67 thoughts on “Why is there no EU/US Supertest?”

1. This post made me go and play WoWp again. Still dunno why everyone is so biased against it… ^^;

   • Planes dont tank and fly logs.
     In WT you either die from oneshot, take some nice damage and crash or fly like bulletproof dragon.

     • We might disagree, but I like the flying model more in WoWp

       The one hit – I agree there, but since it’s the only difference, I don’t think that’s the cause of all that “WoWp is dying” stuff.

       • People generally like easier games mate. War Thunder is easier to master then World of Warplanes, exactly because it is SLIGHTLY less arcadey (Only slightly, it is still almost BF level of non-realism).

         It also got hyped by its aggressive fanboys more. That too helped. Now it is entrenched as better then WoWp and only a smear campaign by WarGaming OR million dollar marketing (both WG can do) will save it.

         As for me… I dont care about planes. Both are irrelevant to me. Except WT’s tanks are kinda shit.

         • I pretty much agree except for the “easier to master, because it’s less arcadic”. I think that being more arcadic helps a lot, but it wasn’t enough, it seems.

           • WT planes somehow more responsive and you can feel its limits of mobility.

           • Arcade =/= easier.
             Usually pseudo realism (WT’s case) is easier.

             Arcadic gameplay used to mean hardcore… easy to learn hard to master. Same as any great game really. Now people of the new generation of gamers praise shit like CoD or battlefield… yeah…

             • Last good CoD was…..Call of Duty 2 Big Red One.
               Last good BF was Bad Company 2.
               Still waiting for 3rd :D

               “No need using doors – just make your own!”
               - Haggard

               • Last Good CoD was CoD 4.
                 Last good BF was BF2.

         • I’ve ever played WoWP, but Warthunder’s historical, or what are they now, realistic battles? are a lot more realistic than arcade. I don’t personally like arcade that much, too many aircraft and too much confusion.

           • Realistic =/= better.

             Else why are you not in Arma?

         • This isnt true. I`m a die hard WOT fan who has been here since Closed Beta and have tons invested ingame and WT is just a much better flight sim than WOWP.

           Arcady-ness works much much better for WOT and it doesnt at all for planes.

           WT is 8/10 i`d say with planes and the only issues are severe balance ones.
           WOWP is a 4/10 as it has UFO like cheesy as physics. Bigworld was just not made to be a vertical game. Anything above a mountains height is just fake feeling. It has boost that keeps some planes literally at top speed climbing straight up and while I love HP pools in tanks and think its much better, it is bad with planes.

           WOWP sucks. WOWS would be awesome if they used the WOWP engine and you could switch to your carrier planes but as a stand alone game its bad.

           I really do hope they do a midway style where you can control your planes eventually and they use WOWP to do it….Other than that its garbage.

           If they really want WOWP to survive all they have to do is make credits from game transfer over, not just gold. I would buy a plane and grind the shit out of it to buy the tanks I needed.

           • WOWP sucks, because ever since 1.3, it won’t play on my perfectly usable 1024×768 monitor.

       • I really like WOWP too, maybe compared to WOT it isn’t that good, but still for me WOWP > WT. HIGHFIVE!

         • WT>wot>wowp. Not jecesarrily for gameplay but indluding: optimisation. My semi weak computer gets better fps for better graphics. Models. The wt models look real. Competent devs. They rarely have imbalance and fix it when they do. And then, there is the part where it makes sense. Im done with wot until they fix their servers, balance what needs to be balanced, and optimize the damn game engine. And remove wt e100. And ban the douchebags who bully and abuse other players. (Wt doesnt take that bullshit) im just mad i spent money on wot…

           • I agree that technologically Gaijin seems MUCH better then Wargaming, which is funny since WarGaming have enough money to buy Gaijin, the organs of all the people working there and the organs of their families and still have enough to build a 7 story Grand Mall in the center of New York …

             But balance wise, WT is shit. And its tank’s gameplay is… meh…

             The only reason you dont see many douchbags in WT is because it aint that popular yet.

             • Not only because of that – chat isnt as good in WoT.

             • And isn’t that a good thing ? Look for rage in WT’s chat, you’ll struggle finding any. I like WoT better for a balanced multiplayer gameplay experience, but WT ain’t bad either. :)
               To me, it’s just its shitty unfinished UI that keeps everyone puzzled by not informing you on the armor/shell/movement mechanics, save for module damage/destruction. You still have to dig old posts on the news channel and the dev blog to find reliable litterature. All they need is more PR, both a brand new wiki with actual content like WG did, and to implement stuff like this :
               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=togFXO-ysB8
               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6er2OSB94uM
               People have to understand simulation is totally cool in a F2P, as long as you don’t require all players to dig history books and whatnot to understand core gameplay. Keeping the average skill low allows a F2P game to grab more money, but it’s still currently causing a lot of people to quit playing.
               On the side of content, talking strictly about the ground forces part – WT:AF beats out WoWP indeed – they need time to implement more map and vehicle diversity while keeping game balance playable. They are already working on urban maps but prefer waiting for the readiness of building destruction features. Physics have shown much improvement lately. Oh, and did I mention they also have a functional T-35 with multigun support ?
               To me, they should have kept the title in CBT phase for more time, then no shitstorms would have happened. They are developing a tank game on an air combat game’s engine, people need to be patient. :)

               • Time needed to fix WT UI is same as WG to optimise game.

             • That’s been my experience also. But I’ve never personally cared for WT’s flight model. It almost seems too “jerky” and overly responsive for my taste (I don’t mind having to fight the plane to get it to do what I want as much as others do apparently)

           • WT tanks is nowhere near WoT in its current state, some hardcore fanboys nearly made me believe WT was the salvation, you know those people with the dumb “WoT survivor” banners in the forums. Buggy as hell at the time of the open beta and funny that you say imbalanced, well well… My first hours of gameplay in WT:GF ive seen such imbalanced shit its not even fun to play, even worse than WoT 2 years ago, maybe it is a little better now but right now WT:GF needs atleast another year of development. It does look miles ahead of WoT in the fancy shader department.

             Also you can turn of the in-game chat in WoT. “(Wt doesnt take that bullshit)” seen enough people in WT who spam the chat and write same shit in WoT and any other online game. Just a case of welcome to the internet.

           • Have you played with it recently? The devs incompetent and there is a huge imbalance in the game. When WT:GF released there was a record of 100k players online, now it barely reaches 30-40k at peak time.
             Rank 4-5 is so unbalanced it virtually unplayable, T-54,IS-4 has over 80% win rate, thanks to this no one wants to play with Rank 5 germans only masochist. Thanks to this there are endless queues in realistic and simulator mode.
             The devs are utterly biassed and don’t listen to the players, and instead of trying to fix this imbalance and guess what they are doing. Right! They’ll add a new T-54 in the next patch wonderful decision isn’t it?
             Also their forums are pest with full of ignorant biassed moderators who are censoring every negative post. WoT is Heaven compared to this.

             Thanks to these I have zero interest in WT:GF, but the Aviation part is ok so if I play with WT I only play with planes.

2. Back when I was a community contributor (newsletter), we got 2500-3000 gold a month.

   When I was a translator, the reward was either 300 euro per patch or the same in gold…
   But all people in the translation team must choose the same method of pay.
   At least that is what I believe it was. Something like that.

3. If you work as a supertester, as opposed to a community contributor, who’s activities are entirely voluntary, you may become a de-facto employee. National employment legislation will probably apply and payment, either of money or ‘in kind’, would have to be declared by the employer and employee to the national tax authority. It is understandable that WG does to want to get involved with this sort of activity, as they are not familiar with the employment and taxation legislation of most countries.

   Oh, also they are cheapskates who want to scrimp on testing their product (no QA department ffs!).

   • But a virtual “good” that can not be traded is not considered as a payment… like a back-scratch.
     And now i imagine EU politicians trying to tax back-scratching…

     • That’s probably a reason. Supertesters are psuedo-employees. Both the EU and US have pretty strict laws about employment and such, and compensation.

       I know for a fact that the US has issues with virtual “goods” as payment. The only workaround for tax purposes is to have it taxed as “property” and then you have to self-report and keep stupidly detailed logs of how you received it, when, what it was for, and what the USD equivalent value is for it. The employer has to do something similar. The only reason I know this is because there was a ruling sometime late last year about bitcoin as a currency.

       And I know the EU tends to have more tin the way of laws, for just about everything, than the US does. I can’t imagine what the process would be there.

       • Still… YOU CAN NOT TRADE WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THE “TRANSACTION” thus it has 0 value in the global economy.

4. WG never be international company. They will always stay as Russian company. Because Russians cant do international company. Lack of skill i think.

   • because WG and viktor Kisly are very much russian…

     if u are dumb /have no idea what u are talking about, dont make it THAT obvious.

     • what kind of moron you are. Belarus is simply Russia. In my language we simply say white russia. Russian never trust other ones. WoT not only my russian game. Also i play 2 year @ WT. I understan russian mentality well.
       They opened Paris office for serving Euro zone. Paris office has no diffirence than mcdonalts Moscow shop. Victor live in cyprus because cyprus is Tax heaven…

       Man i really hate your type ignorant morons who dont know anything about still talking bullshit @ everywhere…

       • This.

         Culturally and attitudinally, there is less difference between Russia and Belarus than between one sub-region and the next in most of western europe.

       • What is your country then smartass?

         • Why is that relevant smartass?

           • Ahh my favorite mate. Always with the reasoning and the VERY intelligent (not) arguments.

             It is relevant simply for him to be given a taste of his own medicine.

             • Criticising someone for not giving a reason argument for their comment, when you yourself did not give a reasoned argument for your comment…. weak.

               And why do you want to give him “a taste of his own medicine”? You should address the argument, not the person making the argument.

               • I am referring to your usual statements mate. It was you and Sky I think that are some of the… special cases around here :P

                 I actually am BTW. His “argument” really deserves a dis, nothing more.

         • I am Turkish guy. West coast of turkey. Many friends work @ holiday hotels. They talking how they drink and after how they behave..Also Russians travellers always @ news. How they how they dont really respect others. Even after Ukrania Civil aircraft attack. As Turkish guy we are equal to west and east. We accept both German Russian Japan and American war crimes. Also we are working for both EU and Russia. I didnt want insult anyone. I only write what is truth. If russians start respect others right they will earn better. ATM @ business. Turkish companies know one reality. If company dont have some important friends @ russia They cant do business. And doing business @ russia have much more risk than EU.
           Again I played 2 year WT to. I learn how behhave againts problems. When i looked WG and compare. I find alots of similar aspect. (thanks SS insider topics)
           One think you understand. I already know my country problems to.o We have alots of weakness and problems. But this is another and deep topics. And one more think. Dont think everbody againts russia or somethink. We can see your nation weak and strong sides. But major problem russian really lack of want to see this.
           Why russia never have real international company like coca-cola or GM….
           Russia will continue sell their raw materials….

           • I meant your remark that Belorussia is the exact same as Russia.

5. “her title is Lead Supertest Manager, which – considering there is no such thing as US/EU supertest – is probably the most useless position ever”
   AFAIK her position is the same for the RU warplanes supertest, so it’s not useless.

   As for the truth… well, it’s probably the fact that it’s easier to control just the RU guys, the recent story about kostik_11 hints on that. And yes, there is at least one guy on tanks supertest who doesn’t speak russian.

6. As for the USA.

   The definition of a volunteer according to the US Department of Labor: Volunteers are individuals who perform hours of service for religious, charitable or similar non-profit organizations without promise, expectation, or receipt of compensation.

   According to The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), A for-profit company could face a lawsuit if it turns out the volunteer was doing the work a paid employee should be doing. A for-profit company is not allowed to use volunteers, unless it’s for a special charity event.

   Someone who is volunteering should be working for their own benefit or a humanitarian reason as opposed to trying to benefit the employer.

   WoT uses volunteers (supertesters) for their benefit.

   • What pisses me off about this issue the most is that WG actually had a legitimate reason for dropping the EU/US supertesters, but the message they put out was ‘EU/US supertesters leak, so we can’t use them’. Typical WG fail.

   • Supertest is for the eternal benefit for the end-users. So it’s volunteering EVEN if it generates profit to the volunteer. (also: according to the FLSA, by this logic, if the army calls you to war you can say: “that is against the laboring laws”?)

     • I do not know about other countries.

       “FLSA, by this logic, if the army calls you to war you can say: “that is against the laboring laws”?

       But in the USA a soldier is paid.

       • exactly… and a guy who must “defend the motherland” is not.
         so if north-korea attacks the USA you have an excuse why you not join the army :D

   • So they should be paying us when we get on the Test Server and test the beta patches?

     Awesome!

     Same rationale as SuperTesters. They really do think their customers are morons, don’t they?

7. Bullshit. As long as you are not tied with WG by contract you can do whatever they want you to do. There is no such thing that you have to be rewarded in any way by volunteering for some company. Supertesters are only different from regular testers (on PTS) that they have early access to everything and see things that wont get into the game.

   If there would be a law like that then I would get shitloads of stuff already. Last time I remember I was testing something as a volunteer – I was in a group for testing stuff for Guild Wars 2. Earlier I had access to closed testing of Planetside 2 stuff.

   Every single closed testing for volunteers have the point that says smth like “Volunteer testers won’t be paid for they work”. Simple as that, noone wants monies for that. Sometimes the game developers are nice enuff to give some ingame items for “supertesters”

   In short – WG is silly and they just dont want any NA/EU players for supertesting because who the fuck knows why

   Leaks ? Yea, sure, as we dont have leaks right now

8. “Participation in pre-release testing of the Premium aircraft that stay in their hangars after testing ends”
   “have an opportunity to exchange their points for aircraft that are not freely available, like the models given out to players during various specials or for entering the bonus codes.”

   What if i register as a “yeah sure, i’m a random russian guy. believe me. just speak to me in english cause i was raised by wolves or something” to get a “free” Type59 and sell the account on Ebay?

   • I wonder if they actually (somehow) check where arw you from on reg.

9. Volunteers must be rewarded? If that’s written as n EU law, then EU is really retarded (I already know EU sucks but this could be another point taken in that direction).

   But I don’t think this is the case. My country is part of EU and I can tell you for sure that volunteers are not paid, nor are they rewarded with goods and they have no income to declare from their volunteering activities.

   The arguments that WG guy puts up are simply horse shit.

   • But but Mao, you are comparing your country (which is also mine, unfortunately) with the West… When though we are on the EU, we still ain’t really in it, more reforms to be done and what not.. Have been to the west (currently studying in it) and voluntary work can be rewarded if for whom you are doing the job sees fit, and most of the time they usually do. Don’t see a problem with that, however small or big the reward is, it can also be a pat on the back :) : Good job you motherfucker!

10. “Those few supertesters that are left from EU and NA are the players who were accepted more than a year ago when we wanted to start a programm and who stayed loyal and showed activity on tests.They share all possibilities with RU supertesters except actual reward in ingame gold. ”

    That is bullshit. I was an active (EU) supertester for over 1 year. They suddenly pulled the plug on all of us when the leaks happened. They didn’t give us any chances, or ask us anything. Just a sudden global ban of supertest accounts.

    We got to keep the tanks we supertested (generally new premiums), but only on our RU accounts (that we were forced to create, for the explicit reason of supertesting new tanks on RU live server). So I have an inactive RU account with multiple tier 8 premiums (jt88, spersh, is-6, etc etc) that I can’t use on my EU account because of wg’s retarded “no tank transfer between accounts/servers” policy. And yes, they promised us at the beginning that we would get them on our EU accounts – that’s wargaming’s promises for you. Let us do the job and then conveniently “forget” the reward.

11. “You Shall NOT like “WoWP! :D

12. There are still WoWp EU and NA Supertesters, just that the registration for new ST’s is closed.

13. There’s actually some legal precedent for this – back in the 90s, AOL used volunteer moderators to monitor chat rooms. In exchange for this, they would receive free internet time (this being back when internet tended to be something paid for by the hour). AOL got into hot water, legally speaking, and had to pull the plug on the program.

    http://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/

14. “All this have a legal backround and goes to a thing that we are obliged by USA and EU legislation to provide monetary payment to Volunteers”

    I’m Canadian so fuck your EU and U.S. law bullshit, neither apply to me. Also in my particular province I know it is possible to waive some regulations intended to protect employees via contract.

15. I was in NA Supertest…. literally weeks before it was shut down. The story I, and many other NA supertesters got was basically that there was Murrcan legislation against the type of compensation was supposed to be given to the testers since it was supposedly an “appointed job.”

    I never thought that held any water simply because Alpha and Beta testers were compensated for their volunteering efforts with unique reward tanks/planes.

    Supertesters could have simply been given something similar, or a small gold stipend from time to time and it would have thrived.

    • > I never thought that held any water simply because Alpha and Beta testers were compensated for their volunteering efforts with unique reward tanks/planes.

      That’s exactly why it holds water in the US. Supertesters are considered “volunteers”. And for a company to use “volunteers” in the US, there can be no compensation. Because the government wants it’s tax money. So if they were paying supertesters as “part time” employees or something, there’d be a whole lot of shit to deal with…

      First and most obvious is that the US doesn’t view electronic goods as currency but as property. This makes it all the more complicated when doing taxes. Look at how you’re supposed to manage bitcoin transactions.

      Second, is that with minimum wage laws, there’s no way WG could afford to formally employ them. Because a month of supertesting gets roughly 2500-3500 gold from what people are saying. There’s no way, if you convert that amount of gold to USD, that they’d come CLOSE to meeting minimum wage.

      I mean, not that anyone who supertests would complain, I mean hell, you’re getting free tanks, free gold, and playing all the new stuff, what’s NOT to like?

      Last, I think that there is a distinct language barrier. I suspect that most of the correspondence between supertesters and WG is in Russian. And when you’re dealing with something like testing new features, “lost in translation” could cause major problems. Also, it’s probably easier on WG to begin with anyway.

16. I use to be a tester and GM for a couple of companies based in the U.S. that used volunteers as GMs and community managers. Somewhere around 2004, I forget exactly when, there was a major court case that had some volunteers suing the company they were associated with for compensation. They won the case but as a result, there was legislation passed that the compensation they received in game goods had to be reported as income. The companies now require the volunteers fill out W2′s and the game companies report those compensation goods in dollar value equivalents to the federal and state tax agencies. I can see where WG would prefer not to have to deal with all the various tax entities and just stick to the one Russian one if it even has something similar to what the U.S. and EU have in this area. So I doubt we’ll ever see a US/EU Supertest based on this.

    • >The companies now require the volunteers fill out W2′s and the game companies report those compensation goods in dollar value equivalents to the federal and state tax agencies.

      Not to mention, there’s no way their compensation would come anywhere near minimum wage.

17. Haswell?
    From the NA server?
    o_O
    He’s one of my favorite platoon-mates, but he hasn’t been on in a while, for about 2 months. We’re very similar in play-style and stats, as well as game analysis ability, so maybe I could be a super-tester as well…

    Also, I remember SerB saying that WG was looking for a good player from the NA server who wasn’t a dedicated padder. They might want to turn to the “Chief Problematic”, Garbad. He has the best solo-pub match win-rate on the entire server.

    • Garbad? That would be more truth than the WoT managers could take, presented in a way they could take even less …

18. so how come they let players CLOSED alpha and beta test their games in the first place?
    isn’t that a “volunteer”, so ANY game that has a closed alpha and beta has to monetarily rewards players and fill tax forms?, snif snif…. you smell that?, yeah, BULLSHIT, fucking bullshit. WG-branded fucking bullshit

19. When WOWP came out they recruited a small group of supertesters. You would see them flying planes that were not released. The last time I saw one of them flying a non-released aircraft was patch 1.4. I had not heard of the US supertesters being disbaned in WOWP. I dont play WOWP as much as I used to for a lot of reasons. Mainly I have only so many hours an evening to game. I play a small group of 5 or 6 games which includes WOWP a few times a week, The biggest issue with WOWP is every patch they totally change the flight model of all planes. (at least the last 3 or 4 patches) I have gotten tired of having to relearn how to fly after each patch.

    As far as I know there are still a small group of WOWP US supertesters. No idea on EU. The laws there are different.

20. I’d love to know which law it is that requires wargaming to pay supertesters that somehow doesn’t apply to Blizzards and other corporations’ beta tests.

    Liars. Bloody fucking liars, the whole lot of em.

21. Well, they probably could afford German super testers on a “minijob” base (450€ / month max) then. No tax declaration needed for these jobs. :P

    Ofc, 450€ / month is the maximum, they could also just send some chocolate (or grant in-game gold).

22. If I am a Russian-speaker, and I live outside of the EU and US (but not in the RU cluster) – can I become a supertester if I open an account on the RU cluster an play 1000 battles?

23. “All this have a legal backround and goes to a thing that we are obliged by USA and EU legislation to provide monetary payment to Volunteers. ”

    This is such horse shit.

    Volunteers do not have to be paid in the US. This is what “volunteering” means. I have volunteered many, many hours to local organizations and have never seen a cent for it and never expected to..

    How would being on supertest be ANY different, from a “volunteering” standpoint, than being in the alpha or beta tests or the test server? You’re still volunteering your time to test an unfinished product..