Hello everyone,
you might have encountered it as well during prime time on EU server – once again, there are sometimes (short) queues on EU1, which means the server is chock-full, not a common sight these days. However, as WG EU stated before (the Falathi interview), there are no plans for EU3 server. Why is that?
Well, the obvious answer is that this amount of players is just temporary and it will go down again, because World of Tanks has reached its peak and it’s likely that the numbers will stay as they are currently (on average) or will start to slowly decline. This is a natural process of any MMO, that is around for a while and World of Tanks are four years old already. Peak amount of players is a good indicator, because for example total amount of accounts includes rerolls, double accounts, “I tried it once 3 years ago but never played” accounts, botter and spammer accounts and other stuff like that.
Last year around this time, World of Tanks did set a new world record with 1,114 million players playing simultaneously on RU cluster. The reason for the massive activity on RU server are of course the current winter holidays (orthodox Christmas). So, how does the RU peak look during prime time?
Just below a million. That’s good, especially considering the events in Russia this year, which surely made many people think about other things than World of Tanks. But I don’t think these numbers will grow beyond the last year’s record. They even might at one point – but only by very very little.
What I mean by all that is: I think that when looking back, early 2014 will be considered the peak of World of Tanks curve and the beginning of stagnation or even decline of World of Tanks, just as 2010 was the peak of World of Warcraft. I could be wrong of course, but I think that 2015 will be the critical year for World of Tanks, a year that (depending on the changes and the state of the game) might actually send the game into stagnation, or actually make it a peak year yet.
Please note one thing however: I am talking about players, not about WG income. I completely expect the sale model shifting towards more “milking”, so despite declining peaks, the profit from WoT might only go up (not that it’s going to be published I guess).
And what do you think?
There is hope for WoT but serious measures need to be implemented in 2015 against:
Bots
Hacks
CoD clone with tanks.
I can do 720 noscope in my 4502B already!
Comparing WoT with CoD makes zero sense, since they are fundamentally different, man… WoT is slower, more team-based, more RNG prone because of long ranges.
Slower CoD through the same 3 or 4 death corridors…
Agree with Red.
Me too. Mainly because of the three dots he put at the end of his convincing explanation.
Thank you…
You are welcome…
Well, you have to be blind not to notice the decline in game’s complexity over last year.
WoT is actually pretty fast for a tank game, so I guess that’s where the CoD remark comes from.
I wish there was a manager there who would focus on “wallet-friendly” approach instead of “milking” as you’ve mentioned it :) Well, overall it was not so bad, but the advent failure was too much even for people with money I believe and I simply think that constant income, even if lower, is still better than huge income in short period of time followed by decline afterwards. But, well, I’m not the CEO or whoever in charge of that… :)
I agree about the milking part – I think we will see more and more “unique” offers and tanks sold that were meant to be never sold again. It is happening already and it will happen even more.
About player base.. it is totally dependent from WG and devs – if they will manage to introduce this year an enjoyable EU branch, Havok and some other nice features which are in development, then peak in next Christmas season could easily get even higher. But if they fail to do it… or if they do it and what happens after that.. I don’t know.
WOT hit massive market saturation in the RU server, but it never really got past 30k-40k concurrent users in the NA server. One thing WG can do for growth is to start trying to appeal to the NA server more, even if its for whiney stuff like 1-tier MM spreads, gold ammo nerfs, etc. In spite of what the forum community probabily thinks, those kinds of changes will probably be well recieved by the general playerbase.
Also WG needs to do something about chronic seal-clubbers and the disastrous game balance at tier 4. Nothing is more likely to make a new player drop the game and never pick it up again than a:
1. bad tutorial,
2. Getting wrecked by seal clubbers over and over again, particularly gold-spamming T-127′s or Cruisers.
3. Reaching tier 4 and then ending up with an absolutely terrible vehicle [AMX 40, DW2, etc] or
4. ending up with an absolutely hopeless scout tank because the game does NOTHING to warn new players about which tanks do or do not get scout-MM at tier 4, and most new players likely hate scouting anyway. The tier 4 lights all make terrible scouts anyway, the Pz38NA is the only one that even has a decent view range.
“The tier 4 lights all make terrible scouts anyway”
Luchs just spat out his coffee! One of the best tanks in the game. And the cutest.
I have 2.5k battles in mine… Padding tier 7 seals is always fun, tier 8 seals used to be even better. But with all certainty I can say that a newbie without a good crew and good equipment will not have fun in Luchs.
i agree with that 100% the only thing i can say about them making things better for NA players is to actually listen to some of our opinions.. NA is the largest consumers of video games in the world… so why not at least listen to some of our opinions… ohh and if they do get players to stay on the server they better reduce lag… 30k people get on and the lag starts annoying..
I know some people wouldn’t like the one tier spread but instead of saying no why not try it for one patch to see how it goes? Maybe it would be something to bring more people playing again. I wonder if on the RU server with a million people on if the MM is much more balanced.
Tupinambis’s comment is not reflective of NA in general. There are players who whine about the items he lists, but in general most NA players deal with it.
If WG were to change everything to reflect what Tup has posted, it would not increase the NA player base significantly.
dont forget, early 2014 was the time competition started and in 2015 more will come. Of course WT GF and most likely also AW wont be as successful as WoT was back then (due to shared marked), but they will take a share of the market away from WoT (There are always ppl who prefer other things no mater how bad they are) and therefore decrease the WoT peak, not because it became bad (Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t as ppl complain since start of beta that everything became worse and still the player base was growing for 3-4 years), but because the market situation has changed.
Plenty of growth left in EU and NA, plus console versions. As long as they keep the updates coming and get Havok in 2015, WoT will be Stronk.
I still dont get this fuss about Havok. As if it was such a gamechanger. I for one dont need it at all – if WG optimize the game better and start to make proper new maps while not destroying the old ones plus add some new branches/tech trees, Id be satisfied. But i guess thats just me :)
Havok is mostly eye candy.. apparently that might give us night/day cycles which I would really love to see in the game.. even if just for historical PvE battles that might last 30~ or more minutes..
And Havok apparently also allows artillery to fire trough buildings with AP and do damage.. which is again, brilliant.
The main problem is the antisocial community. That really destroys any fun.
But you cant sell games without fun. In my opinion, Wot must make statistic private if a user wants this. Unicums would do this, so “Arty-cancer spams me because i’m the best player in the world flaming” stops. Bad player would do this to become not any more victim of insults or even racism. And this would destroy XVM, what is absolutely needed. XVM only creates hate, nationalism and racism in playerbase.
Several years before I was a Quake3 player. There were no things like public statistic or XVM. People were gentle and i want this peaceful game experience back.
WOT also have to strictly sanctify bad behaviour. The lethargy made this game to something you cant let children play. Its unacceptable that children are constantly confronted with racism and nationalism. At the end they grow up and think this behaviour and hate is normal.
No, its not normal. Guys we play a game. Everybody have the right to be a bad player. And if you do insult next time may you insult a disabled children. Remember this!
And if you want all players away from the game that are not as good as you, you are finally the tomato. Remember this!
if you get so offended, why dont you just turn off the chat and enjoy the actual gameplay? :)
Thats possible but it wont change the unsocial behaviour cause by XVM-goldrush.
People will stay ramm you and drive into your shoting line to steal kills. People will still play the way that it is better to lose with good XVM, than to win with bad XVM.
How often do we have situations were e.g. 4 tanks are confronted with 2 tanks.
But no one of this 4 tanks starts the rush, because no one wants to get the first hits.
I’m of of these guys that play for win. I’m not that good, but at least i try. So i would be the one who drives first and gets the shot. But even then often the 3 player stay in their save position and watch while i die.
Players attitude is not to win and to play a team game.
Players attitude is see team mates as competitors when its about running for XVM gold.
XVM must die or the last piece of game culture dies.
Man, XVM does not play instead of you. It is information which you can use to your advantage/disatvantage. Stats mean more or less shit, because 4 tanks with 300WN8 can kill 1 tank with 3500WN8 if he is in the open and the other random dudes shoot at him with premium ammo. There is no skill in that. Severely outnumbered not even the best can succede. Win chance prediction is also bullshit, because everybody had games when they lost a 95% win probability battle and turned the odds on a 15% WR battle. The way you use the XVM given info is up to you. I personally like XVM, mods, you name it, but i take everything XVM shows with a “pinch of salt” (like SS would say)
I think the problem is not premium ammunition for credits, spotting system or even MM, or powercreep. I think the problem is in the mindset, age and experience of the players. Too young – irrational, not understanding a foreign language, can not comprehend orders, slow learning curve, teens and young adults – more or less know “game-english” go here/defend that/help etc, are willing to play team based matches and can cooperate to succede, faster learning curve, adults and elder people – rational, but now willing to comply to team based orders, hate to take advice from someone younger, slower learning curve.
And experience counts too. Experience in other games, team based games, real life experience.
I don’t use XVM. And it would be no problem if everybody use XVM like you do.
But the most XVM users are not able to use it in a responsible way. Instead the think its a judgment that allows them to be the hangman.
Everybody knows about the polish bashing in the game.
Its like we have 1933 in Germany and they wear yellow stars.
This scapegoat behaviour is not acceptable.
This extreme situation is caused by the human impulse to do “statspadding”. But XVM is what it makes possible and make the people finally mentally ill. They have no control over their mind like there is a “gold rush”. People think their value as human belongs to this fucking number.
The Problem doesn’t only exists ingame. When you travel around Teamspeak servers you hear everywhere butthurt, crying, insulting and finally blaming polish people even if they don’t write it in game chat.
Meanwhile this kind of behaviour is normal and every new player “grow up” with that and do it finally by itself.
I’m also raging sometime. I also do insult ingame insult sometime.
I’m not immune to this influences.
Raging cause more rages.
Insult causes more insults.
Time to change it.
do you know anything?? there is a reason some of us play with high stats and dont just rush… yea you may be the first around the corner but when you get singled out by an autoloader or a cancer then your gonna die fast. There is a reason why we all have 57+% win rates. its because we win.. regardless of what you do we win about 60% of our battles
How ofter do i saw that these 4 guys i talked about, stay and died slowly over the half game instead of working as team and use superior number of tanks to get an advantage for the team. I dont talk about blind rushing, i talk about situation when its clear that there is no hidden army that surprise you.
I accept that there are good players with good win rate and good stats. But thats not what i talk about. I talk about the mass of players hunting for WN8 and forget that it is a teamplay.
These guys do intentially the wrong things for win when it helps to stay alive and maximize WN8. They dont want to die and let all the other in his team work for him. The only intentention is to earn what others worked out.
These guys teach themselve statspadding regardless of they win or not. And these guys are frustrated that their kind of playing dont work and then they start insult and poland bashing.
I have a lot of tanks where my winrate ist much better than WN8-stats allow. Its just because i dont fear to lose health points or to die as long as it helpes the team. So i die young while the statspadder earn what i gained for them after.
Was waiting for the disabled kid part, not disappointed.
There are disabled kids in this game.
I had contact with one.
Any empathy available?
Of course there are, 10 to 20 every battle…
What do you want to tell me?
Its ok to insult people when there are not disabled or what?
Every human with a heart know that it is not ok to insult people for bad playing when they are disabled. That’s why I mentioned this extreme example. It was a appeal to the little rest of decorum of the haters they may have inside to understand why it is a shame what they do.
You really want to discuss about who can be legally insulted and who not?
If so, you understand nothing and you part of the problem.
I don’t consider the “Players” that you get stuck with to be people. their lack of Brain cells makes them not eligible to be called intelligent life forms. Id rather have bots than have “Players” on my team. doesn’t help that the bots are better than most of the “Players”
“-XVM only creates hate, nationalism and racism in playerbase.”
Haha, lol mate, do you really think XVM creates nationalism and racism? Unicum = Übermensch? Haha.
I just say poland bashing.
Some people need a scapegoat if they lose.
In Wot these scapegoat are polish people.
The bashing became so massive that people get insulted before game starts when they have a pl in name. That kind of behaviou is so normal that no one cares anymore. I care and these are the moments when i start insulting the guys that insult people based on their origin
How would you call that behaviour?
I call it racism, because only racists believe that racism deals with races, because there are no human races. Racism is a behaviour
People are brutilized and lost any shame. Sky-Ebola, Sky-cancer….
If the world would act like the players in wot act, we would have max 8h to live.
“I call it racism, because only racists believe that racism deals with races, because there are no human races”
So Caucasian, African, Asian etc do not exist, they’re just words, right?
God, the stupid! It burns!
@Fedaykin89
There are no human races. Ask science!
Finally you blamed yourself, like all the haters in WOT.
I see many parallels. How does racism, fascism and nationalism work?
People are divided into classes, by skin color, religion, origin. In WOT they are divided by a WN8-Number. The upperclass then threats the classes below as scapegoat for everything that don’t work well and acts like the lower classes are outlawed without any rights. In WOT its insult and even teamkill based on XVM stats. The upperclass wants the lower class to go away. They would agree if this is done by force. And now we are in South Africa 30 years ago or Germany 70 years ago …
@teenriot – I think you kinda overthinking this. Its just a bloody game, take it easy. If you dont like it, move on to another title, everythings gonna be fine :) :) :)
ok no… actually the upper class players do hate when some stupid noob squad gets smoked right off the bat.. but the noobs are still an important part of the game… aka the part where i farm all my damage :D during a battle i usually pick up about 1500 free dmg from noobs and usually get the rest of my 4 to 5 k off of green players and some good players… everyone blames xvm but i mean if your sniping in the back with an e100 you deserve to get yelled at. if your so offended turn off your chat.. even though i dont think it should be allowed.
@Dimitriperonov
Its ok when you take adventage of players that are not that good as long as you dont dont blame them, do insult or became racialistic when they are in your team.
Dude.. chill… :o)
i agree racial remarks are just unneeded.. anything that could actually offend someone should be taken seriously but saying someone should uninstall is in my books something i say every-game to some one LOL
LOL. I am disabled, but only because I am so very good looking. I can’t drive properly because of all the bikini clad tanker ladies cluttering up my carousel.
Team Fortress 2 got new huge peak and second life after Mann vs Machine PvE mode.
So, WoT need PvE
If they manage to make a game that runs on more than 1 (one) core in 2015 that would possibly delay the decline!
I mean WTF its 2015 and they will never make a brake in EU and US with a game designed to run on Russian calculators .
Wot isn’t an MMO. every time someone calls it that I die a little inside.
WoT is a MMO repeated 50 times. :)
Not as funny or effective as the one where I typed it out 60 times, guess it did not allow that Spam….
it’s the thought that counts.
Well, they wouldn’t need to milk the naturally declining WoT base if they’d not made such a mess of World of Flying Tanks, or World of Floating Tanks.
Which leads to another thing to think about – if WoT is over the arc of the player numbers bell curve, then the drop in numbers will accelerate. I wonder how much Warships will be rushed into release this year, just repeating the screwup of Warplanes?
i don’t know it’s releated to this topic but i have a suggestion for wot.
they can use advertisements to earn money from never-spending-money players. for example they can rent the battle loading screen or sth. like that for companies. with premium account, players can get rid of that ads (i know how annoying are they in android apps).
also i know there are mods for changing that screens (like the natural boobs pictures like one here – http://pkwot.blogspot.com.tr/2014/12/95-big-natural-full-pack-18.html – the link is +18 sorry for that) but they can find a way to figure it out.
I don’t believe that’s the reason, for this hate in chat. It’s the nature of game, in other words, it’s free. Anyone is able to get it with ease. (I don’t know why would adult swear and after that write “lol”).
I don’t remember last time I actually heard swearing in RO2 and KF, which you have to buy. I would REALLY appreaciate if they implement harsher system for insults.
FWIW, my spending on this game has decreased significantly from a peak in the spring and summer of 2014. I don’t plan to renew premium time (barring a heck of a sale or winning more gold in an tourney) and once I complete the WZ mission I will have more than enough VIII prems to fund the occasional IX and X game (4 VIII prems, maybe 5 if I pick up the T-34-3 on sale soon).
I don’t hate tanks, nor the devs, I am just burnt out and a little disappointed. Plus, there are so many other options that are cheaper / newer etc.
Helloooo Elite Dangerous and Naval Action!!!
I very much appreciate the passion that many players bring to the game, I am a fan of using XVM and calling out terrible play AND I also very much appreciate the work that SS does here. Pity that it doesn’t pay more!
WG could learn a lot from CCP of Eve Online. Imagine a game company that not only treats their customers well, but they even listen to feedback! And, there is an elected council of players that directly interact with the devs! And you get to try out all the ships on the test server! And they speak English, so you don’t need Icelandic translators.
Eve is doing pretty well for a 10 year old game.
Eve >>> Tanks, as far as biz model.
For the moment all they need to do is fix that Match making engine…. I decided that until they do so I WILL NOT BUY anything for £€. So SS if you have any contacts over there in WG tell them that in my name :)
THE MM SUX BALLS
Well if they didn’t leave all the seal clubber tanks in the game, like t18, t82, m8a1, hetzer, it would make new players stay. Also a usable tutorial would be nice too, if you don’t pay attention you might play multiple hundreds or maybe even thousand battles without a fire extinguisher, and you would still have 50% crews in your t10s. And against pedoing they shouldn’t let players with 5k games and on to re-play low tier tanks, what’s the point anyway, only gettig feeded by the newcomers, well congratulations if you got good stats like that, it was probably very hard for you. Another thing, i know it’s a cliché, but they really should rework artillery in the game, and some TDs, like the ISU (and basically all the russian ones :D )
“And against pedoing they shouldn’t let players with 5k games and on to re-play low tier tanks, what’s the point anyway”
But newbs with 0 battles are allowed to buy their way into tier 8 and all is right & fair… right?
Go plough yourself, all tiers are available for everyone
Yep, i think similar. And if they don’t make grind less steep, this game won’t see many new players incoming due to imbalance between them and old players.
Milking all the way.
SilentStonker created an alt account on WoT forums, after WG kicked his sorry ass out. Which one of the those is he?
rerolls
double accounts
“I tried it once 3 years ago but never played” accounts
botter
and spammer accounts
other stuff like that.
I hesitate between “botter” and “other stuff like that”.
I think WoT has another peak left in it, if they:-
- Release a decent PvE mode. A campaign mode would be nice too
- Rework the xp system to remove the frustration of getting stuck on tomato teams (which would also remove most bots overnight)
- Release more premiums at reasonable prices
- Rework HBs into something that people want to play
Game will fizzle out and die probably sometime in 2016 if they don’t fix the major issues in this game.
1) Spotting and Sighting of enemy vehicles. Vehicles that are in straight line sight shouldn’t just disappear. Bug has been mentioned many times still no fix for it.
2) Ridiculous Matchmaker problems. They need to refocus their efforts. Be it skill based depending on your personal number (Since we all have them in game). Or some other weighting in effect.
3) RNG needs to be fixed. Not only for ranging and aiming but for damage. Hitting a tank in the side of the turret should not knock it’s tracks off while causing 0 damage.
4) Too many Buggy maps and problems on maps. They go through super test, they go through test servers and when they are finally released. Yep 1,000 problems.
5) Lets see crappy customer service. An Issue is resolved when the customer says it’s resolved not just by you sending a response back WG.
Hahaha, that’s a nice news, it made my day.
You know what comes after stangation? Yes, here comes the dissolution…
Brezhnev-minded WoT goons are gonna attack me, but who cares. Fuck you all, tankists.