Hello everyone,

today, I am going to write something about one specific aspect of World of Tanks (or any “World of” Wargaming product really) – the Free to Play (F2P) business model. Looking at the forums (well, okay, specifically the Czech ones, but the same thing comes up everywhere on occasion), I see a lot of confusion about the “free” part. People do complain that Wargaming shouldn’t charge as much for this and that and that should be for free too and whatnot.

Wargaming is not a charity. It’s a business corporation and it does not exist to entertain anyone, despite how much various Wargaming representatives talk about bringing joy and doing what they do with love and whatnot. It exists to make money. Noone invests millions of dollars in something, that doesn’t bring profit – and so, Wargaming has to charge for something. And that something always brings pay-to-win element into the game – the question is not IF, the question is HOW MUCH.

First, there is this nice little video by Extra Credits again – if you have time, go ahead and watch it (you can skip it, I’ll be describing the effect in the article, but they do it better):

Alright. So, what we have here is the free-to-play model of Wargaming, which they call “free-to-win” or something. In the video, it is cited as one of the good examples of free-to-play monetization and I actually agree. It’s a very delicate balance. You have two aspects of the game, that have to be in equillibrium:

- the ability of the developer to make money off the game
- the ability to play for free with it still being fun

Now, make no mistake. You will always have some pay to win elements, no matter what the developer says and how they argues. What matters is their intensity of course. Sure, you might argue that for example selling “hats” (Team Fortress) might not have any P2W element, but is that really true?

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Source: https://vk.com/newsblog_wot

Hello everyone,

just a quick update on the M56 Scorpion and how it is doing on supertest. Scorpion set of characteristics (including pictures) was leaked earlier, when the vehicle was introduced to the supertest server.

The feedback from supertesters about this vehicle is that with current characteristics, it sucks even against tier 9 vehicles, let alone tier 10′s. The developers allegedly agree, they too are unhappy with the vehicle performance. Current line of thinking is that this tank destroyer will definitely have limited matchmaking – it’s allegedly even possible it will not see tier 9 and 10 tanks in battle at all. This is however extremely preliminary at this point, further tests and tweaks are being conducted.

Hello everyone,

so, the Fury Competition results are here.

Personally, I was really skeptical about the competition and still am about the movie, for various reasons:

- they wrecked the Sherman they used (followed by a Wargaming money drive for its restoration)
- the “LOL SHERMUN WUZ CRAP TEH TIGER BESTEREST TANK OF WAR” trailer
- too much hype
- I don’t like Brad Pitt

Anyway, about the competition. The first funny part is that the “super secret tank” (reskinned Sherman to looke like the one from the movie – not sure which version, the one appearing on the screen, or the way the tank looked after the shooting) is not even in the game (probably gonna be in 9.3 files coming out after this weekend), but whatever.

The winning trailer looks good I guess. I am really not a WoT video expert, but I kinda expected a bit more. But fair enough, why not. What struck me as odd however were the other “trailers”, for example the one, that won third place.

I mean, so there’s the American T20, the M6 or whatever and a Hellcat at the end, what does that have to do with the Fury movie? Absolutely nothing? It looks like an action version of a random WoT video. I know it took probably some (even considerable) effort, but… well, I don’t know.

And what do you think of the contest?

Thanks to WARLOCK360100 for this one.

Hello everyone,

according to this article, Wargaming (specifically Viktor Kislyi) announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2014 that Wargaming (World of Warships) would cooperate with the creators of anime called Arpeggio Blue Steel, which is apparently warship-themed. Tried to check on the story of the anime and it makes no sense to me, so I guess it’s an attempt to make specifically the Japanese players interested.

Well, at least they are doing the advertising right:

Hello everyone,

here are the pictures of a very old map – and by very old I mean more than two years back. It was called Savannah and it never made it even to the open test server. The reason for that was that the developers considered the map too open and without cover – the artillery dominated on it.

Savannah was one of four maps, that were “leaked” around March 2012. The other maps of the batch were Mexico, Munich and South Coast. Munich and South Coast eventually made it to the game (Munich is now called Widepark), Mexico and Savannah did not. Below are the screenies of Savannah and Mexico. Too bad – now that arty was nerfed big time, I think it might be time to have a look at those maps again :)

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Hello everyone,

you might have already heard of the Extra Credits Youtube show. It’s actually a really great show I like a lot, even though I sometimes disagree with some of their ideas. I think it was Vallter, who actually introduced me to this show and I am grateful for that. Anyway, here’s one part that you should find interesting. Go ahead, watch it. I’ll continue after you do.

So, now, you know the reason why there are no player-to-player ingame transactions in World of Tanks of any sort. By not introducing them, the developers essentially bypassed a whole lot of trouble, one of the biggest being raging inflation. Bethesda with Elder Scrolls Online went the same direction by the way, allowing auction houses to work only within guilds, removing the worst predatory practices, that appeared in World of Warcraft over the years by the “peer pressure” (players are much less likely to attempt to cheat their percieved guildmates).

In World of Tanks, the economy is completely closed, which means that the developers have complete control over its flow. Various elements of the economy, requiring both credits and gold, are introduced to keep the inflation in check. And yes, there is an inflation.

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Hello everyone,

from RU server – the Chaffee Race Footage.

The mode is apparently 3vs3 Chaffee race (special fast Chaffee Sport). It takes place on completely reworked Port map. There are various obstacles, such as jumping ledges, exploding barrels and such. It ends with a very fast base capture it seems.