World of Tanks - more addictive than you'd think

What's the best game of the year? Depends who you ask but for me it was definitely World of Tanks. The novelty of the concept, the great gameplay, the vast number of tanks and maps, the endless ways in which a battle can take happen, the infinite replayability, the pseudo-realistic mechanics and physics and, why not, the free nature of the game conspired to make it one of the best games I've played in years.

Of course, not everyone is sold on it. Some people don't like the shooter genre. Some don't like tanks or the WWII setting. Some don't like playing online against others. And on and on. But from what I gather, World of Tanks has a huge worldwide gathering, especially in Russia where it is being developed. A reader informs me that it is actually developed in Belarus. My apologies.

One of the reasons why World of Tanks is so popular is the freemium business model. While other MMOs have started with a subscription model and then switched to freemium when they realized not a lot of people were playing them, World of Tanks was built around the concept of "free" from the get-go. In this aspect, my humble opinion is that it is really well designed. As a free player you have access to all the tank tiers (from 1 to 10) and all the maps. Other freemium games impose certain restrictions on how high you can go. Not this game. While paying customers can reach maximum level much faster, a free player can also get there, through patience and perseverance.

But here's the thing. There's a big chance that if you start out as a free player, even if you intend never to spend a cent on this game, you might find yourself voluntarily shelling out some cash at some point. The very thing happened to me. Though I spent a puny amount compared to hardcore players, I did show my appreciation to the developers by spending some money in the game. This is a good thing. A good game deserves compensation. The more people pay for it, the better the game becomes.

Let me tell you a story that enforces the above.

I'm an European living for many years in the US. I don't have any friends here who are gamers but back in Europe I know a bunch of hardcore nerds, just like me, who love PC games. One of them is a really good friend and we share a lot of interests but these aren't all the time identical. For example, we both love WoW and Diablo but he also likes games such as Dragon Age, The Witcher, Mass Effect. I don't like those but I like Borderlands and Glitch to give a couple of examples.

When I went to my home country on vacation last summer I demoed World of Tanks to my friend. It was easy: download the ~2GB client (very quick at European broadband speeds), install it, login with my username and password. I played a couple of battles for him and he showed some mild interest. I wasn't expecting him to really get into the game.

A few days later he told me that he had created an account and was now playing the game. I was like, woot! He had some initial frustrations with some of the gameplay but ended up being hooked by it. After I got back to the US he told me he was obsessed with the game. He'd even bought a subscription to it and had advanced along the American tank destroyer line farther than I had. Of course, I have a lot more tanks spread across many different lines but still...

So you see, World of Tanks can really grab you hard when you least expect it and it won't let go easily. There are, of course, players who have quit the game in frustration over one aspect or another. One of the main factors of contention is the matchmaker system which sometimes can pit you against tanks 3-4 tiers above you, where you don't stand much of a chance. I admit that the game is not perfect. But you know what? The version number says it is still in beta (currently version 0.6.7) and the devs are continually working on it, fixing bugs, improving mechanics and adding new tanks and maps.

I am not as obsessed with World of Tanks as I was at the beginning. These days I fire it up once every few days, or maybe a couple of times a week. Then again, I'm mostly playing Glitch. But when I do play it, it's almost therapeutic. I just love this game in so many ways. Even if I get raped two minutes into a battle, who cares? I will just load up another tank and perhaps win the next battle with 5 kills.

If you are undecided, if the genre mildly appeals to you, I urge you to try this game. You won't regret it and you might even end up addicted.

In closing, here's a screenshot of a recent glorious battle I fought in. Our team steamrolled the adversaries, with 13 kills on our side, 2 suicides on their side and 1 loss for us. My "Easy 8" Sherman was hanging by a thread at the end.

I caved in, bought gold

Whoa there, before you all blast me, I'm not talking about WoW! Just to make myself clear (for the 1000th time), I am against buying WoW gold and I believe it trivializes the game anyway. Having gotten this out of the way...

The game I bought gold for is... you've probably guessed it... World of Tanks!

The way gold works in WoT is not that obvious from the beginning. In fact, considering that the game is free to play and it offers pretty much the entire tech tree and all the maps regardless of whether you pay or not, you can theoretically play through all the 10 tiers of tanks without spending a (real) dollar.

The catch is that it becomes harder and harder to gain XP and credits (the game's currency) as the tiers go by. By tier 6 it takes a very long time to gain all the necessary XP to upgrade a tank with the best equipment and even more so to move on to the next tier.

World of Tanks has an interesting XP system. Each tank gains XP individually but at the same time, 5% of that experience is saved separately in a "Free Experience" pool which means it can be used by any other tank. Experience is used to research upgrades. Credits are used to buy those upgrades after they are researched.

Once a tank researches all the possible upgrades, it continues to earn XP but that XP is now worthless for this particular tank. You can choose to turn off XP in return for accelerated crew training. But isn't the remaining XP now lost forever? Not quite. That's where the gold comes in.

World of Tanks has such an innovative F2P model that it got me (I'm a notorious tight-fist) to spend money to enjoy the game even more, after only 2 weeks of playing it. For $30 (2 months of WoW) I bought 6500 gold.

Here's what I used the gold for:

1) I converted the remaining XP for tanks which I had either sold (yes, you can still recover the XP from those tanks), or for tanks which had become elite (all upgrades researched) to Free XP. I used that Free XP to research some upgrades badly needed for one of my tier 5 tanks.

2) I trained the crew to 100% for one of my favorite tanks (a Marder II Tank Destroyer if you are curious) and also for my tier 5 tank (a Panzer IV Medium Tank).

3) I might buy an extra garage slot later.

4) I might purchase a 1-month premium account, which allows me to gain XP and credits at a 50% increased rate.

5) Finally, I might buy a premium tank which allows me to farm credits because it is cheap to repair and automatically makes 50% more credits from battles due to its premium status. Unfortunately this tank costs about $40 in real money so I'm a bit on the fence on that.

Was it worth it? Here's a short analysis of each of the above points.

1) Converting XP is relatively cheap. Since having a lot of XP sitting around on other elite tanks doing nothing is not going to help, I consider it a very good thing to be able to transfer that XP to tanks which need it desperately. As a result, I was able to more quickly research the upgrades my Panzer IV needed in order to not suck so badly in combat. Now, the tank is competitive and a blast to play.

2) Initially I was skeptical about training the crew. A new tank starts with a crew at 50% training, unless you are willing to pay a lot of credits to train them to 100%. Problem is, it becomes progressively harder to reach that 100% as you get closer to it.

The quick solution is to spend 200 gold to train each crew member. That's about $1. A tank with a crew of 5 will cost $5 to train to 100%.

First, I trained the crew of 3 for my Marder II Tank Destroyer. The vehicle already had all the upgrades and it was performing well. Let me just say this: the first battle after buying 100% training, I killed 7 enemies (out of a total of 15). My previous record had been 4.

 On top of that, I also won a very wacky medal (it's just like a WoW achievement), for killing the last enemy with my last shell. Hah! Now that's something you don't see every day!

The other tank I trained crew to 100% is my Panzer IV, a Medium with high firepower (when upgraded to the max). Was it worth it in this case? Hell yeah! My tank performs to the top of it's abilities now and is an armored machine of death (at least until it gets spotted).

Why is 100% crew skill so important? Because at 100% crew training every stat on the tank is worth 100%. Crew also aims faster, more accurately, drives better, repairs damage in combat quicker, puts out fires quicker, spots enemies from a farther distance and so on. After 100% you have the option to further specialize each crew member in a number of skills such as camouflage, repair and firefighting. But you can only start specializing once you reach 100%. And if you don't pay for that 100%, it will take ages until you get there.

3) More garage slots are good if you like playing with several different tanks. I already have tier 2 and 4 tanks which I enjoy playing, in addition to the tier 5 and the Tank Destroyer. I would also like to try my hand at SPGs (Self Propelled Guns, or mobile artillery) at some point. Problem is, garage space is limited. The only way you can increase it is either by buying more slots or by selling some of your tanks. It's almost a given that I will fork some gold (300 per) for an extra slot or two.

4) A premium account allows you to earn 50% extra XP and credits from battles. This will simply allow me to progress 50% quicker. Otherwise it doesn't give me a tactical advantage. I'm not sure I'll try it for more than a month though.

5) A premium tank is good for farming credits because these tanks are already fully upgraded (no need to research/buy new equipment), repairs on them are very cheap and these tanks earn 50% more credits than a normal tank of that tier. The only problem is that the nicest such tank, a German Heavy named Löwe costs about $40 in real money. I'm not so sure I want to spend so much money on one tank at this point but it is certainly a possibility for later. First, I'll see how the premium account works, but only after I get back from a short vacation.

There are other ways in which to spend your gold. For example you can buy some premium consumables (such as first aid or repair kits) or premium ammo (only useful in tournaments, unless you're swimming in cash and don't mind shooting real dollars each time your gun fires) but these are of no interest to me.

In conclusion, is it worth buying at least a little bit of gold in World of Tanks? From my point of view, the answer is a resounding YES! Not only does it help make the game more enjoyable by cutting down on some of the grind, but it also helps support the developers who made such an enjoyable and involving game.

Clarification about World of Tanks

There are two things that I forgot to mention about World of Tanks. These are only for the benefit of those who haven't tried the game yet and are tempted.

First, just to make it clear, each player controls one tank. This is not an RTS so you're not in command of a tank squadron. Your "avatar" is your tank but you can own several tanks in your garage. You can only take one tank out at any one time.

Second, I like the way they implemented dying. After your tank is destroyed, you are out of the game. Here, you have two options. You can either stay in battle until the end and switch your view between the remaining allied tanks by clicking the mouse buttons. Or, you can choose to leave the battle. Leaving the battle is cool when you're not playing with friends because you don't have to waste time until the end. Don't worry though, you won't lose any experience or credits by doing so! The awesome thing is that you can go to your garage, pick another tank and join a new battle while the previous one is still in progress. When each battle is over you will get a summary of the outcome, plus your credit and XP earnings and any metals that you might have earned.

That's all I wanted to say.

World of Tanks blitz review

I never thought I would see myself getting into an online PvP game but here I am, talking about World of Tanks. If you've been reading my blog for a while you are probably aware that I hate PvP in World of Warcraft. It's just not my thing. Games like Counterstrike? Bring it on!

I'd heard about World of Tanks vaguely but what attracted me was the fact that the game is Free To Play (F2P) and it has tanks. I kind of enjoy the World War II setting so I thought that since it's free, I might as well give it a try.

World of Tanks is a simple game taken at face value. Essentially there's only one game mode: capture the enemy base. You can also win the game by destroying all enemy tanks or by attrition after the 15 minute timer expires. Under the skin, however, lies a very complex combat simulator which revolves heavily around physics, line of sight, camouflage, terrain configuration and so on.

The best way to play World of Tanks is with friends, because you can get everyone to implement a common strategy. For lack of friends (as in my case), the game creates battles between evenly matched groups of 15 players. This mode pits together tanks which are roughly in the same class, so you won't ever get tier 1 light tanks with tier 8 heavy tanks.

I have only played World of Tanks for three days but I'm already hooked. I've only gotten so far as a level 2 light tank but I want to persevere until I can upgrade to something nicer.

There are two resources in the game: credits and XP. Both are gained in battle but you can lose a game and still win plenty of them. XP is gained in lots of cool ways, for example based on the damage you do to enemies but also on the number of enemies spotted and many other ways that I haven't yet discovered.

Strategy plays a large part in World of Tanks and I have a lot of learning to do. I have already had some glorious battles, including one where I helped capture the enemy base with only 2 "health points" left (out of 90). Scouting plays an important part in the game, as well as protecting slower tanks, spotting enemy tanks for the heavy artillery and also sniping.

Playing the game is fun but if you want to advance, you either need to play a crapload of games (because XP and credits come slow), or buy gold. Gold is a resource that can only be bought with real cash and it can be used in various ways. You can use it to buy XP or credits, or in exchange for various other benefits such as an extra slot in the garage.

Here's where I'm starting to really appreciate that this is a F2P game. I can enjoy it without paying, or, if I want to progress quicker, I can go ahead and spend some cash. I'm very tempted to do that in fact, except that I find it harder to explain to my wife that I need to buy "gold" for some game than to pay a monthly subscription (as with WoW). To be fair, World of Tanks does have a monthly subscription but I'm not yet clear as to what benefits that brings.

The graphics are very good and the game runs well on my machine which is about 2-3 years old. The sounds are also good but I'm starting to wonder whether all the guns sound the same. The game client itself is lightweight for this day and age, at only 1.8GB.

I'm afraid I haven't been entirely coherent with this review but give me a break, ok? :) I'm a little bit stoked after discovering such a cool new game. And you know what? The game hasn't even reached version 1.0. Talk about innovative.