World of Tanks

World of Tanks
Developer(s)	Wargaming.net
Engine	Bigworld
Platform(s)	Windows
Release date(s)	RU October 30, 2010 CHN March 15, 2011 EU April 12, 2011 NA April 12, 2011 SGP March 8, 2012 VN March 16, 2012 KOR December 27, 2012
Genre(s)	Action, Strategy
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Media/distribution	Download

World of Tanks is a multiplayer online game developed by Belarusian company Wargaming.net featuring mid-20th century era fighting vehicles. It is built upon a freemium business model where participants have the option of paying a small fee to advance at an accelerated rate. The focus is on player vs. player gameplay with each player controlling a tank or armored vehicle. World of Tanks debuted as an eSports game at the World Cyber Games 2012.

The game models the effects of both armor and cover and includes more than 240 armored vehicles from the Soviet Union, Germany, Britain, France, China and the United States. Japanese tanks have also been confirmed to be in development. A planned "Tree of Europe" has also been confirmed featuring Italian, Swedish and Polish tanks with Hungary and Romania possible. The vehicles have been carefully detailed with historical visual accuracy, but as this is not a tank simulator, certain parameters (e.g. reduced main gun characteristics-range and penetration physics) have been simplified, and in-game controls are very user friendly for gameplay. Eventually, there will be around 500 vehicles available in the game. World of Tanks was released on April 12 2008 in Russia. One year later it was released for the People's Republic of China, later becoming available for the territories of Europe, North America, South East Asia and Vietnam.

World of Tanks is the first game of the Belarusian company Wargaming.net to be released under the "Free-to-play" model, which will see the game released for free with revenue generated from micropayments in the form of in-game currency, which can then be used to convert free experience gained for the purpose of acquiring Elite Status in a vehicle. To convert free experience a player is required to spend money to purchase the in-game currency, "gold". Converting free experience into usable experience is not free of charge.

World of Tanks holds a Guinness World Record in the category of Most Players Online Simultaneously on one MMO Server. The record was registered on January 23, 2011 when the number of players on the game’s Russian server totaled 91,311. This record was beaten by the European server on 13 April 2012 during the anniversary special weekend where all players could enter a code to be Premium account holders for a day. Numbers of over 305,000 were recorded during this period.

As of 2012, there are 45,000,000 registered players worldwide. On October 4th, 2012, the game reached a record-breaking 500,000 concurrent players online on one server based in Russia. Within two weeks of the launch of the South Korean server, the number of concurrent users in Korea reached 10,000.

In 2012, Wargaming's revenue was declared to be 217.9 million euros, with net profit of 6.1 million Euro, as declared in an annual report for the Cyprus Stock Exchange. The money gained by Wargaming almost exclusively came from World of Tanks.

Game modes

The players in World of Tanks can choose four primary types of battles: random battles, team-training battles, tank-company battles, and clan battles.

Random Battles

There are three types of random battle; Standard, Assault and Encounter. Since update 0.8.0, players have the option to be excluded from Assault and Encounter battles.

• Standard

The goal is to capture the enemy flag/base or eliminate all enemy tanks within 15 minutes. If time expires it is a draw.

• Assault

An attacking team has to capture a defending team's base or eliminate all enemy tanks within 10 minutes. If time expires the defending team wins.

• Encounter

Two teams fight to capture a single neutral base or eliminate all enemy tanks within 15 minutes. If time expires it is a draw.

Team Training

In this mode, a player can make a room and select the map to play. It can be decided to be open to the public, or by invitation. This mode is used for experiments with various tank mechanics, learning new maps, strategic planning and movement, and as a place to train others. There are no experience points or credits gained in this mode and any repairs needed for vehicle are free except for expended shells and equipment (consumables used).

Tank Company

A player can create a team in four divisions. Each division has different tier points requirement. Companies are available in 4 divisions. Junior, Medium, Champion and Absolute.

Clan Battles

World of Tanks offers a unique battle mode called Clan Wars in which, for a moderate amount of gold, players can create their own Clan and fight with other friends. On the Global Map, Clan Commanders can land on a province and try to capture it (by fighting against other clans who have applied for landing) and then receive a certain amount of gold every day.

Vehicle Types

World of Tanks has five different types of vehicles. These are: Light tanks, Medium tanks, Heavy tanks, Tank Destroyers (TD), and Self-Propelled Guns (SPG's - more commonly referred to as "Arty" [artillery]).

Most tanks have a 360 degree turret able to traverse all directions, regardless of the facing direction of the hull. Other tanks, mainly the TD's and Arty, have limited fields of fire. In order for these tanks to aim a different direction, the tank's hull must rotate to face the direction of fire.

Light tanks are used most often as scouts. They are fast and agile but rather fragile and easily killed/destroyed. Players use them to quickly advance to the enemy's starting location to spot for friendly artillery. They have excellent topped-out speeds, and can turn and maneuver rapidly, as well as be difficult to detect, even while moving.

Medium tanks vary in their tasks. They have larger guns than Light tanks and more armor, yet are slower travelling. They may be used to counter the enemy Light tanks, or used to strengthen the friendly Heavy tanks. Medium tanks have both fast and slow setups with heavy and light guns. Typically, the faster Medium tanks will have a smaller gun, and the more armored Medium tanks will be slow and can be equipped with larger guns.

Heavy tanks have very large guns and can usually take the most damage. They typically have very slow acceleration due to the weight of their armor. This tank is the power-house of the team.

Tank Destroyers have some of the largest guns, and are more often the 'snipers' of the team. They can have some of the longest vision ranges, and are able to sit further back from the front lines due to their more precise targeting system, remaining out of sight while firing on the enemy. They usually have extremely heavy armor on their front, but weak armor on their sides and rear. Like the artillery, they most often must rotate their tank in order to change a major direction in their line of fire, though American tank destroyers are offered in two tech tree branches, the conventional TD design with no turret, and a turreted line.

Artillery (SPG's) have the longest range of all tanks. With upgraded guns, they may be able to reach all the way across the map from the furthest corner. They have some of the most powerful guns, along with TD's. However they have, along with Light Tanks, some of the weakest armor.

All are fully tracked (the designers avoided Half-track and wheeled AFVs as not being 'tank' enough) covering from shortly after WWI through the 1950s. All are based on historical designs, though some, such as the German Maus and British TOG2, only existed as prototypes, and others only as design studies.

Clan wars

World of Tanks has implemented a never-ending campaign with Clan Wars unfolding on the Global Map. The Global Map with a particular part of the Earth has been introduced and split into certain provinces. Clans, which consist of groups of players from a minimum of 15 to a maximum of 100, fight over these provinces on the overworld through specialized World of Tanks game battles.

Currently, each region in which World of Tanks is based (i.e. North America, Russia etc.) has access only to a limited section of the globe which they can strive to conquer, with the Russian server having the largest amount of territory due to the bulk of the player base existing within that country. In the course of time however, other continents will be added so there will be the opportunity to dominate the entire world.

Clan Wars is generally considered "end-game" material within World of Tanks, meaning that players who wish to take part must usually be highly competitive and possess one or more tanks at the Tier 10 level. Different clans have different requirements for new recruits however, so the specifications for getting involved in Clan Wars vary greatly.

As of recent updates, some new features have been added to clan wars that differentiate it from standard battles. For instance, in Clan Wars, the enemy tanks are not clearly identifiable like they are in normal battles, but are instead hidden by the "fog of war" so a team does not necessarily know what their enemies are bringing to the table in terms of vehicles. Outside of the North American server, a feature called "tank-locking" has also been implemented, meaning that a player cannot use the same tank in a clan wars battle more than once per day. The North American server also has its own rules, which are not used in other servers, including the rule that clans which hold a province cannot apply for landing on a different section of the map, but instead must fight through the land

Custom features

Various two-tone and three-tone camouflage schemes are available for all tanks, including both historically accurate patterns and game-specific, custom variants. Camouflage is available for temporary use (7 days or 30 days) by paying with freely earned in-game credits, or for permanent use by paying with gold purchased in the World of Tanks store or won in an in game event.

Since 0.8.0 was released, players can now place National Flags, pre designed slogans and camouflage that will increase the chance of remaining undetected.

History

According to the developers' account, the concept of the game came to their minds on December 29 or 30th, 2008. The game was officially announced by Wargaming.net studio on April 24, 2009. Developers claim that the game budget was the greatest ever in the game industry of CIS, but there has been no independent proof of this claim.

Alpha testing of the Russian version of the game began September 2009, with only six different vehicles (Su-85,BT-7,T-34,Pz IV,Hummel,Tiger) and one half-baked map available. By the beginning of the closed beta test, which started on January 30 2010, several dozen vehicles and three maps were completed. In three months, the number of beta tester requests approached 40,000, and over 400,000 tank battles took place.

Open beta test of the Russian version started June 24 2010; at that point, there were 7 maps available, along with over 60 Russian and German vehicles.

Closed beta test of English version of the game began on July 8, 2010.

The Russian version of the game was officially released on August 12, 2010; however, due to technical difficulties, the game servers went offline on August 13.

According to Wargaming.net official press release, the number of World of Tanks users worldwide reached 700,000, including 500,000 users on Russian servers (350,000 active players), and 200,000 on Western servers (150,000 active players). The number of peak concurrent users exceeded 43,000 on Russian servers and 10,000 on Western servers. The average active gamer spent 3 hours 20 minutes playing the game every day; over 10,000,000 battles have been fought since September 2010.

By January 4, 2011 World of Tanks had recorded more than one million registrations worldwide (Europe, Russia and the United States. This milestone was reached in less than a year since the launch of the closed beta in Russia.

On January 5, 2011 there were 74,536 players simultaneously online on the Russian World of Tanks server, which, according to Wargaming.net, had become a world record amongst MMO games. The "Most players online simultaneously on one MMO server" world record was officially registered by Guinness World Records on January 23 2011 and constituted 91,311 players.

According to the game's official site, the Russian server hit the one million registration mark on January 18, 2011.

The open beta of the English version of the game was launched on January 27, 2011; the official release was scheduled for April 12, 2011.

The World of Tanks pre-orders were scheduled to be available for the American and European clusters before the game release.

World of Tanks was released on April 12, 2011 in Europe and North America.

On May 24, 2011 total number of registrations for all three game servers reached 3,000,000 players (2,000,000 on Russian server and 1,000,000 on Europe and North America).

On November 18, 2011 the public test of awaited version 0.7.0 was started. Two new maps are released based on the fjords of Norway and the swamps of Eastern Europe. New texture for tanks also introduced.

On January 16, 2012 the Chinese "buy-only" premium tank, the Type 59, was removed from the in-game store. The announced reason was the very high usage of this tank in the game, which reduced the diversity of different tanks at the higher levels. Type 59 will still be presented in the game and used by the players who already bought it. It will be again available only through special events, periods which will be announced in advance. On February 2, 2012, a gold Type 59 tank was made available as a "buy-only" item on the Chinese server.

On May 14, 2012, KongZhong Corporation (NASDAQ: KONG), a leading provider of digital entertainment services for consumers in China, announced that it had entered into a series of agreements with Wargaming.net to create a strategic partnership for all of Wargaming.net's existing and future games in the mainland China market, including but not limited to World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, and World of Warships.

On September 27, 2012, World Of Tanks was updated to 8.0. This update has been one of the largest updates since the game was launched in 2010 (well over 1.2GB), introducing the new physics update with an updated graphics engine along with new normal and premium tanks.The physics let players jump the jumps and jump off cliffs and bridges it also created ways for people to have new battle tactics.

On November 1, 2012 the Update 8.1 went live and activated the British line of armored vehicles, consisting of 22 models from the Royal Tank Regiment. Update 8.1 also ushered in an overhauled rendering system for Province, El Halluf, Dragon Ridge, and Abbey battling arenas, as well as an expanded list of premium vehicles.

The 8.2 Update features new American tanks and premium tanks. Also, Prokhrovka, Redshire, Erlenberg and Ruinberg are now rendered for the game. New achievements such as Patton Valley, Commemoratives, Lucky, Cool-headed, Spartan and Ranger are also on the game.

The 8.3 Update features the new Chinese branch. Also, some changes to some tanks and achievements.

The 8.4 Update features a number of new British, German and Soviet vehicles. Additionally, the update changes several of the game's maps.

The 8.5 Update features new German and Russian tanks and a new map.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	81.87%
Metacritic	80/100
Review scores
Publication	Score
Eurogamer	8/10
GameSpot	8.0/10
IGN	7.5/10
PC Gamer (UK)	85/100
Browsergamez	75/100

World of Tanks has received favorable reviews, and currently holds a Metacritic score of 80 out of 100.

Awards

• The first prize for the "Best Online Client Game", KRI 2010.
• "Best New Concept" award on E3 2010.
• "Best Free MMORPG" according to the MMORPG Center’s 2010 Player’s Choice Awards.
• "Most Anticipated Free MMORPG" according to the MMORPG Center’s 2010 Player’s Choice Awards.
• "Most Anticipated MMO in 2010" according to the MMOSITE's Reader's Choice Awards 2010
• "Favorite Strategy MMO in 2010" according to the MMOSITE's Reader's Choice Awards 2010
• Guinness World Record: Most Players Online Simultaneously on One MMO Server
• "Gold Award" from Gamers Daily News
• "Best Game" KRI 2011
• "Audience Award" KRI 2011
• Best «Game that Needed the Award» Award from Gamepro on E3 2011
• «Rising Star Award for E3 2011» from mmorpg.com
• «Best Use of Online» Develop Award 2012
• "Best MMO" in the Golden Joystick Awards 2012.

See also

• World of Warships
• World of Warplanes

External links

Official sites by region

• NA • EU • RU • CHN • VN • SEA • ROK