JAM
Wargaming has been tinkering with the in-game economy of World of Tanks, and the community is worried...
Icaught up with an old work chum recently, and he asked what games I was playing these days. I replied: “I’m back on my bullshit.” He understood instantly: “You’re playing World of Tanks.”
My return had followed a very long absence. I had logged in to sample the new Tier VIII mega-map grind-mode, ‘Frontline’. But I found that in my time away so much else had changed.
There’s now a sparsely-populated Australian server, with bots to help pad out games at tiers I to V. There’s a new game engine, and new map-specific music (the Mongolian throat-singing on Ghost Town is particularly nice).
Occasionally you’ll be offered limited-time missions that can pay out surprisingly large quantities of XP – I took advantage of one such 40,000 XP windfall to skip the entire stock grind of the VK 30.01 (P). Then there are ‘Personal Missions’, linked chains of maddening tasks that eventually reward you with rare premium tanks and coveted female crew members.
Play an exceptional game and you might score one of the new ‘Rewards For Merit’. These randomised bundles of goodies include ‘Blueprint
There’s now a dizzying array of meta-game elements to distract you from the shortcomings of the game itself.
Fragments’ that knock a substantial percentage off the XP you need to accumulate to research new tanks. You can also score custom crew skins, and ‘Crew Books’ that reduce the insufferable grind involved in gaining new crew skills.
There’s now a dizzying array of meta-game elements to distract you from the shortcomings of the game itself.
But the most innovative new feature to roll out in recent years is the Black Market, a special in-game shop where players could buy a variety of rare and sought-after Premium tanks for vast quantities of Gold or Credits. The Black Market was a temporary sales event. Each tank was available for a window of just 12 hours – and each was available in strictly limited quantities.
Players had a chance to snag rare tanks like the Type 59 G, a ridiculous solid-gold replica of the iconic Cold War-era MBT of the Chinese army – the tank that infamously crushed the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square.
Just 500 Type 59 Gs were put up for sale on the US server, and they sold out in 14 seconds flat. Each cost around US$100, and the Yanks couldn’t part with their money fast enough.
The Black Market was clearly a success. A leading opinion in the community is that these limited time deals were introduced to drain currency from the in-game economy; in particular, stashes of gold lying around unused from last Christmas’s loot boxes. I would posit a different hypothesis. I believe that the Black Market was created to milk whales, and milk them hard.
For years it has been standard practice for Wargaming to make its premium tanks available for strictly limited periods. After that, they go back in the vault! Who knows when they’ll be available again? Better not risk missing out!
But the key to persuading megawhales to really dig deep is to release premium vehicles for a strictly limited time, AND in strictly limited quantities… that’s the magic formula that has grossed Chris Roberts well over US$200 Million (and counting). In the case of Star Citizen, a tsunami of whale milk has been extracted from a relatively small cohort of space sim super-fans; some estimate their number being relatively tiny, perhaps as few as 5,000.
World of Tanks has been a tremendous success for Wargaming; well over 100 million accounts have been created over the years for this free-to-play sensation. But if active player numbers were to decline precipitously, the only way to maintain profitability may well be to pursue a strategy of cultivating and milking the fattest and juiciest of the mega-whales.
Hopefully, that’s a choice Victor Kislyi and his lieutenants won’t have to make. But many of the changes made to World of Tanks in recent years have threatened to drive away long-time fans. Like the addition of highspeed wheeled scout vehicles (the community refers to them as ‘clown cars’). The new line of extremely small high-tier British light tanks could well elicit a similar wave of discontent.
Likewise, the recent addition of a feature that lets you block the map you hate the most is a tacit admission that some of the maps in rotation are diabolically bad. Few tears would be shed if the Paris and Minsk maps were deleted forever.
To be fair, Wargaming has been listening to some community requests. The upcoming Version 1.6 update will finally get rid of friendly fire, so with any luck team-killing and griefing will soon be a thing of the past. But this is a critical time for World of Tanks. We’ll soon see if Wargaming has what it takes to sustain mass market interest in their flagship title, or if it will devolve into a whale-milking operation that would make Chris Roberts blush.