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WoTB – Wargaming’s Mission

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Hy all!

So, I didn’t end the last blog on a particularly happy note. I generally don’t like blogging about something negative, but that was one of those moments where I felt I had to. I posted it on the Blitz forum as well, and it actually led to a healthy and mature discussion there (which is a rarity). But then we got the new update and things just got worse. And things keep getting worse.

At the moment it feels like every time I’m slowly starting to get over feeling screwed by WG because of something they’ve done, they manage to do something that just makes me feel -more- screwed than before. I feel ripped off, cheated, etc. And I don’t like that. I’m a CC because I contribute to the community and really like doing that, but also because I generally like(d) the product Wargaming had to offer that I’m a contributor for. But at the moment, it’s hard to find the positive side of the game, when every which turn I take, I just end up feeling more frustrated with not so much the game, but definitely the company behind it.

I actually started this blog quite differently. Shortly after the last blog I posted, we got a new grind event in the game. Yay. With the possibility to get two tanks, one tier VII tank and one tier VIII tanks. Yay. Because there’s not enough tier VII and VIII prem tanks in the game yet. You had to get tokens and such for it through missions, which has brought the noobs out en masse, making the game frustrating as a whole. Much yay. The event is called Goose Tales. Imo, Wild Goose Chase would have fit better.

Because there’s a catch. Even if you completed all missions all resets for the duration of the whole event, you couldn’t get the tanks. Not either one of them, and definitely not both. Yes. We got a stoopid (note the double oo to point out just how frigging stupid it actually is) grind mission without a reward at the end. No, instead of a tank as a reward, you would earn a discount on the tanks, of around 36% if you got one of the tanks, and 50% if you got both. Now, that sounds like a pretty good deal, but one tank would still cost you respectively around € 36.85 for the tier VII, € 49.95 for the tier VIII tank, or around € 56.90 for both of them. Considering these tanks have nothing special going for it, it’s really not worth it.

And the blog that I wrote was a lot more extensive on the event. But before I even finished writing it, something new came up, and I decided to change what I was going to write to make it not so much about this singular thing, but about the pattern that just keeps reappearing and make this blog about the one causing that pattern – Wargaming itself.

Of course, Wargaming is a company, and like every other company, it wants to make a profit. But the way Wargaming is handling things now really baffles me, and as it is, they’re very quickly ruining the game for their active community – and I can’t imagine it being that much fun for the rest of the players anymore either.

This started, in my opinion, last year with the profitability nerfs and going from +/-2MM to +/-1MM. The change in matchmaking made the game itself a lot more stale, where people would always do the exact same thing. There was little tactical thinking required, and as such, most players didn’t develop that anymore either. This changed a little when we got the Supremacy game mode, as that requires people to think about what they’re doing and where they’re doing it a lot more – which is the main reason I adore the gamemode. I really do miss the old MM though, it was so much more versatile and exciting.

But wait, there’s more…

Aside from making the most stoopid grind event we’ve yet had, WG has also taken it upon themselves to ruin the game further.

Since October last year, we’ve been getting tournaments. This started with the Twister Cup, then nothing for about a month or two, and then we started getting spammed with two tournaments per week. A lot of clans would register a team and not even show up, or show up with two or three people, which made the wait very frustrating. So, Wargaming thought of something they probably thought was very clever.

They implemented a system for tournaments that involves tickets. In order to participate in a tournament, you have to use a bronze ticket to start with, which you can earn through missions. Yay… Or you can buy the bronze ticket for gold, while you won’t win any gold in the Bronze tournaments, only credits and boosters. More yay. And with the Bronze Tournaments, you can win tickets for the Silver tournaments, which will earn you tickets for Gold tournaments, etc. All very clever, much wow.

Doesn’t sound too bad or complicated. But here’s the thing. You have tournaments in tiers V-VI, VII-VIII and IX-X, starting with Bronze. And don’t think you can just use any ticket for that. No, you have to earn specific tickets for specific tier-tournaments. And in the beginning, you might not even have gotten a whole ticket, you can win a quarter of a ticket instead. Much wow, again.

As said, the tickets, or pieces thereof, can be earned with missions. But, there’s no guarantee if you’ll get a ticket with a mission, and the tiers you get the tickets for are connected to the tier of the mission. So, with me driving my Fury quite a bit because of the whole Wild Goose Chase, I’ve now got around 20 tournament tickets for tiers VI-VII, and one quarter of a ticket for tiers IX-X – from before I went down to tier VI.

When the first Silver Tournament came about it was postponed until Friday, then cancelled. This was said to have been due to technical difficulties. I think it had more to do with the 2 or so teams that registered for it, considering the only ones that had been able to gain Silver tickets would be the ones that entered the Bronze tournaments the Tuesday before it, and that exact same team would have had to be available again. The fact that since then just about every mission holds a ticket is probably just a mere coincidence, I’m sure…

What makes it funnier is that this was called to life to keep the AFK clans at bay, but with the missions now being swamped with tickets, those same clans have enough tickets to create a team and then not show up again, so the purpose is defeated completely.

More and more, the game is forcing you to complete missions and to complete them at high tiers, which forces you to drive a specific tier or tank, and what you gain from going through it all becomes more and more useless. Not only that, the game is also forcing you to play supremacy, which you’ll get missions for even if you have the game-mode switched off. I personally don’t mind that as I adore supremacy, but for the people that don’t, that’s very annoying. What I do find annoying is when I’ve three supremacy missions, and only 1 in 5 battles is an actual supremacy match. I would really like a button where you can choose to play either supremacy or encounter, or both.

But wait.. There’s more…

Apparently next update, we’re getting a new equipment system. I still don’t get what was wrong with the equipment system we’ve had since the beginning of the game, where each tank can carry 3 pieces of equipment that will affect its performance. But no, we’re getting a new system that will allow you to carry nine watered down versions of equipment on your tank. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? So why is in in this rant?

Because frankly put, not any of the changes we’ve been getting in the game these last couple of months have actually contributed in making the game more enjoyable. They’ve mostly contributed in chasing away the players that have been here since the beginning of the game, and the good players. So in effect there’s more idiots in the game, which makes the game more frustrating, which makes more good players leave, etc. It’s a vicious circle and it’s just getting worse and worse.

Worse is the fact that in order to implement this system, people are going to get a compensation to get them started on the new system (so, people, equip all your tanks, and don’t sell your equipment, or you’ll only make it more difficult for yourself). What that compensation exactly is and whether it’ll be of any real use remains to be seen.

Changes like this aren’t going to bring those people back, they’ll just end up making things worse. Because we don’t get those 9 slots for free. No. We have to earn them. And guess how. That’s right. Missions. Insert giant double facepalm here. Soon, everything you need to get anywhere in the game, will come through missions, forcing you to do specific things in specific tiers to get specific results, and if you want the best rewards, you’ll really only be able to play tier IX or X for it. This will mean that the game will become even more impossible, as that’d be the case for everyone.

When you look at the team results, there’s just so many zero’s. Doing 6k damage in tier X and losing because your team can’t get a shot in isn’t a rarity anymore. And that’s creepy. Valiant Effort aces make it a bit less painful, but not by much.

And then I heard the newest thing, yesterday evening. Apparently, now they’re going to supertest a nerf on prammo. The nerf being that shooting prammo will make you do less damage than shooting regular prammo would. Srsly? The cost of the shells is already a ton more to discourage people using it. Which, in the high tiers, really does make people bleed.

They nerfed the heck out of the pen-values of the high tier meds not too long ago (along with their armour), and this is apparently the next step. On the bright side, everyone with a Maus will be doing a little dance, but really… At least this is still a supertest, so not in the game yet. I just really hope it’ll never get there.

It’s like WG going through the game step by step, trying to decide what to ruin next. They don’t seem to be taking their players, or their community, seriously at all.

I’m only one person, and though I might be a CC, I’d be kidding myself to think I’ve any influence on anything at all. But If I don’t say anything at all, I’d definitely not be heard, so when I feel I have something I need to say, I try my best to be vocal about it. Past history doesn’t make me hopeful though. I know a little bit about how things work at WG itself, and the bureaucracy there is amazing in the most negative sense of the word. It can draw the blood right from under my nails, so to speak.

Our staff is amazing. I do want to press that. They’re great people, great fun, and they really do try to get things done for us to the best of their abilities. But most of the time their hands are tied and they have to go through so many channels to get anything done it’s ridiculous. But even knowing that, I can get so frustrated with them as well, when they simply go quiet because the subject isn’t fun, or because they’re not allowed to say from higher up. Communication is everything, and in my opinion, the whole of Wargaming definitely needs a course of that.

The first proper feedback I gave WG was in June 2016, at Tankfest. I’m -still- waiting to hear back about it. Since then, I’ve raised several issues both privately and publicly, and I know my fellow CC’s have too, but most of the time the reply we’ve gotten would be something like that they’ll talk about it, or that it’s been passed on to the people responsible. And that’s the last we’ll hear of it.

The whole feeling of WG not really caring about Blitz and them just experimenting with it is strengthened by the fact that according to their ‘event policy’ of this year, Blitz has no place in it. This means that Blitz will have no representation at Tankfest, and probably not in any other game convention at that. I’m very curious what this will mean regarding tournaments and possible offline events, as those are events too.

When I reacted to the fact that no Blitz-CC of any language section is being invited to Tankfest this year, I got told that Blitz is pretty big for them. That doesn’t add up to Blitz not being a part of their event-policy this year imo, but maybe that’s just me. Considering all I’m witnessing now, all that’s happening and all that’s being done, you can’t make me believe that Wargaming actually cares about the Blitz community.

Since Blitz is a mobile device game, the community itself is less big in the sense of most players not going onto the forums or the other platforms. There’s plenty of clans, but there’s only a small portion that actually makes work of it. The community we have is very tight and active, but percentage wise, I don’t think it’s as big as the other games Wargaming has. The people that aren’t active in the community will likely still spend money on it. And I think that’s a big reason as to why Wargaming doesn’t seem to care about whatever issues the Blitz community tries to raise with them.

I used to get tired of it all because of the monkeys in the game that can ruin the atmosphere, but I’ve always reminded myself that that’s just a tiny portion of the player base, and there’s so many awesome people in this game that make it fun and worthwhile. But these days, I actually get tired of the game itself, as the fun and the life is slowly sucked out of it.

This is the second blog in a row that’s negative and I don’t like that. In a way, I’m trying to plead for changes for the better rather than for the worse, and by posting it publicly, and showing it to the staff, I’m hoping to somewhere, somehow, wake someone up and change the destructive direction things are going right now.

I’ve been a Community Contributor since January 2016. I was pretty ecstatic when I got the title, and I was happy to be able to use it to better the community and contribute more and contribute more usefully. I’ve had a blast with the staff, organising contests, getting WG to lower the age-limit for the offline event last year, doing some streams and just the whole of it. I was proud to be a CC and to work together with both WG and the community. That feeling has changed. As things are right now, I’m not proud to be one, and I’m not proud of the company or the game I’m representing with this role and title.

And that, for me, is the saddest part of it all.

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15,466 thoughts on “WoTB – Wargaming’s Mission

  1. One of the main reasons why I am playing PS4 wot now, it’s still real, no sillyness yes they have missions, like winning the fatherland IS3, or the motherland T44 or the British boiler maker similar to the fury. Yes you win them, Don’t fret to much, they still have it going well on Xbox 360 and xbox1. I still have my clan in blitz, yes they gave me the m60 and I have yet to play it. Until they stop with the rubbish, I’ll be over in PS4 land (RSR) RSR GRAY EYES1 out ?? cheers oh and the graphics on PS4 are out of this world. Thanks for this blog ??

  2. WOT graphics are quite bad.
    But why – why would you play a version of WOT, where graphics are even worse anyway?

  3. Good analysis of last issues with WG strategy and of a game editor not listening at all at their valuable player base….

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