World of Tanks Family at Gamescom

August 19, 2014 10:21 ( F2P News ) 0

World of Tanks Family at Gamescom

 

As we were saying, a healthy dose of Wargaming's time. First the interview with Victor Kislyi, then our hands-on look at World of Warships and finally the current status of their games and some interesting questions.

There wasn’t much new to report on World of Warplanes, the title in comparison to its predecessor World of Tanks hasn’t performed quite up to standard as the company would have liked. From what we were able to glean from our conversation with Diana was that some new changes are coming between now and the end of the year will hopefully get players more enthused about the game, get those players who didn’t try it out to give it a go and hopefully bring back some players who left.



Regarding World of Tanks, whilst Clans have been available in the game for a while, with over 30,000 active clans currently existing, the Clan Wars browser feature allows clans to compete against each other in high tier competitions and fight each other for world supremacy earning gold, exclusive tanks, unique medals and much more. This feature is now bring moved to the Client Side of the game and introduces the new Strongholds game mode, Global Map is a mode for Tier 10 tanks whereas Stronghold is available from Tier 6. With this addition Clan Commanders can create their own virtual base for their clans, develop their own stronghold to level 4 and acquire a number of different resources from Industrial Resources and special bonuses known as Orders that can be used by Tankers to activate in game buffs for all Clan members in combat mode.

As with the ever improving graphical quality of World of Warships so too is this being incorporated into World of Tanks with new Havok technology are being implemented progressively. A new
Twitch mode has been built directly into the game, given the public demand for the service players are able to stream on Twitch more easily, which should further help out the eSports aspect of the game.

And not much to say on the newest addition, World of Tanks: Blitz, but some facts and figures we found out where that for the iOS version there had already been 5 million installs in the first months, the game had reached the top three in over 50 countries and the next tech tree that is to be added is the UK tech tree. More important play is that the Android release will be coming soon and will offer complete cross platform compatibility and will also include a Google+ achievement system.

 

After the demo and the presentation we got to ask PR Manager Diana Radestki a few questions:

Q. As you can track the players through the Wargaming Portal what kind of player movement are you seeing between players switching from one game to the other?
A. Players are always keen to see what games we have, but they’re different games for different markets and with different styles. So a World of Tanks player isn’t necessarily going to like World of Warplanes. World of Warships will be interesting as there’s no other game like it on the market. When I first started seeing this two years ago I was like “This is really slow…” but seeing the development over time, enhanced special effects, the faster combat has been incredible and a really positive evolution.

The great thing about Wargaming, and this is my fourth company within the videogames industry, I can safely say it’s the only company that really listens to their community. The whole reason behind World of Warplanes and World of Warships is because they players asked for it, and now that we’re releasing new stuff they’re telling us what we don’t like.

Q. So what are the players asking for now? What do they want next?
A. There’s always something, they always want more… more ships, more planes…

Q. They want it all together.
A. They want is all together… *shrugs*… can it be done? I don’t know yet. The maps are all completely different sizes, the World of Tanks are [small size] in comparison to a World of Warships map which can be huge depending on the mission, size of ships on the map and the number of them. So when people ask if we can put them all in one it’s not that easy, to try and make it fun where all components work together; for now, who knows?

Q. Will we see any crossover for the other titles as we’ve seen with World of Tanks: Blitz?
A. There’s always potential. Right now we’re focusing on each launch as it comes, World of Tanks has been around a lot longer, so the trajectory [of where the game is heading] is a little bit easier to predict. World of Warships is our newest baby, we’ll see how it matures and see what the players want next.

Q. Did you find World of Warplanes hasn’t been as successful and hoped people would have taken to it more?
A. We have 8 million players right now, but they’re not playing it as much as we’d like and it’s not been as big as we’d hoped, but again it’s one of those things that’s already a work in progress, Wargaming will always listen to the community and try to implement changes. For example we’re going to implement the PvE, which will be new and help people get their play time in so they can enjoy the game and learn to play instead of being overwhelmed of where to start. Some mid-level stuff between the Tutorial and main gaming mode, focusing more on co-op with a team of 3 – 5 real players and the rest bots, creating baby steps giving players the chance to get in there and grow. We didn’t launch with as many game modes as we’d liked and that’s what we’re looking to work on.

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