So I decided to take a look at how many people own which Tier 8 prem, in an effort to see how WG is doing in terms of selling prem tanks, and what people want in prem tanks. It’s hard to compare some prems, for many reasons, including:
1. Overall how good the tank is
2. Tank class
3. Armor/no armor
4. Nation
5. Price
6. Availability and/or how often it goes on sale
7. Other things (Some people hate slow tanks, love fast tanks, love nice guns hate derpy guns, want armor, want a brawler, a sniper, etc).
8. Misc things – crew size and how it looks, etc.
This is the top 15 owned Prem Tier 8 tanks (EU) from Wotcharts.Eu. It is sorted by # of Owners (Keep in mind to be an “Owner” you must play at least one battle in the tank). Also some of these prems were given out as marathons, and to CCs and Wg employees etc, but those are small numbers. I only listed top 15 as the table would be huge.
https://thearmoredpatrol.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/t8premowners1-e1544481426324.png
Some interesting observations:
Obviously some of these are tanks that are better than others, which is easily known by those who know this game, but you can also just look at the stats.
Skorpion G is a very strong tank in a good player’s hand (Arguably the best Tier 8 premium – it appeals to sniper trashlords and people who want to flex around the map and be useful), and is #1 in ownership, even though it’s not available for gold. Lowe/T34/T26E4/M4A1/Is6/CDC/Jtiger88/FV4202/Strv S1/T54 Mod 1/WZ 120 are all available for gold. The Progetto was a marathon tank, as was the Pilot. So literally the only two tanks (That i’m aware of) on this list that were not given away as a marathon or event etc, and aren’t available for gold (Meaning people gotta pay real $$$) are Skorpion and Lorr 40. Both of these tanks are excellent, and are probably in the top 10% of all Tier 8 prems in terms of overall how good they are.
Let’s compare to a known “Bad” Tier 8 prem, the Mauerbrecher, only 8200 owners, to the Somua (Which is a great tank) – Nearly 26000 owners which is more than 3 times as much. Both tanks are fairly new, AND Germany has a bigger tech tree, meaning more people probably play German tanks than Frenchies.
I know you can’t really compare them (autoloader to slow armored heavy) but the point I am trying to make here is that, people aren’t stupid THAT stupid, and neither is WG. They will buy the good tanks, and not so much the bad tanks. It doesn’t take long for someone who knows the game to know if a tank is bad or not, even just by looking at tanks.gg or a similar website without even playing it you can get a good idea of whether the tank will be good, and if you even want to play it.
So basically, expect more OP premium tanks in the future to be sold, because it’s simply not logical to release crappy premium tanks, because few people will buy them, and then what, what did that accomplish? Nothing.
Hope this makes sense – some 200 IQ stuff I know.
