World of Tanks – flagship
World of Tanks is the flagship game of Wargaming, a kind of driver for other projects.
“A lot more people play tanks than World of Warships and World of Planes,” says Vyacheslav Makarov.
According to him, the game of ships has its own very specific audience, mainly in the World of Warships are “held people”. As for the game in airplanes, “it so happened that there are competitors in the aircraft genre, and it was in this genre that they were more successful than us.”
“They“ took away ”the aircraft audience, which turned out to be smaller than the ship and tank. It so happened. At the same time, we lost the opportunity to enter the market for the first time – first impressions cannot be created a second time, ”says Vyacheslav Makarov.
Difficulty creating
One of the most difficult tasks for the developers of the game World of Tanks was the reconstruction of historical images of tanks. The greatest number of problems was associated with obtaining information on Chinese tanks. The English company Vickers was also reluctant to let developers into their archives.“The fact that we managed to get data on tanks from China is simply the result of luck and the fact that there are people in China who play World of Tanks.”
“The expenses of the historical group here were the highest,” says Vyacheslav Makarov.
How many users?
According to statistics, about 10 million people regularly play in World of Tanks. As for the company’s revenue, the largest (if we take Russia), contrary to expectations, is given not by Moscow, St. Petersburg and other big and “rich” cities, but northern cities.“Our competitor is a bottle of vodka and a warm summer evening,” says Vyacheslav Makarov, noting that Wargaming games are popular where home entertainment is popular and there are no other activities that can brighten up leisure time.
“We have weird fans. The king of Jordan is actively playing tanks. He invited me to visit the tank museum, I went, ”said Vyacheslav Makarov.
“The wider we take the scope of an active audience, the lower the average payment per player. In Russia, I will not answer, because I do not want to say how much we earn. “The average payment is calculated using different methods, the difference across regions can be dozens of times.”
About the peak of development
“The peak of the project’s development has long been completed,” said Vyacheslav Makarov.The project reached its maximum in 2015, when at the same time about 1 million people could be on the servers.
Vyacheslav Makarov explained a certain drop in popularity by saying that “the tanks are over, there are no more tanks.”
“Now the company is trying new projects: the Caliber shooter and we bought the rights to the game Master of Orion,” he says.
Opt out of eSports tournaments
Since the beginning of 2019, Wargaming has refused the format of e-sports tournaments; it is difficult and expensive to contain teams of 15 people in the format of e-sports.“We were spending millions of dollars on organizing cyber tournaments, but that money didn’t come back,” he says.
As for the future of the online gaming industry, something to predict in this area, Vyacheslav Makarov considers it dangerous – the market is rapidly transforming.
Targetted Player Portrait
He is like this: a man of 30+ years playing in the evening after work.“Youngsters are not playing our games. Tanks did not grow at the expense of the market when they came to it. And because they reached the adult 30+ audience, ”says Vyacheslav Makarov.
Surprise
Today, according to Vyacheslav Makarov, the cost of promoting Workd of Tanks is less than the cost of production.“Our player must be constantly surprised. The same things work for a couple of years, and then either go to a plateau or don’t work. ”
When he says “the tanks are over, there are no more tanks”, is he referring to the game or actual tanks, because there are plenty of tanks yet to be modeled.
And it is quite moronic, for a WG person, to admit WOT is over the top and dying. Would Stalin issue same statement when the Germans got close to Moscow? Why US kept going after Pearl Harbor and not admit defeat? Brits after Dunkirk? Idiots declaring to the team a match is lost, when battle still going on.
Tesla cars manufacturer losing money, many other large businesses are operating at loss but keep going with hopes for better future, here money flows in abundance but is wasted on fail projects, and with this attitude, the main source of money is declared to be dying.
No, WG people are like ship rats, jumping overboard in fear and despair, when reasonable efforts can save the ship. Disgusting. Shows how the money, and not passion for the creation, is the main force.
They should sell the game to some enthusiastic developers, maybe King of Jordan will be a better WOT owner.
I think Slava enjoyed a company of a bottle of vodka before this interview.
This!
When I saw that a french topic, and a very serious one as it takes archives as ressources, has still hundreds of tanks more to add this disgust me.
People are leaving because game designers are making the game unbalanced and paytowin. Youngsters leave because they can’t pay and don’t have the advantage.
They want the game to die. But not fast.
And also because game developers don’t care about non Russian people and their advice.
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/550734-bcnp-wot-branches-de-chars-et-nations-potentielles-pour-wot/ topic in fine, by anodjl. Including Yugoslavian, swiss, israelian, commonwealth and world branches. Actually, he works on upgrading and new game mechanics like different autoreloaders and including AA tanks with radar.
By the way, this interview infuriates me. Players make this game works but Makarov prefers spit on them saying it’s over anyway and WG prefer testing new games rather than fixing problems that exist for years now.
His sufficiency all along that Q&A disgusts me too…
Not to mention they butchered MoO3 too, with ugly race designs and hideous Psion ships. Not to mention poorer music than MoO2
That and the fact that they released it around the time Stellaris went out. Compared to it MoO is baby’s first 4x game.
thats just miserable and confirms what we said for long time : THAT WG DO NOT CARE !
everything was just a LIE. F2P concept, players feedback, fair development, SKILLS NOT MONEY…and so on
what do you need more??
They are too stupid to mentain F2P concept and make it work
They do not reach their expectations with P2W things
And now they just give up and start other games instead of fixing the BIG MAIN ONE.
FOR SURE, i will never ever try another game from WG in those conditions.
Miserable
also, they can not simply sell the game because is so big that probably they expect some astronomical price for it and no other SANE company would make the effort…
so, WoT is probably doomed
So they are hell-bent on driving the game into the ground. Great news everyone.
What a loser mentality. Is Makarov going suicidal during the holidays?
WG might have finally found out that it would take actual creativity, skill and dedication to create content and keep the game stable and/or growing. That sheer incompetence is so sad to look at…
… must be hard for a “game developer” to create new (enjoyable and sustainable) game modes for the tanks already in the game, as well as non-corridor maps, maps that are not laid out like shitty league of legens three-lane maps. You must find a more suitable game to copy, WG. Please sell your World of franchise to the likes of Obsidian.
At least it now seems like a resolution a la “no more € for WG from 2020 onwards” is actually what they’re asking for.
They didn’t bother with market research on EU where you have a lot of players younger than 30.
I mean heck, I started when I was 17…
I started when I was 16
I started at 13, and blogging at 16.
I started when I was 11 after a long day of swimming competitively, I wanted an account to play a game that revolved around tanks something I grew rather fond of, (although weird for someone my age for where I’m from) it’s sad to see something I’ve been so passionate to play if I had a bad day at school and or with something I was ALWAYS able to fall back onto Wot and start putting a smile on my face. A place for me to vent frustrations even if it would frustrate me more is some cases but still, over a few pixelated tanks It did the job for me… but with this statement from Makarov, it brings me a lot of sadness to see something I’ve enjoyed for so long finally have it’s developers start saying things along the lines of killing the game, even if I had hope for it in the long run…this game deserves better and should be sold to another developer bit wether or not that will happen is yet to ever be seen
“There are no more tanks”…
Well that’s what happens when you focus too much on content in a game about historical content. Funny how WG had to arrive at the end before realising this. If they had been less greedy, and focused more on game mechanics and game modes, then they wouldn’t have a huge balancing mess now and they wouldn’t be out of tanks.
They aren’t out of tanks. There are over a hundred tanks that could still be added into the game.
Maybe, to be honest, I don’t know. But if there are more tanks, I’m pretty sure they’re all blueprint tanks. Eventually they will run out of these aswell though… Will be interesting to see if WG will start to care about the game itself then or if they will just bin the project :/
Slava drank too much of that Kool-aid the WoWS Dev team drank. So now every new nation/line that gets added to the game needs a new gimmick for some reason, If that gimmick is broken or pointless, it doesn’t matter they need a gimmick or need to be broken or else the line will fail because the game balance is broken beyond repair. People don’t buy vehicles for their looks or history anymore, they only buy them if they are broken or have something other nations don’t have.
That’s what happens when you don’t nerf/buff tanks appropriately no matter their status, free, premium or reward it shouldn’t matter, game balance/integrity should be put ahead of such things or else the player base will be poisoned and demand more and more ti’ll the game brakes. (This is why I’ll all ways blame the community for this premium vehicle bullshit that’s happening in the game right now.)
WG has literally become Apple or Google when it comes to it’s products. needs to add new features to get downloads/clicks. While the core fails due to neglect and everyone gets tired and leaves, either for good or come back because there’s really no where else to go. And the player base has become Gollum. “No don’t touch my precious 252U! I payed good money for that tank. And don’t forget the 6 million T26E4’s good goy!” as he continues to ruin the MM ,scare off new players and setting a terrible standard for tier 8 tanks. Literally killing the growth of this game to a steady decline.
(I wait for the day where the only tier 8 tanks in MM are only 252U’s Skorp’s Progettos and SU-130PM’s.)
A shame too cause i was looking forward to the Canadian, Romanian, and Brazilian Tech trees. All that work in the archives for nothing, now just dust in the wind.
Maybe it’s surpring, but i’m not fan of perfect tank balance. I mean … some tanks may be little worse followed by little better ones. It’s sort of rewarding to pick specific vehicle that is “more balanced than others” and grind it. It made game interestring for me in first months – to explore what tanks are popular and why and to grind hellcat, chaffee, is3, t20, t71, t29, m46 patton, t54, e50, …
But I do not like current state with premium tanks being clearly better than standard ones. I know few people who enjoyed team/clan battles with tanks like IS3, T32 and AMX50100 or RHM. They all left the game when they were basically told to buy defender, patriot, skorpion and type 64 or leave, because free tanks are not competitive and bunch of overpowered premiums was released within few months.
To be honest my biggest problem with the game will be hopefully addressed soon. It’s balance among tiers. Some tier 8 tanks (premium ones) are now almost as good as tier 9 tanks in the past. For that reason tier 9 and tier 10 tanks were buffed in general (armor, gun handling) while tier 8 and lower tier tanks stayed untouched. That created huge gap between tier 7, regular tier 8 and premium tier 8 and tier 9. Half of tier 8 tanks is just painful grind, there is not huge hitpoint increase, but tier 9 mediums have armor which is effective against tier 8s and they have perhaps 50% higher DPM. That made anything below tier 9 unplayable with exception of premiums. And i often get tired by playing progetto, scorpion, lt432 and few tier 9 and 10 tanks that are fun. I would like to play tanks at lower tiers which are free to play without having to suffer. Not because I’m cheap bastard, but because of variety and because i want to meet tier 6 tanks with tier 8 at least sometimes. Why do we have 500 tanks in the game when only 30 of them are worth playing?
Holy shit how dense can you be…
If you dont want to improve the game just quit…
Maybe use some more of the money from WoT for WoT and not put it in some new project that will probably fail…
At least he knows it’s dead and done.
«Vyacheslav Makarov explained a certain drop in popularity by saying that “the tanks are over, there are no more tanks.”»
we all know that this is false:
Swiss tech tree: light, medium, arty, heavy, casemate and turreted TDs and I believe even atlrenative medium lines, mostly concepts and designs but most of the work has already been done by others
Italian TDs
Japanse TDs
Chieftain line for the UK (mix between Chieftain and Vickers MBT)
these are the most obvious missing lines in the game, then:
multi-turreted/Super Heavy lines for France and USSR
Soviet turreted TDs
Soviet amphibious/light tank line
complete rework of the US Tech Tree (+ 9 or maybe 10 new lines)
A game can be developed with literally endless renovation, besides new vehicles, many new features can be added, some are simple to implement, just of the top of my head – AT mines, AP mines that can’t hurt heavies, areas passable only by LT’s, like swamps, bridges that heavies crush, thick vegetation slowing tanks to a crawl, some of this stuff is just an adjustment to map surfaces, so it’s cheap.
If the devs are lazy, community can bury them with ideas, just ask the forums.
But if you don’t give a flying rat’s ass about WOT, it’s easily declared dead and tanks are over.
I agree and just because I commented they are lying about not having tanks to add does not mean I am not aware about the endless features they could add to improve the game, not necessarily “realism” features because that part about different terrains (terrain resistance) was simplified because the players asked for it
personaly I hope for PvE to come one day because it will enable us to play all the underpowered tanks in the game without frustration because of all the other OP stuff
No more tanks
> modern tanks, Tier 11-20
You can create separate matchmaking… so all those new gizmos don’t kill poor WW2 tanks.
WoT is still a arcade game, if they really wanted they could make the MBT-70 into a Tier 10 heavy tank, even its built-in spaced armor would not be something new in the game because we already have a ton of that in many different Soviet heavy tanks
only the top 20~30% would need a separate MM because of having either composite or add-on armor (armor kits, ERA, etc)
The MBT-70 would be stupidly strong as a Tier X, though. Hydropneumatic suspension, 69 km/h forward AND reverse, a 152 mm gun that could fire 6 rounds/min. Based on other guns of the same caliber already in WoT, that would be anywhere from 3900 to 4500 DPM.
Sure since it’s an arcade game, they could just make the MBT-70 much weaker than its historical stats. But if they did that, why even bother including it at all instead of just using some other tank with more suitable base stats?
No problem to balance any tank, real data never been more than an excuse to nerf Tigers.
A good example is russian TD’s, with the derp guns. HE blast from a real 152 monster could obliterate any tank by a close hit, armor bashed in, drive-train shuttered, turret flying, crew definitely stunned or killed all together. Yet somehow you can blast even an LT or wheeled car and it just drives off.
They say smooth bore ballistics is a problem, I say give it regular ballistics, no more imagination needed than in all the imaginary tanks. One can say 60TP should have spaced armor and smoothbore gun, but in game it’s OK with regular.
If there is a will, there is a way, and more than one, usually. Excuses are much cheaper, though, so no more tanks.
I don’t like ths fake stuff and that’s why for me ths game will always be a mediocre fake game
«152 mm gun that could fire 6 rounds/min»
about that, they have shown us they are willing to adjust things as they need it, at Tier 8 we have a completely broken OP autoloader Heavy Tank on the Soviet Tech Tree, because they have no conscience they say its a “autoreloader” but we all know it works just like a modern autoloader
additionally we have all the other autoloaders in the game, the T57 for example had a 8 round clip IRL with a ideal RoF of 30 rounds per minute, that is obviously not the case in the game
so yeah, I would expect a RoF of 5 rounds per minute and the standard round being APCR which means that instead of 500~750 dmg it would do 350~450dmg, or something similar
The game dying so it’s refreshing to see some voice of reason from WG.
Only 2 of all russian tier 10s in tech tree were ever actually made for war…that’s TWO out of FOURTEEN.
Just do same with japanese td/ spg line, and many other nations.
Japan artillery was a big deal in ww2, surely WG can slap together 10 napkin/ gravy stain design spgs?. Use ur imagination WG.
But I have to agree with girl in video, and it contradicts what QB god of tanks said recently that WoT has 10 more years life easy, it doesn’t, they released new tanks, lines, nations too quickly.
Where are the kommissars who usually handle such treasonable behaviour? I hope that makarov’s whiney fat ass is being removed asap.
What he seems to be unable to understand (other than how to develop a game or do PR) is that WoT’s (assumed) longevity is one of its major reasons to keep investing time and money in it. If it had a lifespan of only a few years, why bother?
“Our player must be constantly surprised. The same things work for a couple of years, and then either go to a plateau or don’t work. ”
If you’d finally manage to balance tanks and ammo types as well as MM, we would DEFINITELY BE SURPRISED and feel like throwing some time and money at the game again.
Are people insane? He didn’t say that the game is dying, he didn’t say that devs don’t care. The opposite, actually. Ya’ll have reading disorder of some sort?
“Our player must be constantly surprised.”
ANother statement that WG isnt listing to the players. Most players want a good balance between tanks. Sure premium keeps the game alive but dont make one OP tank after another. If WG will put some effort on rebalancing Old tanks and dropping the Goldammospam Players will raise again.
Im close to quit WOT after 8 Years but i have one last hope on the pormised ammo-rebalance.
Grinding standard tanks is a pain in the ass since you play against atleast 5-10 premium tanks every round.