It’s even better than that. 5% of all experience gained, in any vehicle, on any account type, is automatically converted to Free XP.
It may not seem like much, but over hundreds of battles it leads to having tens of thousands of free experience one doesn’t need to spend a cent to allocate.
Wow…I never actually did the math, but that’s pretty cool. I always thought it was just all that free XP from my Premium tanks. But if it’s all, that’s definitely neat.
Dave47
5623
See what I mean about the incredibly poor documentation?
JoshV
5624
Really? I think it’s one of the borderline games that succeed because the basic gameplay is great and unique, more than because it’s freemium model is any good. League of Legends still has the best freemium model, with no real grind attached to it and in fact, no real need to spend money at all, unless you want cosmetic changes.
This. It boggles my mind a little every time I think of the price of a KV-5, Lowe, or T-59. They’ve certainly set the price correctly since there are so many of them, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t ridiculous. Yes, it’s just the cost of four months of WoW subscription fees, and it’s cheaper than Peter Molyneux’s diamond pick, but still…
ShivaX
5626
But you don’t need any of those by any means.
No, but if you want to advance past Tier 7, you’re going to be stuck grinding your Tier 5 and 6 tanks a lot more than someone who buys a premium Tier 8. And if you don’t buy gold, you’ll probably be behind on crew training and probably won’t be able to afford a full complement of tank modules until you’ve done some serious grinding. You can definitely get to Tier 10 without spending money, but it’s going to require a lot more matches in relatively underpowered tanks to do so than someone who spent a lot of real money.
It’s not the worst free-to-play model, but I don’t think it’s one of the best either.
That’s quite the exaggeration. I’ve played this game for over 13k battles, on and off premium, and never once had I set foot in a premium tank (not counting the beta gift Sherman which I sold quickly enough). And no, no gold income from Clan Wars either.
It depends on the player, really, and the vehicle one chooses to drive. An immobile heavy or TD that can’t get out of a bad situation is going to lose money. A mobile medium/TD that can get out of one and live to fight for the rest of the battle will earn quite nicely.
Even that said, for every battle you fight, you accumulate 5% free XP. I’ve had as much as 50k accumulate over time, which I then used to bypass shitty vehicles or upgrade them.
You simply do, no,t need, a premium tank. If you are going to spend some money on the game (and really, you should, reward the developers a little), it makes more sense to spend it on a premium account when those are on discount. Also, premium tanks are shitty vehicles, compared to their normal counterparts.
Exactly.
There is no reason to spend money outside of a premium subscription when grinding "bad’ tanks (the ones you like go smoothly even without) and the initial crew training to 100% starting around tier 5. There’s certainly no need for premium tanks. Tier 6-7 mediums (and Hellcat!) already earn quite well - indeed it’s actually hard to lose money on them.
Of course the idea of actually spending some money on a game shouldn’t boggle anyone’s mind. You can play it completely free, but do give the developers something for entertaining you.
It’s not an exaggeration for me. I barely make any money in my IS or KV-3 and I’ve heard it gets worse from there. I finally have a full suite of modules on the IS, but I’m going to have to sell them all if I ever decide to buy a Tier 8.
I’ve played a decent amount of a few free to play games (WoTs, League of Legends, Tribes:Ascend, Navy Field, Star Trek Online, Vindictus, Fallen London, Glitch, and Empires and Allies and Dragon Age Legends on Facebook) and the only game I’d say has a more onerous free to play system than World of Tanks is Navy Field. Granted, I’ve never made it to the end game in any of them but League of Legends (and Tribes, which doesn’t really have one) and that tends to be where they get you.
I can’t imagine grinding for credits without my freebie T34.
Clearly, different people expect very different things from freemium games/models. For me, WoT’s model is pretty unintrusive, and while I do keep a premium subscription usually, when I spend gold it’s simply as a convenience. As I noted before, we have people who routinely play strong roles in our Clan War battles who do not even have premium accounts. To play seriously at the end game you need gold, but if your clan has land you can get that without paying money; when we have gold that way, we distribute it to our teammates who lack premium accounts generally. But I’d agree the endgame pretty much is untenable without spending some money, if you’re in a serious CW mode or want to run Tier Xs all the time.
But for 90% of the game, and the vast majority of the fun stuff, you don’t actually need anything. An elited Easy 8 for instance makes good money, as do a lot of Tier VI-VIII elited tanks. Not as much as a Type or a T34 or Lowe, maybe, but enough. And my T34 was free, as I had the tank when it was a Tier IX heavy, so I spent zero on it.
I’ve never played another F2P game, so can only go by my experience in WoT.
Now your viewpoint makes sense. Slow heavy, shitty gun (as most Russian guns are), expensive ammo. When your inaccurate, slow to aim gun, costs 1,000 credits per shot, you will not be making money without premium.
The heavy tank line(s) are the worst possible choice (closely followed by Arty) for people going purely F2P. Russian the worst of all of them, because of the ammo costs and lack of accuracy. If you had a couple tier 6-7 mediums or Tank Destroyers (from any faction), whose ammo only costs 250 credits per shot (and far lower repair costs) you would be easily able to not only support that IS and KV-3 but also earn money to buy the next tier(s).
The game is more than possible to progress in without premium, even on a heavy tank, but you must have (tier 5-7, not heavy tank, not arty) money earners to back up your expensive and inefficient heavies.
Dave47
5633
If players are patient and willing to wait for sales and bargains, it’s very easy to enjoy World of Tanks for significantly less money than a subscription to an MMO would cost. (Which is fair because WoT is far less ambitious than WoW or EVE.)
But if you’re going to play for more than a few weeks, I believe that it becomes necessary to spend at least some money to gain access to the “low hanging fruits” of the gold economy. Given that some freemium games make the spending of cash entirely unrelated to in-game performance, I think the “necessity” of gold is a fair criticism of WoT’s freemium model.
maxle
5634
Very much this. For Frenris’ sake I’ll go ahead and explain one of the things the devs do to annoy you into giving them money. I’ll note that this particular technique is what caused me to ragequit the game a year or so ago.
You get a tank, and as you play you earn xp and credits. XP lets you unlock upgrades for the tank you’re playing, and eventually unlock one or more new tanks that you can then switch to, while credits let you purchase these things you’ve unlocked. The new tanks are invariably a higher tier. This means the new tanks will be matched against stronger (not in terms of skill, in terms of stats) opponents. Which is fine, because the new tank you’re just unlocked is also stronger, right? No. Many (I want to say most, but it’s been too long to be sure and I’m not about to go pore over the various tank trees) tanks are downgrades. You’ll switch into a new tank, and its stock loadout will be inferior to the upgraded tank you were using previously. So you’re being matched against stronger opponents than you were previously while being weaker in relative and/or absolute terms than you were previously.
This lasts for the dozens of matches it takes you (the exact number varies by tank and by how often you win) to grind out the upgrades to bring your tank up to par for its tier. Oh, and you can pay the devs to make the process go faster, or pay them even more to skip it entirely.
The game is actually quite good, and I certainly recommend trying it (I had a blast until tier V or so). You may very well decide that it’s enough fun to deal with the artificial frustration (and how frustrating it is varies from person to person). Just have no illusions that the business model is benign or non-invasive.
The crap with new tanks stock being horrid is a valid criticism, but there are several ways to deal with it. Yes, you can spend money. Or, you can play other tanks until you accumulate enough free exp to get the basic upgrades like tracks to make the new tank at least viable. In some cases you can also unlock modules via other tanks in the same line, too. Or you can grit your teeth and play that stock tank for a bit, which can admittedly be a rough ride. The point is, though, that you aren’t really forced to pay money, though they really, really do encourage it in a way that I fully agree can be annoying as hell.
Technically, the only thing you can buy that actually gives you a flat in-game bonus is gold ammo and consumables, and those are rarely used in public matches. The other stuff is sort of indirect, mostly time sink avoidance. It is more intrusive than, say, games where all you’re buying is cosmetic stuff, or where you only use money to add maps or something, but the degree to which it affects you varies greatly according to your expectations I think. I agree that if your expectations are to run top-tier heavy tanks or artillery you are going to have to spend money to make that viable, unless you have the patience of Job (and some people clearly do, just not me).
More annoying by far to me than the money thing, as I’m willing to spend fifteen a month or so on the game just like an MMO, are the numerous technical issues. Lag, inexplicably low framerates that come and go with no discernible rhyme or reason, and persistent 3D glitches that hang your tanks on rocks are very annoying. The game is a resource hog and if you leave it running too long it tends to take a dump, and you can expect odd and mysterious disconnects at random as well. At least, that’s been the experience of folks in my clan for the past few months. The coding of the game is suspect to say the least.
I think most of the criticisms of the game here are valid, but like Josh said it has fun and unique gameplay. I started playing in January and have never spent any money on the game or gotten involved in any clan stuff, and I have unlocked a couple tier 7 tanks and enjoy playing the game. The amount of money you earn definately drops off as you go up in tier, and I hear you pretty much stop earning money at tier 8, but I personally think it’s fun enough to just play random battles without ever trying to get to tier 10. If you approach it like playing Left 4 Dead or something there’s really no reason to ever spend money (other than developer charity) because you’re not going to try and hold territories or do things for your clan that require a top tier tank.
I’ve been playing since beta so I clearly like the game - I just like it more in spite of the business model than because of it.
That depends on the tier 8.
Tier 8 heavy? Absolutely won’t be making money without premium - need supporting tanks.
Tier 8 TD? Depends on the TD. The better ones will make money. My ISU-152, for example, made money without premium. So did my Ferdie. I can’t vouch for the new ones however.
Tier 8 artillery? Ha! Tier 5 artillery barely makes money without premium these days.
Tier 8 medium? Yes, you’ll be making money without premium in all but the French lines (or if you run the 90mm on the Lorraine - the 100mm will break your bank however).
Tier 9s (and 10s for that matter) cannot be run without premium.
Unless …
As I’ve been saying throughout this thread, none of these are an issue if one keeps a couple tier 6-7 vehicles (that you like to play) around as money makers, to support the less profitable stuff (even tier 9-10). For me personally the best money makers have been the T20 and Hellcat, but there are a lot of options to fit a variety of play styles.
When I need to make money fast I just run a series of matches alternating between my KV-5 and my Lowe. I average about 70-100K per match. Sometimes more if I play the Lowe carefully as it makes a superb sniper tank.
I’ll buy this, definitely. I came into it never having really spent any time with F2P games, only subscription-based online games (beyond FPS stuff), and so maybe that affects how little the business model bugs me, as I expected to pay money anyhow. But I can definitely see that the model Wargaming is using can be annoying to many. I guess the longer I play the more noticeable it’s gotten, too, but my beefs with the game right now are more along the lines of burnout I think. I’ve been playing since beta and it’s getting a bit stale maybe.
