[WG] Ultimate Tank Factory

I can be a bit slow with this, however -link-

Check out how cool we are :)

[ALL] WG at Gamescom: Direct Contact

If you happen to be in Cologne this week, don't miss your chance to step by Wargaming's booth at Gamescom (August 21-25).

It's a decent opportunity not only to grab some WoT/WoWP/WG-branded swag but also deliver your valuable feedback right into the face of developers, and of course learn more about our games - current and future ones.

Personally, I will also be available for chatting and beer-ing these days. Use comments to this post for communication.

See you around.

PS: And WoWP 0.5.1 is now live for EU and NA!

[ALL] Supporting Education

"MMO maker Wargaming is to sponsor Britain’s Royal Air Force Museum and plans to build an education centre that will offer attendees the opportunity to learn STEM subjects... 

The World of tanks creator will be funding an exhibition at the RAF Museum, which explores the background of its Dornier 17 recovery project, taking place in both London and Cosford.

As part of a £75,000 grant, the museum will develop new approaches to the display and interpretation its Dornier exhibition, such as augmented reality version of the Dornier flying above the Museum, giving museum visitors a glimpse of the aircraft as it would have been seen in 1940."

Full text. 

Accidentally found this on the web. Guess, UK players will forgive us for the late introduction of British tanks, planes, and ships.

[MISC] Wargaming Seattle

Gas Powered Games (Wargaming Seattle)

Everyone's wondering about Gas Powered Games, our recent acquisition earlier this year. For Chris Taylor, this was a happy surprise - in 2012, the studio was facing an uncertain future with only a now-defunct Kickstarter project keeping it afloat. Being a part of the Wargaming team has given the studio new life; the feeling of excitement in the offices is evident, from the fresh, new ideas coming out of the development team to the eagerness with which they accept opportunities within Wargaming's structure.

Office decorations in Seattle - they already fit right in!

Last week, I got to visit the offices of the new Wargaming Seattle studio and meet with Chris and his design and development leads to talk about the direction the studio is moving, plans for new game development, and just get to know the team and let them know what Wargaming is all about - bringing the fun to free games. Our shared vision turned out to be even more powerful than anything we would have come up with alone.

Their vision is like our vision - a perfect match!

Gas Powered Games and Chris Taylor are already well known for a number of famous products, including Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Supreme Commander 2, Dungeon Siege, Space Siege, Age of Empires Online, and Demigod. The studio happens to be the same age as Wargaming - 15 years - so it's no wonder they have developed so many cool games.

Chris Taylor, CEO and Founder, Gas Powered Games

Chris Taylor is the fire under this studio that keeps things hot, in spite of the cold, rainy weather Seattle is famous for. I was extremely impressed with his enthusiasm and desire to take on new projects and become part of the Wargaming team. As he told me over dinner, it's going to be great for him to let someone else focus on administration, so he can go back to enjoying making great games.

Game memorabilia from the past 15 years

The Gas Powered Games offices are located just outside of Seattle, near Nintendo's US headquarters. They're very postmodern, with a lot of glass and steel, and too large for the number of people working there right now, which means they are going to have to start recruiting to get those desks filled. That way they can get to work on The Next Big Game®.

Chris Taylor's desk - clearly a sign of a creative mind!

There is one desk that is already full to capacity - Chris Taylor's! It looks like he's kept every game he's ever played, every magazine and book he's ever read, and enough office furniture to pile all of them on! Fortunately, we all know that chaos is a sign that creative juices are constantly flowing. Another way Gas Powered Games fits right in with Wargaming!  :-)

by ChrisK

[ALL] WG Acquires GPG

MMO developer and publisher Wargaming picks up Seattle-based Dungeon Siege and Demigod developer for undisclosed sum.

Full text news or here.  World of ... what ? Discuss!

[ALL] WG DevCon 1

Early February 2013 was marked by first developer conference held by Wargaming - Wargaming.net DevCon-1. The conference (not some meeting or tech summit!) took place in Minsk, Belarus.

Two rich and informative days contained ~85 talks divided into 7 main tracks: management, programming, game design & UX, web development, QA, art, and sound. More than 500 participants arrived from WG's dev offices - Minsk (WoT), Kyiv (WoWP, WoTG), Saint-Petersburg (WoWS), Sydney (BW), and Chicago (announced console title). Quite a conference it was, even though with restricted participation.  However it is the format that allowed to make talks much more useful by including some trade secrets and know-hows.

Sure thing, it can be hard to reach GDC-level of presentation and organization, but the event was definitely comparable to any local (hereby I mean Russian-speaking) trade show. And we are definitely interested in doing more shows of the kind. Or even WG-con for players? :)

[ALL] Entering Console Market

Watch out! Some official info here:

Wargaming moves to consoles with $20m purchase of Day 1 Studios. Team behind F.E.A.R. and Fracture join free-to-play World of Tanks creator Wargaming.Net.

The Chicago studio will focus solely on console gaming for the MMO company, working on an as yet undisclosed title. The studio is best known for ports of first-person shooter F.E.A.R. and LucasArts' Fracture.

Link and link.

Are you excited? What kind of game do you expect? Feel free to throw ideas. :)

[ALL] ChrisK Has Joined the Club!

I'm extremely excited to introduce one more speaker (finally native with English :)) who has just joined the blogging crowd and is going to use this resource as means of communication with you, guys. Chris Keeling aka ChrisK is Senior Producer at Wargaming.net, make him feel welcome here.

Overlord

I started freelancing in game writing and design on Panzer Elite for Wings Simulations in 1998, while I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army. After I transferred to the reserves, I continued to work freelance on games like America's Army: Operations, America's Army: Soldiers, Twilight War, and Order of War. I also squeezed in a year and a half combat deployment to Iraq, published my own World War II tabletop miniatures rules, and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Videogame Production and Design along the way. In 2009, I accepted an offer to teach full-time in the Game Design program at Full Sail University.

Things changed fairly quickly after that - I developed and taught several classes, and eventually became the Program Manager of the entire Game Design program (responsible for more than two dozen Course Directors and over 1,600 students!). I retired from the Army Reserve after 23 years of total service and continued to freelance part-time for Wargaming.Net. After the release of Order of War, the company kept growing, from about 60 developers in Minsk (plus one American consultant!) to over 1,300 developers in several studios with offices in about a dozen countries. We could only do this because of the amazing success of World of Tanks, and the potential we could see in World of Warplanes and World of Warships. 

After about four years of freelancing, I was offered a full-time position as Senior Producer here at Wargaming.Net. I have now embarked on the adventure of a lifetime working for a really amazing company loaded with vision, drive, and purpose. Among other things, I suggest Westernization practices and features that will enhance our appeal to players in North America and Western Europe (and, hopefully, everywhere else!), while working on secret new game ideas that may see the light of day in the future. On this blog I will help clarify some of the reasons behind our design decisions, predict some of our future endeavors, and occasionally explain some of the “historical elasticity” used to keep our games balanced between authenticity and fun.

When I’m not slaving away over my keyboard, reading player feedback in the forums, analyzing development plans, or playing other games (it’s research, honest!), you can find me playing as ChrisK on World of Tanks and in the World of Warplanes closed beta, or alpha testing a couple of games still under wraps, like World of Warships. 

See you on the battlefield!

ChrisK

[WoT] Leningrad's KVs

The 2nd manuscript has been sent to the press (while the first book is being translated).

The book is dedicated to KV-1s produced by Leningrad Kirov Plant.

Images below for reference:

[WoT] First Try - Maus Book

"Tactical Press" in cooperation with Wargaming.net presents:

• Authors: Igor Zheltov and Yuri Pasholok. 
• Language: Russian (for now). 
• Price tag (RU): ~20 USD.
• Number of copies (RU, hardback) - 10500.

The book lays down the beginning of the tank series with other issues to come in future.  From my standpoint, this is one of the best tank books in RU so far. And definitely, it's one of the most complete sources on Maus tank ever - images and blueprints were purchased from various private collections from around the globe. The authors managed to dig out the origin and background of German superheavy project and the way it developed.

Translation to other languages and distribution in other regions are currently considered.

[ALL] F2P Is Now Online

GDC Online 2012 that took place in Austin, TX (US) earlier in October (9-11) was my first and last GDC Online. That's because the event is changing its format and switching to mobile and tablets, even though F2P market is flourishing nowadays (as well as mobile platforms).

Austin Convetion Center

Among the biggest participants in client-side section (apart from Wargaming :)) were Riot, NCSoft, CCP. Plus there were lots of Zynga-kind ones and a few F2P research companies. All in all, the online version of the GDC appeared to be poorer than the general one held in San Francisco.

While monetization, marketing, and business development talks were mostly ok, the ones on production, programming, and tech were somewhat worse (based on the feedback of our tech guys) - less innovative, although with some nice exceptions.

I will share some my thoughts on the lectures I have visited personally.

AION example.

By making AION EU F2P (which I believe is not strictly correct since they practically adopted hybrid model) NCSoft managed to overcome underpopulation of game servers and significantly boost the revenue. Their steps were focusing on core community (more likely to spend), making purchasable stuff achievable by playing, not flooding the in-game market at once, investments in huge marketing campaign (they needed to sell 2.5-year-old game once again), and going localized (6-digit amounts are spent to produce single pack VO+text).

General F2P trends.

The share of F2P market (US) in game industry went up from 1% (2007) to estimated 10% (2012). While sub-based games reached their plateau back in 2009 with 7+ mln of users, F2P audience has grown from 9 mln (2007) to estimated 42 mln (2012) - that's taking into account web-based and mobile.  F2P has become the dominant MMO revenue model these days, social games (FB) boast ~40$ ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) with conversion to paying user of about 2.5-3.5%. Obviously, client-side MMOs can have noticeably higher conversion rates (up to 25-30%), while for browser games, it's 5-15%.

F2P has become MP3 in games. It's accessible, affordable, interactive.

Having gone F2P the following titles got much better:

• DC Universe - +1000% CCU (concurrent players) gain, +700% daily revenue
• Everquest II - +40% daily logins, +300% new players
• Everquest - +150% daily logins, +125% boost in Item sales, +350% registrations

The new game ecosystem is now the following: eSports + marketing + global community + livecasting (video streaming). The key focus is now on emergent and sandbox gameplay.

How F2P games are monetized.

The basic principles:

• regular currency is earned through game mechanics
• premium currency is earned by money spent
• no two-way conversion allowed.

Item shop should be a natural part of the game, both regular and premium items should be there.

Leveling/tiering is key to monetization: early game -> mid game -> end game, each with the respective items and prices.

Most popular monetization methods:

1. By unlocks
- unlocks and access to high tiers give access to new items
- monetize rarity: sell rare resources

2. By limits
- monetize storage size or inventory size
- monetize limits of economy power (total cap)
- monetize items with less limits

3. By tiers
- monetize accelerated needs of tiers

4. By power variants
- monetize similar but better items
- use 3 or more power variables (price, duration, power)

5. By time
- universal monetizier: more money spent - less time needed

6. By trade
- amount & slots
- frequency
- time

Pricing guidelines:
- tiering, lowest price is assigned to the lowest tier
- have enough flexibility to adjust prices
- account for psycho barriers - 50, 100, 500, 1000, etc
- use matrix for pricing
- going online a bit expensive, raise item amount per money amount spent

I Invite you to the discussion of the F2P stuff.

Videos From Igromir 2011

Igromir is the biggest Russian expo dedicated to video games. Of course it is not comparable to monstrous German Gamescom, however it grows fast.

Below are 3 short videos from Igromir 2011 in Moscow (October 6-9). The are not subtitled, but I will briefly comment each one.


1. Igromir. Day 1.

Olya invites everyone to visit Wargaming.net booth at Igromir to find out what is hidden behind the curtains.

Later she announces the closed presentation of World of Warplanes that was available only for media.



2. Igromir. Day 2.

It was a first public day with much more visitors. Many came specifically to WoT booth not only to play WoT just for fun, but also to fight for prizes (gold promo cards, and other stuff), scoring the biggest amount of experience. What was going on behind the curtains? See Behind the Curtains video!


3. Igromir. Behind the Curtains.

WN team is getting prepared for the 2 busiest days of the expo.

Eurogamer. Post-mortem.

The expo is over. Obviously there were more visitors at weekend than on Thursday or Friday. The effectiveness of our participation is still to be deternined and analysed, however at this point personally I doubt that we should come back here next year (though I wish we would come, one more chance to visit this great city at least :) ).

The majority of players had not heard about the game earlier (and even less who actually played), many had difficulties with PC controls (the UK seems bo be totally console country), understanding the basic concept of the game (UI, battle itself, repairs and ammo), teamkilling. Yeah, the learning curve in WoT is quite steep.

Still I consider this experience to be valuable in terms of further tailoring the game according to the needs of newbies.

Would like to thank everyone who visited our stand during these 4 days, was nice meeting you indeed. Hopefully, see you all next year.

PS: will be back to office midweek with the recent news from development side of things. Keep your questions until then. Thanks.

Eurogamer. Quick View.

I like Britain and London in particular and that's why I was extremely excited about the Eurogamer expo. In reality it hasn't really come up to my expectations. Not many visitors. I'd say that there are few visitors to be honest. Unlike Gamescom expo we had in Cologne last month. Yeah, I know it was supposed to be like 10 times smaller than the German expo by default, but c'mon. Hopefully things will get better at weekend. 

The good things are that there is no loud music, crowds you need to squeeze through to get anywhere, less rubbish obviously, and no endless queues too. 

So encourage everyone, who has this opportunity, to come and visit us. We will be there for all 3 upcoming days. Why would one want that? To get a hold of free give away stuff with some premium content (including WoT t-shirts branded specially for British players), chat with developers (no one wants to meet Overlord? :( ) and ask any questions you would love to, take pcitures with the two tanks outside the expo centre - Valentine and T-34-85 (they were taken from Bovington tank museum and we thank our friends from there), and play WoT of course.

Special expo accounts have nearly unlimited financial resources and all possible vehicles unlocked, including KV-220, T23, Pz. II Ausf. J, BT-SVm Pz. V-IV Alpha, Pz. V-IV, A-32, M6A2E1, M4A2E4 and many others.

Pay us a visit at Eurogamer show!

2012 Mystery Revealed

What to expect in WoT in the near future? A lot of stuff!

We give you the unique opportunity to get hold of World of Tanks release plans for 2011-2012. I'm totally sure most of the plans announced will be accomplished in time thanks to the team of highly-skilled professionals, that currently comprises around 300 people in 3 major offices.

With the development center in Minsk, Belarus, Wargaming.net has fully functioning operation office in California, the US, and two forming offices in the EU - in Paris and Berlin.

The main focus of the development team is to introduce new game modes, add more tank models (French are coming soon), new maps (Jungles, anyone?), improve visual effects and the engine itself.

The detailed release plans are given below.

 New Game Modes

Company battle divisions: tier 10 max with no overall tier limitation, tiers 8, 6, and 4 max with the respective overall tier limitation.	Q4 2011
Assault (one team attacks, the other one defends the base) and Encounter battle (two teams are to capture the base in the center of the map).	Q4 2011
Garage battle – players can use several tanks (one after another) in one battle (“limited respawn”).	Q1 2012
Escort (only a few tanks from the team have the ability to capture enemy's base, the opposite team is to stop potential invaders).	Q1 2012
Historical battle - faction based battles with historically justified restrictions on vehicles and modules available.	2012

New Tanks American tanks
medium tank M4A3E2, light tank M24	Q3 2011
tank destroyers M8A1, T49, M18 Hellcat, T28 prototype	Q1 2012
heavy tanks M103, T110, tank destroyer T25-2	Q1 2012
Soviet tanks
light tanks T-50, T-50-2	Q3 2011
tank destroyer SU-85 (I)	Q4 2011
tank destroyers SU-100M-1, SU-101 (Uralmash-1), SU-122-54	Q4 2011
heavy tanks  KV-1, KV-2, KV-4, Т-150, ST 1, Object 252	Q1 2012
German tanks
medium tank Pz IV Hydro	Q4 2011
tank destroyers Marder III, Dickermax, Nashorn, Sturer Emil, Jagdpanzer E-100	Q4 2011
TDs E10, E25, tank destroyer JagdTiger Sd Kfz 185 (88/71)	Q2 2012
French tanks
light, medium, and heavy tanks Renault FT, D1, D2, B1, ARL 44, AMX-50 100mm, AMX-50 120mm, Hotchkiss H35, AMX 38, AMX 40, AMX-13/75, AMX-13/90, Chatillon 25t, BDR G1B, AMX M4 1945, AMX-50-68t , AMX-12t , Lorraine 40t	Q4 2011
SPGs RenaultBS, Lorraine39 L-AM, AMX-105AM, AMX 13F3AM, Lorraine155-50, Lorraine155-51, Bаt Chatillon155	Q1 2012
tank destroyers FCM 36Pak40, 105 leFH18B2, Panzerjager35R	Q1 2012
tank destroyers Renault FT AC, Lorraine 37L-AC, Somua Sau40, S 35CA, ARL V39, AMX AC de120-46, AMX AC de120-48, AMX50 Foch	Q1 2012
medium tank Renault G1R, light tank АМХ 13FL11	Q1 2012
British tanks	Q2 2012
Japanese tanks	2012

Ultimate Conquest (Clan Wars)

Fog of war in clan battles	Q4 2011
Cooldown period for destroyed vehicles.	Q4 2011
Expansion of the global map. The following regions are going to be added in the prescribed order: North America, Africa, South America, Australia, Korea, China, Japan.	2012
Clan treasure transactions.	2012
Clan armoury, clan consumables and tanks.	2012

Performance and Game Client

Packed resources decreasing map loading time.	Q4 2011
Pre-caching – optimized vehicle model loading for Low-end PCs.	Q4 2011
New firing effects, explosions, and other visual effects will be added gradually.	Starting Q4 2011

New Features (Misc)

Vehicle customization: camouflage and horn sounds.	Q4 2011
Mini-map customization and new functionality.	Q4 2011
Quick in-game violation report system.	Q4 2011
New crew skills and perks.	Starting Q4 2011
New aсhievements.	Q1 2012
Expanded post-battle statistics, also accessible in garage menu.	Q1 2012
Realistic vehicle physics.	Q1 2012
Extended platoons for up to 5 players.	Q1 2012
Improved match-making system	Q1 2012
National crew voices (crews of each nation speak their mother tongue)	Q1 2012
Battle game tutorial.	2012
Commander’s chart.	2012
Improved chat functionality, official language-based chat subchannels.	2012

Maps

1. Each update will introduce 1-2 new maps.
2. Maps featuring North American Landscapes are planned for release in Q4 2011, after that the following regions are going to be covered:

- Africa
- South America
- Australia
- China, Korea
- Japan
Maps featuring all regions above are currently in development. The details on maps will be announced upon the release of each particular update.

Notice! Release plans stated above are subject to change. Only the most important features are listed.

By the way, 6.7 update is planned to be released later this week.
Stay with us and you won't miss anything!

Tanks Still at Gamescom. Updated

Today’s gonna be outstanding and really overcrowded. Unlike all the previous expo days, today will definitely be different. Still a lot of visitors, asking questions about how to play and which key to use so as to exit the battle and those who demand buffing/fixing the E-series, nerfing Soviet tanks, improving match-making system, implementing tier restrictions for Clan Wars.

A little later today Wargaming.net is participating in a show match organized at ESL booth were we are going to oppose The Drill: Training Camp winners - German team Panzerknacker. You can follow the battles here http://tv.esl.eu starting 15.10 local time (GC Stage 1 English).

The roster is known now. We play King Tiger, Pershing, T44, SU8, Grille, Panter II, T1. Format/style is 8/42. Arty - Tier 5. Maps: Lakeville, Prokhorovka, Himmelsdorf, Steppes. Shame, there's no Malinovka on the list. :)

Start making bets on who is going to lose! Providing we do, I will truly be down and at least I’m gonna entertain myself at the community party we are having tonight. Three hours of friendly talk with nice (I hope :)) German players. If you have registered on the forum, see you around. If you haven’t… well, come anyway! We will be hanging out at Friesen Bar (Friesenstrasse 41, 50670 Köln).

Dont hesitate and drop by.

It was an epic loss, guys. I am p*** off! Now all German tanks will get nerfed for sure! :)

World of Tanks rocks at Gamescom

Truly rocks! You will spot our booth easily. No one else has such load music and hot dancing babes. What have they got to do with tanks? Not much, I believe, however they are dressed respectively and behave as real tankmen comrades.

Otherwise World of Tanks booth is in military style. It is divided into 4 parts, each of them are distinguished in terms of design. Two zones where Public Tournament is held (everyone has a chance to win a gaming laptop) look like a shelter with all those steel constructions and sacks full of sand (in fact they are not). The most outstanding part is characterized by game places designed like tank turrets. Actually this is the most attractive one for the visitors. And the zone where the game speaks German can be recognized by military looking barrels. By the way we are possibly the only MMO offering to try out the game using laptops (not just laptops but cool gaming laptops that are also branded!).

Our booth. Pay us a visit

Typical German WoT player?

I bet you will find us easily. If you are around, follow the loudest music from Hall 9 and come to ask the questions you’d dare ask the devs in-person! And no hard beating please. :)

Wargaming TV. Episode 7.

New episode of Wargaming TV with English subtitles.

In this episode:
- improved graphics
- Wargaming.net at Tankfest

Wargaming TV. Episode 6

New episode of Wargaming TV with English subtitles is out.

In this episode:

- Wargaming.net at Computec Cup
- 6.6 update
- anti-bot policy

Wargaming TV. Episode 5.

Wargaming TV. Episode 5 with English subtitles.

In this episode:

- camos (v.7.0)
- Ural Steel Finals. Post-mortem.

Further episodes will get English voices.