It’s might be a silly name, but World of Tanks manages to unshackle itself from such criticism to deliver one of the more interesting simulations of the year. One-part lightly-realistic tank simulation and one part swift 15-on-15 action, its sedate pace and reliance on teamwork may well explain the millions of players that have sampled its battlefields to date.
Dropping newcomers into a garage with just a couple of menus and a huge red button for company, it’s within that structure that World of Tanks draws an analogue to the likes of Call of Duty or other online shooters. There’s a basic XP and currency system that governs access to a raft of equipment and perks, whilst the developer also provides a huge roster of mobile weaponry to reward steady progress. You might start off with three light tanks representing Germany, Russia and the USA, but tactical use of your research points quickly unlocks the heavier classes, devastating Tank Destroyers and SPG’s.
Those units form the brunt of a light MMO-style class system, and eventually determine your specialist role on the battlefield. Jumping into any match to sample your new setup is as simple as clicking a gigantic button at the top of the screen, at which point the game attempts to match thirty units the same experience before throwing them onto a small-to-medium sized map. Each round concludes either by destroying all of the opposition tanks or by capturing enemy bases, at which point your back to the menu to consider tech trees and jump right back in again.
As you might expect for such a basic meta-structure, controlling your tank is fairly straightforward. Standard WASD keys are utilised for movement, with your mouse acting as a turret. Your targeting accuracy fluctuates suitably depending on whether you’re in motion or stationary, and scrolling the mouse wheel zooms in on either your enemy or the chunk of wall you accidentally just lined up against. Each of the tanks has a radio range that highlights enemy units on the map, and there’s a huge element of dice-rolling on the server to determine which of your shots are accurate, which penetrate armour, and which simply whistle past into the nearest tree.
Despite the frustration that customarily comes as the price for semi-randomised combat in an action game, in practice World of Tanks functions decently as an online shooter, with battles that playing out in short stretches neatly promoting co-operative tactics rather then lone-wolf rampages. Teams need a variety of hardware taking up scouting, sniping and heavy artillery duties, and in that respect the game caters well for lower-level players that stick to performing the crucial roles of spotting or acting as a speedy lure; both of which are a lot more entertaining than they sound.
The question is whether or not many people want to do that for a sustained period of play though, as – despite the best efforts of the matchmaking service – finding a fight that’s close to your capabilities can be tough in those early stages. The learning curve is steep during the first couple of hours of play, and it’s only after repeated failure that the stronger elements of World of Tanks begin to show. Simple strategies such as minimising your profile, adjusting for terrain movement speed and accounting for reload times eventually start to solidify, but at times those formative stages are brutally punishing against tanks that seem to pinpoint you from impossible angles and at a range that seems entirely out of reach.
Taking the time to consider your surroundings and take your foot off the gas is the best option for survival, and each of the nicely-rendered maps eventually reveal themselves to be chock-full of sniping opportunities, ambush spots and newbie-crushing danger zones. Should the frustration get too much and rage-quitting becomes a necessity rather than somebody else’s bad habit, it should be noted that death is a non-penalised option, but you’ll need another tank available in your garage if you want to jump straight back in. The one you left behind is locked until its game ends.
For those that stick with it until the games become a joyous and slow-paced tactical affair however, World of Tanks is a rewarding online shooter with a good ambitions to stay innovative throughout its lifespan. New nations have been added since launch, and a Risk-style world warfare map is launching soon with full clan support. Given the huge payer base and zero waiting times to get into matches at the moment, such spit and polish is to be commended, and hopefully a balance between approachability and long-term viability is within its grasp. It’s not quite there just yet, but as a template for future freemium shooters, it ain’t half bad.
Professional enthusiast, videogame "journalist" and all-round spectacular sofa dweller. "
48 Comments
Based on 10 minutes of game play? -_-
Dice rolling you say? Did you even read the game manual or went to a WOT WIKI? If you would, you would known that it is not a dice rolling, but complecs calculations of every shells speed, type, angle, penetration, armor thicknes, armor type,distance, and a lot more.
Er, you’re aware that every stat in WoT is subject to a +-30% die roll?
no its +-50% roll but there are more stuff in consideration that penetration and damage dealing .
The problem I have with these reviews is that they never start off like a new player, they have all the tanks and every upgrade.
It can be a proper grind towards a new tank, but that has its own satisfaction, all they do is play and not get sick of playing the same map for the 20th time today, with tanks massively outbalanced.
I still love the game despite its flaws, I shall still keep putting money into it in the hope that we finally get a game worth singing about from the rooftops.
so they must have played for 10 mins had a quick look at the tech tree then went in to a hiht tier match and probbly tried to frontaly shoot the mouse got some dings and decided to say the combat is a diceroll lol
to all who read this its not a diceroll
tanks have armour values your guns have penetration values if penetration is higher then you penetrate with AP. angling your armour works to increse its effectiveness and your guns lose penetration at long range
lol dice rolling, it takes hundreds of battles to get the shooting and aiming right, it’s almost an insult to good players.
Try starting a fresh account and play a 1000 battles and write another review
Well , all the points you made are valid but the game does not deserve 7 , give it a 5 , Its shallow with no Content
Did u even play the game ? if not .. stfu asshole . Thx
your the asshole, asshole
lets see you produce a free to play game with pronominal graphics, solid game play, and a community of over 3 million players, hmmmm, i thought not, i give this game a 9 out of ten simply for the fact that ive seen an update or two out a month, n not little pussy ones either, full fucking tree upgrades
League of Legends? oh and P.S. you mad bro?
Anyone that knows anything about WOT knows that it takes many hours of gameplay, learning the skills of a WOT tanker before you truly get the most out of this game. WOT is good fun and the better your skills and experience the more your battle results improve.
“despite the best efforts of the matchmaking service – finding a fight that’s close to your capabilities can be tough in those early stages.”
- few minutes of game-play, perhaps even none, just information scathed from other websites, reformatted.
The game is good, but need some changes. After few thousand games, when you have a land like Moskow every day you have to defend it, all the players who attack your area will be the same tanks, just a little boring.
The challenge is that you have to reach the best tanks, after no challenges.
One thing I would love to see in WoT, to be able to choose the map, at least from time to time…
Shooting DOES involve dice rolling –> penetration and damage values have a range of values and the shot itself semi-randomly hits somewhere inside the aiming circle.
The game is best I ever play
And dont cray if somtimes u are smalest tank in team, next time u will be bigger tank
9of10
Still many things wrong with the game. Have you ever played a game where there are 6 artillery tanks on each side?
?
Or what about getting stuck on rocks and not being able to move off em, leaving you stuck and ruining your game?
And what about being shot by tanks you cant see?
Or maybe even tank being 60metres away from you and they disappear because theyre behind a bush
Basically what I am saying is this game is very far from perfect. Still many frustrating issues that need to be resolved. But despite this its still worth checking out and lets hope devs get around to fixing some things in this (potentially) great game
I can’t agree with the “many things wrong” part.
A:it’s called a RANDOM BATTLE, so expect some pretty crazy match ups and hectic battles, throw expectations out the window and face it as a problem you MIGHT have run in to in WW2.
B: ok, it’s a slight glitch that happens periodically, but not a huge deal, wouldn’t go so far as to say “ruining your game” you CAN still shoot.
C:being shot by tanks you cant see means FANTASTIC teamwork, it means someone you can or can not see atm is spotting you for his team, and if he doesn’t fire, you stay spotted without you ever spotting him. a TRUE scout, not the suicidal ones in the leopards lol
D: this IS realistic, if you were stationary behind a bush, i would need to remember where you were. if you dart behind a building i wouldn’t know where you went, why different with a bush? only difference is that if i shoot my shot will blast through the bush, my visibility still doesn’t go THROUGH the bush (unless it was winter and there were no leaves
)
E:it’s not “perfect” because it’s a constant work in progress, perpetually adding new things, it’s not CoD or other retail games. i don’t think anyone would tell you Eve Online or WoW is perfect, both are constantly being updated.
omg are you stupid???
your point C is so fucking not true, there was once just ONE tank left he stood in open terrain richt in front of me, killed me and i only saw him when he killed me and he started to move…
that is just shit when you know i was also the last tank left of my team
so teamwork??? how many times did you play??
This game is a definite hate-or-love game, you can see that in the reply’s too. Jack obviously hates it, while all others stand as a steel wall before THEIR game. I told some friends to try tbis game, most never came past the first battle…. for me its the other way around, it has tanks so it CANT be bad…..
anyways, back to the review….. reply’s seem to focus on ‘dice rolls’ that dont exist, but suppose you are sniping an enemy realy far away, and the entire silhouet of the tank is inside the target zone…. he is standing still, so are you, and the vizor has zoomed down total… and even then, when havving the tank dead centre in the vizor, you still have a lot of non-tank in it too…. so you can hit every part of the tank, or miss, just because the gun is not that acurate at 500+ meters and i guess it has to be some dice-rolling to determine wether the shot is dead on target this time, or inacuraccy of the gun had the shell fly 1/2 a degree off course and miss the target by an inch, just like in real life lady luck would determine where exactly a shot would hit.
@elite-osiris: hundreds is not always needed…. if you are used to visor instability while moving, you can quickly adapt and just like in WWII, shoot while standing still, thus increasing accuracy. after a lousy 3 first games, i managed to get a 50% hit ratio on my tier 1 vehicles. Then again, i played hundreds of battles in other tank games
and about match-making: If you have a hard time finding a fight your size, its always easy to stay close to a tank thats bigger, and watch your enemy’s have a hard time trying to dent him…
And what about “Clan Wars” and world map? nothing? Realy bad review made by guy who played this game for max 30mins.
its a tactical game where tactics are only for Premium Users (team company)
matchmaker shoudnt putt you in games with 4-5 levels bigger tank than yours (cant hurt em)
its a looooooooooong grind til lvl 8 tanks,i shouldnt mention lvl 10….
its a word from player with 10000+ battles.
Thanks for reading.
Got tier 8 tank in 7 days without premium, tier 10 tank in 14 days without premium. Learn to play.
I agree with truth, these grinds are brutal if your not premimum and not able to play all day, And it doesn’t help when the company doesnt give much info about how their XP formulas work. I got 40k to get my next spg and im getting 300 +/- a win so maybe sometime this year
you must have a M7 Priest don’t you
I hate to burst you waaaawwaaaa bubble but I have made tier 3 german in 12 hours of gameplay…Slept for a while returned and in 2 more hours tier four…..And I suck….If I know I am against heavy tanks I spot for my team,you get exp and GP for that too. About two more days and I was tier 6….Now the german tiers are a bitch because you dont even get close to heavies till tier 6 or 7,french american and russian get them alot earlier..But dems the breaks I am in a tiger
why you deleted my post Admin???
People dont deserve to hear the truth??
7 out of 10 is honestly too much.Game certainly deserve such score,however it should be noted that the developers fail to bring new content and their inability to fix bugs and rationalize some of the features is nearly criminal.Simly the quality of game is decreased by bunch of monkeys that cant get the job done and even worse,cant listen to their customers at all..
And ofcourse these reviews are worth nothing,you just cant rate game after hour of playing on press account.Just NO
Especially when we all know that most of the dudes who have to review WoT spend most of the time in-game trying to team kill everything in their sight
Nonsense , You all just rant , Everyone is entitled to his/hers opinion , When someone says something you start to swear and prove his wrong , thats just childish , ALL i am saying is Before this game gets into the 7 , it needs to improve the game play.Because any veteran like me who have done over 6000 battles knows that tthe balance is wrong ,this is one of the only games where there are times when you are USELESS
useless? only if you run out of imagination…. even if your shots dont hurt the enemy, they still hinder him… throw his aim off, and maybe a track too… even a track of a maus does NOT have 200 mm armour… and remember, maybe you realize you cant penetrate his armour, but when your target cant see you (yet), he may very well think that he just got lucky and the next round WILL penetrate his skull….. Also you can guard an open flank and warn against an upcomming attack, just like if you run out of ammo…
Useless: British 2 pounder ap tank rounds vs German 88 mm FlaK
Useless: British 2 pounder atg vs Pz IV in North-Afrika
Useless: Helmet of a kamikaze pilot…..
Useless: tanker without hope…
Usefull: tanker with a gl hf approach. Fighting bigger tanks means honing my dodge and hide skills
I got a review for you dont play TD. Yes its a fun tank but does not get used in the clan wars not until the devs decide to make it a tier 10 atleast.
Artilery or SPG is totaly needed if you plan not to pay for premium cause it is the Money maker tank…..
IS-7 is the most versetile tank of all then t-30 the DPS and the tank that takes all the damage .. the Mouse or E-100…
The game is very far from realistic tank sim. Using my arty sometimes I wonder HOW I SEE THEM FROM SPACE! The game is cool but sometimes the mechanics sux!
Real life arty gets coords from forward observers on the ground, in tanks and in planes, they do the math at what angle they have to shoot, then they fire a marker and the FOB radio’s back corrections. Once the arty is on target, its just a matter of keep on firing.
If this was the same ingame, only whizzkids could operate the arty and NO-one would take the time to radio the coords to them, so realism would make arty use almost impossible.
In real life, most damage is done to weak targets such as human body’s. arty shells explode on impact, they dont pierce much. Open hatches and machineguns are vulnerable, dirt and mud obscuring visors and periscopes, lots of dirt and trash can block the tracks and the wheels, and explosions can jam a turret or thow an aim copletely off, but thats about it. Accuracy is a point too. Because in real life the distance is guessed, not measured, you knever know if a shot is 10 meter in front of a tank or 20 meter behind it.
To keep it short, in real life arty is not good against hard, moving targets because you have to hit spot on to do any damage, and to kill a human you only have to hit near, and flying bits and pieces of metal will most likely do the job. Realism would DEFINETLY make arty useless here.
In my oppinion, the creators have found a decent way to incorporate arty in the game. Sometimes too acurate, but i’ve never seen an arty become top-gun….
I have a top gun with SU-18
Also 5 kills with Hummel in one battle. 3-4 were done long-ranged, 1-2 were done in close combat. So, almost top gun again 
Wow….this is why no one pays any attention to on line “professional” reviewers. You, sir, are an idiot. Try playing for more than ten minutes.
I have over 3000 battles and I can tell you that this game is, at best, mediocre. The game needs substantial polishing. The match-making is very poor and the visibility issues are ridiculous. Not to mention the freaking morons that mod the chat channels. Communism is alive and well in WoT. Using caps-lock will routinely get you banned. The imbalance in the nation to nation lineup is equally ridiculous.
Of course, you can’t expect much from a backward, broken, corrupt third world country. The greed exhibited by these commies is second to none. I predict that this game will fail completely within the next year.
If you have time to waste, give it a try. But if you don’t, stay as far away as possible.
Note to developers: Russian tanks never have been and never will be the best. Except in your minds. You will NEVER get a penny out of me. NEVER NEVER NEVER. Now please ban me for caps lock.
lol just lol.
keep dreaming and jerking’ on Greatest US-Nazi super-puper “tanks”, Mr.Looser.
the Devs have no need for ur fuckin Penny, shove it in ur ass as deep as u can.
I agree with buddywhatshisname That is why they are making Wowp and Wob , damn you…
and they will fail quickly as well.
Is this gmae in store now??
The game is free-to-play
@TheTruth – Nobody deleted any posts. Feel free to comment on whatever you like!
As for dice rolls, the combat is heavily based on randomised damage; that’s not an opinion, it’s fact! It doesn’t ruin the experience at all, but when it’s noticable it does take something away, IMO.
+-25% rolls do not define the WoT combat system, it is realistic, and anyone who played more than 10 minutes knows how important the RNG system is.
Not only is the game free to play, but, and more importantly it absolutely wipes the floor with Call Of Duty not only for its lack of cheats because WOT has been PROPERLY implemented and runs serverside not client, but this game just works. This game and this game only has made me bin my Xbox 360 and Playstation because i was tired of the laaaaaaaaaaaaag / constant BS that console gaming is.
Incredible game, has eaten many months of my life.. and I still need to “just get that next tank/upgrade”, and this is only the beta version?! Every single other games development company in the world need to take a look at these guys. If theres an issue, they fix it and fast, Outstanding.
the game has a great basis but i more like to whait a miniute to get 15 min of fun than i have to whait 15 microseconds to get killed in 1 minute as i am another 1shot kill and i cant even hurt the enemy
another thing is that the goal is to get the best tanks. after that you could say the goal is clan wars but the problem is there is not enough space on the map
and there should be a max of artillery in a single game, i once had 18 arty in a battle, that was just shit
SO CONCLUSION: IT IS A GREAT IDEA BUT MACHMAKING IS A FAIL
PS: LoL you are an idiot, the nazi’s had the best tanks of the world, the developers must have loved their country to much and buddywhatshisname you clearly never have been to russia yet, i have and you dont know it at all but indeed russian tanks were the badest tanks of the war. The nazi’s lost the tank part of the war because the english had captured a submarine with the secred code were the nazi’s gave throug their tactics and russia stole the code from england so they knew already what the tactic of the nazi’s was and had everything ready to react on it that is way the nazi’s lost the battle of kusk = biggest tank battle ever
god damn keayboard i mean the battle of kursk
Here is another great review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIf6IYawkdM