World of Tanks
When I first heard of World of Tanks, I was at the WarGames.Net enormous booth at E3 2013. Back then, the promise of massive multiplayer armored battle seemed very cool, if not a little bit strange that everyone was getting so excited about it. While the game certainly looked cool, it seemed impenetrable to everyone but those “military geeks” who watch all those TV shows about the latest in military techniques and technology.
Of course, one of those diehard military geeks happens to be a younger cousin, so as soon as he hears about it, it’s on his radar. Naturally, since he lives in the next state, we don’t see each other or game very often. Fast forward a couple years and I’m headed up to visit. Sure enough, he boots up World of Tanks. Through his lens I finally get it.
World of Tanks is a game about, of course, tanks. You start out at Tier 1, mostly light tanks, and work your way up the tiers by purchasing upgrades. There’s five types of tanks: light, medium, heavy, tank killers, and artillery. The first three are pretty self-explanatory: light have speed and can spot enemies, heavy have durability and are slow. Tank Killers only have armor on the front, and have low mobility, but have extremely powerful guns. Artillery are very different from the rest and are very fragile — they require lots of strategic planning to fire from extreme distances on enemies that your allies have spotted.
World of Tanks thrives on the amount of diversity the classes allow. The game starts you off with one light tank from major WW2 powers: US, UK, France, China, Russia, German, and Japanese. Each of more than 200 tanks has different characteristics that define how you play the game — for instance, the tier 1 US light tank had a very short cannon, was a little bit slower, and had a bit more armor than the tier 1 French light tank. Each tank can be outfitted with equipment upgrades, crew abilities and skills, and consumable supplies. To unlock new tanks, you must progress down a “tank line” from tier 1 to tier 10. For most countries, this means selecting a tier 2 tank of a specific class and upgrading directly down the line (although there are often forks in the path).
Since this is Power Play, I wanted to make sure that I was off to a good start. At first, I was interested in checking out light tanks, because I like to scout out the battlefield and sneak up on people. The forums suggested the French line was best. However, after a bit of research it seemed like the best beginner lines were probably the Russian medium, or the German, Russian, and American heavy lines, so I opted to do those. Each line has a few branching paths, so I made sure to check out the recommended path for each: American, German, and Russian.
Starting out, the game gifts you 2x EXP for all the tier 1 tanks. I used this to grind EXP and unlock all of the tier 2 tanks for each respective country, before selling all but the best tier 1 light tank: the German L Traktor. This way, I could still go back and play tier 1 if I wanted, but I maximized the bonus exp I got from starting out. The game also gives you a healthy amount of bonus EXP and cash for completing the tutorial and then watching all of the tutorial videos — they’re a fine way of learning the game and each is only about a minute long. One of the tips that’s easy to forget is the use of the automatic lock-on, which (since I’m playing on Xbox 360) is the RB trigger. This is extremely useful for any light tank that’s got high speed.
Once I unlocked all of the tier 2 tanks, I purchased the rank 2 for each of the four lines I had chosen: the French light tank, Russian medium tank, and German & American heavy tanks. The forums seemed to heavily discourage using the specialized classes until you learned the maps — since they require more “camping” and “sniping.” For the artillery, I might buy the American, as it sounds the most user-friendly. The tank destroyers sound much more objective, so I’ll have to wait and see my preferred playstyle before selecting one.
After a few days playing, I’ve noted some more things — it’s very difficult to “rank up” some tanks for various reasons — sometimes the light tanks are too slow, or their guns aren’t very strong and they’re almost completely regulated to scouting. Other tanks are very poor until after upgrading, which makes it hard to get the first few levels. The first few days playing, I made sure to grind out a win in each of my respective tanks before focusing on one — as the game rewards “first win of the day” bonuses.
Most of the paths I chose start out with light tanks for the first few ranks, and wait until at least rank 4 or 5 to switch to medium. The exception is the American heavy line, which immediately starts at medium and goes to heavy at rank 5. One of the biggest challenges is when the game starts pairing you with level 5 tanks at rank 3, which mark the arrival of the heavy tanks and also the first time that you’ll frequently be facing veteran players. The fact that I attempted to continue with the French light line hasn’t paid off, as their light tanks are much slower than some of the others (ie, the Russian tanks) until rank 5, and are more like medium tanks.
I’ve noticed that I might actually want to look into Tank Destroyers, since they seem to be the snipers of the game, and manage to hold their own fairly well. The game is heavily geared toward strategy, so charging in head-first is almost never the right move — except that with scouts, sometimes it is necessary.
Overall, I’ve been having a lot of fun with World of Tanks. It’s very grindy, but when you’re rewarded with a win after some smart strategy and solid duels, it’s a great feeling. The best part is that the whole thing is totally free (aside from a few VERY optional premium tanks). While it’s an older game, the matchmaking is fairly solid, and the sheer amount of vehicles in the game ensures a huge amount of replayability. I’d definitely recommend giving it a try, even if you’re not a military nerd.
