Original date of blog: November 2nd, 2015
Okay, so this blog has been horribly neglected. I’ll make up for it,promise! Before my holiday I was too busy to write for it and then I was actually -on- holiday and decided to do other things than blog. I did tank, however. Probably a lot more than I should have. I blame the stupid Frankentank for that.
The Frankentank may be Wargaming’s most brilliant and most stupid move at the same time, ever. Over the last couple of months, they have seen players dropping out, and the game becoming a bit less active. That’s not to say they see us as people or care why those people quit playing. On the contrary – we’re just a bunch of numbers to them. But they have thought of some ways to keep the players in the game. With mixed effects.
One such endeavour was the contest called Rise of the Continents, where all four Blitz-servers competed with one another based on activity in the game. As a player, you automatically entered for this, you didn’t have to submit anything anywhere or anything like that. Which made it pretty useless imo. And the prize? A little bit of gold and some prem time. Well, nice and all of course, but nothing special.
For the most active players during the event, there was an extra prize in the form of headphones or earphones of Sennheiser. Now, that’s not bad. That is good stuff – I use Sennheiser myself. Two of my clansfolk – Xenodium and Joseolas – got that prize, which makes me very proud of them. And worried about how much time they spend in the game >.> It’s pretty cool to win wargaming stuff though.
But the fact that the most afk player ever got awarded that as well just shows how rigged it all is. Not to mention that they found out that Russia used bots in order to up their activity, making their server the victor.
Wargaming is saying they’re looking into things, but I wonder if we’ll ever hear about it again. Aside from Russia cheating (which, imo,should be reason to disqualify them), Mr Afk has been complained about numerous times on several parts of the EU blitz forum. He has his own topic, where people can complain about him. And yet, Wargaming apparently never noticed that. Very hopeful for this whole “looking into it” thing, if they can’t see the things happening right under their noses.. And they already gave everyone their prizes. So, what are they going to do if they decide Russia should be disqualified after all? Or isn’t the victor, either way? Revoke the gold and prem time? When it’s already been used, do people get a negative balance? Uh-huh, I’m sure they’re “looking into it” indeed.
But the best and worst thing they did to up activity is the Frankentank. This literal monster of a tank could be earned through seven stages, each seen as a mission and each requiring a certain amount of xp being earned to finish it. Wargaming didn’t count just Base xp for it, they counted premium xp as well – which gets you 50% more xp per battle than without premium.
So I’m thinking lots of people got extra premium time for it, earning wargaming lots of money. At Clan Phoenix, we gave some of our younger members some premium time, so they would have an easier time to get it, because earning a total of 660k xp isn’t easy. Especially not considering you have to wait for the mission reset, which only comes twice a day, before you can start the next stage of the mission and you only had two weeks to get all that xp. The other option was skipping stages for gold (though you still had to wait for the mission reset).
Because the first stages happened while I was preparing for my holiday, and was incredibly busy, I skipped them. The first stages were cheapest to skip, but I had no intention of paying the 10k gold it would take to get the tank fully in gold. Judging by everything I had heard about it, the tank really isn’t worth it. Not the grind, not the gold. It’s a mixture of tanks – which is how it has gotten it’s name – and it’s a tier VII premium tank. No preferential matchmaking. It apparently earns credits like a beast, but so far, most players I’ve seen in it, have no clue how to drive it.
Wargaming, was, btw, incredibly smart (taste my sarcasm) to rename the tank from Frankentank to Tankenstein midway. Frankentank is the name that had been used for it first, and the community happily adopted that as soon as things about this tank started leaking out. It has a nice ring to it. But when they actually launched the mission, they had changed it to Tankenstein. Why? No clue, and really, no reason…
You can probably tell by now that I’m a big fan of this whole thing, can’t you? Well, to quote one of my favourite misspelled tattoos: “its get better”. Imagine having that on your skin for the rest of your life… (I hope they have “no regerts” =’D ) (I Google them every once in awhile. They always crack me up.)
So, assuming you don’t skip any mission and get around 1k xp per battle if you do your job in tier IX or X, you’d need 660 battles without premium time to earn that tank – mission resets aside. This equals to 440 if you do have premium account. This is where wargaming messed up for real.
Every battle lasts an average amount of 5 minutes. So without premium account, you have to spend 55 hours playing the game – again, mission resets aside. With premium account, this means 37 hours. In two weeks. Those that can actually spend that amount of time on the game in such a short amount of time, worry me.
For the common person that has a job, or school, and a life outside this game, the tank is nearly impossible to get without using gold to skip certain parts. Luckily (I really speak fluent sarcasm), Wargaming has allowed for simply buying the tank at the end if you didn’t manage to get all stages done. For 10k gold. That offer ended yesterday.
As I said, I wanted the tank, because I’m greedy and it’s a collectible, and I didn’t want to gold more than the first few stages. During my holiday, I knew I’d have time to play for it. And that is where it becomes Wargaming’s most stupid move. As I grinded for it, and entered battle after battle, I got really fed up with the game. I didn’t want to play the game anymore.
It started feeling like -having- to play, rather than -wanting- to play. The amount of xp required for the Tankenshit (yes, I went there) was just too much, took too much energy, too much time, too much everything.
Near the end of it, I kind of lost my appetite for tooning and being social because of some drama, and I ended up sealclubbing the last 40k xp I needed to get it. And during that grind, even sealclubbing stopped being fun, despite earning another Ras. Congratulations, Wargaming. You ruined sealclubbing!
The moment I got the Tankenshit, I stopped playing. I logged out of my account, and closed the game. And just felt myself relax.
And I know what the problem was. Even without the drama, I was getting fed up with the game because it had started to feel forced. It was no longer ‘can’ play, it was ‘have to’. And the moment that kind of thing happened, I dig in my heels and start resenting it. I doubt I’m the only one.
Apparently, Wargaming is looking into creating more of these kinds of missions. And I wonder if they will take complaints and the like about how this went down for the Tankenshit into account, or if they just see the numbers that showed how activity increased for a period of time.
P.S. The whole grind for the Tankenshit has left such a sour taste in my mouth, I can’t help but hate the tank. I still haven’t driven it. I don’t plan to any time soon. Pretty sure I’ll hate the Tankenshit more if I do.
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