World of Tanks: Easily the best (and most frustrating) tank-based online game.
Note: This post suxxx 
Can’t even get the linebreaks to properly “register” lol. All I have to say is that it’s a good game. Here’s me bitching about losing a lot –> bitching and bitching
Just a quick note about the title: When I say “best online game”, I actually mean the only online game I put time and effort on, and when I say frustrating, I mean it tries to fuck with you until the end of time (or until you get a badass tank).
For a little intro, here’s a quote I CTRL+C and CTRL+V’d from onlinegamesforyou.com
World of Tanks is a team-based, free download, massively multiplayer online action game dedicated to armored warfare featuring historically accurate fighting vehicles from the 1930s to the 1950s
Anyway, the first time I heard about this game was when I was browsing Metacritic looking for games to play. I had a look at all games with a rating of 80 and above, and there I’ve met WoT. It immediately passed my “online game test” even without me playing it. And since I have the best criteria in the whole world when it comes to online games, here it is to share:
- A lot like Company of Heroes.
- Company of Heroes with all unnecessary bullshit removed.
- A shitload of tanks. In a map. Bashing the fuck out of each other.
- Totally not full of teenage dicks.
- Absolutely no sign of a child playing it.
- Does not involve killing monsters over and over again.
- NO FUCKING CHILDREN PLAYING IT. Seriously. I fucking hate it when children on online games trashfuckingtalk other people. And no, I’m not a child-ist (I say the word exists).
- Children not interested in playing it. It keeps them out. Nuff said.
- A huge selection of tanks. Despite that, choosing isn’t difficult since you have to go through the tech tree to get something you want. If what you want isn’t at the very bottom (highest tier), you can stop where you want to and use that tank for the rest of your life.
- The game mechanics ROCK. You can’t just run, point, and shoot. There’s a lot of stuff involved in getting a kill, and even then, getting a kill isn’t entirely necessary. You just have to contribute something to the team and try to not get yourself killed. There’s a lot to mention, but it wont fit here. Have a look at the page instead.
- A lot of people say it has decent graphics. I can’t comment on that since I don’t have a machine that can handle the game at above medium graphics settings.
- I love tanks.
- Matchmaking sucks (matchmaking chart here). Well, not completely, considering the fact that you get raped by it when you’re between Tier 4 and Tier 8 which is where you obviously spend more time on. Take the tank destroyers, for example. Tank destroyers are supposed to inflict massive damages to the enemy, with the slight disadvantage of having no turret (limited gun traverse) and having paper armor. They work extremely well — when put in matches similar to their tier. When put in higher tier matches, good luck. It does, however, teach us tank destroyer players a lot of survival skills.
- You don’t get to play with a lot of your friends. You can play with a friend in platoon mode, but if you want to play with more than just 1 friend, you have to pay real life money for that. Sort of a deal breaker for people playing with a lot of friends.
- Given the above, cooperating with completely random strangers is a bit hard.
- And by random strangers I mean a lot of complete idiots. Check here for some of my games that lost epicly.
Related articles
- World of Tanks crowned Best European Online Game (massively.joystiq.com)
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WoT Matchmaking: I’m out of luck…or am I? « Our Very Existence
October 23, 2011 at 11:31 am
I have played another tank game “Tanki Online”. This is first multiplayer 3D-action flash game. Participate in furious battles — destroy enemy tanks, help your team, advance your tank, make your military career! Wide choice of ammunition, several game modes and real players only.
Scommesse Sportive
November 3, 2011 at 10:59 am
Hi, I came back to your blog looking for the post of getting Arch on the dm1z, and noticed you posted about WoT a few times.
Do you play on the US or UK server? I also play, on the EU server, and thought you might want to play together at some point.
Also, it seems like the “no sign of a child” playing statement is now false. The game is now also plagued with childish players who insult everyone for noob and worse.
I’m the European moderator of http://reddit.com/r/worldoftanks and we run clans on both the US and EU server. You’re welcome to join them, but even if you don’t feel free to stick around our boards, we have about 1200 readers at the moment, and about a quarter of those are members of our clan.
You should also know that I’m a Wallet Warrior (although I prefer the title Creditcard Cowboy myself), but only bought the Type-59 after about 4000 battles, so I hope you won’t judge
wvdschel
February 9, 2012 at 11:54 am
Nah, I’ve changed my views on wallet warriors. Turns out making money for a high tier tank isn’t that easy. Just that this crappy blog post was written when I was still making decent amounts of creds using Tier 6/7 tanks. Now I’m struggling to make money on my JT.
Also, cool
I’ll join in when I have the time. I’m currently busy for school stuff but I’ll try to check around reddit.
My stats by the way: http://worldoftanks.com/community/accounts/1000953263-awheheokay/ (far from impressive. also, no prem)
kpbotbot
February 9, 2012 at 1:57 pm
This is me: http://worldoftanks.eu/community/accounts/500268994-Spaceman_Spiff/ – I have some pretty nice tanks but terrible scores. I’ve been having a lot of back luck recently with games (maybe it’s me though, as I play lots of high tier, matchmaking can’t really screw me over). Once multicluster account migration hits (I suspect this will be 2031), we should play some games together
wvdschel
February 9, 2012 at 2:05 pm
This? –> http://worldoftanks.com/news/755-multicluster-technology/
It was TL:so i DNR. Just skimmed through the post. Would that mean players from the EU and NA servers could play together? If yes, then sure. Ping me when that tech comes because I don’t play as much as I did before ((:
Which brings me on an entirely different question: What programming language, GUI libraries, game development libraries, and/or IDE’s should I learn? O.o I’m shifting from Electronics and Communications Engineering to Computer Science because of reasons that would only make this comment longer
I’ve asked because I had a look at your blog and it seems you’re adept at that stuff. Also, a side note: I would prefer tools that are cross-platform. Thanks in advance 
kpbotbot
February 10, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Yes, that’s pretty much what it means.
The tools you pick really depends on what you want to do. Do you have any programming experience?
Despite all the hate it gets, for a lot of things Java is not a bad choice as an introductory language, as it has a great wealth of books, libraries and other resources available.
I myself prefer Ruby, which is an easy to learn, easy to use programming language that is extremely flexible, but unfortunately is unsuitable for things like game development because it’s quite slow.
Python is similar, and has a wider user base, and is a little faster. I’m using it more recently because there is this excellent Kivy framework that allows me to quickly develop and deploy on a wide variety of platforms (Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, …). It has quite a peculiar (but elegant, powerful and convenient) way of doing things though, which make it harder to port over your experience from and to other systems. But, like functional programming, it is something that has broadened my way of thinking, so I consider it an enrichment.
If you want to do game development, libgdx is an excellent library that allows you to develop OpenGL backed games with Java, and deploy painlessly across both the major desktop operating systems and Android. SDL is also a very common choice, especially for 2D graphics, and there is a ton of documentation and starter guides on the net. Moreover, it can be used from pretty much any programming language you end up choosing. If you pick Python as a language, PyGame has an excellent reputation, although I have not used it myself.
A good starting point for Ruby is Shoes (shoesrb.com), which is an easy to use toolkit designed for beginners (I sometimes use this if I need a quick GUI for something, it is excellent for prototyping and experimenting).
As for GUI toolkits, this is a tough one, and I haven’t settled on one myself. Like you, I prefer to keep things cross-platform, but the GUI tends to differ across, not just in look, but in feel and behaviour as well. You usually end up with an app that looks out of place and akward everywhere. In all honesty, I haven’t needed much GUI for most apps I made, and when I did, it usually didn’t require me to have access to the standard platform controls like buttons or text fields, so I often end up using lightweight game development libraries for makeshift GUIs.
If you want something more low level, then C is an excellent choice. C is a “simple” language, in the sense that you can have a deep understanding of it’s workings rather quickly, whereas other languages often remain a magical black box even after you used it for years. If you pick C, I highly recommend reading “The C Programming Language”.
TL;DR: If you are a beginning programmer, I would recommend picking Python or Ruby, or perhaps C if you like to get closer to the metal.
wvdschel
February 10, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the extremely detailed reply! Seriously, I’m keeping this for future reference
Anyway, yeah, I have a bit of programming experience. I wrote random extremely simple programs in different languages in a futile attempt to find that one perfect language that I feel fits me. In the end I chose C++ because I think it’s “not too close to the hardware” and not to “high level”. I might be wrong on this though.
What troubles me is how I “apply” these programming things into the real world. The only thing I know that’s a bit more advanced than writing simple console stuff is using 3rd party libraries. I’ve tried SDL and it was fun until I got a little lazy ((: What other “techniques” do I need to be aware of (like using libraries and stuff)?
Thanks again. I’m going for C or C++ and will take things a little more slowly this time. Also sorry to bother you with noob questions XD
EDIT: Found myself a book ((:
kpbotbot
February 10, 2012 at 3:36 pm