I've just finished a 6 hour stint of playing World of Tanks today.

It's a free (or microtransaction) Tank battle game.

Unlike so many other sim's lately it JUST WORKS. No mucking about. Reliable. Great fun!

After beating my head on Cliffs of Dover and DCS:A-10 it's just great to be able to sit down and have fun without any hassle.

What is this "World of Tanks."

I have never, ever heard of it before.

Do you have more information on this "game"?

Yep, here you are:
http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_121a.html

As a game it's not great, but it is addictive. The tier system should provide for balanced gameplay between vehicles in the same tier but usually the match-make clumps together any vehicles it can find so long as they're 3 tiers above you. The goal-posts continually change, get a PZIII and it'll put you in with Tigers, get a PZ IV and it'll put you in with IS-3's. The system works a bit like a casino, it keeps you playing and the house doesn't lose. It took me about a weekend before I realised I was playing "Dress-up Barbie: History Channel edition" purely for the sake of dressing up.

If you really want to enjoy the game for the gameplay then I'd suggest getting an MS-1, teching it up and staying at tier 1 where there is atleast some balance.

But it's free so shouldn't complain !

Cheers

I think the behaviour you talk about above occurs when there's not enough people playing and the game has to match who is available for that battle.

A buddy and I played together for those 6 hours and the balance was almost perfect - usually within 1 of each type (ie 3 vs 4 artillery etc).

I am working to having tanks in a couple of different tiers. Trying to stick to the German tanks at the moment.

Like I say, when you're rolling around in loltraktors you're fine. It's when you get up to tiers 4,5 and 6 that you get the imbalance.

EDIT: Here's the kind of imbalance I'm talking about.

Putting a PZ III in against tanks 4 tiers higher is just ridiculous. Moving through tiers 3, 4 and 5 can be a real grind, in many battles you're actually better off just hiding and hoping your team wins.


And maybe you aren't so safe in the tier one tanks. Last battle I played there were 2 tier 1 tanks added into the battle. Thankfully for them we took pitty and formed a defensive ring around them else they wouldn't have lasted long.



Cheers

it's true, the matchmaker hates you.

without paying for a premium account, grinding to a higher tiered tank is slow and painful. I am lucky because I got to spend seven months playing the beta before the full release. during the beta I went crazy playing as many different tanks as I could before the full release wiped all my efforts away. So when full release rolled around, I knew exactly what tech tree branch to focus on in order to get those higher tier tanks.

if you're playing F2P like me and want to get into a higher tier tank, the trick is to discover ASAP what kind of tank you enjoy playing with the most and then focusing on that tech tree branch without exception. I'm not saying play with just one tank, but make one your main focus and never lose that focus or else you'll be puttering around in low tier tanks forever.

join a clan or get to be friends with someone that has premium so you can form platoons and play together. like most MMOGs, effective coordination and communication is going to see your team come out on top more often than not. playing solo is going to really draw the grind out even longer than necessary.

wish I had better advice for getting into a high tier tank, because part of the fun is figuring out what kind of tank(s) you like to drive. but the entire time you're finding out which type of tank floats your armored boat, it's all time wasted that could have been spent focusing on that one tech tree branch. you can research nearly every tier two tank for a nation after a couple of GOOD wins in the crapboxes. then it is a matter of saving up credits to purchase those tanks, driving them around for a few battles and discovering what really fits your play style. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to start focusing on a single branch ASAP. Especially for F2P players and people that WANT to drive higher tier tanks.

personally, I focus on the American heavies. that means I save every single free xp point for that branch's modules (spend free xp for modules only, NOT for researching tanks), and every credit I save is for the next American heavy. I researched the tier eight heavy a couple of days ago and I'd be driving it now if I didn't get side tracked by grinding out the Russian's tier six heavy (for free garage slots..free stuff is cool).

So yeah, you can drive a high tier tank with a F2P account. it may take you over a month like it did for me, but it is possible.

oh, another suggestion I have is to get a "money maker" tank for when you need credits. arty is a good money maker, but I don't like playing arty so I use the Easy 8 Sherman as my money maker. these money maker tanks are even more important as you get into the higher tiers, because the high tier tanks will NOT pay for themselves if you have a bad run of luck with many losses in a row. all premium tanks are money makers.

Was playing till my system went south on me.
Might be a blessing in disguise since I was stuck in the M3 Lee and that tank with no premium is a long painfull grind.
I played the beta since September so I knew the shortcomings of the game and I won't play Russian so I was going US heavy but I'm not sure I'm going to bother going back once I get my gaming rig back up and running.
It was starting to get boring due to slow progress and lack of content.

WoT just got an update, two new maps and the old ones got a really nice make-over. The graphics are really crisp now. I'm not too sure about the balance and matchmaking yet.

I'm currently going up the german research path, with focus on TDs, arty secondary, and tanks "for fun". Any advice appreciated.

And if someone can point me to a tank platoon/clan/group that plays on UK time, that would be awesome.

I don't know. I applied for the beta or what ever it was several times over the last few months and never recieved the email I was supposed to receive to activate. I gave up. yes, I checked my spam filter.