World of Tanks

[Palantir]

I posted this at GS.
It's a fun game that you can jump in & out of very easily.



Anyone trying out World of Tanks? (Beta)

I literally jumped right in last night after watching the two 3 minute tutorial videos about the game. (Very basic info) It's a fun game, takes about 8 minutes on average per battle (max time 15 min) One I was in lasted only 3 minutes and only one lasted the full 15.

You pick your nation, USA/GER/USSR then click on your starter tank (light tank = weakest in the game) and jump RIGHT IN, pretty easy.
Within the first 10 seconds I had already shot my first tank! Ok it was a friendly and I shot-out his radio, but hey it was a HIT!!
{Boy talk about a grumpy player }

You shoot using the left key button and I was used to using the left key button to turn in LotRO so my first reaction when the game started was to "turn" and I "turned" three times- hit that guy twice which I thought was pretty good shooting at the time.

Each "battle" location is random (maybe 8 different maps) and the game matches 15 random players together (or grps of 3 if they form a platoon before hand) but it balances out the tank types on each side (3 hvys on each side 3 TD's on each side etc...) The funny part is most games have new players starting in them so at the start of each game you have someone shooting wildly at his fellow teammates!


You start off with the weakest of light tanks & advance up the tree of development from there: you get research & spendable points to spend that you gain through the battles. {Research advancements then you buy it like a better motor, turret, gun etc.} I'm up to a Pz 38T with just a few hours of playing.


It's a Capture the Enemy Flag type of game with everyone starting at their base then a wild start as everyone races to where-ever heading for the enemy's location. I played in @20 battles got 6 kills and died 10 times.

For communication there's a basic text-feature that showed 2 lines of text that I had zero time to read in-combat except when I was already dead. It seems that players use Vent or TS to communicate because there's really no good or easy way to talk or ID who is in what tank or plan tactics as everyone seems to just race around. You can highlight them for an ID but to do so you have to swing your turret and target them and having your turret swinging backwards is not a good idea (no clue how the TD players with no turret would do it).

There are also SPA's which all the other team-tanks spot for, any enemy a teammates tank can see everyone on the team can see, so the SPA can see on his over-view map. The SPA can then usually target and shoot at them with indirect fire. Not sure exactly how that works but it's devastating having 105mm & 150mm fire coming down on you.

Terrain is destroyable; you can drive over fences, trees, wagons and even thru building if you have a big enough tank, or you can blow them out of the way with your gun.
I must have wasted 10 rounds of ammo shooting at a tank I could target before I realized that I was shooting the house to bits that I was hiding behind. It was interesting that it showed I could target that tank yet not shot at it.

Another time an enemy PZ IV was on the other side of a row of wooded houses from me and it took me a bit to realize that all those holes appearing in the sides of the house was due to the fact that he was shooting thru the house AT ME!

I had a fun time and was eager for each battle to begin and start shooting. There were about 2500 players on & 60 battles going while I was on.

I do think there needs to be more depth instead of just the quick wild-west shootout feeling of the individual battles. Of course there might be as I just got in and started running around.. and this being a beta more is probably coming.