Despite community backlash, Wargaming has just released its new experimental equipment on January 20th, 2023. Experimental equipment in the test server trail runs of the community has proven to be game-breaking and a must-have for all tanks to maintain competitiveness. Bounty equipment and bond equipment are all ready hard to get. This further pushes the gap between new players and old players. The game is becoming a more significant gap between new and older players and leaving less of the game to skill and more of the game to equipment.
What is the new experimental equipment?
The equipment effectively combines two modules into a single module once it is fully upgraded. It will give you a single-slot use of equipment equivalent to two modules. The upgraded equipment allows commanders to configure their tanks into new beasts.
The community backlash
Major contributors such as Skill4ltu, Quickybaby, DezGamez, and many more have all spoken out against the changes. The fear is Wargaming is using this as a money grab, further pushing away potential new players and the balance of the game. This will bring tanks that were okay or good into a state where they are overpowered or near overpowered. Looking at what data is shown for YouTube’s dislike of videos. There is an overwhelming dislike for voting against the dislike. Remember that these plugins only track what other users with the same plugin have entered. The actual number of dislikes usually is much greater than what we can gather from these community ran dislike plugins for YouTube.
Possible reasons Wargaming has added this equipment.
Wargaming has been trying to push more and more community engagement over the years. To help with player retention and getting new players interested. They have also been famous for abusing the player base with cash grabs to try to get more money out of players. They have been lately combining events with these cash grabs. Such as multiple seasons passes a year. As season passes is the only way to get bounty equipment and select tanks. To give Wargaming credit, they are a company trying to make more money and retain players. All their other game ventures have not been big successes, such as World of Warships and World of War Planes. World of tanks is both the console and PC. Not cross-platform between the two systems.
Boosting services
World of Tanks, like most games with grinding. Players have turned to boosting services to maintain competitiveness while busy with work or life in general. Players also turn to these services to get to a competitive place faster or place for rewards in competitive game modes that only the best tank commanders can get. With the further divide of equipment, it is becoming harder for newer players to get to a place where they can earn these rewards as the barrier to equipment and skill is becoming more significant. Boost source store is looking forward to the larger gap between new and old players. The changes further drive the divide between experienced players and new players. Funneling more players to WoT boosting services.
Are boosting services hurting the game?
This is hard to say. Wargaming is hurting their own game with the many changes they are making. Such as their fast cash grabs of limited-time purchases of tanks that only a limited number of players can have. Where only limited data is given to players before purchase, and it is being advertised as an extremely strong tank. With speed, damage, and armor as the game’s current meta has shifted. Boosting, on the other hand, has gotten to the point, though, where during North American prime time that both sides of a team can be locked down with AFK tanks. Some boosting services do this as they lack enough skilled boosters to meet mission needs, earn mission reward tanks, or make it easier to farm marks for their services. This ruins that single match but has further ramifications across the game by making it harder for other players to mark their own tanks. Makes the standards to meet wn8 higher, as players will now need to get more damage per match to get the required wn8 for clan war’s clans.
Why is Wn8 so important?
As WoT lacks any skilled based matchmaking, the community has come up with its own skill-based tracking system. As Wn8, this best judges a player in comparison to other players in the same tank. The most significant factors are damage, followed by kills and win rate. Game rigging by some boosting companies is becoming more common due to the demand for boosting services increases and the lack of skilled boost service providers. Some service providers have turned to game rigging. In turn, this is affecting the entire community as a whole as it is changing expected outcomes for wn8, marks of excellence, and other rank-based factors. A skilled-based match system would help put a stop to this. Just enough to attempt the balance between both teams. The rate at which one team steamrolls another team has dramatically increased over the past few months. This is mainly becoming of many of the factors listed before, as the gap between players is significantly improving. As your equipment and tank are becoming a more significant factor in your performance.
In conclusion
The new equipment has significant ramifications across the entire game. The new equipment will cause major balancing issues with balanced tanks based on their equipment slots. It further pushes players to other means of gaining an advantage in the game by hiring boosters. This, in turn, is making boosters take full advantage of the situation and start game rigging, as they need more skilled boosters for their service. Everything has a ripple effect, and this isn’t throwing a pebble into the pond. We are throwing an entire bolder into the pond. Time will tell how big of an impact this will have.
