For about two years now, World of Tanks has dominated the field of massive multi-player online armoured combat games. World of Tanks achieved a great deal of success by targeting a gap in the market between arcade shooters and historical combat/tank simulator games. It tickled the tank enthusiast's desire for a game that modeled cool armoured vehicles, and loosely simulated the intricacies of tank warfare, while still being easy enough to pick up and play that the casual gamer had no difficulty getting on board. While World of Tanks did a great job appealing to that niche, they also built a number of negative qualities into the game that have niggled at its success, and its customer's satisfaction since inception. This has led to a spree of competitors looking to dethrone, or at least challenge World of Tanks's monopoly. The first major competitor to challenge World of Tanks was War Thunder, which promised combined arms warfare and a more realistic simulation of warfare. While it has had some success, it has still failed to achieve the same level of appeal, perhaps due to its steep learning curve and lack of professional competitive play appeal. This leads us to Armored Warfare, perhaps the closest match to the World of Tanks formula that we've seen yet (other than the flat out knock-offs you'll find in the internet's backwater).
Some will tell you that Armored Warfare is among the World of Tanks knock-offs, with its near identical control scheme and overall gameplay. Much in the same way that I would not call League of Legends a ripoff of DOTA, but merely an emulation of a formula with its own flavour and specialty, so too is Armored Warfare an emulation of World of Tanks. World of Tanks specifically covers tanks from the 1920s, the era of inter-war experimentation, up until the 1960s. World of Tanks claims to cut its vehicles off around the point when smooth-bore guns came into fashion, and armoured combat began to shift its focus toward lighter armoured vehicles, computer and night vision developments, and of course, the shift to guided missiles. That's pretty much exactly where Armored Warfare picks up. It's almost amusing to see vehicles like the T-54, the M60, and other top tier World of Tanks vehicles hanging out at tier 2 and 3 in Armored Warfare. Armored Warfare differentiates itself from World of Tanks by focusing on modern warfare, adding new ideas such as missile systems, and high-tech armour that actively defends without simply relying on armour thickness and angling. It seems to offer virtually everything that World of Tanks does and more, save for World of Tanks' historical period.
Wargaming, the company that produces World of Tanks, has a lot to be concerned about, perhaps far more than they ever needed to with War Thunder. While World of Tanks will likely remain in its prime position, Armored Warfare’s greatest potential power is that it may force World of Tanks to start reassessing some of their less popular policies and features. Much like Guild Wars took on the role of challenging World of Warcraft's unpopular features, Armored Warfare attacks some of the longest standing gripes that World of Tanks players have. World of Tanks' players have long begrudged three major problems: pay to win consumable ammunition, frustrating artillery, and a lack of a PVE (player vs environment) mode.
Ammunition in WoT is highly simplistic. Most tanks in the game carries three ammo types, an armour piercing type, a high explosive type, and a form of premium ammo that costs gold (paid for with real world money) or extortionate amounts of standard currency. The higher the penetration on the shells, the better. While it is sometimes better to use high-explosives, this is typically a gimmick, and higher penetration variants of ammunition are almost always better. This not only rewards players for spending real money on a disposable assets, it also flies in the face of realism, as super high penetration ammunition is actually not that effective against lightly armoured targets in the real world. Armored Warfare addresses this by making the penetration mechanics more complex, having high penetration rounds over-penetrate light targets, causing minimal damage. World of Warships actually implements this same mechanic, leading to shell choice becoming a much more important factor of the game, and adding to the required skillset. War Thunder took this mechanic to the extreme, and based its entire damage system on critical hit locations. Armored Warfare comes closer to War Thunder by rewarding the targeting of critical modules, and penalizing overuse of high penetration ammo. Yet, Armored Warfare retains the hit points based system of World of Tanks, thus avoiding War Thunder's less fair and random feeling combat. Armored Warfare also adds missiles and reactive armours, which add their own unique challenges for players to learn.
Artillery was also a sticking point in World of Tanks. Artillery units were meant to discourage camping behaviour by putting a unit into the game that was great at targeting people that sat still in cover. However, due to a complicated series of issues, which we may discuss another time, arty in World of Tanks seems to do the opposite, being rewarded much more for targeting tanks on the front lines. This led to huge frustrations for most medium and heavy tank drivers, who found themselves leading the charge, only to be punked by arty. This problem was compounded by the arty damage models being super random, with the distinct possibility of blasting a front line heavy tank in one shot, or bouncing off a light tank without a scratch. This led to massive frustrations, since most players didn't even know that they were being targeted until the pain train slammed down from the sky. The slow firing and aim times, plus the relatively boring play style for arty meant that it wasn't even really all that fun for the arty drivers, leading to low class population. Again, this is where Armored Warfare came screaming in on their modern warfare eagle. Armored Warfare attacked the arty problem with gusto. Arty fires faster and more accurately than in World of Tanks, but mostly does consistent amounts of smaller damage. It still wrecks modules, and splashes multiple targets, plus the addition of special arty ammo that can reveal hidden enemies and conceal friendlies, making it feel more like a support class, a la a priest from WoW, who can throw debuffs and offer more than mere damage. All tanks in the game get a notification when they are being targeted by arty, giving them precious time to move before being blapped, thus making the game feel fairer, and death by arty feel less of a cheat. The game is made more fun for the arty player, too. Arty now play a fun mini game where they are notified of enemy arty positions when they fire, which allows them to counter battery their opponents. Their position is only given away if they choose to continue firing without moving, thus seeing to the issue of arty player just sitting on their arse for most of the game. Armored Warfare’s efforts to fix the arty issue have not gone unnoticed by Wargaming, who have already proposed similar changes to World of Tanks.
The final feature that sets apart Armored Warfare is the prominent PVE mode, which allows players to fight cooperatively against an AI opponent, rather than focusing the game entirely on monotonous PVP battles. Some players will see this as a waste of their time. After all, isn't it always better to play against human players? Well, even those players may find themselves reconsidering that position when they consider that World of Tanks style games all still have the same sticking point when it comes to PVP. These games almost always include a double experience boost for your first victory of the day. Many players end up tearing their eyebrows out in frustration when they play an absolute monster game, racking up massive damage, worthy of a humongous doubled reward, only to have their team suck a fat one, and throw that whole bonus away. By including a PVE mode, you can be assured that a first victory of the day will at least be a guarantee within a few games, rather than the randomness of team games. These co-op games also still feel like a competition with other players, since you'll be fighting to get the most damage done, and be the biggest contributor to your team's success. Furthermore, it helps the player to skip the horror of the "stock tank" syndrome. World of Tanks players will know full-well the pain of playing a tank without all of its upgrades, or without a fully developed crew. Having to say to your team, "sorry guys, I'm a stock tank," can generally be avoided by grinding out the modules in the lower stakes game of PVE, where failure doesn't carry such a stigma of failing your comrades.
I'd love to rant and rave for a lot longer about Armored Warfare and how it differs, and improves on the World of Tanks formula, but I don't want to sound too sycophantic, as the game is still imperfect. The game's graphics still feel like they have a little catching up to do, and the engine is still a tad buggy. Many tanks need balancing, and it will be a little while yet before the game reaches World of Tanks' level of polish. World of Tanks players should consider downloading the game, trying it out, and then going on forums and talking about ways that World of Tanks could be improved by studying Armored Warfare. As consumers, we all need to take advantage of opportunities to prevent big companies like Wargaming from getting too comfy with having a monopoly on a niche like tank combat. World of Tanks has sat on its hands too long about issues like arty, and premium ammo, and while Armored Warfare is far from threatening World of Tanks' dominance of the industry, it is certainly a solid enough challenger to shock Wargaming into action. Those World of Tanks fanboys that have no interest in playing Armored Warfare should still rejoice that a true challenger has arrived, as this can only mean innovation and improvement for you. Players looking for a new experience, with a familiar formula should get on Armored Warfare right now, and try out all the new features. I'm confident that Obsidian Entertainment's Armored Warfare will rattle some cages, and bring a whole new generation of heavy metal excellence to the armoured combat simulator genre. World of Tanks, get off your arse and show us that you rock just as hard, because this challenger has you in its sights.
