World of Tanks - Free to play MMO by Wargaming

Maybe you have already heard about it or maybe you have seen an advertisement from this game. I'm talking about World of Tanks - the free to play award winning game - which is created by the Wargaming team. This game is all about the second World War in which you have to shoot the enemy with your own tank in teams of 15vs15. But this isn't only just about shooting each other with your crosshair: without tactics and a good well-oiled machine you'll never achieve victory.

When I first heard about this game i was very excited. While I actually downloaded their game i saw some video tutorials and beautiful pictures of all different kind of tanks from the game. We can divide the tanks in 3 main nations: The Germans (Germany, The Russians (Russia) and the Americans (America). But since they are working on new updates the French tanks have been added too and still a lot of extra tech-trees (new trees of tanks one can research) are added by time.

First of all I have to tell you guys something about the Tech-tree. The Tech tree is a place where you have a good idea of which tanks belongs to which nation and which different trees you can get to starting with the first vehicle. It shows all tanks from a current nation and when you right-click it you get information about it like its speed, turning speed, the gun etc..

All tanks are divided in different tiers: by example everyone starts with tier I and can eventually reach tier X (heavy tanks), tier IX (medium tanks), tier VII (artillery) or tier IX (Tank Destroyers).

There are also barracks in the top corner if the main screen and when you click that button you see all the personal that you currently have. When you want to put over a crew from by example a PzKpfw IV to the VK3601H, because you have earned a lot experience on that crew, you will need to retrain them to 100% with 200 gold per person (when you have gold), I believe 85% if you use credits (20k credits p.p.) and 75% if you want to spent nothing. When the crew is new you can get 100% crew for 200 gold, 75% crew for 20k p.p..

In the store you can buy all the different tanks within a list of all of them. Furthermore we have a Depot which contains old ammunition not used, old modules which are not used anymore or other items. Most of the times you can sell these because you are already using the better ones but if you can transfer them to your new tank it's a good thing to keep those in the depot.

There are a LOT of different types of tanks and they differ in playstyle. Lets start with those types: we have Light tanks which are usually the very first tanks you start with. As you play more battles and gain experience and credits you can research new different parts like a cupola, tracks, guns, radio's, and the next tank from the Tech-Tree. They first tanks Germany starts with is the Leichtetraktor (also called Loltraktors), Russia starts with the MS-1 and America with the T1 Light tank. They are all showed in your garage where you can load them with ammunition, buy modules and change the crew or add crew skills which you get after a lot of battles when they gain experience. At first they all start at 50% but as you continue your conquest they will eventually reach 100%. This means they are much better than they were on 50% and they can now train crew skills that can boost your crew skills or give your tank advantages towards your enemy.

There are also medium tanks which are known for their fast agility, speed and mobility. These tanks are very fun to play as you can get to safe places faster and can pop-out faster to shoot the enemy in their armor to eventually get back without getting hit.

The real tanks are the Heavy Tanks which are mostly in the end of the tech-tree. Those have of course the biggest guns, highest armor and are pretty slow compared to the other ones.

The TD's are known for their good base-defending capabilities. They have a long body with no cupola on it and have a higher camo rate than the usual tanks. These tanks are usually useful if you like sniping and staying in the bushes till the enemy appeares on your screen.

There are a few light tanks which are scouts and can change the tide of the battle. These have no to little armor, low penetration gun but their speed, agility and firing rate is incredible compared to others. This means they are very handy when scouting the enemy or mostly used for killing the enemy artillery (SPG's are Self-Propelled guns).

The SPG's are very different comparing to the other tank types because they use long range firing and go into a special mode which survey the map. When the enemy is spotted you should get your circle around the enemy tanks so you will shoote more accurate and eventually when the round crosshair is not changing anymore fire! They do a LOT of damage when hit and can also do splash damage. Their only big disadvantage is that the reloading time is really long (because of their dangerous big guns).

I've seen that you will always die if you rush the enemy. Because there is artillery in the game the best thing to do is to stick together with your teammates and to get cover before others spot you and you get arty bait. It's pretty annoying that there isn't a choise for a game-type without arty. Because of this you will always (mostly) try to camp. This is not really realistic to me because in the real World War II this wasn't always happening. You won't like this game if you wont to be independant from others because team-play is the only way to defeat the enemy.

When i began to play I tried the German tech-tree because their tanks just looked awesome to me but that is just my taste. The graphics and gameplay are truly amazing and when i continued i learned how to play and what to do in different situations. There is however one thing you should keep in mind - it's a FTP MMO, but it's very hard to reach higher tiers without having premium. A premium account for a month is 2500 gold which is 10,00 euros; you should keep that in mind.

So if you like real big beasts and have interests in the World War II, maybe this is just the game for you! See you on the battlefield!