Greetings,
Recently, the Community Contributors, Circon and Mailand were invited by Wargaming to discuss game development with the Devs, this meeting was confirmed on social media by a photo, which I first saw it surfacing on Twitter and since seems like it was since taken down but it’s still possible to view on Mailand’s Facebook page:
Translation from German by “Shade1982”:
“So, why was I in Paris yesterday? Together with Circon, I had the opportunity to talk to four of the main developers for WoT from Minsk. And it’s been quite a day! These are the people with ideas, work with them and eventually make decisions. We talked about virtually every aspect of the game. We saw opportunities, challenges and limitations. All in all, it was all very open to talk about the complex WoT-system and all its intricate details, and as a whole. Based on that, I am planning to do a video series in which I will start to discuss several different specific subjects about the game. The goal is to show and explain to people the game mechanics, connections and possibilities/engine limits. Even though I can’t share all the details with you yet, it has to stay interesting for you after all. Stay posted! And to conclude, a big thanks to these gentlemen for taking the time, and thanks to WG for making all this possible. In the picture, from left to right:
- Ph3lan (EU Community Operations Lead)
- Me Andrey Biletsky (WoT Creative Director)
- Georgiy (Lead Game Designer)
- Igor (Lead System Designer)
- Alexey Ilyin (Product Manager) Circon”
Now, the reason why no one is speaking about it?
Well, all of the remaining Community Contributors have not been informed that this meeting was going to take place beforehand, despite everyone’s understanding that not everyone can be invited, but not only that;
Wargaming has also put the whole meeting behind an NDA wall barring every Community Contributor from being at the same level of information about the game which is a new precedent and especially given the current poor state of affairs.
Some Community Contributors, myself included have already shown their displeasure about the situation being behind closed doors, but the current powers in control of the CC program (and Development is also to blame for this) are simply not open for discussions with us and believe that they are not doing anything wrong, this has been their ongoing attitude for over a year now.
I asked a couple WoT communities (not just mine on my discord) whether anyone had heard anything from other CCs talking about this subject and it has been a unanimous “No”. Even the CCs who have been verbal about this privately are not talking, I can only say that I am not very surprised that no one is speaking.
Between the CCs I spoke to, there is general discontent about how the program is being run for at least the past 2 years, some people have given up on caring and are branching slowly away from WoT, others are just afraid to be kicked out of the program if they express their concerns publicly (This was never a problem before).
I personally already been very subtly invited to invite myself out of the program, based off some incredibly poor and fabricated excuses, it was all settled amicably under the basis of “its a misunderstanding” and “It’s how this person speaks”, but the person who did it could not even come forward with an apology about the way he handled the situation. Also, I am very happy to report that the same employee seems to no longer have a problem finding his way towards PMing me with requested material/codes, a problem only I, very tragically, seemed to have as I browsed around with other CC peers about it and even after contacting Ph3lan about the issue which had turned into futile attempts. Now ain’t that nice, one positive outcome. 🙂
I also have been told in confidence by other CCs whose names I’m keeping private, that they have been politely warned they may receive fewer opportunities if they participate in any sort of “rant”, a bit troublesome when most of the constructive feedback is seen as a “rant” these days.
(The cherry on top of cake personally was when a member of staff called me emotional for saying that WoT was greedy for selling the E-25 after they promised they would never again for obvious reasons. I must admit that one gave me a sensible chuckle as I spoke in no different tone from anyone else.)
CC Management says that every CC is equal more but more than ever some are now more equal than others and I would sincerely urge other CCs to start being more vocal about the way things are turning.
And to the readers, I am sorry if you wanted a Q&A or any update. There is none. You can forget a Q&A from Tankfest as well, they ended those too and pretty much blamed us, even when most came from abroad, making the effort to travel early to attend the meetings. They blamed us for not making it constructive when it was one of the WoT staff members giving the answers that kept deflecting questions and brushing things with bad jokes.
Same for those monthly/patch Q&As, they stopped that too saying that no one gave feedback which is very much untrue, as I had very explicitly told them why fewer and fewer people were attending them.
To simply: Q&As failed because World of Tanks’s CC Management/Devs got this genius idea of putting Q&As under NDA, they expected us to attend Q&As where most answers -to your questions, mind- were not allowed to be brought back to the community which defeats the whole purpose of holding such meetings in the first place.
I have been a World of Tanks Community Contributor for over 6 years. That’s 1/3 of the life of the teenagers reading this. I have seen good and bad WoT staff come and go, good and bad decisions happening, I have had some extreme disagreements with some staff but I got to also create many friendships. I have pretty much have seen it all, with one exception… I have never before seen CCs being treated this way. I have never seen people more disconnected or/and afraid to speak their opinion.
To end, despite my low morale after having been pretty much beaten down by some members of staff/decisions, I still absolutely love World of Tanks and I want to remain a Community Contributor, produce more content, give life to some tank projects I got on my mind, etc. However, I am aware of the risk I am taking by writing this article for you but it’s because of how much appreciation I have for the game and community that I am stepping up and doing this. During these couple of years that I have run RSR, the one thing I soon realised is that most of the time matters only improve when we speak publicly about them, and given that no advice/feedback is being taken internally, it’s necessary and about time to be open about this. And for those that may think it will only affect the few of us Community Contributors, each of us comes with their own community… There is a Domino Effect.
And just before I shut down the shop for the night after this more personal toned article, one more thing:
I would like to give some knowledge to some of the members (active and previous) of WoT staff who have positively impacted the community like Vuque, DellRoh, “My Numero” Juan, Pigeon of War, MeatHeadMilitia, Ectar (despite our arguments somewhat I dearly miss), Ash, Crysantos, Mrconway, Lumberjack, etc, etc.
I can’t possibly name everyone obviously but I am pretty sure you could enlarge the list. We surely need more people like them and we should give some appreciation to the ones that are still around.
Thank you for your time;
Best wishes.
Rita
I’d like to take the time to perform a skit in relation to this;
“The story goes that a meeting in Paris was scheduled to be a Q&A involving Wargaming – *snrk* what, you mean Epic Games? – who took all the Tankfest money – and, well, items – to create a legion of Rocket-powered Russian League tanks to – you guessed it – take over the world!
“They say they’ve been ordering Epic Games around this entire time, but come the bloody hell on, I haven’t seen a disguise this unconvincing since Star Wars Battlefront 2 disguised itself as EA and becoming bad on purpose with lootboxes to stop me from playing it! …oh wait, that was real?”
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Sorry about that I’m just really upset as you could probably tell)
No, no ,no! WHY must WG keep ruining great things the Qna’s (at least for me) were one of the only things keeping the hype alive for world of tanks giving me something to look forwards to. IMHO they are hurting the game even more by getting rid of most of these since these usually generated lots of thing to look forwards to. Firstly they extremely in the wrong when they say “oH tHeSe QnA’s ArEn’T gEtTiNg CoNsTrUcTiVe CrItIcIsM” and other things of the sort and should at least try to look at it from our view instead of letting their ego’s or belief they haven’t done anything wrong get in the way of this. Also as Rita expertly explaines we must act! We must tell more and other CC’s to act and (for us too) speak more publicly about this matter to get Wg to see that this hurting their game and the same is for other matters (such as OP tanks and all the other problems we have with WoT and WG). Even if WG doesn’t listen at first, or ignores us, or tries to quiet us, we must not give up, we must keep fighting till all is made right, and most importantly we must keep WoT alive!
If you’ve read through this thanks for listening to my rant/call to action I really appreciate it,
Tanks ( 😉 ) for your time,
Soren~
Ruining shit about their own games is kind of WG’s bread and butter at this point. Sure that makes me sound like a hater for the sake of hating on them but the history of the game has shown this to be true time and time again.
And that’s just one of many reasons why Wargaming does not deserve our hard earned money.
See I told you so, still think imI paranoid???
I do. But you were right as well. ;P
just wait till warshits does the same….
Different office, different policies, different people.
I don’t want to truly be comparing WoWS and WoT here but the reason why I started covering WoWS on livestreams and became a CC for WoWS as well is because they left me a very good impression, not just online but in person. You can easily reach them and they will actually listen to you and even the big Boss Arthur has always looked pleased to see me IRL, despite knowing who I am and how easily I will talk publicly about issues. That for me means a lot.
I would not say that WoWS is perfect, I have been very vocal about my distaste for the Nueve de Julio for example but generally speaking, at the end of the day no one wants to make a bad game but they have consecutively backtracked bad decisions and they do it rather fast. And like I said, they do actually listen and are open to talk.
Rita, it is called toxic relationship. You love wot but wot does not love you. It ruins your life and steals your time. It is time to move on and leave this piece of s**t behind you.
It is hard, but it can be done. There are other ways to express your passion, be creative and get things done – all that in a friendly environment that will make you happy and at peace with yourself.
I started playing wot in 2013, 3 years ago I stopped paying money, nowadays I login once a while when nostalgia wins and I want to take a look at my garage and tanks.
What you wrote here just confirms that my decisions were correct and nothing in WG will ever change…well actually that is not correct, from what I can see it changes to worse.
You love tanks? Talk to ppl at The Tank Museum, start working for them. They are serious, they are passionate as you are and with them you will be able to make a serious impact.
You are right I will give you that, its a good analogy.
That is why despite me wanting to still continue playing the game, I have also started branching out doing other things, Im playing WoWS as well, started going for weekly walks and recording those for youtube (Tank, Ships, random history and militaria and even al other topics like Biology, Geology and so on will be shown in those little adventure videos), I also got some IRL tank content coming that I am very excited about and started working on some history scripts too.
I am not putting all my eggs on the WoT basket, they dont deserve much after how they have been treating me these past months, I have no told you everything.
They are pulling the gun to head tactic. That’s scummy as Fucking hell..
They do it with impunity, and it sux.
WG is mimicking real life, for a change: whenever the Czar farts, WG smells the changes. Meaning, they have always shown their colours, but now, they feel no one can touch them. They throw some crumbs at those CC’s (who stream WoT for a living), knowing all to well they have the latter by the nuts.
Ranting about the mentally challenged dev’s, or who the frak is calling the shots now, doesnt matter: they are all russian siblings, hamsters in a wheel, inside a cage, young ppl getting high on power, beeing under payed in decision making positions. We all know what “power” does to fragile ppl…
Triple A games companies are with very few exceptions just milking the players for as much dollar as possible with as little game development as possible. The list is lead by Activision EA etc. It’s no surprise that other game companies are following suit . Me personally I don’t play any of them anymore I’m bulding a model railway instead. At least I get something other than overpriced pixels for my money. I still watch others playing them. But no more subs from me. The gaming bubble burst and greed took over. Micro transactions killed it all.
Its only a Game people… When the Fun stops …Stop
You are right, there. But, wrong at the same time, because the problem relies on the addiction this game spews, for most of us
One of these days I was watching the Jimmy Fallon’s show and he was interviewing some wierd human specimen, a youtuber and streamer of some sort. The audience was in ecstasy so, that wierd looking troll was very well known, apparently.
To sum it up: a person can be smart; people can be dumb.
Okay, fair point. But some people want to actually see things improve rather than just giving up the second you aren’t having fun.
If you gave up every time you weren’t winning, we’d never get anywhere
Your comment is the most retarded thing ive seen all day, and ive been talking in World of Tanks General chat all day! “It’s only a relationship, when something goes wrong … just leave”. Is that how you sort out all your issues? Instead of actively working on it you just drop everything and move on? I suppose its why your name is anonymous, your name wasnt working out for you, so you just dropped it.
WG invite 2 CC is like, using a microscope to view the universe.
Circon is a badass though. He dares to say what’s on his mind. And he is a great player. Guys like him should be involved more in developing the game. Mainly for balance.
Not really, because then you end up with the same problem;
Someone being given more power because of their opinions or how they speak
Difference between fact and opinion. When it comes to balance there is clear difference between the two. Someone who is speaking facts and has the game knowledge to suggest the necessary fixes…That’s a good thing.
And yes some people opinion are worth more. You know why? 90% of people are idiots or sheep.
I’m not saying specifically circon or anyone else. But anyone who has the ability to look past opinion and personal experience and look at cold hard facts and suggest the changes that are necessary should be given the podium.
Last time they employed someone like that turned out to be Murazor. We know how well that went.
they have 20 circons in russian comunity so they dont need him
Love him or hate him, QB has also been pretty vocal on his dissatisfaction with elements of the game. He’s gone well out of his way to demonstrate the issues new players face by creating a fresh account which he plays only as a free to play player.
Many will say QB sucks up to the Devs, but why is he not there then??
There must be a very good reason circon and mainland were invited only
I think the difference is they invited people who they thought they could pressure into silence, people like Rita, Quickybaby and a few others will talk to their fans regardless of an NDA if they think it’s a bull**** reason behind it
@Havoc199 I suppose you think the 90% of idiots or sheep are the people who don’t directly share your opinions?
It could be said that Artillery is the worst performing class (which could be a fact) and therefore needs a buff, then facts would mean the change would have to happen?
Yes arty is underpowered. It’s true. But it also breaks the game. That is also a fact.
I don’t care about my ‘opinion’. Opinion means nothing. Humans will always boas and have issues with perspective when it comes to opinions.
Look at facts objectively and you learn and understand more. Challenge your own thoughts and ideas. I do the same for most things in real life as well.
As far as the last time being ‘Murazor’…he didn’t look at any facts whatsoever. He used balance like his personal playing field doing what he wanted. That is exactly the personal bias I am talking about avoiding.
Just a side note. To blame murazor exclusively for the balance issues in the game is also a fallacy. There are plenty of people who went along with his ideas even though a simple understanding of the game and look at some of the stats on vehicles would easily show that it was not balanced. Besides they are still selling tanks like the Defender on a regular basis.
So to shorten all this down;
WarGaming is going full Soviet, suppress any bad information, hire yesmen to worship the bad, threaten anyone who breaks the cycle.
And we stop paying for their shitty game, period.
Wargame ~ its my game so there! and if you don’t like it ‘just go fuck yourself’ as more than one power crazed Russian WOT manager/ developer has quoted publicly & repeatedly over the years ..
The massive Russian ego’s that live in the Wargame WOT company cannot and never will admit ‘anything ever is there fault or there problem’
its very much like the Emperor or Czar of Wargame and his ‘heads in the sand’ royal court just before the Russian revolution, completely arrogantly clueless over the common masses/ peoples utter discontent
they all got there heads chopped off in that revolution for being “arrogantly stupid” beyond belier
aka ~ Wargame today
Sounds like the Iron Curtain is being rebuilt.
I loe the way they only want “constructive criticism” when they have been ignoring (at best) such for the best part of a decade.
“but more than ever some are now more equal than others”
Hmmmmm…. where did I read something like that before?
“I also have been told in confidence by other CCs whose names I’m keeping private, that they have been politely warned they may receive fewer opportunities if they participate in any sort of “rant”,”
But they invite Circon? LOL….. his complaints about things, which are valid, could easily be seen as “rants” by the hyper defensive (butthurt?) WG.
CC should be people who play REGULARY the game. And Rita does not.
Is that your personal interpretation of what a CC should be? Let me spell out what the acronym CC means. Community Contributor. And I have to say she has contributed to the WoT community.
Maybe she is just jealous.
In the past, yes. But now.. not much.
“rade890” if you think I would like to attend a meeting where other CCs would end up not being allowed to know what took place you are out of your bloody mind.
@Rita
Lets be honest. You are not contributing to WoT lately enough to be called CC. Maybe thats why you were not invited. And now you are just jelous and envy those who were invited.
Lets be honest. You are not contributing to WoT lately enough to be called CC. Maybe thats why you were not invited. And now you are just jelous and envy those who were invited.
Have you even read the article? Or you just going to keep on pressing on the “jealous” key because that’s just the lazy easiest thing to think and type? 🙂
I suppose you’re clearly a better option because you obviously know so much about the game and have such great people skills? (/s)
Rita is a CC because she, guess what? “Contributes” to the “Community”, except it’s becoming more difficult because “Community Contributor” is slowly being morphed into “Yesman or leave”
It’s hilarious that people still don’t understand this.
WG doesn’t give a damn about you, never did, never will. They only care about money. Happy playerbase doesn’t speak to shareholders. Money does. They just had to train enough monkeys to pay against their own best interest and they did, just like many AAA developers.
Any issue you find they’ll get that one window licker from the forums quoted “See? People want it this way!” Those silly PR projects like CC are like kids playing in a sandbox. WG has probably the worst PR team I’ve seen in gaming, on par with Gaijin. How do you deal with constant downvotes to the news on forums? Disable dislikes. How do you deal with someone calling you out on your endless greed? Copyright strike them and call them homophobes. How do you comment on almost anything? “Oh, we are f2p game so people expect us to be charity, greedy bastards!”
Want to know true purpose of CC project? Give them some silly free codes and hopes of making it bigger and in return we get a way to shut them up from ever talking about glaring issues. Basically the same thing that’s happening with game “journalism”.
WoT was a great game in 2014, back when core developers gave a damn about it, now it’s just a pathetic cashgrab harvesting the playerbase. People could put up with developers ignoring them, because the game was actually getting better. Now they still don’t listen and just drive it into the ground just so the income graph for the next fiscal year looks good. Do you want to know what WG does with the “CC meeting notes”? They print it out in many copies just so the sales department doesn’t run out of toilet paper.
People would give WG endless shit for the stunts they are pulling off constantly but WoT playerbase on the West is too much of a niche to ever be vocal enough. They just live in their Russian bubble taking care just to not piss off the Russian playerbase too much. (How many days did the nerf announcement to Obj 430 and 430U last until it was canceled?)
NA is almost dead, EU is bleeding hard and RU is slowly declining as well.
If you want, keep playing. But stop giving them money for access to pixels. WoT will never get up from the ground and WG will never stop lying. Doesn’t matter how many times they show some new guy saying “now he’s the lead dude!”
This ^^
Well written and accurate. Sums up quite a lot.
Bunch of nonsense.. if customer is not happy he will not spend anything. Did you take this from some communist book?!
Nah, I’m fine. But it seems like you need to pick up a psychology book. WG did and learned how to exploit addictive nature of WoT and sunk-cost fallacy.
If you need any proofs, read on the forums how many “happy” people announce actually buying the newest, freshest lootbox after complaining two days earier about some yet another dumb thing WG did. “OMG but this time those pixels with completely artificial, monopolized price are really worth it!!!111”
Some good quote got popular lately: “vote with your wallet means that the cause is already lost”.
That was a rant and a half. You have gained the Sir Foch medal of excellence, Sir.
As much as I can empathise my question is….are any of you really surprised? If you are then you are pretty deluded. I’ve been saying for over 5 years regards WG attitude towards the community in general as well as the game design and balance etc.
I stopped playing the game 2 years ago and only come on for things like strongholds or team battles. Only to play with friends that I made.
I have been addicted and broken out of it. The game is cleverly designed to make a person addicted. It is also a highly toxic community due to a very frustrating game design which promotes raging and trolling.
The game is dying. That’s a fact. The playerbase across all servers is the lowest it’s been in years. Even at peak hours during special events the playerbase is lower compared to what it used to be on a regular weeknight.
The answer is simple. Stop paying money. Stop buying prem account. Stop buying the newest OP prem tanks. Instead spend your money (and time) on something worthwhile for yourself. Something you actually enjoy and gain satisfaction from. Something in which there is gain not a dead end when the game inevitably dies.
Just my 2 cents.
Rita, thank you for always being truthful with us, and taking a risk or 2 for us. You are a voice we trust, and we do not want to see it silenced.
NA server.
So all this total overreaction is over some closed meeting WG had witha couple of good CCs and haven’t told anybody about it? Ok. So what’s the problem, again? I think Rita should post actual news and iteresting stuff instead of crying all over her blog, but that’s just my opinion and it’s her blog after all, she can do whatever the bloody hell she wants. I’ll just stick to other blogs then.
If you actually read the article instead of jumping into shallow comments you would know.
Okay… how much are you getting paid?
No seriously, if I can get paid for just accusing every critic of being a crybaby I wanna know
In this case, how much are you getting paid?
Russians just don’t have a feel for freedom, open-ness, honesty and truth. What would you expect..
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