Behind the 8 Ball; Casual Player Blues

Mrtheox, on 15 July 2010 - 03:29 AM, said: I'm a pretty casual gamer and one of things that attracted me to WOT was the promise of reduced grind, i.e. the "eve" trailer. I fell like this game is not casual player friendly. First, grind equates to superiority in this game, and the margin of superiority achievable by grind mitigates tactical prowess, for the most part. Secondly, the grind feels unsatisfying, as each time you play your newly unlocked tank you are disappointed. The base models are always inferior to the previously upgraded tank. I call this the kick to the nuts effect. When a player unlocks a new tank, they get all excited for their new shiny, then you get it out on the battlefield and the tank is totally underwhelming and ineffective. This goes against the grain of most MMO experiences. As when one "upgrades" to a new piece of gear or levels up, they expect to instantly be better than they were before. In some ways this game punishes you for upgrading your tank. Because the new tanks are so bad, you're forced to either stay back in your old tank and fully upgrade it and transfer the XP out into new tanks or, suffer through 14 to 20 games of being very ineffective in order to buy the upgrades necessary for the tank. For instance, to earn enough XP/Cash to upgrade out of the BT2 into the 7 the BT 2 needs to be fully upgraded to have a chance at earning decent XP. Then the 7 doesn't feel superior to the 2 until it's 90 percent upgraded. This pretty much extends down the whole Russian medium tank line.
The Russian mediums are expensive and less of a value of the Germans (Russian tanks aren't any better than the germans but the russian tanks cost way more). Which means by the time a player has unlocked their Russian tank, The German players are all ready down another tier or they are fully upgraded, thus compounding the competitive gap. Also because the cost to upgrade is so high on the Russian side, if you want to keep up with the power creep you have to sell off your old tanks and can really only play one tank. The longer one plays this game the greater this problem compounds, you end up playing more and more just to try and keep up. 6 months after launch it will be all elite equipment with each side having 2 leopards and 3 other new people in lights getting killed quickly and it will be verv difficult to level up.