For a game that was released in 2010, World of Tanks still has a dedicated player base and a steady stream of updates that continue to add new content. We are smack dab in the middle of their current SummerSlam season, and with it are new premium tanks that come with trained crews and garage slots to help expand your roster. These tanks can be collected by earning levels, or they can be acquired through purchasing their season passes. Either way, you’ll need to play quite a bit to earn everything that’s part of the SummerSlam event.
Users playing without the season pass will earn gold and silver at the first tier and each subsequent tier. The second tier will give them a free day of premium, a WWE crew, and camo vouchers. Tier three comes with XP boosters, and tier four will net the Stone Cold Steve Austin TL-1 LPC Tank. The premium tiers come with a ton of rewards, which scale based on how much you spend, but there are more tanks, more boosters, and more premium content that comes with it. But as is customary for World of Tanks, it’s going to take quite a few games to get what you want, regardless of which route you decide to take.
But new tanks and crews aren’t the only new additions – there’s more, and the most exciting of which is probably crossplay between Xbox and PS4. Now you and your friends can play together regardless of personal preferences and the divide between gamers can continue to shrink! Or so we can hope – either way, it’s nice to see more and more games embracing these capabilities. To make crossplay usable, World of Tanks has implemented a Friend ID system so people can invite those on other problems easier. The in-game clan system has also been modified to accommodate this merge too.
Clans allow you to participate in unique in-game challenges and earn unique rewards, and with the implementation of crossplay, World of Tanks wanted to bring the clan system along for the ride. This is where things might have gotten a bit dicey for long-time fans of the game. Clans can’t have the same name, so during this system merge if two clans share a name then the older one keeps it while the newer clan’s name is randomized. An unfortunate casualty of war… and updates.
Speaking of unfortunate casualties, the Xbox 360 version of World of Tanks makes the list as well. As of July 2020, players will no longer be able to access the Xbox 360 version of the game. This also seems to be a bit inevitable. The Xbox One first released in 2013 and the Xbox Series X is due to be out by the end of the year. Fun fact, this August was actually the 10th anniversary of World of Tanks’ release.
I wish I could give an update on what to expect with World of Tanks on Xbox Series X, but the developer Wargaming was unable to comment on their plans for the game.
My personal take, and this is just wild speculation on my part, is that these recent moves could be indicative of Wargaming’s desire to upgrade World of Tanks to take better advantage of the newer console’s specs. Now that the Xbox 360 is no longer being supported it would allow for larger maps, more players to connect to a single game and, as a result, larger battles. After all, it’s hard to improve on a game when you need to develop for hardware that is a decade old. Again, this is all just wild speculation, but regardless of their long term plans I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a roadmap that sees World of Tanks on the Series X one way or another.
There is some support for my theory though. There is already a decent list of new map upgrades that are being rolled out. Not just optimization changes, but there are also more trees and vegetation, lighting system improvements, and upgrades to make the landscapes more dynamic. The changes aren’t subtle and the result is a much better looking game. It feels like World of Tanks is getting some new life put into it and fans of the game should be excited to see what the coming year brings.
The season ends in September so there’s still some time left to earn the new rewards. I’ve gone back and forth on World of Tanks in the past: I certainly never got as involved in World of Tanks as some people do, but I’ve put my fair share of time into it and what I’ve always liked about it is there is no harm in revisiting it. It’s still free-to-play and whether or not you want to invest anything is a personal choice. So if you want to see what’s new for yourself, grab a few friends, boot it up, and play a few games. And don’t forget, it doesn’t matter which system you use anymore!
