Clan Wars: from Conception to Global Map and Strongholds

Background for Clan Wars introduction

 

Teamwork is a vital component of World of Tanks. With each game consisting of two teams competing in strategic 15 vs. 15 battles, teamwork is the ultimate key to success. When people begin playing World of Tanks, they quickly realize it’s difficult to survive in Random Battles and maintain a high win rate while playing alone.

Players found they were more successful playing matches with a trusted team that has its own polished tactics and battle strategies. As groups of teams emerged and became more prominent in World of Tanks, we wanted to create an opportunity for these players to battle with experienced counterparts on a regular basis and award certain bonuses for their excellent team work.

The in-game socialization elements introduced before Clan Wars (Platoons and Tank Companies) are built around teams that are temporary, and we wanted to give players the opportunity to gather colleagues, friends, or classmates for a large scale permanent team, which led us to introduce Clans.

Emergence of Global Map

 

We had plans for the Global Map in place before we even released World of Tanks. The initial idea behind the strategic meta-game was thought up by World of Tanks founding fathers Sergey Burkatovskiy and Slava Makarov.

Our vision was to create the Global Map as a massive strategic companion to World of Tanks that is played on the current world political map by commanders of clans.

We later translated this vision into an online battle arena where players fight in a 15 vs. 15 format. Additionally, we wanted to offer visible and substantial rewards to the top clans including land provinces, which can be captured and utilized to produce income for clan members.

It took Wargaming nearly half a year to develop the Global Map, with the first version releasing in January 2011. As far as gameplay is considered, it is a strategic land-grab style game on a world map where clans fight to conquer provinces. After overtaking a certain province, clans can earn anywhere from 200–4,000 or more in-game gold from the acquired province.

While designing World of Tanks, we initially experienced a lack of time and resources to develop the Global Map within the game client. The development team decided to make Clan Wars available for all possible devices including mobile phones and tablets. Due to these factors, the final clan wars meta-game ended up being designed for the web. 

How we decided to create Strongholds

Natallia Pershyts. The Global Map has been extremely popular since release, but there are a few things we hope to improve in the near future.

1. Bringing Clan Wars to the World of Tanks game client: Clan Wars functionality has always been outside of the game client. Players have to leave the game and transfer to an external web source to play on the Global Map.
2. The Global Map is high-level, end-game content designed for top-players and can exclude lower level players: As our research has shown, players usually join a clan after completing a few hundred battles and unlocking level 5 or 6 tanks. To satisfy further interest in the game, we should allow players to join clan battles and participate in special exclusive content.
3. The Global Map has a substantial capacity restriction: There are about 1,800 provinces available, while the RU realm alone has over 130,000 total clans. All of the clans wouldn’t fit on the map at once. For the time being, this model works because it ensures high competition resulting in only the best of the best playing on the Global Map. However, further expansion of this model will continue to cut off a substantial part of the World of Tanks audience from clan battles.

Strongholds is the perfect solution to overcome the above restrictions.

1. The Strongholds mode is available within the World of Tanks client. Clan Wars functionality is still outside of the client, but we aim at duplicating it in the client as well as on the other platforms.  
2. In Strongholds, clans can start Skirmishes with level 6 tanks, which opens Clan Wars up to a less competitive World of Tanks audience.
3. Any clan can have its own Stronghold. It’s free to set up and play, cannot be conquered, and clans are able to decide how they to build and develop their own Stronghold. Clans require a minimum of 15 members to have full functionality and the opportunity to defend their Stronghold in the future.

The first iteration of Strongholds allows 7 vs. 7 with level 6 tanks, 10 vs. 10 with level 8 tanks, and 15 vs. 15 with level 10 tanks.

The advantages of participating in Clan Wars

Natallia Pershyts. The Global Map is the only place in World of Tanks where players can acquire in-game gold without using real-life money. The awarded in-game gold is added to the Clan Treasury and distributed between players’ accounts.

The Global Map also offers unique level 10 tanks as a perk for winning battles in Clan Wars that cannot be earned anywhere else.

In Strongholds, players earn Industrial Resource that may be used in any type of battle outside of Clan Wars.

Future of Global Map

Kirill Mal. We wanted to make Clan Wars open to more players by adding Strongholds. We want to make sure the top players who have unlocked all tech trees and have reached the end- game stage in World of Tanks will still have new challenges and content to explore.

We are currently working on Global Map 2.0 which is being revised to be more accessible, with a more user-friendly interface and visuals, and will transfer the Global Map to the new web engine. From a technological point of view, it will be a completely different game.

Strongholds is already performing really well below are some interesting facts in this infographic:

We have already held the first two Campaigns, as well as the special event World on Fire which were all very successful. There will be a third Campaign and more special events coming in the near future.

Eventually, the event model will take over the entire Global Map, which means that all clans will fight to finish first during the campaigns.

Future of Strongholds

Kirill Mal. We were able to find gameplay solutions that will allow the Global Map and Strongholds to coexist in the same space. Strongholds allow clans to battle each other whenever they want, as many times as they want and gain an almost guaranteed profit. Strongholds are the visual representation of clans, a possibility for clans to develop themselves as any regular player develops his or her tank.

The next iteration of Strongholds will introduce wars between the strongholds. After that, an option to erect new buildings and combat expendables will be added. We anticipate Strongholds will change the combat gameplay of Clan Wars completely.