Let’s start with few numbers illustrating the progress we’ve made in 2013. Over the last six months, World of Tanks’ daily active user (DAU) rate has grown by half over, with the brand’s penetration reaching up to 80% in the Russian region, the homebase for the game’s largest community (19 out of 78 million registered players are those from Russia and CIS countries). According to the TNS Web Index report form March 2013, World of Tanks official website was ahead of Twitter, BlogSpot, and Rutracker.
Given the integral popularity of the WWII theme and the fact that over one third of the Russian gamers (15 out of 40 mln) favour MMOs, World of Tanks hasn’t yet reached its fullest potential and is capable of reaching the middle of the Top 20 Russian websites list.
Supporting a multimillion community requires a great deal of effort. Retaining players and attracting new users is impossible without a network of services, including quality performance, media support, and regular updates. We launched eight Updates for World of Tanks in 2013 and continuously strengthened its server side, having doubled the number of server racks by the end of the year (50 server racks and seven data centers at the beginning of 2013; 120 server racks at over 15 data centers at the end of 2013).
Along with the developers and game designers, the Public Relations and Marketing team helped to grow the game. Wargaming has shown World of Tanks at 15 major expos and conferences worldwide from E3 in Los Angeles all the way to Tokyo Games Show in Japan. Our event teams organized over 20 meet-ups with Russian players and attracted close to 60,000 gamers at various offline tournaments in Eastern Europe. In addition, 45 million players participated in World of Tanks and World of Warplanes’ online contests, quizzes, and special events.
The Wargaming.net League, promotion among progamers and avid spectators, and the introduction of 7/42 battles have positioned World of Tanks as an official, full-blown eSports discipline. 22,000 tank squads (137,000 players) competed at over 500 tournaments, including TechLabs Cup, GeForce eSports, World Cyber Games 2013, The Ural Steel 2013, The Intercontinental League’s tournaments, and the Time of Tanks series. The best performing team to date is the Ukrainian leading multi-game team Natus Vincere, earning $160,600, playing World of Tanks.
As new players enroll, the amount of tickets our Customer Support team receives increases correspondently. A total of one million customer issues were resolved in 2013, which is twice as many as in 2012.
Alongside technical support service, we’ve been putting copious effort to deliver our community solid information about every game update. With over a thousand news articles and overviews posted at the World of Tanks official website in 2013, players can troubleshoot their way out of pesky situations and contact customer support if the problem persists or becomes too difficult.
With such a massive following, World of Tanks has long since become more than just an online game. The vibrant player community that we’ve built shares a certain lifestyle, one we have created with online events, tournaments, charitable and educational activities.
We, ourselves, are keen on military history, collaborating with military museums and researchers worldwide and regularly partaking in different military initiatives. Last year, Wargaming led the search for Spitfires in Burma, helped the Russian Tank Museum in Kubinka restore several wartime machines, and supported the Royal Air Force Museum with its efforts to conserve the last surviving Dornier Do 17 aircraft. It’s nice to see how these events inspire our players to learn more about the WWII heritage.
Reaching 1,100,000 concurrent players on the Russian cluster is an inspiring achievement and a well-earned reward for all of the team’s efforts in 2013. It’s also a great start for 2014, as we further our growth and embark on our ambitious plans for this year.
We go forth to reaching new milestones.