Loading...Looking at the active players in other games got me interested in taking a look at World of Warships. This lead to me seeing numerous postings a year ago lamenting the “player decline” in North America. It seems a year ago, players didn’t think WoWs had much staying power.
I decided to take a deeper look and talk about the numbers, along with numbers from some AAA games. It is somewhat surprising, but suffice it to say, I think WoWs is in a good place right now, and that the implosion of the NA servers was greatly overestimated.
I also have some ships to give away. If you won, send me a DM. I announced the winners in the video.
-Zoup
first! yes, I am very aware how immature this is lol
World of games are all doing well population wise, well except for planes, but we don’t talk about planes. There are very few games in the same genre and AW and WT are the other big ones that come to mind, hard to compare these niche games to other games, should be compared to similar games then the genre as a whole has to be measured.
Why does anyone even think that WOWS NA is dying? My dad plays at 4:30 am to about 6:30 am – never has any issues getting into full random games. I tend to play between 12 pm and 7 pm usually – NEVER have I had any issues jumping into a random at any tier from 2 to 8 so far.
Yeah I SHOULD own tier 10s by now, being a CBT player who still loves WOWS more than any other PvP game ever made, I just don’t get to play as often as I would like, for good reasons that I would rather not get into as they are personal problems. Still, been a BIG fan of WOT since September of 2011, and played that game almost daily into 2014 – still play it on occaision of course. But World of Warships is DEFINITELY my main squeeze and has been so since CBT! It is SO DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING ELSE!
Also WOT is either 5th or 6th most played online game in the world of 2016! Same goes for 2015. Hopefully WOWS will eventually land somewhere in the top 10 as well!
I mean, have any of you even LOOKED at War Thunder “Boats”??? I call it Boats because that is exactly what it is, a bunch of small patrol boats sailing around going *dakadakadakadaka” launching the occasional torpedo – ALL in the EXACT same view used for War Thunder Ground Forces!
So imagine WOT on Water – would be a TERRIBLE GAME! Well now imagine War Thunder Ground Forces on water, and you have War Thunder BOATS!
Honeslty, I would rather play Steel Oceans than War Thunder Boats….
i see russian bias coming XD
Oh, that salt from the enemy team. Heh.
I cannot stand vanilla First Person Shooters anymore… I don’t even like Overwatch, and would much rather play Team Fortress 2 instead – or if BattleBorn was actually given a chance, had some dedicated players so the developers could refine it, BattleBorn to me, held MUCH MORE promise than Overwatch, but is dead because of Blizzard/Hactktivision HYPE!
Anyway, COD type Shooters are just BORING to me! It simple as; Spawn, find enemy, shoot in head and kill, get killed, respawn – rinse and repeat. IMO there is NO real planning, strategy, tactics – and even VERY little skill beyond reflex times!
Where World of Tanks – when I first played it in 2011, I was immediately enthralled! It was like “Chess” of first person shooters! Suddenly – you have to worry about the capabilities of your vehicle, the capabilities of ANY AND ALL enemy vehicles, your positioning, even AIMING – actually requires SKILL BEYOND SIMPLE REFLEXES!
You probably get where I am coming from now, and if you don’t – well I don’t know how else to spell it out for you. I could write a book on the difference between WOT/WOWS and other games like COD, even Battlefield 3,4, and 1! NONE OF those games – will you benefit much at all by knowing every specification of every possible enemy/weapon – none of those games will you benefit much at all by learning a specific role/weapon and playing it til you have it down to a science, and none of those games require true skill to aim! That is the TL;DR differences in my view.
I question his stats. I regularly see 17k players on NA.
after over 6000 matches, they lost me. I made the decision over the weekend to walk away. the only reason I checked here is to hear what you had to say.
final straw? Belfast = pay to win, in ranked. They make a game mode that requires you to fight close range for a small cap. then introduce a ptw ship that counters the DDs doing their job. the only option for the DD is to just stay away and concede the cap. ptw…
I’ve been pretty solid since closed beta and I haven’t noticed much of a change in my overall experience playing the game. Like any online game, there is a ton of griefing in the chat. But that is to be expected.
peak hours on EU is 30k, not 16k
Hi Zoup ,i think the players base for WoWs is not teenagers I’m 40 years old and the guys i play with is similar age, the game is not a gun-ho ,is a great strategy and much thinking game,for this WE love it, keep up the good work
(Sorry for my English)
WoWS as a whole… I would say it’s about 10% worse as gameplay is concerned from when it first went out.
They fixed a lot in the game, but the good effect is mitigated by :
– Blanket nerfs on one of the game’s DD line and all of the CV lines.
– Aircraft carriers are annoying to play AND to play against… an overhaul is planned, or so WG claims.
– More and more “Russian bias” is creeping in.
– Still no fix for HE spam, and made WAY worse by introduction of a certain dubious HE skill.
– Introduction of 3 bad lines in the last year (German DDs, IJN new “torpedo dd” (lol) line, and the RN cruisers which are really bad except the few that are so overpowered).
– Introduction of a totally not asked/wanted captain skill in the last major overhaul. We’re lucky not more ppl are taking it because it’s completely game breaking for many ship classes.
– Power creep is really, REALLY bad. The more WG waits to address it, the more ppl are getting fed-up of it and “taking breaks” or leaving…
– More and more of the new ship additions are dependent or some gimmick gadget (instead of WG using core stats of ships like speed/armor/accuracy/agility) to balance.
– Complete disregard for the Rock-Paper-Scissor balance of power which made the charm of the early game so well it got me hooked. More and more ships can outright kill their supposed predator.
– Still no royal navy Battleships (except the one premium, the WarSpite)… I know they’re coming, but it’s late, I hope ppl that where waiting for them are still waiting and will join the game.
IMHO it’s a complete miracle the numbers are remaining steady as they are. Had WG fixed the issues above, I am sure the numbers would have easily doubled since release.
The game has too many “Frustrating Mechanics” that WarGaming simply does not seem to care about, nor willing to fix… But that are manageable in PvE mode since bots don’t “abuse the system”.
Hey some ppl really like the game. I do too and I pour lots of money into it. I just gave up on PvP 9 months ago and will continue to do so until (if ever, lol) the annoying mechanics get fixed.
Want more ppl in World of Warship ? WG just have to fix their shit. It’s as easy (or hard, take a pick) as that.
Yesterday evening: 30k players on EU Server. Love this game to pieces!
well worldwar is a big european theme the only big with america having alot stuff like civil war independent war in europe its all ww2 ww2 ww2 xD
World of Warplanes still exists…
Remember also that those numbers are even before you take age into account. NA in particular has a relatively senior player base compared to other games; people who often have more money to invest into the game and less time to play.
Edit: also, GG! 🙂
What would be interesting to know the number of player who are willing to open the wallet, let a few moths escape and financially contribute to a game they enjoy. If theres 12k players online, how many of them are penniless scrubs just playing for free and will never contribute vs players with the means to kick in a few bucks as payback for the fun of the game, by buying a ship every now and then or other premium swag. I figure the success of any game, is judged as the success of any business. Can it turn a profit? We all know it takes money to design, build and maintain a game. God forbid, if they’d like to make a bit of profit too.