IF IT IS FREE, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER

If it is free, you are not the customer

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 04-05-2020
Online Games Bay

Wargaming, company behind World of Tanks, World of Warships and World of Warplanes, is known for its predatory marketing approach towards customers, so article like this is nothing new or nothing surprising, but there might be people unfamiliar with the topic, so... Yeah, there are things that need to be said.

World of Tanks, World of Warships and World of Warplanes are free massive multiplayer online games, but like most of the free MMO games, they are not really free. Yes, you can create your account for free, yes, you can play for free, but at some point you will just have to pay for that pleasure. And there is nothing wrong with it - Wargaming invested a lot of money in their projects, in advertising, in maintenance, so of course they look for ways to monetize on their hard work and to make profit. That is absolutely normal in every business venture. However if you are not familiar with the expression "when it is free, you’re not the customer, you are the product" you might get trapped in not very nice places.

Since the beginning all of their games had the premium options, like special tanks or ships, available only to those, who are willing to pay for them, special ammo that was better than the normal ammo, etc. The players got used to that, if you want to have slight advantage in the game, you can pay for it. That is normal. Unless the creators will get carried away, like Wargaming is in recent years, and bit by bit they try to destroy their players base by offering more and more over-powered premium vehicles and bit by bit making all the free ones practically useless. Of course in forums they do listen to their community and adjust to what players think about those changes... No, I’m kidding, they just put more and more stuff to pay for, while all of the free players are... Yes, you guessed it, the seals that are ready to be clubbed by the premium players.

After several updates of World of Warships you can spot slight difference in the waiting queue - how many of you noticed that there are dozens of aircraft carriers waiting and not a lot of cruisers and battleships, especially in lower tiers? In one of the updates aircraft carriers got slightly better parameters (to put it mildly), you are miles away from the action, you can spot and attack on any point in the map while being safe somewhere in the corner, what not to like about it? Wargaming over-powered the aircraft carriers, now they are making money on people, who want to switch to new best way of playing World of Warships, so the players adapt to that trend. Except some of them actually can’t. Not for free anyway. Simple example: I was given American battleship for taking part in beta test of World of Waships, returned to it recently and discovered that right now my life expectancy is about 2 minutes into the battle - 30-40 seconds before I’m detected and about minute and a half until the bombers sink me. Why? Because that particular warship has no anti-aircraft weapons, so it is just big dumb target unable to maneuver fast enough for all the aircraft carriers in the opposite team.

You can visit the forums of World of Warships, where you will learn that "if you don’t like to play against aircraft carriers then you are doing it wrong", to paraphrase the usual answers. The explanation given in forum is simple - this is the historical reality that aircraft carriers played important part in naval battles. Besides you can buy ships that have better protection from aircrafts - it is so obvious. Well, that excludes pretty much all of the lower tier American cruisers and battleships, which had none or very little anti-aircraft guns, that excludes most of the destroyers. But you’re in luck - premium ships have better protection - who would have guessed? So the time and, probably money, you have spent on your ships in the past goes down the drain, because Wargaming needs your money and changes all the rules. I mean they adapt to historical reality.

It has been about two years since Wargaming started advertising submarines in World of Warships, they are in closed beta, supposedly, so their introduction into the game will create another problem. "Oh, you have warships without anti-submarine capability? now that’s a shame, but look, you can buy one" you will find on their forums soon after, because like aircraft carriers now, most of the people will want to give it a try from beginning and... And here is where you enter, the poor sucker, who was actually playing the game for free. Would you mind waiting in line to be slaughtered by the submarines? After all, you play for free, you are not the client, you are the product.

15-03-2021