Hey everyone! Thanks for your interest in the video - let me clarify these are back of the envelope calculations at best to debunk any worries you might have that WoT will slow down in the next 5-10 years. Any game that makes this much, as I show, will be around for a very long time. A few things to note... 1) By using 2022 RU server data this exaggerates player numbers as many Ukrainians have left and joined EU since. 2) These are "peak Christmas" player numbers and will be less during the rest of the year. 3) Yes it doesn't include multiple accounts or bots. Accordingly my estimate is likely to be HIGHER than reality, but it's still, in my humble opinion, a solid representation of the situation and even if numbers or revenue was half or a quarter of what I found then WoT will still be a wise investment for WG for a decade.

If world of warplanes is surviving with less then 100 concurrent players I don't think wot is dying anytime soon

Haven't watchted vid, but no, WG isn't stupid and isn't going to give up their biggest profit generator.

I claimed Patton the Tank and never played a battle in it.

First Hamiltons move and now this!?

One minor flaw in the maths, taking the RU numbers from 2022, what proportion of those moved to the EU server and make up the 2024 count, in which case you would be double courting them in the projections.

Glad to see QB found a use for “Patton the Tank”. 🤣. 🤘😎 Tankers

"USUAL WOT IS CLOSING" 2025: BZ-176 15v15 STARTS

Going to “maintenance only” doesn’t necessarily mean shutting the game down, it probably means WG are switching the majority of its developers onto CW, or another new project, and the current version of WoT, or the version around in 2025, will be left as it is with no, or extremely limited, updating.

7:46 When you add RU and EU player numbers, you are counting twice those who moved their accounts from RU to EU - and that's a significant amount!

I think that we should see an OG season, old maps and mechanics for a limited time would be so cool!

for a while there was a Hong Kong server and a sydney server in Asia recently both were combined into a single server, the sydney server would rarely go above 1k players in my experience at peak time

Gotta love it when QB breaks out the Excel sheets! Great video! I didn't take your X (Twitter) poll, but I claimed the Patton and haven't played it.

I think the maths here have been very generous with regards to accuracy... however, as a rough guide its a very interesting calculation. Even if its accuracy is +/- 25%, which is a huge margin for error, its still showing a clear trend of continued profitability.

I think the concurrent player numbers is the biggest sign, if a game is getting peaks of 200k plus consistently, there is no way most companies are going to give up on that or stop developing for it. The EU server has also been doing that for like 5-6 years with no real signs of dropping off, it drops off in the summer obviously and rebuilds in the winter.

i could see WoT enter a sort of "maintenance light" mode for a while after the launch of project CW while they try to get it to take of

And I know at least 3 accounts (mine and 2 others) that have NO battle played in Patton The Tank

I just want to say I respect the level of love and detection you have for this game QB. How much research and calculating you do just to let us know what really happens in the game we all love. So much respect good sir.

Just to add i also got the Patton, i'm an active player and haven't even taken it out for one battle. So the 1/3 of players that had the patton, being actually calculated seems pretty ok.

I doubt it

Happy Friday People!

I was a CC and Moderator on the NA server. We were told that the US server (back in 2012) that the NA server was only around 4% of the total player base at that time. We were told however that NA accounted for around 9% of total income for the game. That was when the RU sever was still part of WG. American players especially spend money on games, a lot of it. I am not sure what the numbers are at this point but if it is still even close to that today, that would be your answer as to why NA still exists and may persist...

We also have to factor in the CN playerbase numbers in the CN server. I know it's a different company that handles it but there's no way WG isn't part of decision making in there.

as a software engineer and based what i got from the post i think the developers will have to prioritize their efforts into 'other projects', maybe that new game that is being developed, i don't know but it seems like the likely candidate. Too me this just means that we'll see more tech tree tanks as premiums going into WoT and we'll have less new content, less bug fixes, less new features in the game. I doubt they will can WoT, the revenue is needed to get a new game to a point where it can be monetized, there is a lot of technical debt that is built up for a new application. thinking about what QB stated about the game client, WG would probably be smart to use the developers to pay off that technical debt that has been accumulating for years, decade+ most likely. I can imagine the configuration manager at WG pull there hair out on every new release with testing the build on three different clients for multiple different platforms like PC, MAC,etc.

The NA server has a SA sub server that only has 2k peak players every day. It is sad our situation

I just started playing at 25 December 2023, I’ve gotten to the tiger tank and I gotta research the last gun then I’ll be maxed out

Been playing since the Alpha back in September 2010 and on the NA server since April 2011. I play almost every day, in the early mornings (EST) and then in the evenings some times. There is about 2-4K players on the NA server between 7-9AM (currently 7K at 9:21 on a Saturday) on the weekdays and about 12-15K in the evenings during prime time. During the Christmas event that goes up to about 18-20K players in the evening. Yeah the game isn't as popular as it was 5-8 years ago but the user count has roughly remained steady.

Fuck them i pay a 100 boxes every Christmas as my anual fee to keep the game running

I'd add to that that most players are of a higher average age than many other games (mainly adults) so people which may have less time but more money to spend on the game. I'd also add that many people (myself included) may not even have connected around christmas to spend full time with family, go on holidays or personally revise for their end term exams Edit: i dunno if that would count but the chinese servers which is independant from the other servers probably generates alot of money though i dunno if that goes to WG or have any idea of the statistics

I have not played Patton Tank, although I am daily active on WoT... and I'm sure there are many other players like me. WG will not stop this game, they make a huge amount of money here. Just think how many players have WoT plus, or how many players buy premium tanks, lootboxes and so on and multiply that number only with few euro/month :) will have an astronomic amount of money...

I really enjoy these types of videos. I’ll be at that it’s not the normal continent and we get to see what they make on year to year basis. Thank you for the hard work you put in to show us this Qb!

I’d go the opposite way on Patton the tank, as to say there are people with multiple accounts, or even booster service with 100’s of account that just clicked the free tank. They may register as 600,000 accounts but I don’t think that’s the actual player base numbers

8:20 Taking RU region stats for Jan 2022 was a mistake, because it included a lot of Ukrainian and Kazakh players that moved to EU later on. So you counted them twice. Total Server population should be at least 100k less to account for that.

So many memories. So many psychological scars. I may cry.

I play on the NA server and haven’t seen 18k plus players in a very long time. It’s mostly around 4-8k

Thanks for the content QB Although I do like the gameplay I love these kind of videos as well Keep it up QB

I watched your video on Patton the Tank and decided that there wasn't a point me playing it lol

I claimed Patton The Tank and played quite a few battles with it, it is not as bad as what players were saying but not a good tank for sure, but what do you expect when you get something for free these days

Glad to see you addrssed this qb, been looking into this thinking wtf

*IF* it's somewhat true. I imagined it actually means some major change to the WoT engine, or major change to how the servers an clients are run/managed.

The NA only account for 2% of the player base, but probably 50% of $💵 spent on the game. 🤘😎 Tankers

If anyone didn’t knew what QB would do if WOT close A new statistician is on the market

I throw £65 nearly every month at the game , unless WOT makes a statement about this I’ll hold fire for now

Love ur contain since 10 years, those kind of video are the best, u divedeep in the main system and put out the real fact. =D

as a not really that frequent player of WOT in sea server, i might just restart my progress and move to EU.

Wot need Frontline as normale Mode and Heavy Tanks need more HP. Like the Mauerbrecher. Its 5 times Heavyier but only got 150hp more then a Chinese Heavy Tank that drives 50 km/h.

for asia yes old player was left to other game but there was new player that join in a game recently too and this new player mostly not afraid to play in game

Unless they are getting ready to roll out with WoT 2.0 in late 2025 or 2026, I cant see it outright going on the maintenance life support yet.

gta 5 sold for $60 for 5 years and for another 6 its been selling at $30. 11 years and still has a big enough market to sell at those prices simply because there is enough of a demand. wot has a large player base that spends money so theres no reason for them to shut down just because its been around for a long time

I really wish QB would check out the hell that WoT console has become

The Asia server has gone up around 2k a night from this time last year when they migrated to new server architecture.

Brilliant video! Just a perspective from a brand new player who started in the Asia region a month ago (I moved here several years ago). On tiers III-IV the waiting time hardly ever exceeds 1 min, so unless people are extremely impatient it does not feel like the game is dying. I am expecting that tiers V-VIII will be even more populated and I certainly do not have an impression of an abandoned franchise as someone coming into the game from the outside.

When I come back to the game every so often, because I like War Thunder so much more, I never have a problem finding a match on the NA servers. There are still a lot of people playing this game on that server.

I played Patton the Tank once then sold it!

there is another way to get at the total population. Most member/subscription programs at peak hours/times will normally see between 3%-5% of their user base using the service.

I've been playing the game since Beta and I'm on the NA server, the matchmaker is getting pretty bad and I'd say I get 3 tier spread games pretty often. There aren't nearly as many players on and wait times are getting longer, especially at odd times of the day. I would love to be able to move over to the EU server. I have recently been playing on the EU server and my experience is actually much better. I feel like the matchmaker has way more tanks and players to factor in a games aren't as lopsided. It's really like a 60% chance on NA that you go 0-15 or vise versa, it's getting worse. I'd play on EU permanently but I have literally invested thousands of dollars into my NA account over the 10 years I've been playing and don't want to give that up. Hopefully one day we can connect to EU from NA with the same account, or they just merge the servers, I think that would improve things in more ways than one.

WoT will need an engine update at some point in time, so after the "HD update - WoT 1.0" in 2018, there sure will be an "8K update - WoT 2.0" incl. ray tracing, responsive smoke ect. in 2025+. Might be also an good idea to add modern tanks...

While i dont think that wot will end 2025, the math used in the estimation on the number of players based on the patton tank is wildly flawed. The numbers are based on a poll that only 1400 people answered. To use that as a basis on a ratio for at least hundreds of thousand players (based on the patton) is not taking the small sample size in cosideration.

Clever analysis strategy. Good work.

The economy calculation may be a bit flawed - I'm an economy player with ~17k battles, I've got ~25-30 premium/special tanks and full premium account, and I'm spending around ~62 USD or ~50 GBP per year, so ~5 USD or ~4 GBP per month.

i did not play project CW i just saw videos and streams but i hated it and it felt casually like you re comparing CS (wot) to COD (project CW) and its doesn't give you that rush and feel like wot when you re 1 v 5 or play a light tank and outplay heavies and so one

I just hope they merge the us and eu servers. it gets hard to find a match sometimes.

I know the NA server, from about 3pm to midnight east coast time, has about 12k - 14k players nightly

I’m not sure if I’m a “tank collector,” but I have amassed around 200 premium tanks since 2011. With that, I probably have spent $300 to $400 USD per year on the game.

NA console player here. I play between 7-9pm during the week. My observations are that the Queue time is about 30 seconds with about 110 players in the Queue per tier above tier II. Peak player count is on Friday evening where I have regularly experienced player counts above 150 in each Queue with a Queue time of less than 1 minute.

Hey QB.great content once again but imo when it comes to player base estimation you should take in consideration 2 more factors.the 1st is the amount of users that own more than one account and the fact since we don't have data for the RU region after a lot of players migrated from RU servers to EU when the option to do so was provided

Thanks for the great and detailed video

I look at the match making stats in game when joining and how long it takes and if the match fails.

So yeah...might be that it will become a support-only game, none with actual development anymore. They're probably going to throw all their resources into the new CW whatever game. Honestly, I do seem to like that game - best to do away with historicity whatsover for a game with a playstyle similar to WoT. I mean the mechanics that were recently added to WoT literally defy physics, and neither is there a shred of historical accuracy about these vehicles.

I kinda lost interest when they kept doing the trend of an Insanely OP Tier 8 Premium tank to be released annually. World of tanks surely had been fun, but if it gets closed then good riddance.

Thanks for all the statistic mining. Is there a way to see the breakdown of what people paid for the auction tanks? I'm most interested in NA but would be interesting to see Hi/Lo comparison worldwide.

I would like to see WoT do what Mechwarrior Online does. You enter the queue for a battle and randomly get chosen but could be on NA or EU server for the battle. The percentage was based on how many players were on each server.

You can't simply extrapolate relatively small poll to the entire playerbase, there will akways be some degree od error, dependent on sample size.. Did you calculate confidence intervals?

World of Tanks NA maybe but not the Rest

Left out the deduction for those with multiple accounts thus lowering the true number of participants. Also realize the RU area makes less money than the EU unless Wargaming has changed how they charge for tanks/services. Several years ago I got on the RU server and checked how much the Skorp G cost....It was only $8.00 U.S. currency if you put it in the exchange rate converter to see what that area paid for premium tanks while we were paying over $40 U.S. So Russian players get a huge discount likely due to them making far less money on average.

Local RU server prices are lower because of different purchase power parity. So if you convert to $ or €, you must add a coefficient to this table)

Asia server player here. the queue time is fast, unless you're playing arty. and you got high probability of asia mainlanders whale their way in the server

yeah asia server has 13k concurrent players peaked but in those 13k concurrent player there are 10k whales last time with the type 59 gold my friend spent almost 120k gold crazy rich asian server

Did not know NA server population was that low. I thought it'd be about half as much as EU.

Hey QB, big fan. I spotted a major flaw in the calculation as well. You considered all your twitch followers as EU server players and multiplied the Patton (70-30) accordingly. But you have viewers from other servers as well

I hope QB is right. As an NA player with a few too many premiums. I'd be pissed of they closed NA

I have claimed Patton the tank and it has never left the garage

There seems to be a force game start when ppl been waiting more then 3 mins even if the lobby isn't full

Guys, please... Do we have anywhere some kind of list or chart with the history of premium tank sales? I need to check some things...

Im pretty sure i know what theyre going to do. They're going to go down a War Thunder type of approach. They're going to put WoT, WoWS, and WoP into one client and even have it accessible under the same garage. They wont integrate gameplay with ine another, which is good, but you will be able to play either WoT, WoWS, or WoP without having to launch a new game application. You'll simply click a different hanger/garage in game and you'll be able to see your tanks, ships, and planes. This also greatly encourages people to play the other games.

RU is a lot lower. Probably more than half of CIS region migrated to EU

Your Patton the Tank estimate will be biased upwards as the people that entered your poll will also likely have seen your review of the Patton, therefore they are more likely to avoid playing the tank relative to the whole population. I suspect that they will leave it as a cash cow, releasing new premium tanks (whether directly or via loot boxes) to ensure that the cash keeps rolling in.

Ending support or new content as was claimed, and closing are 2 vastly different things. And that's based on their new game doing well enough to shift focus mind you. Something I have my doubts about tbh.

I love how QB loves his Excel sheets

I think it's a bit less then 70%, there is probably a bias of QB followers, but still, it's like 1.5M active players, big number

I play on NA. Usually at peak hours, the server player count is around 15k-20k. I don't find the que time long.

I spend about 800$ a year on tanks on NA. This makes me feel better after thinking about this for a while. Good vid QB.

WG doesn't have a western development team. They are located in Belgrade, Serbia and most of their old devs moved there.

Tbf I never played patton and I played over 500 battles in the last 2 months

Hey QB, your other video of you laying out all the money never popped up on my page. It must have been pushed down on KZfaq. But I’ll go watch it now. lol

Hi QB ! You take on a crucial role with this research and calculations. You are a valuable asset in this famous WOT game ! Respect man !

I hope so

What a good thing to have a content creator with PhD

ahhh! @Quickybaby the Asia area has already shrunk... 2 servers Hong Kong and Australia... already have been amalgamated into the ASIA1 server... they basically closed the Australia server... (as our ping late last year when the "Name" change came in, it dropped immediately to the HK ping rate...). I'm a late starter and only started playing via my brother, and during the pandemic in 2020 March, due to boredum and 2 years of lockdowns in Melbourne Australia)... and when I started the Aus server had about ave 900-1500 players active (and on special events it might jump up to 1100-1900), gradually once I got to playing more regularly that dropped to 800-1200... and by the end of the pandemic in 2022 most of the time the Aus server only had about 600-1000players per night. Most of the time, non-peak time there might only be 400 on the server... then they just amalgamated us in to the ASIA1 server... and I suspect many Australia/New Zealand players all left the game then, as when you are playing at 120-160ping (and I've had mine jump out to 150-300ping) vs sweaty asian players on 15-40ping... the game is pretty much over... I went back to playing a bit of arty again.. as you just can't play LT or MT (which I love) and being competitive... I was pretty much a FTP player... and would just buy some Xmas boxes once a year, for a boost... so only about $50 AU per year... for the first 2 xmases...but last year, just saw that it was going downhill, and decided not to spend any money as the game IS dying here. And like you say Asia Pacific is only 1.85% of their entire player base. It is a fun game, with ongoing challenges... but this end of the World is the canary in the mine... but yeah it might take a lot of years for the RU and EU to die off. ASIA will probably dwindle, and NA will probably be next...

@quickybaby Great excel content, as always :)