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This is probably the longest review I've ever posted here over the 10+ years I've been posting full reviews. I've split it into two parts. The first part covers the actual game which you download for free via the World of Tanks web site (You will receive an email with a link to the site. This is a one-off link that includes the code for the free tank and gold built into the link - when you start installing the game you may get a pop up message asking to create an account. Ignore that because you will already have created the account. Just click the log-in button located in the top left of the World of Tanks client and input the details you used when you first registered using the link that was provided via the email you received). The second part concerns the actual giveaway, which is a New Years gift for NEW players only, that includes a tier 3 tank and some gold, and must be redeemed before the end of the year. The game World of Tanks is over eight years old and is constantly bringing in new ideas to keep the community strong. 2019 promises to be another great year with the introduction of an updated matchmaking system that ensures you are not put-up against insurmountable odds, as well as other useful updates. The main game is free to play, but you can purchase a renewable premium account that gives you a quicker progression through higher experience awards as well as other purchasable items such as new tanks, special ammunition and other upgrades for your tanks. I've included loads of videos covering 'playing totally for free', 'how to survive as a new player' plus a whole spectrum of other videos ranging from inexperienced to championship level game play. Hopefully they will give you a good idea about whether this game is for you, that is unless you already play or have played it previously. There are two versions of World of Tanks, the original and a slightly simplified version (which is available via Steam) called World of Tanks Blitz Today's giveaway is not the actual game; you will need to download that from the World of Tanks main site. This giveaway is a holiday bonus for new players that includes an additional tank that would normally cost you real cash as well as some in game gold, that is also 'usually' purchased for real cash. I've not played the game before so cannot give exact details of how the gold system works yet. Hopefully some community members will have already played this game previously and will help by giving us information on such things. I don't have the time to invest in more than a few hours before this game goes live to justify making any statements about the in-game purchases part of the game.

World of Tanks

In Brief

World of Tanks is the Free-to-Play PvP cross platform war game hit that includes coop and if you wish a pay in premium account that gives you better experience and better tanks etc. There are hundreds of tank to master from Germany, Japan, France, the UK, USA, USSR, and China. Choose your tank, upgrade your vehicle, and battle on many different maps

As mentioned above, you will receive an email once you've completed the share on Facebook action. The email contains instructions on what to do).

Installation:

I haven't installed the game yet. I will update this section once I've done so.

Introduction:

Originally released August 2010, World of Tanks is a massively multiplayer online game developed by the Wargaming Group, featuring mid-20th century era combat vehicles. It is built upon a freemium business model where the game is free-to-play, but participants also have the option of paying a fee for use of "premium" features that cost real money. You purchase in game gold which can then be used to buy better tanks or upgrade one you already have, as well as better ammunition and other useful add-ons (I've listed some of these in the second part). You can earn in game gold without spending money, but it's a definite grid to do so. Check out the following videos that emphasize the totally free version to give you a taste of World of Tanks (WofT), HERE (Starting Again in World of Tanks... FOR FREE) and HERE (How to Succeed at World of Tanks Without Spending a Penny?

Whiterabbit-uk 17th December 2018

The Game:

Review 1:

To state the obvious, you’re not moving around on two legs but two caterpillar tracks, and this has a massive impact on how you explore the vast, feature-rich battlefields which populate the game. You can move forwards and backwards – no sneaky strafing here – and you turn very slowly. As a result of these limitations movement needs to be carefully considered and finding appropriate cover becomes essential. Drifting away from the protection of buildings and other cover usually results in your vehicle being pounding by enemy shells.

While solid cover is your friend, there are other elements of scenery which can be totally ignored – after all, you’re in a massive tank and shouldn’t allow feeble wooden sheds or wobbly walls stand in your way. In many circumstances you can simply smash through many things which might initially appear to be obstacles, and this allows you to surprise your opponents by approaching them in cover before bursting through and blasting them to pieces.

World of Tanks is incredibly tense at times, and a lot of that is to do with the fact that unlike your typical shooter, you’re not discharging a fast-acting machine gun but a cannon that has to be sluggishly reloaded after each volley. You have to make each and every shot count in this game. Snap-shots are rarely an option as you need to wait for your targeting reticle to reach a certain size before pulling the trigger, otherwise your shell is likely to pass harmlessly over its intended target.

The consequences of missing a shot, especially in close quarters combat with a tank of equal or greater size, can be disastrous, making one-on-one encounters exciting and challenging. You also need to take into account that each tank has different damage zones; hitting one head-on is usually the worst option, as the tank has heavier protection on its front. The sides and back are weaker, but if you’re precise enough you can knock out its treads or turret, effectively ending the battle in one shot.

All of this makes for a slower, more methodical shooter, where each and every movement needs to be carefully planned with due care being paid to the lay of the land and available cover.

It’s also worth noting that every player has a different role; the small, weaker tanks are scouts and it’s their job to spot the enemy so the slower, more powerful tanks can trundle in and take them out. This vital task means that newcomers can drop into the game and still be useful even though they don’t have immediate access to the more potent vehicles. Points are handed out for spotting enemies as well as taking them out, so even if your gun is silent for the entire round, that doesn’t mean that you can’t contribute and earn experience points.

And experience is what it’s all about, really. To unlock new tanks, upgrades, crews and much more besides you need to grind away at the game for quite some time. As a freemium release you can drop into World of Tanks without spending a single penny, but you are constantly tempted to open your wallet by the presence of premium rewards.

Real-world cash can be spent on gold – World of Tanks’ in-game currency – that allows you to unlock more powerful tanks and speed up the rate at which you earn experience. While you can ignore such temptations and with enough perseverance become an adept player, there’s no denying that shelling out actual cash enables you to fast-track your military career. Later in the game you have to invest some serious time in order to progress without resorting to buying gold, and while it’s an enjoyable experience throughout, it can feel like a grind at times.

With cross-platform connectivity and a large collection of fans already playing and enjoying the game, World of Tanks offers a vibrant and active community to team up with and fight against. Unpredictable human opponents keep each and every match interesting, and the tactical depth baked into the game is remarkable.

Each map calls for different strategies, and these evolve and develop depending on what kind of tank you’re driving, or what kind of enemies you’re fighting against. You’ll also need to work as a team, spotting enemy tanks and calling in fire requests from your larger, heavier allies.

Unlike most FPS titles where teammates are in constant competition to see who can bag the most scalps, World of Tanks calls for a deeper sense of cooperation. The faster, smaller tanks can’t win the skirmish without the aid of their bigger siblings, and vice versa.

World of Tanks on Xbox One certainly looks the part, with improved models, textures and visual effects which make good use of the more powerful hardware. There are some disappointments to consider – driving your tank through some smaller structures merely results in them vanishing immediately rather than collapsing realistically, but this is a minor quibble when you consider how large and complex the game’s maps are.

If you find a chance to take a breather amid the chaos of warfare then you’ll be rewarded with some gorgeous vistas and breathtaking, picture-postcard backdrops. You can watch the sunlight catch blades of grass as they dance in the wind, or witness the sun setting on a mountainous Italian hamlet – all before these sleeping environments are reduced to rubble by incoming shells.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Damien McFerran 23rd September 2015, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 2018

Review 2:

The heavy metal thunderdome that is World of Tanks has finally hit 1.0, heralded by the sound of explosive shells and colliding war machines. It’s not 1.0 in a conventional sense, but it does give us the excuse to finally give it the ol’ review treatment. Here’s wot I think, eight years late.World of Tanks sits at the intersection between arcade and simulation. Its battles are fast-paced and brief, with simple objectives and fleeting lives; but it’s also a game of geometry and tactics, of finding the perfect angle and trying to force enemies to reveal their weak spot through teamwork and even stealth.

I use the authenticity versus accuracy comparison a lot when I write about games that dabble in history, military or otherwise, and I’m bringing it out again. If you don’t think about it too much, World of Tanks’ bloodthirsty behemoths feel like you’d expect from a tank, even though they’re massively abstracted. A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the obsessive graphics and audio engineers, whose work is newly highlighted in this 1.0 update. They’ve asked questions like “How would water react to a tank moving through it?” and “What does gunfire sound like in a valley compared to a field?” and then tried to replicate it in-game. It’s these tiny considerations that make the battles feel real and tangible, even when tanks are ramming each other off cliffs or skating across ice lakes.

World of Tanks is a lot more restrained than the bombastic trailers full of tanks smashing into each other and blowing up suggests. It’s a considered action game that creates just as many quietly intense moments as explosive brawls. And these fights are dramatically different depending on not only what class of tank you play, but what tier you’re duking it out in, as well. In the early tiers, for instance, you’ll mostly be fighting as and against low-damage light tanks and the occasional SPG, the artillery class. Later, medium and heavy tanks start to appear, along with predatory tank destroyers, and battles start to become more complex as a greater number of strategies become viable.

Each class has different priorities. SPGs typically hang back, finding a perch or hiding spot from which they can safely pick targets with their bird’s eye view of the battlefield. Light tanks dash around, scouting and spotting enemies, helping out SPGs in particular, but also the entire team. Tank destroyers prowl the map like deadly hunters, looking for heavily-armoured foes to demolish.

There are exceptions in every class, however, and the class of a tank doesn’t always define its role. There are beefy tank destroyers designed to square up to their quarry, head on, the tank of tanks, but there are also tank destroyers that are better off attacking from long-range, preferably near bushes they can hide in. This means there’s usually quite a few reasons to dip into a new class, even if it’s one you think you won’t enjoy.

I’ve become rather partial to support tanks since I started playing again. Despite its importance, teamwork isn’t as common as you’d hope in World of Tanks’ battles, at least not the random ones. There’s a mini map and an alert system that both prove to be extremely convenient, but only when people are paying attention to them. Playing a support role, then, can be simultaneously rewarding and dispiriting.

There are usually at least a couple of players being communicative, though, and it just makes playing something like an SPG a lot more engaging. Having that extra-long range and that broader view of the battlefield means you can react a little quicker, and perhaps rescue a friend-in-need even if you’re on the other side of the map. And since you’re not on the front-lines, it really helps to have people highlighting problem areas where you can assist.

Destroying enemy tanks isn’t as simple as lining up a shot and firing. Tanks are elaborate, modular machines and no two models are identical. Their weak spots, heavily armoured areas and the thickness and angle of that armour all depend on the tank, so it pays to do a wee bit of homework. The reticle turns green when you’re hovering over a weak spot, but in the heat of battle, you don’t always have time to search. You’ve got to know even before you start aiming. And even then, you need to take into account the effectiveness of your own gun and ammunition, your tank’s weight and engine power, and of course your accuracy. If you’re moving, for instance, or are trying to fire quickly, your shots are going to be a lot more likely to go wide.

The result is that a single 15-minute fight can contain all manner of near misses, close calls, tense standoffs, explosive charges and calculated assaults. With so many different types of tank, a lot can happen. And if you’re taken out of the fight, you can head straight back to your garage, pick another tank and jump into another game straight away. Once the battle you left is over, you’ll get access to the other tank again. World of Tanks has a lot of faffing around, but it’s extraordinarily good at getting you back into the action as quickly as possible.

Most of the faffing is relegated to World of Tanks’ convoluted progression system and business model. A boot camp tutorial that walks new players through a series of battles, interspersed with progression and currency walkthroughs, makes the first 30 minutes of the game surprisingly breezy. By the end you’ll understand the basics, and a bit more, as well as getting access to three tiers of tanks. You’ll also have a bit of extra experience and credits that you can use to upgrade the tanks you’ve already unlocked. Then the training wheels come off and it gets a bit messy.

The problem is that, even once the systems have been explained, they’re overly-complicated and draconian. Take the process to unlock a new tank, for example. First, you have to unlock the previous tank in the tree, then you’ve got to use that tank to earn combat experience points — slowly — which you can then spend on upgrades and the next tank. But even then you don’t own that tank. You’ve just researched it. Then you need to spend credits to actually buy the tank, and then a few more credits to fill it with ammunition and consumables, like fire extinguishers and med-kits so your crew don’t die in a ball of fire.

And that’s just the simple explanation. There’s also the separate free experience that can be earned slowly by any tank, which then gets place in a pool. Combat experience from other tanks can be converted into free experience by spending the premium gold currency. If you don’t have enough combat experience to unlock the next tank in the tree, you can use the free experience to get you there. After all that’s done, you then get the choice to spend even more credits on training the crew inside your tank.

It’s a horrible system that makes World of Tanks seem a lot harsher than it is. In the early tiers it’s a hassle, but you should be able to fill your garage with tanks and maybe even get your first tier V vehicle within a few days. After you reach the final few tiers, however, you’ll start to feel the grind as you play in low-tier matches to maintain your high-tier tanks, saving up to buy the fancy ammo that will allow you to stay competitive. You might even win a match and still end up losing credits as you swallow the repair bill. The alternative is spending cash.

A premium account nets you more experience and credits after a fight, but big spenders can also splash out on fancy premium tanks. They’ve been a point of contention between War-gaming and its community since the early days. War-gaming argue that they’re different but not more powerful, but they’ve also been rightly pressured into removing certain tanks that were demonstrably overpowered. The issue goes beyond balance, however. In any competitive game, the introduction of premium-only stuff divides the community into the haves and the have nots. And in this case, letting everyone play together only exacerbates the feeling that some players have an unfair advantage, imagined or not.

This only becomes more pronounced in the higher tiers, where the game becomes more competitive and the premium advantages become more of a necessity. The message is: you can play with the big dogs if you want, but you should probably stick to the low-tier fights. If World of Tanks 1.0 is going to bring in new players, not just lapsed ones, the message needs to be different.

Despite its eight-year evolution, I still feel the same way about World of Tanks as I did way back when I first decided that battering armoured vehicles seemed like a fun way to kill an evening. The big changes are largely positive, even if not every patch has been a success, but Wargaming’s flagship remains a great game that frequently gets in the way of itself. Reaching the higher tiers should feel like an achievement and the source of more exciting battles; it shouldn’t leave me worrying about bills and grinding. I prefer to leave that to real life.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Fraser Brown 26th March 2018, Re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 2018

Conclusion:

World of Tanks is an impressive online title that delivers a slick and visually striking game.

There’s no barrier to entry thanks to the freemium approach, but this is a double-edged sword as the game can become a grind unless you’re willing to invest real money.

However, it’s such a compelling, deep and addictive experience that you might not begrudge dropping a few quid on premium currency, and even if you do, you have nothing to lose by taking it for a spin across some crater-filled battlefields.

Other Reviews and Videos of World of Tanks:

You can see over 17 thousand mainly positive comments via the Steam community of World of Tanks HERE (these are for the Blitz version of WofT, the main difference between the games is that Blitz has fewer tanks and smaller maps, otherwise is the same, so i've posted the Steam community comments as I think they are appropriate to the original version.and you can check out the official world of Tanks forum for virtually any question you care to ask about the game HERE

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE (Upcoming features 2019 - matchmaking, premium armour), HERE (grand finals 2017), , HERE (How to Block Damage), HERE (Highest DPM in WofT), HERE (WofT Brick Review), HERE (opening Loot boxes crates in WofT), HERE (WofT - most deadly tanks, HERE (funny moments), HERE (WofT - 15 kills in a Tiger), HERE (WofT - Epic wins and fails, HERE (Starting again in WofT ... for free) & HERE (The state of WofT - is it dying?).

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can Google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

Today's game is already free, what you are getting is an extra tank that would otherwise cost you real money. You also get some gold with this deal as well, which can be put towards other items in game. You'll find the main game which you'll need to register for and is totally free HERE.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting World of Tanks to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE or the world of Tanks official forums HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the War-gaming Group for giving away the extra tank and in game gold and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If World of Tanks doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something else to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals). There are over 90 Free to Play and Free games on Steam. The main difference between free and free to play is that most free to play games include downloadable content that costs money, though many of the DLC do not give an advantage in game as most of the DLC is cosmetic only, however, there are games like World of Tanks, where in game purchases can give a big advantage of pure free to play players.

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).