Rarely do we hear anything from World of Warplanes. There is a reason for this, as explained by Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.
What about World of Warplanes? The aerial combat game, in which you engage in intense dogfights with other players in the style of World of Tanks, has not been particularly successful. This is evident from Steamcharts. The peak number of concurrent players in the past 30 days was 198.
Even Wargaming acknowledges that the success has been lacking. The overhaul to version 2.0 did not help, either.
Interestingly, the situation looks very different for competitor War Thunder.
A Game for Military Pilots
What does Wargaming say about the game’s failure? Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming, commented on the game in an interview. According to him, the controls with keyboard and mouse simply didn’t resonate with players. Not everyone liked it. Not everyone could or wanted to be that military pilot, as only the truly skilled players with their crazy skills could pull it off.
It just didn’t work out. I can’t think of any other reason. One could even say we had bad luck. We just couldn’t manage to create a casual dogfighting game.
Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming
According to Wargaming’s CEO, although the game had the same good presentation and historical accuracy of a World of Tanks, it simply wasn’t suitable for letting off steam for 10 minutes and having fun. Players had to strain their brains too much. As a result, the fun was lost.
What’s next for the game? Players who are still enjoying World of Warplanes need not fear the end. Wargaming intends to keep the title running. According to the developer, a few hundred thousand hardcore fans still play, and World of Warplanes still generates some profit.
There was a time when we were burning money on the game, but now we have managed to optimize the team. Our approach is that those who love it can continue to play. We just won’t promote it as strongly anymore.
Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming
So, World of Warplanes continues. However, we will hardly hear anything about it in the future. Fans who feared a complete shutdown can breathe a sigh of relief.
Did you think World of Warplanes would not succeed? What do you think was the reason?
Unlike World of Warplanes, things are going well for World of Tanks. Why it is still worth getting into even 10 years after release, you can read in an article by MeinMMO author Jürgen Horn.
