Wargaming are once again offering stateside players four more packages in their gift shop, three of which come with premium tanks and various tanky tidbits. The deals run until 22:00 PST on January 17 (06:00 GMT the next day), but are they worth your money? I did some number-crunching to work out their true value and, despite my further education in mathematics, my head started to hurt.
So what do we have this time?
- The Credit Bundle ($6.89) is a massive handful of in-game currency, being nothing more than 500,000. Usually, this in-game currency is exchanged at a rate of one gold for 400 credits, so you can view this as a purchase of 1,250 gold, or 181 gold per dollar.
- The German Bundle
($16.39) gives you the T-15, an agile premium Tier III light tank
that is usually worth 900 gold, a garage slot to put it in (usually 300 gold), a three day
Premium Account (usually worth 650 gold) and a can of 105 gasoline (worth 50 gold). It also
includes 1,500 gold for your spending pleasure, meaning the whole thing is equivalent to 3,400
gold, or 207 gold per dollar. - The British Bundle
($23.55) includes the TOG II, a premium Tier VI heavy tank that is a bit of a shell sponge and usually costs 3,500 gold, a garage slot to park it in, a seven day Premium Account (usually worth 1,250 gold) and four large repair kits (50 gold each). In total,
this package works out as 5,250 gold, or 223 gold per dollar. - The slightly more expensive Russian Bundle
($23.59), comes with the well-armoured premium Tier IV Valentine II tank (1,000 in all good tank dealerships), a garage slot to stick it in, a seven day Premium Account, four large repair kits and 2,500 gold in loose change. The entire package is
worth 6,550 gold, working out as 222 gold per dollar.
Are they good value? They’re not bad. The exchange rates for these packages work out pretty similar to the lower-cost purchase options for buying vanilla gold bundles. For example, you can get 3,000 gold for $14.95, or 200 gold per dollar, or 6,500 gold for $29.95, about 217 gold per dollar. This means you’re spending at this sort of level and you’re getting a little more for your money, but making a sacrifice in having some of your purchase choices made for you. As ever, the
key question is whether you will make use of those consumables, whether you will play the heck out of your Premium Account time and whether you specifically want any of those premium tanks. I don’t think any of these packages particularly stand out, but the tanks on offer are all interesting. Here’s why.
Both the T-15 and Valentine II are good choices, though they are both a little undergunned. The former is the most fun, being a speedy and fairly tough tank that behaves like a stronger version of the Tetrarch, while the latter is also pretty resilient vehicle but much slower. The TOG II, on the other hand, is a strange beast, being big, slow and very tough. It’s going to take you a while to actually drive your way to the battle in this thing and you’d better hope there aren’t many hills along the way. When you get there, though, you’re going to absorb a lot of damage before you finally pop your clogs, but be warned that you’re a big, big target (and I don’t think I’ve ever missed the thing when I’ve shot at it). This is more a tank for campers or people who prefer to live life in the slow lane.
You definitely don’t want to buy the credit bundle. That’s not just because it’s relative value is weak, but also because it doesn’t give you anything special. You’ll earn credits in-game anyway, simply by playing, and it’s the XP you’ll always be short on when you need to unlock upgrades. When you do spend your money in World of Tanks, you want to make sure you’re getting something you wouldn’t otherwise be able to, whether that’s the ability to convert XP, the chance to earn more per match, or new tanks and equipment. In-game credits are really not worth your real-life money and they won’t give you much of a shortcut up the tech tree.