Some great news for local World of Tanks fans today. Wargaming has announced that the World of Tanks ANZ server will be receiving a two-hour extension.
The World of Tanks ANZ server was launched on November 1 and was trialling a 6pm-12am operation. However, due to an overwhelmingly positive response from players, Wargaming will run a trial of the server from 6pm-2am.
We spoke with ANZ Wargaming Country Manager Travis Plane at PAX Aus about the World of Tanks ANZ server.
“It’s incredibly exciting for a product that’s seven years old to come in and say, ‘We’re gonna double down essentially on the infrastructure and the investment.’ I think it’s caught a lot of people by surprise. I think it definitely caught the community by surprise in a good way. But really it’s illustrative of the commitment and the focus that we have of trying to make players as happy as possible.”
When Plane joined Wargaming, the number one request from the community was a local server. “So we sat down and said, ‘All right, how do we try to make this happen?'”, Plane told me.
“When we sat down and looked at the numbers and whether we could actually deliver on that, it was pretty clear that at certain times of the day just wasn’t gonna work.” But Plane and his team persisted and settled on running the server between 6pm and 12am.
I asked Plane if he thought that the server would get hit hard by players when they launched and he was hopeful it would be popular. Looks like he got his wish. Plane also mentioned to me that Wargaming is a very data-driven company. It follows the numbers and in this case is doing just that.
It’s certainly a good time to be a World of Tanks fan with both the local server getting extended hours and the Battle in APAC ongoing.
The World of Tanks ANZ server operates between 6pm and 12am.