24 Hour cool down on Tanks for each time zone – Most clans operate in a singular fashion: play your highest tiered and most skilled individuals first, and as often as possible. Chips on the map aren’t restricted to specific players, just any clan player. All the important battles by each team are fought by their best squad: great in concept but poor in execution for everyone else in the clan. This gives most all of the playtime for a team to the best 15 people, and not the whole team (unless simultaneous battles are fought). A 24 hour lockdown wouldn’t be loved by very many people because it would give a severe advantage to those who play the game more. It would force clan members to get multiple tier 10 tanks and garage slots and spend more money to compete. But I would only lock down a tank once it’s been played, and only cool it down for that time zone. Players in time zone A could only field a tank once a night there, but they could still field it in time zone B.
Battle times need to be reworked and solidified – Prime time for provinces are often misleading. If prime time is 19:00, then battles likely don’t occur until 20:30. I don’t think this should happen by default, but only when necessary. It also shouldn’t be a question of exactly when a battle is played. After prime time is up, there should be a specific time for each battle right away to get rid of any confusion. It’s probably impossible to do with so many battles and provinces, but it would also be nice for clans to agree with attacking/defending clans on later or earlier times, if they’re available.
Allow the formation of permanent alliances – It’s in the game already, just make it a feature. If teams pay gold to do so, allow clans to join forces and act as one. Chip stacks for each clan would still be separate, as would everything else, but permanent alliances would offer better coordination between those clans. Let their pool of chips co-exist, and let their players fight for each other like mercenaries (with a the mercenary gold fee each time to prevent abuse). There are communities that were forced to create 4 or more “clans” because the clan size limit is 100, yet their community is 500 people strong or more. Just let them give more gold to Wargaming so they can merge. This will also benefit the small teams as well. 10 small clans can band together to step up to the big guys more efficiently. This would differ from alliances in that it would be much more costly, but it would be permanent and gold would be divided evenly amongst the permanent alliance members from all territories.
Final Thoughts – Ultimate Conquest is still in beta, but it rewards teams with real World of Tanks gold. It’s a very promising start for Wargaming and World of Tanks, one I’ve had the pleasure of playing from day one. Managing a clan that has 75 members playing nightly is as fun as it is time consuming. It’s an addictive feature to a free to play game that’s already fun and plenty addictive without it. Wargaming is constantly expanding the features of the clan wars system, and it has huge potential. Eventually, when the Ultimate Conquest map spans the entire earth, things will be much more competitive between clans as well as time zones. If Wargaming can do what’s possible to get the Ultimate Conquest system to lean more towards a middle ground that benefits both huge and small clans, then things will inevitably get more competitive and rewarding for everyone. That’s probably the major issue right now, is that massive teams get too many advantages over small ones. While that intrinsically might seem a petty notion, it really does hinder the smaller guys from entering the scene and going toe to toe with the giants. There are other things being added to clan wars, but I left most of them detailed in my interview with Victor Kislyi, the CEO of Wargaming.net.
