World of Tanks: Modern Armor is kicking off its holiday festivities with its biggest winter celebration ever. Winter Fest brings new content, game modes and more, and we were able to chat with the team at Wargaming all about the new event, and what it was like building it ahead of its December 10th release.
The new mode, dubbed the Winter Fest, brings with it a new holiday game mode, which sees players take on a brand new frigid foe: the Ice Queen. Utilizing their Toy Tanks, players will take on the new foe in a PvE event to save the holidays. New tanks are coming as well, including the Kampfpanzer 07 P(E) with a holiday Yeti skin, which will be great to show off next time you help save the holidays from the Ice Queen's plans.
A new hub is also coming, hosting the new events, as well as providing a marketplace to spend an all new currency, Snowballs, to spend on event-themed exclusives.
We were able to catch up with World of Tanks: Modern Armor's creative director Thomas Foss via email to chat about the upcoming event, as well as how it was conceived, and some of the challenges the team faced while building out their winter wonderland.
MMORPG: When planning the upcoming Winter Fest event, what was the thought process when approaching the new systems you designed exclusively for this event, and could you see this being applied to future events if things go well? Additionally, the new Event Container is bringing an in-game hub to the event - can you talk about designing this new feature, and could it be applied to future events?
Thomas Foss, Creative Director: The first part of the process what coming up with a story, a new I.P. story that would tie everything together. Once I had the story of the Ice Queen, I pitched it to the team and, with some great ideation and brainstorms—and a lot of hard work— ta-da! Another goal for this event and future events was to build up a system or a series of systems and tools we could use moving forward. We had already done this with the creation of our D-Day event, which was popular with the players. One of the challenges of big events like Winter Fest is that there are so many moving parts for players to find. The Winter Fest Storefront (the ‘event container’) is designed as a one-stop shop, with everything and anything event related in the same place to make it easier for players to engage in whatever parts they want. It is designed such that it can be reshaped, expanded upon, and re-skinned to meet the needs of future events.
A final pillar for us was, of course, focusing on our players. We love celebrating the holidays with our community, and really wanted to have multiple ways to let our fans who are playing the game throughout the season get good rewards and have access to every aspect of the special event.
For all the above, we wanted to combine a lot of these new features and classic holiday components into an experience where the sum was greater than the parts.
The Two-Part Game mode: can you talk a bit about the process when building the story for the Ice Queen? Why did you decide to go this route with the event versus just focusing squarely on the Tank vs Tank action many are logging in each day to experience, and how do you balance a new narrative beat with that moment-to-moment action?
Foss: We had two major goals on our vision board when coming up with our two-week special Ice Queen event.
The first was to come up with a cool PVE event for the game. As you know, the main mode for World of Tanks Modern Armor is PvP Multiplayer, but our players also really like it when we do special PvE events. Our “War Stories” mode remains one of the most beloved past special features by our community. That featured campaigns that brought historical events to life and comic-style visuals for narrative – it was unique for us. We tried to keep that in mind when thinking of our holiday event.
The second thing we had in mind was creating an original universe and characters all our own ... ones our players would enjoy even if they’re not strictly military. We picked the holiday season because it’s consistent with the holidays themselves to be a little different – snow, toy tanks, gifts, mystery and wonder – this is all intrinsic to the holidays, so it’s a natural extension to think about it for the game.
One of the more intriguing aspects of this event seems to be battling not simply other players, but winter beasts like yetis, and the Ice Queen herself. What was the experience like building out these new types of encounters to make them feel distinct from tank vs tank battle, all while keeping things feeling familiar to players who are there for incredible tank combat?
Foss: I really took a note from the Nutcracker stories here, in playing with how a toy can become real, so why can’t a tank turn into an abominable snow creature, or a powerful Ice Queen? Once we had the story, and a bit of backstory for each character, our crack tank design team built the “traits” of them into the tank behavior and abilities. Then we play tested, tuned, and play tested more until it all felt shiny.
We have done similar things in the past with our “Awakened” versions of tanks for Halloween, so the players should be able to catch on rather quickly as to how the enemy tanks work. Remember also, that players are in the North Pole helping Santa, so the players will be battling in Toy Tanks.
Four weeks is a long time for an event. Do you worry there might be event fatigue among players, and how do you plan on mitigating that to keep people participating over the course of the four weeks?
Foss: We tried very hard to balance this event and keep things fresh every week. And remember – on top of Winter Fest, we have a lot of other things running in the game, including the FROSTBITE season with season passes, new tanks, and challenges all its own. The entire month is planned with activities via normal playing plus events to keep players engaged.
As for Winter Fest itself, a key component for us was to break things down every week while still having the event be long enough for players to earn enough Snowballs and Winter Fest War Chests to collect lots of rewards and exclusives. We made the events digestible by having them run a week at a time but made a lot of the rewards achievable by giving players a full month to earn them.
Can you talk about the four new tanks being added to the event, and how players can unlock them? Are they timed exclusives for this event, or are they being added to the permanent roster of tanks players can use?
Foss: Except for our Toy Tanks, any tank a player collects or purchases can be used all year long. They may need to be acquired during the limited-time Winter Fest event, but then they are added to a player’s permanent collection.
One of the tanks – the ELC EVEN SS.12 – can be acquired only through collecting Snowballs then redeeming them in the Winter Fest Storefront. The Kampfpanzer 07 P(E), which comes with its own holiday Yeti skin, can be acquired only through Winter Fest War Chests. These rewards overview does a nice job of giving you the highlights of our new Winter Fest content.
PLUS, we’ll also have four new Toy Tanks in this year’s Happy Holidays mode. I’ll talk more about those in a minute.
You’re also bringing a new currency to the event: Snowballs. How do players earn this currency, and does unspent currency carry over to future winter events? Can you see WoT utilizing special event currencies in future events moving forward?
Foss: Players can earn Snowballs in a ton of different ways. From completing challenges in the game, to participating in Winter Fest’s special event battles, to remembering to claim their daily rewards in the advent-style Winter Calendar, they’ll have their choice on how to roll up those Snowballs to redeem in the Winter Fest Storefront.
While we haven’t made any announcements about future events, this limited-time currency system is something we’d certainly like to use again when it makes sense, like it does for Winter Fest.
And yes – thanks for the reminder – Snowballs are a limited-time currency that expires on January 6. So please use them before they melt away on that day!
Can you talk about the new 3D commanders and how they were chosen for this update?
Foss: This was one of my favorite parts of building out the Winter Fest event. It’s the holidays, so I really leaned into characters that reminded me of all the animated shows I watched at Christmas time. I collaborated with (or maybe pestered) our art director, Andy, by sending him sketches or images I’d find, and we went back and forth with ideas until both of us were giggling. And of course, the star of our show, the powerful Ice Queen, needed her place in the su ... erm, snow. In fact, we’ve made two versions of her in celebration of, well, her!
Toy Tank Mode is back with this new Winter Fest - how important was it to include familiar events (including the Winter Calendar daily rewards) in the new event to ensure something felt familiar to players among all the new content?
Foss: Combining the familiar with the new was crucial for us. And really, we started by thinking about our historic holiday hits, Toy Tanks and the Winter Advent Calendar daily gifts. Making them part of Winter Fest felt natural and gave us a way to make them part of a complete in-game holiday experience instead of feeling like separate entities. Then, we combined those traditions with new ones we hope our players like as much, and it all added up to our first Winter Fest.
And yes - one of my favorite things about Winter Fest is the new Toy Tanks! We’ve had our classic holiday map with two classic toy tanks, the O.G. dart tank and the “Glitter Bomb” artillery tank, running for several years. With our new story arc taking place in the North Pole, it gave us an opportunity to expand that line of Toy Tanks with four new variants. We now have the Megablaster ATGM tank, the Nurf-stroyer tank destroyer, the double-barreled Yellow Ryder pellet tank, and (last but not least) Ole Sparky, the sparkler flame tank. Each one has a special role to play in all three events and can be bought with our Snowball event currency in the Winter Fest Storefront. Players will keep these tanks but can only use them seasonally. These tanks also come with a “toy” version that players can display in their custom garages.
