World of Tanks news » Tank Festival 2019 Recap & the Road Ahead

No matter how much we wanted to prolong it, after two months of continuous events with exciting gameplay, brand-new mechanics, and tons of rewards, the Tank Festival had to end!

For the first time in the history of World of Tanks, we offered a series of interlinked activities that lasted so long. It was a new experience for you and us, and we hope you enjoyed the Festival and filled your vault with unique Styles, Decals, Bonds, and other valuable stuff! 

Finally, you enjoyed The Offspring’s show in your Garage. We also teamed up with the band to create a new exclusive vehicle, the TL-1 LPC, with a unique "Pretty Fly" 3D Style. The tank is fully inspired by music and unites power and drive. It's something no one has ever seen before!

Want to look behind the scenes and see how we prepared for the longest celebration in our project? Check out the video below!

Let's take another look at the Festival's activities and dig into some curious details.

The Great Race 

The most anticipated mode of recent years was the final chord of the Festival. Races took place on the revamped Newport track and two more formidable racing tanks joined the legendary Chaffee Sport — the T-50 Sport and the Leopard Sport. 

During The Great Race, we held an adrenaline-fueled Team Tournament where an intense struggle for leadership unfolded. All Tournament rewards will be credited to accounts before October 11, as we need time to make sure there were no rule infringements among the winners, and absolutely no possibility of contractual battles. Please be patient — trophies are on the way!

The Offspring in Your Garage

This year’s WG Fest: Tanker Day was headlined by legendary California punk rockers, The Offspring. Their music is a powerful stream of drive and energy — just like Random Battle clashes and the Tank Festival was an excellent occasion to start a productive collaboration with the band. After consulting with the musicians, we decided to give each Commander the opportunity to enjoy The Offspring’s live hits in their Garage!

The band enthusiastically supported our idea. For us and for The Offspring, it was a truly bold experiment and new exciting experience: A concert in the Garage rocked no less than a live show. The band members' movements were modeled using motion capture technology. 

We also created one of the coolest-looking vehicles in the history of World of Tanks, the TL-1 LPC, with a "Pretty Fly" 3D Style. Designed as a live concert stage for The Offspring, the TL-1 LPC comes with its own Crew representing musicians as tankers and other great features — check them out:

Give It to Me Baby!

Mini-Games 

We hope you liked them! Mini-Games were intended to give you the opportunity to complete Festival collections, and simply entertain you between participating in other events. Visually, they were embodied as old-school slot machines once located in Minsk's Gorky Park. Situated in the heart of the Belarusian capital, it has become the prototype of a virtual amusement park in your Garages.

Frontline 

The most epic mode in World of Tanks, Frontline's 2019 season is nearing its end. In Episode 8, we introduced a huge new map, Kraftwerk, featuring a wide variety of landscapes and impressive buildings. Many of you began to receive the long-awaited grand prizes, two exclusive steel predators — the Emil 1951 and the AE Phase I. Those of you who couldn’t join this mode earlier received reinforcements in the form of sets of Personal Reserves. With them, the last two Episodes have become a springboard to your final rewards.

Festival Fair 

For the Festival Fair, we reworked last year’s Advent Calendar for the Tank Festival and enriched its functionality with new mechanics — allowing for more deliberate choices and thorough review of pending purchases. We hope you got vehicles you've long wanted at a reasonable price! Special daily missions provided tickets to customize your Dog Tags.

Steel Hunter

With Steel Hunter, a Battle Royale mode, we wanted to try new and previously unfamiliar mechanics. Its main idea — everyone fights for themself — and gameplay features were warmly received by the Steel Hunters. The mode was a great alternative to Random Battles — it wasn't grindy and didn't require extra effort.

The event turned out to be lots of fun, but we see room for improvement. The mode may return in the future, but in a slightly revamped form. Initially, we tried to balance the complexity of Steel Hunter and its accessibility for a wide range of players. As a result, we released a more casual version, but we have several ideas to make it more challenging. We now need to decide how to correctly combine the various mechanics in one exciting Battle Royale mode.

Czech Holidays 

Czech Holidays was an easy start to the Tank Festival. The event offered an opportunity to research the Czechoslovakian branch faster and make the process enjoyable and convenient. It also introduced the mechanics of Blueprints, which were one of the key rewards. The event offered a large number of trophies for completing simple, yet interesting, missions, and it was a great way to introduce the first-ever Czech Premium Tier VIII tank — the Škoda T 27 medium — to the game.

Dog Tags

The Dog Tags feature was created specifically for the Tank Festival to challenge your opponents on the battlefield. You could flaunt your “business card” in front of defeated enemies, so they would settle the score in the next battle.  

Originally, Dog Tags were to be customized with approximately 200 elements, but we reduced that number. Some players didn't immediately appreciate the features of this mechanic, but very quickly more and more Commanders began to design their unique Dog Tags. 

We continue to study your feedback, and for now this mechanic will take a little break. We need time to think about its future, and whether Dog Tags should be revived for other events.

On behalf of the World of Tanks team, we’d like to express our deepest gratitude and sincere appreciation to every one of you. We tried hard to surprise you and sincerely hope you enjoyed the Tank Festival. We want to make it a great and long-standing tradition, and launch Tank Festival 2020 next year, with even more rewards and special events. Keep your eyes peeled for more details closer to the date!