VS

Let the Games Begin

 

Anyone who has enjoyed World of Tanks, made by Wargaming.net, will tell you that the game was truly revolutionary in its concepts and implementation. Truly no other company sought to create an online player versus player armored warfare game quite like Wargaming managed to do with this game. They found a niche that no one had really tried yet, and made it work, and for that, they were rewarded with revolutionary success. Since 2010 when the game was in closed beta, millions of players have played this game, and given Wargaming their money.

Speaking of money, here's an overall breakdown of Wargaming's revenue and active players: 

(source: ftr-wot.blogspot.com)

 

Overall Revenue 281 million,  Broken down into..
168.9 million -  Russian Server
  70.0 million - European server
  39.7 million - U.S Server
    2.4 million - Sea Server
 

Now compare that to active players closer to the time of the report (Pulled Dec 01, 2012)
3,034,756 - Russian Server
   845,528 - European server
   195,340 - U.S Server
     62,225 - Sea Server

That means that that for the average active player they made roughly the following per month..
  $4.64 - Russian Server
  $6.90 - European server
$16.94 - U.S Server
  $3.21 - Sea Server

It's little wonder then, that finally another company took notice, and created some competition. In November of 2012, Gaijin Entertainment put War Thunder into open beta testing. They were clever with their implementation however, since they didn't immediately start with tanks. Gaijin's idea for War Thunder is very similar if not identical to what Wargaming is trying to do with it's 'World of' games, create a land warfare game (WoT), air warfare (World of Warplanes), and sea warfare (World of Warships). Gaijin decided to preempt Wargaming and start with planes first, trying to take many potential customers from World of Warplanes, and get them hooked on War Thunder planes first. According to War Thunder news (source: http://warthunder.com/en/news/216/current/), as of July 25th, 2013, War Thunder has more than 3 million players. Apparently, WoWP had around 4.5 million players throughout the beta-testing phase (source: http://www.techmerszone.com/2013/11/world-of-warplanes-is-now-available-to.html). This may lead you to believe that World of Warplanes is more popular, and is going to be more successful, but from these polls and forum threads, you will quickly begin to see the opposite is true:

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/52375-world-of-war-planes-vs-war-thunder/

http://forum.gaijinent.com/index.php?/topic/10242-war-thunder-or-world-of-warplanes-poll/

http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/39396-world-of-warplanes-vs-war-thunder/

http://duxter.com/topic/5491-world-of-warplanes-vs-warthunder/

http://archeagesource.com/topic/2067-war-thunder/

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3862506/Re_World_o_Planes_vs_War_Thund

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/17064/

War Thunder

Aside from those, having read a great deal about both World of Warplanes and War Thunder, I can safely say that most people are very positive when it comes to War Thunder, and almost universally negative towards World of Warplanes. 

WoWP

Given the community's sentiment about both games, I'd have to say that Gaijin has succeeded in their attempt to take Wargaming's air warfare customers away. This isn't to say that World of Warplanes doesn't have its share of fans, but I believe most people are really not that excited about WoWP.

This brings us to the next topic: the ground forces side of things. Having effectively won the air warfare contest, Gaijin is now nearly ready to begin the closed beta for their ground forces.

http://warthunder.com/en/news/337-Ground-Forces-closed-beta-announcement-en

Many people, myself included, have been eagerly anticipating the release of, or at least testing of, War Thunder ground forces. It's somewhat of a drawback that the number of slots for the closed beta are limited, and you will have to complete certain objectives in the War Thunder planes game to become a closed beta tester for ground forces. For me, it's enough that finally a company that is obviously very competent will try to compete with Wargaming on it's home turf, ground forces. 

 
Given Wargaming's history of bad customer service, bad North American servers, failure to fix known issues with the game (spotting system/camo/RNG/fail platoons/AFKs/bots/0 dmg crits), and their general attitude towards their playerbase, I won't be surprised if many people jump ship from World of Tanks and give War Thunder ground forces a shot. I believe that Wargaming is digging their own grave with the way they handle many issues, or in some cases, simply ignore them. As long as War Thunder ground forces is halfway decent, not full of bugs or other critical gameplay issues, I think WT ground forces may be a hit. Wargaming will definitely notice a down tick in their active players, if not their income, once WT ground forces is put into open beta, and the only thing I'll have to say to them will be, "how terrible".

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/261998-customer-service-fail-security-measures-fail-no-help-from-wargaming/

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/246835-telianetfaillagpacketlossfml/

http://themittani.com/features/wot-serb-facts-july-%E2%80%9Chow-terrible%E2%80%9D