I received this press release from Wargaming.net, the makers of World of Tanks.
I get a press release of some sort from them about once a week and they vary in quality. But today’s had me… asking questions.
Here is what they said:
World of Tanks Sets World Record
London (24th February, 2011) – Wargaming.net is glad to announce that its free-to-play action-MMO game World of Tanks has set up a Guinness World Record™ in the category of Most Players Online Simultaneously on One MMO Server.
The record was registered on January 23rd, 2011 when the number of players on the game’s Russian server totaled 91,311.
“We are excited to see so many people playing World of Tanks and the new record is an important achievement for us,” said Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net. “However, with the population of the game growing steadily another week or two would let us report a more impressive record as the current PCCU number surpasses 120,000 players”.
Wargaming.net wants to thank all World of Tanks fans that made this record possible.
Join the beta at: http://game.worldoftanks.com/registration/ (NA server)
Join the beta at: http://game.worldoftanks.eu/registration/ (EU server)For more information on World of Tanks, visit http://www.worldoftanks.com/.
This confuses me a bit, since I do not understand what they mean by “One MMO Server.”
Not to bash Wargaming.net or anything, but there isn’t a lot of shared space in the game. At the most you are involved with 31 other players you can see and otherwise you are in your own private garage or in the queue to get into a battle. So it isn’t exactly like 91,311 people shared an experience together.
Plus, is under 100,000 really the high point for what we define as a server, shard, or realm?
Surely some game like Guild Wars has already been there, done that.
Or a game that plays like World of Tanks… like, say, StarCraft II? If you can call WoT an MMO at the moment then the door seems open for StarCraft II, doesn’t it?
So unless they can prove that all 91,311 people were logged into the same single server in their data center rack, I’m not sure this record is very well defined.
What do you think? Record? No Record? Poor definitions?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Considering the game is about as MMO as SC2, yea. Forget all of the back-end ‘one server not one server’ stuff, lets just start with the record going to a game that is, um, massively multiplayer first.
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I vote for Poor definitions.
The game is really fun, but not an MMO by my definitions, Infact i would say it’s pretty much like Modern Warfares match making lobby system, only alot faster and error-free. But retaining the progression that existing in that game.
So if the record is for players on one server (Logon, Lobby & Games) then fair enough.
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TERRIBLE definition, since (AFAIK) WoT uses heavy instancing rather than one large world like EVE.
I don’t know too many other games with a similar architecture to EVE, but those are the sorts of designs that really should qualify for this.
Guinness World Records are a joke at this point, anyway.
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And I must admit some mild disappointment that Massively just ran with that press release at face value.
It is one thing to claim to be bloggers and not journalists, but to become the simple redistribution point for press releases without even a “were not sure how they defined this” is sort of sad.
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Yep, in EVE you can potentially fly to any system and shoot or trade with any other player that is logged in. I don’t consider this to beat EVE’s record in the slightest.
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It isn’t an MMO full stop. It’s a lobby-based shooter; and considering COD4 had 250k people online on my PS3 sometimes, the record doesn’t even stand for “most concurrent users in a game.”
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One server is a single shard – like EVE. It is a technical achievement and should stand at that.
I think the main thing to point out is that this is only the Russian shard – the game has lots of room to grow internationally and in the end, it’s nice to see more successful options available.
I say more power to ’em :)
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I wonder if they had actual Guinness recognition of the achievement. Those things usually require a witness and proof of meeting certain guidelines. Of course, Guinness’ requirements could be just as off-base as anyone else.
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