Welcome to World of Tanks!  Here Is Your 155mm Cannon...

By: _Marine and _Juris

Table of Content:

Introduction | Benefits | Is It Worth It? | What Should I Do?

So, You Want to Spend Some Money on the Game?

 But notice: we didn’t mention buying or wasting Premium Time. Simply put, neither of us understood the power of premium time and what it could do for us, nor whether or not we should be using it. First,    we will look at the benefits of premium time, the cost of premium time, compare premium time to some premium tanks, and discuss if it’s really worth it throughout.

 How Does Premium Time Benefit Me?

 Premium time is pretty simple: you earn 50% more experience and 50% more credits per battle in any tank. So, if you earn 500 base experience and 10000 credits in your brand new T1 Cunningham on a standard account, you could have instead earned 750 experience and 15000 credits if you had a premium account. This is a massive benefit, especially at an early stage in the game, and will continue to pay off as you progress in terms of crew training and buying new tanks and equipment.

 If you’re a brand new player, and find yourself enjoying the game-play, you should strongly consider premium time and NOT a premium tank! Quicker progression early on will lead to a more enjoyable in game experience throughout your World of Tanks career. But, which length of premium time should you choose, and what price makes sense?

 The Cost of Premium Time: Which is Worth Getting?

 For this discussion, we will NOT be taking one time special premium time deals into consideration. At the time of writing, here are the current prices on the NA server:

1 day: $1.49
3 days: $3.69 ($1.23 per day)
7 days: $6.69 ($0.96 per day)
14 days: $9.93 ($0.71 per day)
30 days: $12.59 ($0.42 per day)

90 days: $33.89 ($0.38 per day)
180 days: $57.49 ($0.32 per day)
360 days: $96.49 ($0.27 per day)

 Obviously, the more days you purchase the more the package costs. However, as you can see above, the longer packages significantly increase the value of each dollar spent.  Playing intermittently (as opposed to every day) can make it more difficult to choose the right package, but unless you are a completely casual player, the longer packages can quickly become cost-effective.  For example, to make the 14-day package cheaper per day of premium than the 1-day, you only need to play 7 days in the 14 day window.  Even better, you only need to play 9 days in a 30-day window for the 30-day package to be more cost-effective.  Obviously, the longer packages (90, 180, 360 days) provide even more value, assuming you play fairly consistently.

 If you are a new player and are not yet sure if you will be interested in playing World of Tanks long-term, the 30-day package probably represents the best value combination, as the cost per day is ~25% of the cost per day for 1 day at a time, and is only ~50% more expensive than buying an entire year at a time.  This gives you sufficient time to work a few lines up to the mid-tier range (and, of course, this will proceed considerably more quickly with the 50% bonus to credits and XP that the premium account gives), and decide whether you want to continue playing longer-term.

 Instead of purchasing premium time directly with real money, it can also be purchased with gold (the premium in-game currency).  For example, if you get the 3000 gold package, 2500 gold will buy premium time for a month, while leaving you 500 gold to move equipment or convert to free experience.  Efficient gold usage is an entire topic unto itself, and so we will leave a more in-depth discussion of in-game gold and the best uses thereof for a later article.  Just don’t convert it to silver, please.

 So, What Should I Do?

Once you get to tier 3 or so on a couple lines and find that you are enjoying the game, it’s probably worth going ahead and getting a month of premium time.  This will speed up your progress to the mid-tiers (5-6) considerably, and it will help you through the absolute worst part of basically every tank line in the game (because tiers 3-4 are the first two tiers that get matched against tanks two tiers above them, they tend to struggle to influence matches even in the hands of experienced players).  After that, if you’re still enjoying the game, consider picking up one of the slightly longer packages.

 If you are patient, the 180-day and 360-day packages go on sale somewhat predictably.  If you are going to play the game longer-term, this is probably the best way to buy your premium time.