For those folks that don't know much about World of Tanks, or have been gone for a very good while, here's a quick recap: Instead of pushing too many special missions in-game to earn some special tanks (like how it worked before on 'On Track'), now there's a special page separate from the game itself 'Tank Rewards'. It records some tokens you gain inside the game to claim a small bunch of prizes at the end of the month. The better you do, the more prizes you can pick, up to a mid-tier Premium tank to make money, and even some boxes to try your luck and see IF you earn a high tier premium tank. It can happen, but it's very rare. It changes a lot (both requirements for the token AND the prizes) according to the month. Today's article is about the latest one, Snow Tanks (5 December - 15 January)

World of Tanks this December was very fun with the Holiday Ops event by decorating your own tree, having some rewards and giving you nice bonuses to motivate players in a good way to keep playing the game until January 15th. It was a very good relief and almost made forget everyone that the Tank Rewards was running on the background and to compensate for the fun and relaxed pace of the Holiday Ops, Tank Rewards was quite strict. Not hard, but very strict: 110 points for the 'free' tank and 115 for an extra box. Usually the Tier 4 for the free tank usually rests on 40-50 points. This month was almost 3 times that amount. Playing multiple tiers every day was the key. Again not hard, but you couldn't idle a lot. Even by just seeing the amount and persistance needed, many players did not took the challenge and dropped out much earlier on, missing the points on purpose because they knew it'd be hard for them.

Sounds too complicated. Why bother with TankRewards then? Simple: GOLD. Long ago Wargaming gave a small but almost fixed amount of Gold to help all free players to either buy some premium days -OR- save for some premium tanks of their choosing. Even in-game events when you earned the same tank, you got it's gold equivalent. Now? Too many policies now it says if you win a tank in-game, you'd get it's credits equivalent. Not gold. That's a little troublesome if you really needed the gold. And thus Tank Rewards is a good viable option because you get the tank technically as a gift outside of the game.

So some players who really needed the gold had planned to get the Strv 42/57 as one of the possible Tier 5 rewards, because if you already had one in your garage, it'd be the most expensive tank vs the TOG II* and thus, you'd earn a little more gold with the Swedish one vs the British whale. So many people (myself included) got the tank as soon as the prizes were available to be delivered (Around January 19). That'll be 3700 Gold many of us already had plans what to spend it on. It all was good until a good weekend happened. But for some reason good with good nulls out with the other. Somehow.

The prizes were up for choosing on THURSDAY to be delivered all on next day, exactly on the day a new Weekend would begin: the Victory in Ardennes where it'll bring several discounts in-game of many expensive goods, and even some in-game tanks you could buy with gold... The Strv 42/57 included, yes, the very same tank many people had already picked up to be delivered the previous day too, was also on discount. The big problem here is also because by the time we picked our TR choices (~Friday 00:00 UTC), we were unaware the tank would be on sale. The discounts and the link to the Event News popped up around Friday 14:00 UTC. The link of the Victory in Ardennes event can be found here https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/general-news/victory-in-the-ardennes/

So, Tank Rewards gives you tank OR gold if you have it, and there's a good event going on with the same tank in discount. There's no issue at all, right? Wait for it...

The tank costs 3700 gold on a normal day. The tank in-game thanks to the event costed 2590. Tank Rewards apparently gives you the gold equivalent of the tank on the same moment it's handled out, which many players cashed out instantly on thursday to be paid on Friday and use the prizes of the strict December TR ASAP. So what's the gold we got accounted? 2590.

Usually on these kinds of situation you could just send a ticket to Customer Support to explain the situation, and they'll happily give you the difference if something went wrong. Previous TR worked like that and players got reimbursed the gold difference later on. This time shouldn't be different right? Well... no. I sent a ticket and guess what's their reply?

"If the tank is discounted, then the compensation will also be discounted"

Working as intended, comrade!!

Anon: "lel prette sure ur a haxxor Ron you got discounted cuz u ugly and warmemeing only hates you. I haz all gold and only you complaeen"

Wrong. I'm not the only one showing discontent on the topic. At all.

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/568342-where-is-the-rest-of-my-gold/
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/568408-huge-bs-when-it-comes-to-tankrewards-compensation-policy/
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/568370-dont-select-your-tank-yet-tankrewardscom/
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/568466-more-wg-shenanigans/

The very last link is a good one, given player 'Blackroan' keeps pressing for the rest of his gold and Support replies back to him with an important sentence:

"We're not refusing to assist you, we're simply doing our best to enforce our policies under the same standards for the entire community."

So let's screw EVERYONE at once and lets keep the borked system still hand out the prizes badly instead of compensating the players! Very smart. They really hope they can get away with this and people will get used to it. Even on the same copypasted replies they know not one, but MANY players are frustrated and they refuse to fill the rest of the gold. The bitterness might spill out somewhere else if not filled properly... like on this post. Guess Wargaming can't remain quiet without some controversy to stir the community, right? Here's hoping not too many player's grudge gets too big with this pleasant experience and jump to a totally different boat, like on Warthunder or even Armored Warfare.

Here's hoping Wargaming can actually fix this for the entire community involved on this mess and definitively not repeating this incident again.