In one of the features of WoT 2.0, you can get a custom video made of your WoT history. That video said that I have been playing World of Tanks for 14 years. Well, not really. I first played World of Tanks 14 years ago. I have been playing World of Tanks for over a thousand hours, but there were a lot more years in which I didn't play the game at all than years in which I did play. The last time I played before WoT 2.0 was 5 years ago, and things have changed since then. My apologies if I am conflating changes that happened over those 5 years with changes that the version 2.0 introduced.

It is completely unsurprising that a 14-year old online game is well past its prime. There are no official numbers, but estimates from various sources, based on various data collected by players about players. When I played last at the height of the pandemic, there were an estimate 7.5 million players in World of Tanks, and while the pandemic slowed the decline, the game was already well past its growth phase. Before the release of WoT 2.0, estimated player numbers were down to 2.5 million, and we don't have numbers yet how much the new version was able to revive.

Declining player numbers not only pose a financial problem to Wargaming, the company running the game. It also poses a financial problem to a number of YouTube channels that have dedicated their channel to World of Tanks content. Fewer players means fewer potential viewers, which means less revenue from content creation. And of course the content creators each have their own idea why World of Tanks is declining, and frequently blame Wargaming for some decision or other. This is also somewhat typical for YouTube: If you run a channel for a game and don't frequently criticize the game, you will be seen as a shill. Also the occasional "World of Tanks is dying" sensationalist / controversial video is good for viewer numbers, as controversy gets more clicks than "this is fine" content.

So while Wargaming was mostly concerned how to monetize the remaining players, many YouTube channels were complaining about that monetization. That went as far as some channels organizing a "boycott", in which they wouldn't review the tanks from loot boxes. Unsurprisingly, Wargaming wasn't amused, and removed content creator privileges from the YouTubers complaining the loudest. Which didn't make the content on YouTube about World of Tanks any more positive.

World of Tanks has, and always had, a slower pace than other online shooters. Especially with heavier tanks at higher tiers and with players using terrain and cover well, a lot of shots simply didn't penetrate armor. Which kept tanks alive longer, and led to matches being up to 15 minutes long. Now on the one side, Wargaming felt that a faster game would attract more players. On the other side, Wargaming wanted to sell stuff to players, like premium tanks and premium ammunition. So over the years, power creep occurred: The tanks today penetrate armor a lot more often, due to players using premium "Pay2Win" features. In addition, one of the major changes in World of Tanks 2.0 is an "armor flashlight", that makes it easier for less experienced players to see where the armor of the enemy is weak and can be penetrated.

Between that, and the drive to get players back, or new players into the game, veterans of World of Tanks aren't happy: Too many people in a typical battle aren't very experienced, and play in a more YOLO style, which has become more viable due to that power creep. Thus battles are now much faster, often last only around 5 minutes, and feel very different to the more careful style the veterans are used to. Thus an increasing number of World of Tank content creators are just ranting about the game these days, which doesn't really help to promote it, and contributes to the downward spiral. Which also reduces their own viewer numbers. A video 5 years ago from Quickybaby about the best starting tech tree got 692k views, while an equivalent video from 2 weeks ago about which free tech tree to pick only got 255k views. It is pretty obvious that the World of Tanks ecosystem is not in a good shape. The game company and the content creators all make a lot less money than a few years ago, and often blame each other for that.

Undoubtedly related to declining player numbers and the resulting matchmaking problems is the fact that World of Tanks today has a lot more PvE parts than it had 5 years ago, when I played last. Today, unless you turn it off, your first battles every day are PvE battles against bots. And why would you turn that off, when you are more likely to win against bots than against real players, and you get full credits and xp for those wins, they just don't affect ranking. There are also a number of PvE events, and a badly defined "new player protection mode", in which new players are again more likely to face bots as enemies, or other newer players, and are protected from "seal clubbing", as the practice of veteran players farming new players for xp and credits was known.

But while the increase of PvE actually makes World of Tanks more attractive to me, I don't think I will play WoT 2.0 a lot. My loss of skill over the last 5 years not playing is noticeable to me, and once you have played at a certain skill level, playing at a much lower level isn't much fun. Getting back to my old skill would take a lot of time, would maybe not even work as I have gotten older and slower, and be generally not worth it. There are too many other games I could play instead which would be more fun.