Today in World of Tanks the Renegade Challenge starts. That is a so-called mission marathon, where by doing a series of daily missions over 10 days you could receive a tier VIII premium tank for free. At first glance that looks like a fantastic offer for Free2Play players, as tier VIII premium tanks are the best money-makers in the game. However, as many people quickly remarked, the challenge to get this tank for free is basically impossible.

There are two versions of the challenge, one called "commitment", the other "mastery". For the "mastery" challenge you need to do things like being the top tank by experience earned, or similar achievements that generally only the top players can achieve. And even those very good players will have to grind, as the last mission for example requires them to be the best player in the team 25 times. That takes hours, even for the best World of Tanks players. For the "commitment" challenge you need to accumulate base experience points in tier VI - X tanks, while being among the top 10 of players in your team. That is doable even for mediocre players like me. However the amount of base experience you need is staggering: 251,000 overall, of which 50,000 alone on the last day. Getting 1,000 base xp in one game would be considered a great game, even by a good player. If you come in on 10th place in a game where your team loses, you might only get 100 base xp. My statistics say that I get 480 xp per game. Assuming that I can make top 10 in at least 2 out of 3 games, I would need over 1,500 games to get this much base xp, of which 150 games on the last day. If the average game lasts 7 minutes including queues, I would need to play for 90 hours over 10 days, of which 17.5 hours on the last day. That isn't going to happen.

So, is this Renegade Challenge absolutely useless? Only if you are a Free2Play player. Because in previous mission marathons, if you did for example 5 out of 10 missions, you had the option to buy that reward tank for 5 times 10% = 50% off. And because the missions get harder, I can do the "commitment" missions 1 to 5 in a quarter of the time that 1 to 10 would take me. And I don't need to finish a specific mission on a specific day, for example if I don't do mission 3 on day 3, my play time on day 4 will first finish mission 3 before starting mission 4. So the goal of doing half of the missions over the 10 days boils down to 17.5 hours overall, roughly 2 hours per day. And I don't need to do or achieve anything special, I just need to play World of Tanks with any tier VI or higher tank, and not completely suck.

So, I'm setting myself that as a "Half-Renegade Challenge". I'll try to reach at least 5 missions, and then buy that M54 Renegade tank for half price. Which is still a good deal for me, as the tank is pretty sweet, except for the big weakpoint on top.