While Wargaming is conspicuously absent from PAX Australia this year, that doesn’t mean they didn’t want to use the opportunity to stage a gathering for their many Aussie fans. Throughout the night at the event, I was questioned several times – ‘Tanks or Ships?’, as fans from both World of Tanks and World of Warships were brought together to match online names to real-life faces, and meet some of the people behind the games.

Alongside the party, Wargaming also had an announcement to make regarding a new Australian addition to World of Warships – the HMAS Perth, which will hopefully launch next week.

“It’s a huge project, we’ve been planning it for the last year or so,” says Sho Hatai, Product Specialist on World of Warships.

“It’s similar to the Royal Navy ships, but will have HE. It won’t have healing like them, but instead has got the smoke, it’s got the different torpedoes. And, so it will be a very unique ship and it should be very useful.”

Based off the real Royal Australian Navy cruiser that operated in early World War II, the HMAS Perth was originally a Leander-class ship named the Amphion serving the UK’s Royal Navy. After its transferal to Australia and re-commissioning as the HMAS Perth, it was involved in several battles before being sunk in 1942.

The expansion into our country initially proved to be a challenge for Wargaming.

“It’s very difficult to penetrate Australia, yeah, because we’re not military based,” admits David Macfarlane, Publishing Producer on World of Tanks in Asia and Australasia, “We don’t have a tank culture, like Russia does for example.”

However, the company has developed a positive way to deal with some roadblocks, including trolls or negative players.

“As an example, we were talking about a player called Jock, who was our most vocal player. But he’s also been with us since the start of the server as well, so it’s now about four-and-a-half years since he’s been with us and four-and-a-half years ago he was the one who had everyone as friends, and everyone agreed with everything that he said and he was also the guy in the forums complaining about this, complaining about that.”

“So, it’s good for us because we want to improve the game, but also he was creating a lot of riots for us, etc. So, now he’s on my speed dial, as well as thousands of other players. So, anyone who’s a vocal player, or community influencer, they all have speed dial directly to me. So, Jock can message me anything he likes at any time of the day, and he’ll get an answer directly from us.”

“He’s been turned from a negative influencer to now something that is very constructive, and we like to do that with our community.”

It’s actually been a big year for Wargaming in Australia, with their hand in helping bring home an original AC1 Sentinel Tank to Cairns, as well a virtual version into World of Tanks. A few months later, its bigger brother, the AC4, was launched into the game as well. In October, the World of Tanks WGL APAC came to a close in Australia, and Wargaming’s activities are now capped off with the player gathering event last Thursday night in Melbourne.

The Wargaming Gathering ran late into the night, with plenty of prizes for fans to win, from shirts to model kits for Girls Und Panzer, and by all accounts appeared to be a great success in bringing together some of the game’s fanbase over their love of Tanks and Warships.

“We’re planning to have more cool events in Australia next year,” promises Joanna Lin, Director of Communications APAC Marketing at Wargaming, so stay tuned for further Australian Wargaming-related news.