Wargaming Boasts Of 250,000 At Tanker Day; The Offspring To Perform In-Game

Lots of game companies have conventions that draw thousands of fans of their game ... or tens of thousands ... but hundreds of thousands? A quarter million? Now that's an event!

That's the number Wargaming is boasting of today, saying that 250,000 people from 28 countries attended Wargaming Fest: Tanker Day in Minsk, Belarus, last Sunday. Another 2.6 million watched the event via livestream across the world. It took up a full square kilometer of the city and included 120 entertainment zones, including one set off by the Belarus Armed Forces, where fans could take selfies with real-life tanks, including one used by the national tank biathlon team. In related news, today I learned there's a tank biathlon.

There were, of course, places to play World of Tanks at the show, and a "Premium Garage" that housed various Wargaming titles. The main stage played host to the Clan Super Cup, with the winners taking home $25,000 and 500,000 in-game Gold, as well as various accessories from the show's sponsoring partner.

Given Wargaming's frequent rock music collaborations, it's no surprise that the fest also included a concert, with bands from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. The headline act, though, was American punk rockers The Offspring, who will also be performing inside World of Tanks from Sept. 18 to Oct. 7. Their act, which uses motion capture techniques, will be on a virtual stage inside the garage.

Wargaming's got one more collaboration in the works, this one for World of Tanks Blitz. Alongside five new Italian medium tanks coming to the game comes a partnership with Formula One driver Giancarlo Fisichella. He claims that he "knew about the game" before this deal, saying that his favorite of the new tanks is the Tier X Progetto, whose autoreloader "combines power and practicality, historical and modern technologies, which is cool." Perhaps with his endorsement, we'll be one step closer to putting weaponry on race cars, Mad Max-style.