Exclusive Interview! PlanetWoT - World of Tanks fanportal

Today I had the pleasure of speaking to JTS and Juha686, two brothers who play World of Tanks and they have created a World of Tanks fansite with a difference. They have created an IRC bot on the Quakenet IRC server (irc.Quakenet.org) which collects your post-battle information and produces some additional statistics and a highscore list which is ideal for bragging rights with friends...

Welcome to PlanetWoT.

ElcomeSoft: So to start us off,  what was your inspiration behind PlanetWoT?

JTS: Well, first there was TankoBot which gathered WoT battlescores from IRC, and kept highscores for them for each vehicle separatel. It was all done by Juha686 at that point. And as the time passed, and it seemed that it required more and more work (coding) with Mirc (yes, it was coded as Mirc script back then) we decided to renew the whole thing and make highscores available to the internet. From there it seemed natural to expand it a little... All the other features PlanetWoT has are basically made for my own needs (wanted to upload screenshots, wanted to monitor my own statistics with graphs etc.). When you code it for yourself, why not give it for usage for everyone, since it basically requires only minimal amount of work to keep it open for everyone. Juha686 has anything to add...?

Juha686: No, nothing to add, that pretty much covers everything :)

ElcomeSoft: So TankoBot takes information gathered from WoT battlescores and gives us some statistics back on tank performance? What does this give that isn't already available in game at the moment?

JTS: Well for a start it is much more social, and one thing is that you can paste your battlescores to TankoBot, and monitor for your average experience and credit income for a certain period of time. When you look at highscores-webpage, you can see a rough lookout of how much experience you can gain with different kind of tanks. Currently it seems that KV for example is a great tank for getting experience, and so is KT (King Tiger/Tiger II). I also used to monitor my daily win/lose ratio with TankoBot, however now it's a bit obsolete feature since you can monitor them directly when using the Statistics-feature on PlanetWoT website.

ElcomeSoft: Is copying and pasting the information into TankoBot the only way to record a players statistics?

JTS: No, there sure is much easier way to do so. When you register with the PlanetWoT website and fill in your WoT-ingame nick your statistics will be recorded automatically daily. Statstics for each player are gathered every night, and graphs are generated for various statistics. For example you can monitor your daily victory ratio from a single graph easily, http://jts.kapsi.fi/planetwot/graphs/jts.stats.victoryratioperday.png. There is my daily victoryratio graph, and all my graphs can be found from a single page: http://jts.kapsi.fi/planetwot/playerStats/?name=JTS

ElcomeSoft: What direction do you see PlanetWoT and TankoBot taking in the future?

JTS: There is still much to do with the statistics-feature, it is currently at alpha-stage, and it doesn't, for example, unfortunately support US-players at the minute. TankoBot seems pretty final to me. I haven't heard any improvement suggestions in ages considering the bot, however with PlanetWoT there is still much to do. Under consideration is to add support for some most common languages, since TankoBot works only with english-translation. But yeah, now we concentrate on improving the statistics, and after that, who knows :) People usually have lots of requests and usually they are reasonable

ElcomeSoft: Sounds like a very useful community tool for World of Tanks players. How can people get started with PlanetWoT and TankoBot?

JTS: With TankoBot you just need to get yourself to Quakenet IRC, and join channel #wot, #tankobot or #wot.fi. After that type .help / ask from someone about the bot :)

Juha686: There usually is someone online to get you started with the bot.

JTS: If you want to monitor your World of Tanks statistics, or want to participate on our "official" highscores list (where screenshots are requires as proof) you need to register yourself into PlanetWoT. Registering and using PlanetWoT is completely free and takes just 10 seconds.

ElcomeSoft: Excellent guys, thanks for your time today and I wish you every success with PlanetWoT. Are either of you available to get me started?
 

JTS: Thank you for your time and effort! Sure I am available. Let's get you registered and started with TankoBot!

So there we have it folks. PlanetWoT is open for business and producing some useful and interesting statistics on your World of Tanks time. I've even registered myself and my stats are flowing into the system as we speak!

Go check out their website, register yourself and have fun!