Featured Dead Game One: War Metal Tyrant

There was a time when I had put down Diablo II and Magic: the Gathering for awhile, because there was this other game that had me enthralled. That game was War Metal: Tyrant. I have also never been more successful at any game in my life as I was at this game. I was actually one of the best players in the world. This game boasted an average active player count of around 8,000 at any given time. At the time, that was fairly popular.

I have always been into card games, so trying this game was an easy choice. It was 2010, I was unemployed and single at the time. Back then, in the olden days before Google Play and mobile games, Facebook actually had mobile-game-like games. I read "Collective card game" and I was in.

It was no different back then than it is now that games like these were typically pay-to-win. That's what sort-of set War Metal: Tyrant apart from the others, at least at first. During the time of the first expansion (The first non-base booster pack), the majority of the best cards in the game could actually be acquired by playing through the missions or grinding to open packs.

The pay-to-win aspect of the game was more apparent in faction wars, where premium currency (War Bonds) could be used to get more attacks in on your opponent and there was no cap on how much you could do this. While this was absolutely busted and was abused by whales, the one saving grace for it was that they had to be able to beat your decks in the first place. In other words, no matter how much money they spent, it wasn't going to make much difference if their decks weren't built right anyway.

That said, there were many players such as myself who saw opportunity in this system. As long we built the better decks, we shouldn't worry too much about the big spenders.

After a month or so, I had already garnered enough reputation to catch the attention of what was the #8 faction at the time, Platinum Division. They were fast rising at the time as well. Their leader offered me a position in the guild and I obliged. A few months or so in, they had risen to #4, but my time in the faction was cut short. I had missed a single faction war and they had activity requirements, so they kicked me.

My time in that faction had shown me a lot. I now knew what to expect at the top and how to get there. I also knew that I didn't want to join another faction that would just kick me for imperfect activity as well. So I started my own faction: The Deadfish (An inside joke among my friends). I kick-started it by getting my brother and a few of my friends in on it. Then I spammed the game's faction forum advertising a laid-back faction where we won't expect too much of you. That apparently resonated with a lot of people. Way more than I expected. A few months or so in, I already had a full faction and surprisingly, many of them were very active, despite the laid-back expectations. After about six months into creating the faction, we had already become the #12 faction.

Many top-5 faction leaders & members, including Platinum Division who were now the #1 faction, credited me publicly as one of the best overall players in the game. It was nothing short of impressive that a bunch of free-to-play laid-back guys broke into the top 15. At this time, the #2 faction and Platinum Division rival World Warriors (Who were NOTORIOUS for spending absurd amounts of money to secure wins) invited me to ditch The Deadfish and join them. I declined. I would have rejoined Platinum Division before I would join "The Wallet Warriors", let alone the fact that I wouldn't ditch the faction that I was so proud of for either.

Unfortunately, #12 would end up being our peak. Around this time, the newest expansion "Nexus" was released and it was a first. Nexus was a premium set and there was no possible way to obtain it without spending money. It was also a power-crept set. Most things that came before it were now inferior. Many of my faction members were upset by this and quit playing the game immediately. In fact, the whole WMT community saw an exodus in general over it. I also almost quit.

So my faction started to plummet in the ranks and I was becoming frustrated at losing to cards I could not acquire. I stuck around just long enough for the next expansion "Purity" to be released, hoping they would course-correct. As soon as I saw that it was another premium set, I quit playing too and gave the leader-reins to one of my members.

I returned to the game about a year later just to check if maybe things had turned around. I came back just in time for the release of the first Non-premium set since "Nexus", called "Homeworlds". There was hype that maybe the game could rebound from it. We were all played, though. Not only did the packs cost a whopping TEN TIMES more in-game currency than the other non-premium sets, but the set was weak in general, offering little or nothing to topple the power-crept status-quo that now ruled the game.

Needless to say, I didn't stick around. I found out about a couple years later that the whole game was shuttered.

The game later returned in the form of a mobile game called "Tyrant: Unleashed". This time, however, instead of learning their lesson, they doubled down on the premium pay-to-win model. Not only were all the sets still premium, but there was now a bloat of exceptionally overpowered "Promo" cards that could only be acquired by spending money. Needless to say, I wasn't interested in that either.

Nowadays, Tyrant: Unleashed still exists, but it's basically dead with no community left and if online comments tell an accurate story, the developers seem to have abandoned support or updates for it as well. Whenever I look it up in the Google Play Store, I get "This game was made for an earlier version of Android". That said, Tyrant: Unleashed didn't really last much longer than War Metal: Tyrant and it's no surprise.

This is a game that was once one of the most enthralling games that I had ever played and now it's a zombie. I wonder if Synapse Games or Kongregate learned any lesson from it. Probably not. *Shrug*. Man, do I miss the old WMT, though.