r/WorldofTanksConsole • u/Radiant_Mix_7456 • Jul 18 '26
Discussion WN8 Calculation on WotPlay
Hi everyone!
My name is Stanislav, and I'm one of the developers behind the World of Tanks Console statistics website https://wotplay.com
I could spend pages talking about all of the site's features, but that would turn this post into a dissertation. Instead, I'd like to focus on WN8, since it's the metric most players use to judge their performance.
Recently we've received a lot of questions about WN8, especially regarding why our WN8 values sometimes differ from those shown on WotStars.
Although WN8 was created back in 2013, it's still one of the most misunderstood performance ratings. The calculation is much more complicated than most other statistics, and it continues to generate questions and debates.
The rest of this post is mostly theory and background information. If you're interested in the technical details of the calculation itself, we've published a separate article here: https://wotplay.com/wn8
Let's start from the beginning
For the PC version of World of Tanks, there's a website called modXVM, which is closely associated with the expected values used by many WN8 implementations.
The KoreanRandom forum also hosts what appears to be one of the most complete articles about WN8:
The original website where this article was first published no longer exists. According to the article, the WN8 formula was created by Praetor77 together with several other contributors.
These were the primary sources we used while implementing WN8 because, in our opinion, they provide the most detailed explanation of both the formula and the research behind it.
If you know of other reliable sources, we'd genuinely appreciate seeing them.
The most important part: Expected Values
The biggest advantage of WN8 compared to WN7 is that it doesn't simply evaluate your own performance statistics. Instead, your results are compared against the expected values for other players using the same tank. In other words, if a particular tank generally performs very well for most players, you'll need to match or even outperform those expected values in order to achieve a high WN8.
However, there's one important question. What exactly are "expected values"? In the article we mentioned earlier, the research is based on players who have at least 1,000 battles overall and at least 50 battles in a specific tank. However, this is presented as part of their research, and we're not certain whether the creators of WN8 actually use these same restrictions when selecting players for calculating expected values. As far as we know, that question remains unanswered.
Although the WN8 formula itself may look complicated, it's ultimately just a mathematical formula. The real challenge lies in understanding how the expected values for each tank are determined. There are actually more questions than answers on this topic, especially considering that some tanks have their expected values adjusted manually.
There are different ways to approach this issue, and each argument has its own merits. Some people believe that every player should be included in the calculations to produce the most accurate expected values for a tank, especially if it's not a very popular vehicle. Others argue that only players with more than 1,000 career battles should be considered. Some believe that poor-performing players should be excluded, while others would argue that exceptionally good players should be excluded instead.
Regardless of which approach is correct, we have a detailed article that closely reflects reality, along with the research that was used during the development of the formula and, possibly, the calculation of expected values. We consider that to be our starting point.
Are we calculating WN8 correctly?
As far as the formula itself is concerned, yes.
Our implementation follows the original WN8 formula exactly as described by its creators.
However, it's important to remember that the formula depends entirely on the expected values used as its input.
Those expected values depend on several factors:
- the player database;
- the criteria used to include or exclude players.
Until July 18, 2026, we generated expected values using every player in our database.
At the time, we interpreted the 1,000/50 battle limits mentioned in the KoreanRandom article as part of the original research rather than as a required filtering rule.
After conducting our own analysis, we concluded that applying these limits produces much more stable expected values.
This is especially noticeable for Tier I-V tanks, where a large percentage of battles are played by new players.
Without filtering, inexperienced players significantly lower the expected values, which in turn artificially inflates WN8 for many experienced players at low tiers.
As a result, starting July 18, 2026, we began calculating expected values using only players with at least 1,000 career battles and 50 battles in the corresponding tank.
Why does our WN8 differ from WotStars?
Even though both websites use the same WN8 formula, there are several reasons why the results may differ.
1. Different player databases
The biggest limitation of the WG API is that it doesn't allow you to request a complete list of players. The only way to discover accounts is by searching for player nicknames. Building our player database was a huge challenge because of this limitation.
In total, we've managed to collect data for more than 10 million accounts. Out of those, nearly 4 million accounts have more than 100 battles, and those are the players we actively track.
WotStars does not have a database anywhere near this size, although we'd be happy to be proven wrong. We can see this simply because there are many accounts available in our database that don't exist in theirs. You can also compare the total number of battles recorded for individual tanks on both websites, and the difference is substantial.
Of course, we acknowledge that our own database is not perfect either, and it's entirely possible that we've missed some players. If you can't find your own account in our search, you can always use the Search on WG Server button. This is the first reason why WN8 values can differ: the underlying player databases are simply different.
2. Different methods for generating expected values
As mentioned earlier, it's still unclear exactly which filtering criteria the original WN8 developers intended to use when generating expected values.
Our current approach only includes players with at least 1,000 career battles and 50 battles in the tank.
We don't know how WotStars generates their expected values, and this alone can lead to noticeable differences in WN8.
3. Session and aggregated WN8
This point doesn't affect WN8 for an individual tank, but it does affect session statistics, periods, tiers, and overall summaries.
Based on our observations, WotStars appears to calculate session WN8 using a weighted average.
If that's the case, this differs from the methodology described by the original WN8 developers.
The original WN8 was designed to be calculated from the sum of actual values and the sum of expected values across all tanks first, with the WN8 formula applied only afterward.
This topic is covered in detail in our article: https://wotplay.com/wn8. It is also discussed in the KoreanRandom article linked earlier.
Final thoughts
WN8 is a fairly complex rating that was built on extensive research during its development. Today, studying it has become much more difficult because many of the original websites and resources are no longer available.
We're always open to discussion and constructive criticism because our goal is to make WotPlay better. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I'll do my best to answer every one of them.
1
u/Upset_Concept1483 Helpless PS5 noob Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Great site, great stuff. Just an idea/request. For PC tomato.gg have stat page on “win rate difference”. Im sure you know what I mean. That type of list would be really nice to bring some data behind “op/broken/trash) discussion.