A lot of the time great things require great foresight and planning, whether that be the Pyramids, the Moon Landing, or World of Warships. Teams of people spend countless hours meticulously planning and implementing their ideas to create wondrous things.
Other times, great things come from bored posting on Twitter.
A New Alliance is Forged
If you're a fan of Windscribe and our content you'll know we like a bit of banter to our social interactions, a bit of bite, a bit of je ne sais quoi. We think the corporate world takes itself far too seriously, and more companies should be willing to talk the talk, rather than spin the marketing.
It seems like these World of Warships folks are right up our street!
Whilst we're not diving into a full blown partnership over an off-the-cuff twitter exchange, we think it's a cool opportunity for both ourselves and World of Warships to trade some goodies and give them away to our fans. We might move on to bigger things together in the future, who knows, but for now we just want to get together to give something back to our communities!
If you want to skip to the good stuff, go right to the end, where you can find a link to an in-game contest launching today on World of Warships!
But...Why?
You might be thinking “That's cool and all, but what does a VPN have to do with gaming?” and that's a valid question. Alternatively, you might be thinking “But I've heard that VPNs are bad for gaming?” and that is definitely a point of debate. I'm here to tell you that VPNs can be used in tandem with gaming, and can even enhance your experience!
What Does a VPN do?
If you're not sure what a VPN is, it's a service that allows you to route all of your internet traffic through remote servers, masking your IP, internet activity, and other data from the countless prying eyes across the web. You can spoof your location, avoid cookies and ad tracking, bypass network restrictions, protect yourself against DDoS attacks, and more.
Perks for Gaming
Using a VPN whilst gaming unlocks two primary perks to improve your experience: Enhanced Privacy & Security and Enhanced Routing.
Enhanced Privacy & Security
The Enhanced Privacy & Security bonus is primarily useful on games that use peer-to-peer connections to host lobbies, like GTA Online, or some of the older Call of Duty titles. When using these connections it's very easy for other players to see your IP (either with a cheat, or a network monitoring tool like Wireshark). This gives them access to your approximate geolocation and the ability to DDoS you, or even probe for open ports or servers to gain access to your network.
When connected to a VPN like Windscribe, however, your IP will show as whatever VPN server you are connected to instead. Not only does this mask your location, but it also protects you from attacks. Even in the event a DDoS attack somehow manages to take down the VPN server you are connected to, you can simply change server.
Enhanced Routing
The second perk is only relevant if your network/ISP doesn't already have optimized routing – but if it doesn't, then you should notice the benefits of a VPN.
Routing is what we call the process of information packets being directed across the internet from source to destination (and back again). Sometimes, your information is sent down the scenic route – have you ever had abnormally high ping on a game despite connecting to a geographically close server? Chances are, you were suffering from bad routing (or at least you can tell your friends that's why that n00b managed to get the drop on you).
If you are someone struggling with this then using a VPN can help you create a bypass, connecting to a close-by server and forcing traffic to be routed through the shorter path. This should create a more stable connection with less ping (so you'll have to come up with another excuse for that K/D I'm afraid).
The Disclaimer
Now, here at Windscribe, we're not a fan of being misleading; many VPNs hype up their product and it's capabilities beyond the real and we think that's just kind of scummy.
That's not to say we don't think we have a great product – quite the contrary, we're the best damn VPN out there and we'll fight anyone that says otherwise – but part of being the best is acknowledging the limitations.
With this in mind, it's important to know that using a VPN while gaming can have a negative impact. Most notably, if you are already on an optimized network with good routing then connecting to a VPN server that is not geographically close to you can potentially increase your ping. You'll still get the privacy and security perks, but nobody wants to see their latency go up. To minimize the chances of this you'll always want to make sure you're connected to a nearby server with low ping.
What is World of Warships
World of Warships is a free-to-play, historical, online PC game developed and published by Wargaming. As the name gently suggests, it’s a naval action game where players can amass a fleet of iconic war vessels and take them into battle in strategically designed multiplayer arenas. Beyond the gaming aspect, World of Warships also prides itself as a digital naval museum – a focal point for history enthusiasts – thanks to its beautifully recreated ship models. New thematic content and innovative game modes are being added on a regular basis, always providing diverse and fresh gameplay experiences to its players.
The Goodies
Finally, we're on to the best bit – what goodies are we giving away?
To start with, World of Warships have generously supplied us with codes for their games and we're going to be giving them out to our registered users. We know that many of you will have an absolute blast playing it and we'd love to see users taking screenshots or video clips of their experiences and sharing them with us on Twitter or Discord!
For those using the mobile app, you should already have a notification; for those that provided their e-mail address upon account creation, keep your eye out for the e-mail we've sent out landing in your inbox.
Conversely, we've supplied World of Warships with a bunch of codes for our full service accounts. We think that World of Warships fans will love the benefits of using Windscribe, both for the perks it can give their gaming experience and for the general quality of life improvements for their internet experience.
These codes will be given out through various avenues – including an in-game contest starting right now! Players have until the 10th of October to participate, and there's a category each for both new and existing players. What are you waiting for? Get yourself signed up and start earning that XP!
Good luck, Captains!
