Back in the heyday of World at War, the developers made a controversial decision: Take the tanks out of Hardcore Team Deathmatch. Over on the World at War forums, a vote thread was started, and it seemed there were many more respondents in favor of retaining the vehicles than eliminating them.
Why did Treyarch make this decision? I've lost track of the posts and blog entries regarding this, but, if my always fallible memory serves, community rep JD_2020 said at the time that tanks didn't fit into the "spirit of hardcore." Mind you, this decision was arrived at about 6 months after the game was released, and tanks were well established in World at War's HC maps. No advance warning was ever given that the tanks were going to be yanked out of hardcore; they were simply gone. Supposedly, there was feedback given to Treyarch that a majority of players didn't like the tanks. At the time, I was an almost daily visitor to the World at War forums, as it was the only game I was playing. Yet, I saw no uproar about tanks - until they were yanked out of hardcore. I've never found a satisfactory answer on why it was done. In the forums, other players and myself asked what the data was that supported the decision, but no specific answer was ever forthcoming from Treyarch.
Since this is a blog and I make no claims to journalistic impartiality, I think this came about due to a vocal minority of whining douches. You see, the twitch players just wanted to run around shooting other players, and it cramped their style when they played HC TDM on a vehicle map. See, in World at War, when you played on a TDM vehicle map, it wasn't really TDM. It was an objective based game, and the objective was to control the tanks so you could get the most kills.
Then, as now, I played with Matt64 and Reibo, and our usual strategy was to have Reibo, as the best tanker, in the vehicle and Matt64 and myself protecting his flanks on foot. And it was a successful tactic. Playing against disorganized dopes who were intent on a game of Team Free-for-all, it usually resulted in a blowout.
It came down to this: Treyarch couldn't smarten up the players, so they dumbed down the game, caving in to the @holes who called the tanks "mobile camp spots" and the tankers "tank whores". End of line.
