Interview with Storm from a Czech WoT magazine

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Hello everyone,

what follows is the summary of an interview with Michael “Storm” Zhivets, that came out in the Czech WoT monthly magazine “Deník Nooba” (Diary of a Noob) ran by Carramba66 (the same guy who made the veteran charity happen). Its second issue is now out and if you can read Czech, I can really recommend it (it contains e-sports posts, reviews, historical articles and such). You can get it from this post.

As for the interview, it’s a bit older (from the beginning of December) – the issue of the magazine was supposed to come out earlier, but there were some delays in production. Either way, here’s the summary:

- Storm started in the Minsk game studio called Arise, that merged with Wargaming in 2007
- when looking back, he wouldn’t do any significant thing on WoT differently, apart from being more prepared for the huge influx of players (the servers sometimes weren’t handling the popularity of the game)
- his big hobby is fishing
- PEGI and ESRB ratings are very important for Wargaming, without them, some regional markets would remain closed – but as for the missing crewmembers, Storm states that the original goal was to make a game without violence elements
- roughly 75 million people around the world play World of Tanks, including women and elderly folks
- the fact Germans already have Panzer 38t and 35t will not damage the quality of the Czechoslovak branch, especially since there are other “copies” between the trees (Storm mentions “twins” in French and German tree)
- European tech tree will not come earlier than 2015
- the names of the tank crewmembers for EU tree will correspond to the country the tank was built in
- Storm states that while WT E-100 is very strong, it might face the same effect as FV215b 183 (SS: that means that while a lot of players consider the vehicle OP, statistically it’s balanced), he admits it might be rebalanced after a few months
- historical battles will appear in first half of 2014, WG is actively working on them
- no list of historical battles’ tanks is planned for now
- apparently gold ammo will be limited in historical battles (only to a certain number of rounds, so players don’t spam it)
- there will be new bonuses for the owners of premium accounts, but it’s too soon to tell
- there won’t be direct QA with Storm and SerB on EU server (the way Russians have it)
- next year, global graphics improvement for WoT is planned (improving the number of polygons, the quality of textures and 3D models)
- there will be 2 kilometer and even 4 kilometer maps
- spotting system will not be cancelled, but it will be reworked. For starters, the amount of camo factor will depend on how many spotting checkpoints are visible (SS: as in, if a tank shows only one spot checkpoint, for example the roof, it will be less visible than a tank just standing in the open)
- Storm confirms that APCR ammo does lose penetration over distance faster than AP

54 thoughts on “Interview with Storm from a Czech WoT magazine”

  1. - European tech tree will not come earlier than 2015
    - the names of the tank crewmembers for EU tree will correspond to the country the tank was built in

    Interesting.

      • besides, who cares about names? The only crewmember which name i like is my SU-152 gunner, Krivoruchenko, it is something like “has very inaccurate hands” :D

        • Lucas Assmann – my e50 driver, absolutely unrelated – the e50 is the tank that fell of cliffs the most for me personally
          Bodo Mauss – my maus driver
          Oleg Nebaba (if you get the Krivoruchenko pun you’ll get this one) – extra tanker, kv-2 gunner from the kv->kv-2 swap
          Those are the ones that i remember right now, but i used to collect names with puns (like Vsevolod Stremailo on my A-20->T-50-2)

          • Just remembered – Harry Potter on the fv215b ht as a driver, he got knocked out a lot when i was training the BP on t7…
            You can get pretty funny names and cases (my friend has a totally racist-yet-funny case of 1 white commander and 5 black tankers in his T34 prem)

              • yeah I used the xmas sale to rename my T30 commander like that aswell

                american crews have lots of epic possibilities, for example the Pulp fiction characters Marcellus Wallace, Vincent Vega, Jules Winfield, Butch Coolidge, Winston Wolfe

          • I have a crew member on a Russian tank that is called German Polskih. IRL he would be shot for being a spy :D

              • Not really, it’s a really commmon structure (and surname too) with the -ih ending part being pretty much “russian” or “slavic”. It wouldn’t turn out to be one of the problematic surnames that would get you in trouble.
                Plus, i have to add (being russian and shit) lots of people don’t really see polish (or for that matter – any of the countries of the eastern socialist block) as “bad” people.
                And yeah, i second that on the name german (it’s not pronounced djerman, it’s pronounced gu-erman, like in the word “guess”), it’s absolutely ok. One of my friends has a middle name Adolf, which kinda means that his dad was born 1940-smth and his parents called him Adolf…with the guys’ name being Leonid (totally ok) Adolfovitch (which is plain funny to me personally, we’ve had laughs about that).

          • If you’ve ever played Stalker: Call of Pripyat, this one’s funny.
            A Commander I’ve had for a while is called Aleksandr Degtyaryev, and he’s a Major.
            I hadn’t noticed his name for over 1600 battles with him until he was a Major :’D

      • As I understand it, it will be half-nation-based. The origin of the tank will matter when you get them, but then you can swap them in all “European” tanks.

  2. - there won’t direct QA with Storm and SerB on EU server (the way Russians have it)

    there won’t “be”? typo?

  3. -Storm confirms that APCR ammo does lose penetration over distance faster than AP
    it continued with “at 500m, APCR has still higher penetration than AP

    • Depends now on the penetration difference between the ammos…take the low tier ammos for example…at 500m the APCRs might be less effective than APs

    • I still think that at 500mm some might have similar penetration with regular AP so that using APCR isn’t feasible. HEAT shells are much better at long ranges because they don’t lose penetration at all and most of them have much more penetration than APCR. On the other hand… they have less normalisation and are severly crippled by spaced armor.

      That feel when muh chinese Po shells had over 400mm penetration after chinese were introduced
      ;__; but then the Serb Nerf attacked ;__;

      • APCR is faster than regular AP and much faster than HE/HEAT.

        And at least on high tier guns, pen loss over distance with APCR isnt that great, usually you still have more pen on 400-500m than AP. Overall APCR is the best amunition, if you dont start with 300m pen on regular AP rounds.

        • I think the speed difference depends on the gun. Some HEAT is slower than normal AP, some isn’t; same with HE.
          Example: the shells used by the M-63 (semi-unique gun on the Object 416) and iD10T-2C on the T-54 have a consistent shell speed between AP/HEAT/HE, and the stock iD10T gun is the same between AP and HE. The gun and shells on the Chinese 113 are the same.

          On the other hand, the Chinese 112 has the same between AP and HE, but loses a whopping 160m/s (800>640) when switching to HEAT. The D-54 on the Object 430v2 is the same, but only loses 115m/s.

          So saying that “APCR is faster than AP which is faster than HE/HEAT” isn’t necessarily correct; you have to check for yourself with each gun you use. APCR does seem to be consistently faster, though, especially on the tier X mediums where it’s primary ammunition; up to around 75% faster than HE/HEAT there (the Batchat in particular has a massive difference in HEAT and APCR velocities, the Soviet mediums aren’t far behind). But on tier IX and below, it doesn’t seem to be a general rule.

  4. - historical battles will appear in first half of 2014, WG is actively working on them

    … that mean’s in Wargamingtime it will appear in 2015 :D

      • And in Valve-time it will never appear, and only rumors will appear occasionally each 4 years, with memes being created such as “Historical game mode confirmed!”

      • I do hope that HP differences will be lowered in Historical. It will be highly unfair for a T-34 of a Panzer 4 driver to shoot a tier 7 like 15 times to kill it and for the tier 7 to be able to kill it with 1 or 2 shots.

        Or just make the rewards for driving a tier 5 bigger.

        • “I do hope that HP differences will be lowered in Historical. It will be highly unfair for a T-34 of a Panzer 4 driver to shoot a tier 7 like 15 times to kill it and for the tier 7 to be able to kill it with 1 or 2 shots.”

          This is the second time I see this kind of thing here on FTR and I don’t understand it, to be honest. How is that different from normal -/+2 tier spread in randoms? This kind of argument would be kinda valid if the only way to drive T-34 in a historical battle was in a “15 T-34 vs. 15 Tigers” battle, but I somehow doubt it’s WG’s plan.

    • I want my B1 to pound some german panzers. I want to feel its armor bounce helpless german guns and to use it to the fullest unlike muh frenchies did in reality. Historical battles are the only mode that will let me do it. B1 in randoms is very weak and outclassed.

  6. 2 and 4 KM maps? This is something interesting!! Can’t wait to see how they will implement it.

    And the cammo spotting? Thats a good idea from Storm. Now you won’t have to worry that much if your tank isn’t 100% hidden and you will still get some bonus at least :)

  7. Well issue with the WTE100 and the FV183 and the WTPz4 and other “OP” vehicles is that alot of “average players” get them thinking they will own anyone and fail miserably because they have huge drawbacks (reload time, armor, camo) that above average players lern to deal with, but they somehow don’t. That is shown by that new kind of rating you presented earlier. Measured by WR alone they don’t appear OP.

  8. - roughly 75 million people around the world play World of Tanks, including women and elderly folks

    OLOLOLOLO xDDDDD I give MAXIMUM 2 million :D
    Seriously – who the hell inflates the acc number?!

    • Well, the servers will give that number of people playing. But that is an incomplete statistic. Of those 75 million people playing: how many play every day? Of those daily players, what is the average play time? etc.

      I do not doubt that WG has 75 million playing WoT, but they are not playing WoT at the same time.

        • Yes, but your number does not invalidate his. Your number may be a more accurate statistic of people playing WoT at a given time, while his is the statistic of unique members playing overall.

          It is just typical PR bullshit, not false but misleading.

  10. - spotting system will not be cancelled, but it will be reworked. For starters, the amount of camo factor will depend on how many spotting checkpoints are visible (SS: as in, if a tank shows only one spot checkpoint, for example the roof, it will be less visible than a tank just standing in the open)

    cant wait for that to see how much worse WG can make the spotting system.

    • A spotting system based on checkpoints that give cumulative penalties to camo factor as more are visible could potentially be a turn for the better.

      Consider the two current biggest issues; TDs with magical cloaking devices and tanks disappearing out in the open.

      TDs (common design, non-turreted) can’t generally hide much, if any, of themselves behind hard cover and still maintain the ability to aim at all targets in their entire gun traverse. So instead of being able to sit behind some bushes and be invisible while they rain death on things as they can now, they would have to make a choice: limit their field of fire and be partially physically hidden, or throw caution to the wind and expose all their vision checkpoints, being easily detected. The planned changes to bushes in the nearish future (making their coverage round rather than a box as they are now) would also make it harder to hide all their checkpoints behind soft cover, especially things like the bigger/boxier German and Russian TDs.

      Tanks out in the open would be just that: out in the open, all vision checkpoints exposed. No more heavies and mediums disappearing as they trundle through open fields, being as exposed as they are (should) make them detectable up to the best observer’s spotting range.

      Gonna take some special consideration for scout tanks, but at least one of the devs (I think it was a dev?) has already expressed desire to make life a bit easier for proper scouts, so that’s something.

  12. - apparently gold ammo will be limited in historical battles (only to a certain number of rounds, so players don’t spam it)
    ______________
    Why not limit it to randoms also….you know so players don’t spam it…..

  13. - there will be 2 kilometer and even 4 kilometer maps

    Yay for T28 Proto driver ….not.

  14. Graphical improvement? Does this mean that the old Big World engine will finally get multi-threading support and DX11?

  15. “- Storm states that while WT E-100 is very strong, it might face the same effect as FV215b 183 (SS: that means that while a lot of players consider the vehicle OP, statistically it’s balanced), he admits it might be rebalanced after a few months”
    It IS overpowered, this thing has extremely low dispersion when moving the turret, laser like accuracy, kills a Maus from full HP with a single burst, highest view range in the game, decent mobility and very high HP. Only cons are the unarmored turret and the negligible turret armour.