Hello everyone,

Russian site habrahabr.ru posted an interesting information. Wargaming’s competitor on Russian market, company Mail.Ru (the creator of an atrocious browser-based WoT clone called Ground War: Tanks) was involved in a Arbitration Court of Moscow decision number А40-91072/14-90-176 (“Mail.Ru Games versus IFNS No.14″). The verdict was announced on 24.11.2014.

IFNS stands for Federal Tax Service Inspection – you know, Russian IRS. In early 2014, IFNS made a thorough audit of the abovementioned company, as a result of which it was found out that in the second quarter of 2013, Mail.Ru made cca 1,6 billion rubles (cca 26 million Euro) from “implementing additional game functionals”, in other words, for selling premium accounts, tanks and such.

IFNS decided to tax this revenue with VAT (18 percent) and ordered Mail.Ru to pay cca 292 million rubles as VAT backpayment (and possibly 58 million more as a fine for tax evasion). Mail.Ru was not trying to evade taxes, because according to Russian law these payments are exempted from VAT, but IFNS did it anyway.

In other words, IFNS considers the sale of virtual items (and this already concerns WoT, I am sure you see how) subjected to VAT.

Mail.Ru of course did not want to pay anything, so they put it up for a court to decide. And, surprisingly enough, the court sided with IFNS. I do not know whether Mail.Ru appealed (or whether that’s even possible), but the point is, it’s completely possible that other game developers (including Wargaming) will be soon subjected to “random inspections” and with a court decision in their hands, IFNS will demand more taxes (Russia needs money after all, I don’t have to tell you why). My first reaction to this was “well, that explains a lot”.

Conclusion

It’s clear that in the end, it will be the players, who pay the bill. But the real question is – WHICH players? Russian ones already saw the prices on their server soar with the plummet of the ruble (since the prices are tied to USD), so I think that as a “global” company, Wargaming might transfer those costs to regions with richer players. In other words, us. So, keep an eye out for price increases.

Hello everyone,

I am putting this here to give you an idea of how World of Tanks is popular in Russia. There is a World of Tanks FB group, which has cca 1,25 million “likes” – and that’s for the entire world. As you may or may not know, Russia on the other hand has its very own social network called Vkontakte (lit. “in contact” – there are more Russian-exclusive social networks such as Odnoklassniki, but that’s a long story). Anyway, this VK group has almost 2 million fans.

Wargaming did put up an event where if they get 2 million until 18.12., there will be (on Russian server only of course) two x2 XP days as a reward. Here’s a video accompanying it, with English subtitles available.

Hello everyone,

in the leaked missions for EU in December, following monthly mission was published:

1.12.-1.1.: Monthly Missions

- win 3 battles while driving a tier 5+ tank once per day (must be in top 10 in XP), get 75k credits
- complete the mission above 15 times, get 700 gold

Well, they decided to nerf it. The December monthly mission (as can be seen in the client) now is:

- win 5 battles while driving a tier 5+ tank once per day (must be in top 10 in XP), get 25 gold

The second part was cancelled altogether. Thus, instead of total prize of 2,325 mil credits + 700 gold, you get 775 gold. Too bad, I could have used the credits.

Source: http://yuripasholok.livejournal.com/3876806.html

Hello everyone,

Yuri Pasholok published yet another “wacky” Soviet design, this time for a tank that was supposed to destroy enemy tanks by… ramming. It was proposed in November 1942 by Soviet engineers E.R.Rass and P.L.Rozov from the No.1 NKAP plant (NKAP means People’s Commissariat of Aviation Industry of the USSR) – a plane factory.

The reason for the creation of this vehicle was that (as the report attached to the drawing explains) “ramming is one of the most effective and demoralizing way of dealing with enemy tanks”. Therefore, the designers proposed a vehicle with two hardened rams on each end. The armor was 50 to 75mm thick (on most exposed places). The ramming was to be performed at speeds between 25 and 30 km/h. The vehicle was to weigh 50-60 tons (from the report, Yuri Pasholok writes 75 tons) and was to have backup armament – 30mm guns. The design was intentionally made very streamlined and sleek for maximum resistance to shells.

Needless to say, this proposal was not accepted.

Source: Russian support site (via Loyolla from Ponyushnya, thank you)

Please note that this policy seems to apply only to bonus codes specifically.

Hello everyone,

looks like an interesting policy change took place on RU server (given the nature of the change, it’s fully expected to happen on other servers as well).

Basically, if you have a premium tank in your garage and get another one (for example by bonus code, or you win it in some event like the TOG we had not long ago), you will not be compensated with the tank’s price in gold anymore. Instead, you will recieve credits, using the ratio of 1:400.

An example: if you have a tank worth 1000 gold in your garage and get another one (for example by bonus code), you will instead of 1000 gold now get 400k credits. But if you bought the 1000 gold tank again in the premium shop, you’d get 1000 gold.

Discounts still apply as before, eg. if you were to get the 1000 gold mentioned in the example above and the tank was on 50 percent discount from an event, a bundle and such, you would get only 50 percent compensation (eg. 200k).

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3615224.html

Thanks go to the_komp for this batch of leaks :) Unfortunately, we still only have models and armor, no characteristics.

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3615224.html

Hello everyone,

here are the 9.5 medals, which are tied to individual missions (you can see the awards representing all vehicle classes and 4 steps). There’s also a medal presumably for the acquisition of the girl crew.

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Source: VK Wotleaks community

Some are still missing, but otherwise, the description is pretty self-explanatory I would say :)

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