Size Matters and How can it affect YOU

Hello everyone,

first, I apologize for the length of this post, but I humbly suggest it for your attention, because it concerns YOU personally as well. Today, we are going to talk about sizes. No, not THOSE kinds of sizes, but file size, client sizes. Have you ever thought about what the updating of World of Tanks does to internet?

Currently (patch 8.11), WoT client size is cca 13,5 Gb – you can check yourselves. If it’s significantly more, delete the content of the “Updates” folder (yes, you can do that safely). Some mods increase the size of the client significantly as well (model rework, the “Winter Mod” and such), but that is not really a concern here.

13,5 gigs – that’s quite manageable, right? Well… for now. There are rough estimates as to how big the client will be, when everything (maps, tanks) is reworked into HD. Last time I’ve seen, this estimate is around 80 gigs I think. Think about it: 80 gigabytes of World of Tanks client. Obviously, that’s not a problem for existing players (they will be “fed” via patches in parts and won’t have to download this all at once, unless they do something stupid and compromise the client integrity by using some shitty bad-written mods). It’s the new players, for whom this is an issue.

Obviously, there is also a price to pay on the internet update level. Not that long ago, Wargaming moved a server from Telia-operated Germany and (at least in theory) eliminated some of the nasty chokepoints that caused lags, but even so, I know for a fact that when a major patch comes out, the traffic reaches 300 gigs per second (this data is a bit older, 8.10 or so). To compare, this is like a MAJOR DDOS attack on the internet. The infamous “lags on patch day” (and a few days afterwards) are a reality, not a myth, caused by massive strain on the web. And now imagine the client to be 4-5 times bigger.

Consequences

I am sure that some of you by now are already considering the magnitude of the issue. This train however has left long time ago – the decision to re-work World of Tanks into HD was taken and there is no going back. This decision too comes with a price of course. Several, in fact.

- the first price we already noticed is the announced lack of many new tanks in 2014. If I count it correctly, we will see 14 new vehicles in 2014 (not counting splits and redesignations of existing vehicles, includes premiums though). I might be off by one I think, because in one case I am not sure. Compare it to the numbers of new tanks in 2013. Quite different numbers, no? Of course, the official (and trutful) reason is that the modelling department is busy, but make no mistake, client size plays a role in this as well.

- second price appeared yesterday. Did you notice Storm announcing that Wargaming is thinking of removing 10 “worst” maps. Again, the official reason is to remove bad maps from the game – and that’s logical. I think many people have issues with certain maps, such as the Sacred Valley. This map is infamous for being unbalanced and generally speaking, but the important point is…

“If 10 maps get removed, what else does?”

It was mentioned by Storm (in passing and in an unrelated answer, but nevertheless) that one of the reasons for removing those maps is “so we don’t have so much material to rework to HD”. I firmly believe that this line of thinking (instead of alternatives – such as optimizing the methods of content download and re-work) – are the path to damnation. There were subtle hits at removing even other content from the game (nothing specific, so don’t panic yet, but there is clear influence of the future game Armored Warfare, that makes do with very pretty graphics, but much fewer tanks – 90 or so). And so, we get to the third price to pay.

- strict limits on future content. Now, I am not an engineer. I am not a programmer, nor am I an IT guy, so chances are, there are many, many of you, readers, who know these matters better than me. I simply believe that in the age of 60gb Elder Scrolls and 60gb Titanfall, having a potentially 80gb client (keep in mind this is only if you download EVERYTHING in HD, which will be optional). I will get to that a bit later, back to the content.

The major upcoming tank content, that however won’t make it in 2014, is:

- more French tanks (specifically, medium and heavies)
- the Sturmtiger line
- EU tree

Or…. are they? Let’s see.

French tanks – the AMX-30 line might not make it into the game at all. Why? Simple. It has no tier 8 and dubious tier 9. Very easy to cancel and there have been hints that this might actually be the case. Heavies are a bit easier.

The Sturmtiger line is like Wargaming’s own vapourware, announced several times over the years, but not coming this year and let’s face it, balancing the massive derp is not easy, I am sure that if there was a push to cut future content, this would be one of the first casualities.

And… the EU tree. Italian, Swedish, Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian tanks. Two out of three biggest communities on EU server (Polish, Czechoslovaks) are waiting for their vehicles still and there is significant support for Italian tanks as well. Do you really think Wargaming wouldn’t dare cancel it for the sake of keeping the client size? Think again. There have been rumors…

Italian tanks are probably “safe” (at least in some form, they historically fought and are needed), but everyone else – not so much.

Solutions

Well, I am sure Wargaming knows about all the options (contrary to popular belief, they are not idiots), so – quickly for you.

First, let’s talk about sizes. Current HD model sizes (with HD textures) range from cca 100 (Sherman) to 120 Mb (Maus) a piece. Now, if you set your details to “high” and do not switch the HD (ultra-high details) on, the size of the model is reduced to cca 30 Mb.

What can be done to manage the client size and traffic in general:

- obviously, the first and most important point, is to make HD optional. This is actually much more complicated than it sounds. Wargaming isn’t a company run from a garage, it has its shareholders and whatnot. As I wrote several times before, Wargaming is basically divided into two parts: the developers and producers. The production part has a HUGE say in what content gets released (specific example is the “commandeering” of regular tanks for premium status, because hightier premiums sell well – you will see that this year). What I am trying to say: the decision to rework all the tanks into HD models and textures was already taken, it was and is NOT cheap (heavens know how much money does it cost) and as such, it has to be “economically viable” – in other words, the decision has to pay for itself. What this means is that while HD textures might be optional, they must not be discouraged, so at least a certain part of the playerbase does in fact use them.

- second idea would be to make HD models available (and downloaded) only for the tanks you actually have in your garage. Sounds stupid? Well, think about it. How often do you buy new tanks, especially on higher tiers? How hard would it be to implement a mechanism, where a HD model is downloaded automaticaly (IF you want that) when you buy that respective tank. You say you want HD textures for all tanks nonetheless? Sure, you could manually download them from some off-site with a quick installer, so it’s user friendly. The main idea is however

a) not to clog your client with HD models you don’t need even IF you can run them
b) shift the net load over time to ease the pressure on the net infrastructure

The basic idea is this: if you can afford a good computer to run HD properly, you can afford a good line as well. Of course, that does excludes rich people in the middle of nowhere and whatnot, but realistically: how many are those?

- third idea would be to download HD textures manually and separately, from some off-site. Maybe even with a delay. How about releasing the HD texture pack 3-5 days later after the patch separately? Those who really want it would have time to accomodate, while not being delayed by massive traffic spikes.

- fourth idea would be to start strictly regulating mods. You might ask: “what do mods have to do with this?” – the answer is simple: if you fuck your client up with a bad mod, the launcher will force you to re-download an entire client, creating potentially pointless traffic, that could have been avoided. I don’t know any statistics on this (the numbers might be marginal), but it’s an idea.

So, what do YOU think? Would you want sacrifice future content to keep the size of the client low?

157 thoughts on “Size Matters and How can it affect YOU

  1. My client is only 12.8GB, even with sound mods and XVM installed. Should I be worried? This is after clearing the updates folder out.

  2. Your pointing out the install size of the client however this is different to the compressed version you would download. Future HD tanks will also not be as large as the current as they will not need all new textures and sharing texture will help alleviate client size.

    • “Future HD tanks will also not be as large as the current as they will not need all new textures and sharing texture will help alleviate client size.”

      That i find highly doubtful.

      • I mean the size increase from the initial wave of HD tanks is GOING TO BE Larger as the supporting files (textures) are not currently there. I’m not saying the tank model files are going to get smaller.

      • Either way, if you want to install the client right now you have to download around 6 GB, while you’ll find on the hard disk 12-13GB as you said.

        So that’s already a compression of almost 50%.

        To add, i am sure they’ll decide to make HD models additional and on a separate optional pack.

        If the problem however is how much WoT takes on your hard disk, then well, no complain is valid here, hard disk don’t cost much, and they throw at you 1 Tera hd or even more for really low prices.

        • what about those of us that like fast load times and so have an SSD. I have a 250GB SSD that works well. but if they pull this kind of BS, thats about 1/3 of my SSD being eaten by one game.

          • Well move it to a HDD, I have a 128gb SSD and I’m not complaining. All my steam games are on the HDD and if WoT moves there too, no problem.

          • You don’t need the whole game to be on SSD, I have parts of WoT on HDD and parts on SSD, so that important bits are loaded quickly but the rest isn’t important and can be on HDD :)

    • Will not be as large? Imagine one tank having about 100mb in size after the HD rework… now just take a small tech tree like the Chinese: how many tanks they have? Hmm, about 15, 16? Take each tank and add the 100 mb and you will come up with a big number when you calculate all other tech trees too..

  3. I am already running everything on minimum….It can’t get any lower then i am already…and I don’t expect it to change…I’ll stay on the lowest possible settings. The game still looks good even with the minimum settings. It doesn’t bother me. My only objective is to be able to play the game normally. i don’t use mods…frankly don’t need them.

    • I’m sorry but if you read this blog you might remember that they want to move graphics to shader 2.0 so i might think of an upgrade in your case

      • Well fuck….then Wg can buy me more powerfull computer..that would be nice..sice I spent some money for prem tanks they can return the favour :P

        • same thing happened in eve. they had to upgrade the graphics, and with that was a dropping of the lower end models that were about 8 gens back. they still got a lot of complaints about it.

          But that’s part of development, and it was somewhat inevitable. although world of tanks can’t quite so easily do the same thing as eve did where they offered a promo to buy a decent grade graphics card (560TI) for a set amount of ingame currency.

    • Buy a new PC. Using garbage from last century isn’t particularly good idea anyway.

      • es, of course. But when that “garbage” can run every other game fine and you don’t have a buck left after your rent and bills, buying some new gear really stays low priority…

  4. Woah! Thanks for that Update folder trick! I got over 10 gigabytes of valuable SSD capacity back because of this! :)
    This article however does worry me. 80gig HD client?! Sucks if I have to switch my gameclient to normal HDD or buy a bigger SSD just to get all that sweet eyecandy that WG will offer in future. :(

      • Doesnt it solve the micro-freezes problem? Content which is not in RAM [for example destroyed tank models] are loaded from HDD/SDD to memory… and gues which is faster ;)

    • The only improvement you get with any game on a SSD is loading time basically. FPS increase is not significant. In addition, you do not really want a frequently updated game on a SSD for lifespan reason (With modern SSD, this is less true, but still).

      • SSD lifespan…lol yeah. Writing at full capacity 24/7 you will eventually manage to reach that limit after 10-12 years….chances are some other part than the memory chips of the SSD will croak before that happens.

        Whats the longest time you kept a physically spinning HDD with mechanical parts alive in continous use?

        • Not true. Enterprise SLC NAND flash can endure about 100,000 write cycles and MLC flash only about 10,000 cycles. Constantly flipping the gates you could wear them out in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, and believe me, I’ve seen it happening during resiliency tests.

          Now, if you add to that the “tricks” of the controller and virtual memory layer, then yes, during normal use the life expectancy is between 5 and 15 years.

      • Ethan_ – false.
        It barely improves loading time of the battle, but it eliminates the micro-freezes you get when spotting a new tank or destroying one.
        Besides, “frequently updated”? Dude, get real.

        • My OS on SSD, all games on HDD 7200rpm, wd caviar black to be specific, I’m not experiencing or I didn’t noticed any micro freeze on spotting or destroying one. But will check again later and focus on it just to make sure. My loading time is sufficient and mostly one of the 1st one there waiting for other players before countdown starts at 30.

  5. MMO games get bigger with every patch, that is logical and yet unavoidable.
    But Storm’s comment about removing 10 worst maps… is it a sign of more content removing?
    If you look at it, 10 worst maps… basically you would be stuck with more same maps, like, instead of every third game being El Halluf, every second one will be…
    I don’t think it is a good idea, and WG should have thought about HOW to implement HD models before they already prepared the patch(9.0)

    • it maybe be content removing but does this also means
      that by removing the 10 “worst” maps they plan introdusing new ones in the space of these maps?

  6. I’m still not very comfortable with removing some maps just because they don’t wanna remake all of them. For me it’s part of the game. I have those maps I like more and the ones I dislike, however I have fun on both.
    Every map has a side, which each individual player is more comfortabel with. However starting on the other side gives an extra motiviation for me.
    Next thing is the map rotation.. right now we only play 5-6 maps a day. Sometimes 6 out of 11 matches are one map. This sucks. Now imagien this with even less maps..
    Despite the fact HD models on non HD maps look a bit deplaced, I can enjoy this even more than playing HD tanks on just 3 maps overall (a bit overdone)

    Maybe they should get seperate Downloadservers, which I guess is an option, too. So downloading new versions doesnt bother the ones with fast internet speed.
    Well and the acutal games gettin bigger is with every new game..
    But I hope that WG won’t make a full client download with these appromixmated 80GB just to make sure no problems occure, since I need 2,5 days to get these 80GB on my pc.

  7. The issue I see with reducing the number of maps is that the game already feels like it has only 5 maps anyway.

    My usual daily rotation is, Ruinber, Ruinberg onfire, Himmelsdorf, Himmelsdorf winter, El Halluf.

    Its a rare holiday to spend some time in another map…being REALLY locked to those maps would feel like hell…

    • Wanna change ur rotation? I had the last days almost entirely Sewerogorsk, Ruinberg, Hidden Village, Karelia, Swamp and Tundra. -.-

        • i kinda hate windstorm becouse it ALWAYS loads so danm slowly and i ALWAYS get in the game after some play time has already passed…this shit happens ALWAYS..but only on this map

      • Lucky dude, I got the same maps as Hokum. With the exception that I haven’t got himmel in a while. During this year I haven’t been a single time in Karelia or Sacred Valley and I have seen the latest map ONCE!.

        It’s all ruineberg, el halluf, ruineberg fire, el halluf every day over and over again, makes me feel sick.

    • I’ve counted them from battle log exported from vbaddict.net. From 1090 battles it is clear that two versions of one map makes them twice as frequent.

      Steppes 37x ………. Himmelsdorf 24x, Himmelsdorf (winter) 26x, Ruinberg 27x, Ruinberg on Fire 31x ……. Siegfried line 17x

      I tend to perceive the most hated map as most frequent, but there is no clear correlation (Abbey, Northwest, Tundra are among them, Mountain pass, Arctic region and Komarin are surprisingly among most rare)

    • I made some stats from 1090battles. Ruinber, Ruinberg onfire, Himmelsdorf, Himmelsdorf winter, El Halluf have average occurence. That makes Ruinberg and Himmelsdorf twice as frequent if you count them as one map!

      Most frequent for me are Steppes, Malinovka, Highway, Tundra, Serene coast, Airfield that I played 36-38 times. Least frequent are Siegfried line, Mountain pass, Karelia and Komarin played 17-21 times.
      Ruinberg as one map 59 times, Himmel 50 times.

    • I seem to get every map but Ensk and Siegfried Line regularly. Which sadly those two rare maps are my two favorite maps.

      Oh and on Tier 4-6 Widepark is even less common than Ensk and Siegfried Line

      • If I remembered my past few games, my maps are: himmelsdorf (encounter north spawn), winter himmelsdorf (standard noth spawn) Komarin (south base), ruinberg on fire (north base), Komarin (north base), ruinberg (south base). Those are rotating more recently specially those map with alternative theme.

  8. Why are there so many MBs for models while our HDDs are not ready for it yet?

    The idea that makes only the tanks in your garage HD is the best.

    Also, I think that they could have done the HD tanks after implementing the European tree…

        • I suggest you get your head out of your arse and stop comparing a virtual good to a real good that will benefit you considerably more than a tank in WoT. Besides, storage devices are cheaper than they ever were before. You get 1TiB disks thrown at you, when you buy even the cheapest PCs nowadays. Computer Gaming is not a hobby for people who have problems with getting enough money to not starve.
          Logically, the concern of WG isn’t disk space used, but rather bandwidth/time used to download the data and probably loading the data to the RAM for a match. Downloading 80GiB just to test a game? Will people do that? My answer is: Yes. Most people don’t have a problem with that. It just collides with the “instant gratification”-philosophy and if you’re not dumb about it, you can always get away with a “slim client” for new users, which prioritizes the download of certain components (low tier maps, low tier tanks) and establishes a working client, while downloading the other data incrementally in the background, with a low-bandwidth useage while playing and high useage when still in launcher mode. That ain’t hard to do, really.

    • Nope. As SS already said: WoT Patches have the same influence on the web as massive DDOS attacks – which means even completely unrelated sites/games get affected. i wouldnt wonder if big WoT patches produce the same lagg-spikes for WT, LoL, WoW and such as it does for WoT.

      And btw: i would be quite surprised if the update servers arent already different servers than those for game hosting.

      • It’s not only WoT.
        Bigger WT (or insert any big MMO here) patches make the same effect, the whole infrastructure in the EU is outdated…

        • Wow, you have no idea. WoT is a speck of dust on the daily traffic routine in the european networks. A WoT-Patchday has zero influence on the available total bandwidth and the bottleneck is the update server. Always.

      • Here’s a funny fact: It’s more than 6 months since i last played wot.
        All updates till now had no influence on any game i downloaded, i could always see any clips and i never had any problems loading any websites on those WoT update days.

        I don’t think you really understand how small wot is on the internet.
        The only problem that may appear is with sites hosted on the same server cluster as WoT.

  9. War Thunder GF beta is 11 GB with tanks and planes and…
    The biggest plane file is 71 MB (G8N a HUGE japanese bomber), the biggest tank is 26 MB (T-34 mod 41).
    However they use a completely different engine, maybe WG will implement better texture compression in 9.x.

    • They have already a very good engine with the bigworld but they just dont usw it because they had to open theyr secret basedata oft wot so that everyone would See what bullshit they hat written in this game…

  10. Well SS nice observations, fine read.

    One thought I had while reading: I downloaded ESO client and was shocked by the size. 20 something, close to 30 GB download. I was like wtf and delayed downloading it(I have 5/1mbps net package anyway, too slow)…

    Also about SturmTiger. That’s their problem cause they decided to make balanced tank(sometimes buff/nerf for balance reasons and sometimes “historical” cause it suits them). War Thunder got away with that one, they simply said we will make historical planes and tanks and they don’t give a shit if Sturmtiger has a building blasting rocket mortar shell. They will make it one day(of course with big reload, I believe reload times very big indeed, it’s a big ass shell)

  11. The second Idea has some appeal, however it is flawed in one aspect: In the battle there are more tanks than just your own. If you want to see those in pretty HD, you have to download them all, as there is no way o predicting what tanks will get pushed into your battle by mighty MM. :/

    Fourth idea applies to ppl thoughlessly overwriting stuff of the client, instead of putting it into res_mods or (if unavoidable) adding stuff as seperate files that wont be checked by the launcher. If you use JSGME or a similar mod installer which backs up your original files and remember to deactivate the mods on version change, this problem can be avoided quite easily.

    • “The second Idea has some appeal, however it is flawed in one aspect: In the battle there are more tanks than just your own. If you want to see those in pretty HD, you have to download them all, as there is no way o predicting what tanks will get pushed into your battle by mighty MM. :/”

      Yes. BUT – be honest with yourself: How many times in the heat of battle can you tell between HD (ultra-high) and only “high” settings? If you are not sure, test it on the test server, mate. You will see that the difference on enemy tanks is quite small.

      • Almost as often as I look on the small details on my own tank, tbh. In sniper mode or close combat.

        I think the point is either no HD or all, tending to the latter, as the HD models look nice in the garage but in battle they make nearly no difference at all to me. Having GBs of bandwith and memory wasted for passing glances is not very economic for my thinking. :/

      • I dont thik that the real problem of optional HD models is in their visual recognition in battle, but in armor models. As you shown us before, there are some significant changes in armor of HD models, which depends directly on amount of availible polygons. Im quite sure, that serverside operations like penetration tests will use new HD model with more polygons, but if you dont have HD model in your client, you dont have the HD armor model as well, so your client dont know about different armor thickness on weakspots especialy.
        Im not sure if reticle color depending on armor/penetration ratio (red, orange, green) is also calculated serverside or not, but as it doesnt take distatnce, angle, etc. in account (variables known to server) and also works without delay even when not synchronized with server, it seems to me that it is client side and it uses armor models in client. Therefore if you have different armor model in client and on server, your client will show you false information about your penetration chances of spot you are aiming at. This will cause confusion mainly for new players and WG seems to try to avoid confusing things as we saw for example on HESH mechanism or decision about different HE mechanism for artilery.

  12. The mods are not a problem. Since WG doesn’t make them they are unofficial which means that you take your own risk installing them. The solution is to copy the WoT folder without mods as a backup. Seems easy to me….

    • This. I always backup the client after each patch

      After that i can install the mod-packages – if they are available after the patch

    • It starts to be their problem when the users messes up the game client and it would be needed to redownload it whole (in the worst case).

      I think they should create an official mod gallery with mod manager, that would help to reduce such problems.

      • Better and easier option – make a gallery of game files which are influenced by mods. A mod screwed up your /res folder? No worries, jump to worldoftanks.eu and download this particular folder only.

  13. Third idea is the best, in my opinion. Everybody is free to decide whether or not they want the HD models.
    Plus the delay thing decrease the load of server upon release date. Seems fine to me.

  14. I really don’t care about size of client. Nowadays, there is no problem with disk space,with current size/prize ratio where 1TB discs are below 50€.

  15. The download likely won’t be massive and it’ll take WG absolute ages to actually make all of the tanks in HD. The reason why Titanfall had such a massive size is because the developers are idiots and made you download the audio uncompressed: So, instead of getting a client in the region of 20 GB or something, you got an extra 28 GB of audio that you don’t need or want.

  16. The solution to “If you screw up your client with mods, the launcher has you download the whole game again”-problem is not regulating the mods!
    The real issue is not that mods screw up your game client – people can do that quite easily without mods – the issue is, that even the integrity check run of the client is less than “working”. It neglects half of the client files, simply because they are not delivered in a pkg file.
    So the solution that i (as an IT guy) propose for this specific problem, that admittedly creates huge amounts of unnecessary traffic, would be the same as in World of Warcraft: enable the launcher to really fix the game and by fix i mean a process like “your audio folder is missing? let me download those 120 MB for you”.

    They could also tackle some modding-issues that lead to those situations (gnomefathers sounds appearently just dont really work if you install them in res_mods instead of res, which i think is a client bug) but providing a really good repair tool has the advantage that it can also fix file issues not related to mods, which is why i think it would be the superior solution.

    • Problem with audio files for the client is that you have to have then ALL in the same location…either in res_mods (that includes copying the games other audio files there as well) or un res/audio.

      I hated this way of having to do mods this way since it was introduced in early 0.7.sth….

      • As i said: That would not be much of an issue if the launcher was able to correctly repair every single client file.

        You are right about the audio folder though.

    • Storm (?) said once that only cca <5% of the playerbase use mods. How many of those achieve to screw their client up? Not many I think. The idea of launcher fixing the files is awesome, much better than a folder gallery I was thinking about (from which you could download any single of the main folders of the client).

  17. Good, but hard thing to do is to make in-process content downloading. If you meet a tank, which has HD model available in battle – it’s HD version will start downloading at a certain slow rate (if you have HD models turned on). Or just simply make additional content download to run in the background, so that you could play as soon as main content is ready, and than it won’t really matter how long all the rest will keep downloading.

  18. First of all HD models are not supposed to “pay for themselves” in the way You are talking about. Yes, there is a reason to make them, but it is not the reason You suggest in Your post (at least in my opinion).

    Let’s be honest: there is a group of shallow players (yes, I DO mean to offend some people) that play only for the looks. This is the same group of players that is comparing WoT and WT only by how these games look, and NOT by gameplay features like pacing, mechanics etc. These HD models pay for themselves simply by holding those players in the game or bringing back the “eyecandy people”, and in many cases what it means is that players who can afford really expensive gaming PC to run the game on “all the HD You can get” are also more likely these players that are more willing to pay for their convenience (no, not for winning, WoT does not have P2W yet!).

    Is there ANY good reason to make using non-HD content less convenient for players? Nope! Let me explain why, ok? ;) OK!
    First of all there are those “richer” players that can afford playing on premium accounts all the time, buying permanent cammo, retraining crew for gold etc. It’s great that WG can earn something on those guys, and these people don’t mind throwing in some money just to save time (especially when grinding for something takes more time than earning money required for converting exp and money to buy them, it’s as simple as that). The thing is that these guys need other people to shoot at and play with, so the best way to do that is just by making as many people playing the game as You can, and this is also achieved by making as many machines as possible run the game. Why? The same reason as with the rich players that can afford many things – players that can NOT afford a AAA title every two months will jump into a free to play title most likely and will be just playing. Penalties for NOT using HD features would be an opposite of that and would actually decrease the amount of “targets that play for free”. And You do need a crowd of targets to keep these “HD – pay to skip – players” entertained.

    In other words:
    You are looking on the issue from a bad perspective. It is not wargamings problem to ensure that payers actually use their HD content. The problem is that some people will not play the game without the HD content and actually will only use this form of game client if they’re to stay in the game. That is wargamings problem – make a high-end content for people that need it to keep on playing and most of all … paying. ;)

  19. The thing i picked up most over the client size is the “stress on the internet”

    It’s constantly being invested in.

    Yes on patch days and about a week after there is lag spikes left right and centre, but as WG say, it’s not there fault, its peering, (your connection going from one network to another)

    Usually it’s crappy internet companies that are to blame for this, as there peering management or the servers themselves are shite, improve these peering points and the client size issue would be a smaller issue as there would be fewer lag spikes and better connections all round.

  20. Oh .. and one more thing:

    A simple solution to client size issue causing very high network traffic: use torrent technology better. How? Starting from the patch day for about 2 weeks just buy extra servers in every country that will simply seed the file for download. Internet is called a network for a reason and distributed source for such file would also cause traffic to spread symmetrically. This way You could in fact download a client file from 10 or 20 sources at the same time. Also what could be done is to make clients also seeding the file for the time Your computer downloads the file. Why? mostly because Your download leaves Your upload stream empty for the download period. Why not utilize that to some degree?

    The problem is that many internet users have paranoia then it comes to safety and will not want to seed the file no matter what. To bad, as this would solve ALL the problems with server traffic “on the patch week”.

    • WT has the option of torrent updating (actually, IIRC it is set as the default one), you can limit both download and upload speed so it doesn’t steal all your internet. Torrent downloading would be awesome.

      PS: Pozdrowienia z grodu Kraka ;)

  21. Personally I don’t care about HD. It’s clear that HD is being introduced because of War Thunder. Years of whine about graphics resulted in introducing HD models and sticking with PigWorld engine that is going to be backed up with Havoc.
    Sounds like a Frankenstein Monster, doesn’t it?

    About technical things: currently there are two directories: res and res_mods. There is nothing against having 3rd one, like res_hd, into which, on demand, HD content could be downloaded on demand, either from game client (that is harder option), or from launcher (easier one).

    If WG would implement proper torrent protocol, they could make WoT self-distributing – for a small bonus in game for used upload bandwidth they could ask players to turn their WoT clients into update servers and distribute HD content using torrent protocol between clients.

    • 5GB upload – 50 gold?! or something like that.. 10GB – 50 gold.. but they need to deal with fake upload, some trackers solved that problem.
      A lot of people have bandwith for something like that.
      And users to be able to set a download directory separate from the instalation one. I would set it on another HDD so it will install quicker & I could upload without my game loading slowly.

      • Rather, knowing how cheap WG is, +10% to credits and exp.

        There shouldn’t be a problem with fake uploads since data that would be transferred are clearly described, and WG could distribute torrent files in normal, update and kind of trusted channel.

  22. “- second idea would be to make HD models available (and downloaded) only for the tanks you actually have in your garage. ”

    I’m guessing here, but:
    That would require them to make 2 different models of every tank they create and have created.
    being able to view the vehicles you don’t have as HD should also be a viable option right?

    Other games used to have that approach where you’d be able to download a separate high texture pack.
    I don’t think WG wants to put that amount of man hour into maintaining 2 versions of the same thing.

    Also the HD remake seems to have an actual impact on armor and what not, so it doesn’t seem to be as simple as just making 2 different graphical versions of the same tank.

    • They’re going to have to maintain HD and normal versions anyway, since a large part of the playerbase is still on toasters. For example, I am playing on a budget laptop from early 2011. I run the game at 25 fps on all minimum settings except draw distance. There’s certainly a lot of people like me among the poor students of rich countries, for who the price of a new computer is 2 months’ rent, and in developing countries where it’s half a year’s rent.

      • I may have missunderstood, but I thought they didn’t want to do that?
        But it would make sense if they had a separate “standard” client and a HD client.

  23. Fuck HD models, fuck HD maps and fuck new content. We need game optimization because now it looks like shit AND runs like shit.

  24. so i am a rich person with an 100MBit line and Intel i5/GTX660!? Wow, cool

    Come on you dont need to be rich to run a broadband internet line and buy a proper PC.
    100Mbit with phone flatrate costs me 35€/month and the whole new homebuilt PC was maybe 800€ once.

    • Being able to spend this kind of money without having to think of making cutbacks in essentials basically makes you a rich person, yes. :)

      It is always the problem of drawing the subjective line of rich and poor.

      • 800€ for a pc lifetime of 4 years additionally to the internet flat makes about 50€/month. So yes i can afford that for communication and i am a very rich man. ^^
        If i could buy me an own server for playing with an SDSL flat only for playing, maybe that would be “rich”.
        I dont think that people playing online games have an 1Mbit Internet with an old One-Core CPU.

        • “I dont think that people playing online games have an 1Mbit Internet with an old One-Core CPU.”
          Did you really wanted to offend me???
          (i’m almost what you described)

  25. Lists;

    Is there a list of the likley tanks for this year?

    and

    a list of the likly to be removed maps?

  26. This is an excessively alarmist article. Do patches create a ton of traffic? Sure. Just like patches for every other game ever. I think you have massively overestimated client size, but even ignoring that, you will never get massive amounts of people redownloading the whole thing at once. Fuck it up with a mod? 80 gig of traffic. Probably at 3-5 MB/s. This is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of the internet.

    Besides. As client size increases, so does investment in infrastructure. If infrastructure remained static and demand took off that would be one thing, but by the time this game’s client hits 80 gig (if it ever does), it will be no different from anything else. Even a few years ago a few gig took ages to download. Now? 13 gig reinstall downloads through steam done in an hour or two.

    Try to keep this alarmist nonsense off your otherwise great site.

  27. SS about the mods regulations. I think they need to rework the way the client repairs the game. They need to have more options like Full repair(Download all),Smart Repair (checks the checksums of the files and download only the ones that doesn’t not mach) and Manual Repair (You chose what to repair).

  28. If you want nice graphics be ready to pay the price.
    Downloading HD models from some different source is a nonsense. WG is not making a mod, its upgrading game client. Making people to download HD models and then installing them separately from the client will complicate things for users. In other words it will not be user friendly installation process. There should be possibility to download either regular client with option to upgrade it to HD later or HD straight away. That’s the only thing that can be done IMO.
    I think that it is not possible to reduce the size of a client without some revolution in this programing/rendering thingy. ALL modern, complex games are large in size. So either you deal with it or leave it.

  29. “- second idea would be to make HD models available (and downloaded) only for the tanks you actually have in your garage. ”

    It would mean that you have to fire up a connection and DL 100mb when you get a new tank (and potentially waiting about a minute or so on slower connections before seeing your bought tank in HD). Also it’d need some (more) clever file management, to delete the models that you sold.

    Btw, my input is that there will eventually be some saving even from WG’s side, probably. I thik the models can be packed more efficiently and unpacked only at client’s PC, which would save the traffic and leave only the players whining for bigger HDDs – but really, with the cheapest price/capacity ratio being at 2TB HDDs these days, it’s hardly an issue.

    • I hope they will also give an option or show some progress that you are downloading the HD content and only do that on garage. Some players with shitty connections like mine will be alarmed if my ping went 999 because client suddenly downloaded the HD content in the middle of the game when it saw enemy tank/friendly tank on HD or didn’t notify the user that it is downloading the content or tank you have in HD then proceed to start the battle.

  30. MMO clients are notoriously large! This should not be a problem as you CAN wait few hours to download a fresh client if you so much need one.

  31. sorry SS as you wrote, you are not an engineer/programmer/it guy so plz don’t write about these subjects, this is just stupid and shows total lack of understanding of networking and the internet architecture, regarding the downloading part and how it’s a DDoS on the internet.

  32. I understand the issue of the incoming WoT changes and why they happen.
    But hell, I have a very negative attitude when it comes to removing diversity.

    I started to think.Do this HD models really worth it since only a small part of the playerbase will be able to use them?Does it worth killing some parts of the game(removing maps, much less content over time and so on) just to add those?Does it really trade off?

    I’m already pissed after I red yesterday about what Storm said with the removal of maps…

    In my honest opinion, although this HD-ify proccess sounds cool, I think that in the end it will fail.
    And yeah, I am one of those who preffer a stable, balanced game instead of an eye-candy show off.

  33. second price appeared yesterday. Did you notice Storm announcing that Wargaming is thinking of removing 10 “worst” maps. Again, the official reason is to remove bad maps from the game

    This could ALSO translate like this :

    -10 shit maps
    - forcing people to camp (at least at high tier)
    - camp the entire 15minutes on those shit campy maps such as redshire, while good and adequate maps end in 5-7mins.
    -compare server strain for 15minutes vs server strain for 5-7minutes round.

    Basically server resources are consumed for what? to camp and end in a draw. That is a waste. That cluster will consume bandwidth and power, just so people will camp until the end of the round and talk random things on chat.

  34. Storm in a tea cup – even if the full client download will be 40GB (compressed), and it wont be, the full client is downloaded comparatively infrequently so it is of little concern. The patches would still typically be around 2-3 GB MAX so it isn’t that big of a deal. And you might notice that the game client and patches are downloaded using torrents, while I haven’t profiled the network traffic I am willing to bet that the use of torrents is so that they can have download servers dotted around the place to distribute the traffic across a number of network providers. At any rate 300Gb/s is nothing really, go ask someone like Google that run several multiples of that 24/7 in just a handful of data centres.

  35. I used to download game patches with my telephone modem (max 5KB/s) so I don’t see the problem with a big download for me personally as the internet speed had increased exponentially. Yes I have to wait a little longer until the complete game is downloaded, but I don’t mind that. Hard disks in computers are also big enough these days so that everybody can miss 80GB.

    What I would not like is the removable of the maps. Even if the maps are the least liked maps in the game. All those maps bring enormous variety to the game. Removing them would make the game far more repetitive. And I don’t care for the amount of tanks in the game. I haven’t even researched 25% of them. So I wont have time to play with the new tanks anyway.

  36. I think that mods are not the big problem … what if I get a new fresh copy of WINDOWS and I have to install all the things in my computer including WoT client? … what if I get a virus and fucks all .exe files and fucks all my programs including WoT client? … what if my hard drive burns because of “mods” (how a stupid asshole from Wargaming Costumer Support said) and I have to buy a new hard drive??? … what if I buy a new computer for better graphics??? There are many things that could influence that download … What you said with alternative HD model download just for the tanks from my garage is the best solution …

  37. I can’t understand how people get scared about the “impact” WoT has over the internet.
    Dudes, Youtube uploads and streams a lot more GB per second than WoT even dreams to….And youtube is just one site. There is also vimeo, twitch, and tons of porn sites.

    WoT has NO influence on the internet speeds. When WoT updates something only their servers get laggy because they are in the same servercluster.

  38. i dont think wg will make it a must to download 80gbs of hd stuff.. most of east european/russian players have calculators running on lowest quality… and the ppl who play for fun and not hardcores, wont buy new computer for a single.game

  39. От блядь тема – размер клиента.
    Тупо сжав в тупом зипе _текущий_ клиент (pkg файлы) – размер уменьшается в 1.5-2 раза. Текущий клиент, который продолжает прекрасно работать без потери качества. Ну а если применить специальные методы сжатия, то можно ужать раз в 10 с минимальными потерями качества.
    Правда время загрузки/старта карт увеличится.

    • Same here, 15 km outside a major city in Germany.

      I would pay almost any price to get a 100mbit/s connection, but no way because all the telcos and providers don’t want to upgrade the connection here.

      But don’t worry, all the guys here that are telling that 80gb is not much sure have fast connections.

      In the long run WG will have to change the distribution mechanism to a torrent based and lasting mode.

      Why is it necessary to download an update/patch completely on the day it comes out?

      Why not offering an ongoing download mode that takes a week or so to complete, but with low bandwidth consumption? Even so that you can play the actual version without any performance loss on your connection?

      If the client grows, we need a better mechanism for the distribution that suits all players, not only the ones that have the fastest connections.

  40. I find the HD models to be much of a muchness. It doesn’t really matter that you have a HD model when you are shooting from 500m away because your system isn’t going to render it in that detail. Good for the garage but useless elsewhere.

    This is the same for any game in fact. There is no point in potentially slowing your system for prettiness when what you want to be is effective.

  41. Removal of terrible maps from the rotation is something that’s done in every other video game, in WoT this is long overdue. Pearl River and especially Sacred Valley are just terrible by design.

  42. Let’s be honest, WG has taken a decision that sounds like invading Russia with Hitler style… So… A “Battle of Berlin” by playerbase has become inevitable. Let’s say, in next 2, or 3 years, WoT will die.

    Like everything else, it’ll die and buried away.

  43. 1) New Tanks

    WoT doesn’t need more new tanks! It actually has more than you need. I have 24 tier X tanks from all tank lines, and imo everything that was added on top of the USSR, U.S., French and German tank lines is superfluous, redundant, doesn’t really add significant new game play styles and usually is underpowered or unbalanced. I consider the new Russian tier X mediums and the 2nd U.S. tank line (leading to the T57 HT) worthy additions, but neither the British, nor the Chinese or Japanese tanks cut it – nor do the new German mediums (-> Leo 1) or TDs (-> WT E-100).

    I wouldn’t shed a tear if these got removed from the game altogether – BUT: I would of course want to see a compensation for them. I have converted free XP worth around 100€ for my British, Chinese, Japanese and German tier x tanks. If these would get removed, I would of course want to have that back. That would be around 700€. Not going to happen, since I certainly wouldn’t want to have it back in WoT gold form (why should I ever need gold worth 700€ when there is nothing left I could and would spend it for)?

    2) HD Models

    You cannot only download those HD models you are having in your garage – you need to download all you will potentially see in battle, which does not only depend on the battle tier of your own tanks; You also need to consider troll platoons.

  44. Quality > quantity in this business. Think about the game experience of new players, that just started playing WoT. They doesn’t care if there are 400 or 4000 vehicles in the game. They want cool explosions, pretty maps and tank models, awesome sound, plus a good tutorial and game balance that is not too penalizing. So for them its better if the game has fewer, but better maps and tanks. Download time is extremely important too. Remember that WoT is a free game, new players didn’t invest anything and they have nothing to lose if they abandon the game early.
    And now think who is more important for WG? We, the 1% of the most active players, that are already their paying clients or the silent rest or maybe the new, potential clients?

  45. But since each texture is getting smaller, or broken up, then I don’t think the increase will be as large as you imagine. On top of that as the tank textures become more broken then you might find that some are able to be reused much much more than previously possible. De-Duplication of textures might make it not so bad..

    my CT folder (Current build) is 14.22 gig
    my regular wot build is 12.59 gig..

    I agree with the current guess.
    Say there are 300 tanks, and right now what 6? have HD textures.. so that’s 270 meg per tank.. or about 80+ gig by the time you remove duplicate hulls…

    But I think WG could play it smart here and really pull some of these textures in for re-use. If they don’t then 80 gig is too big and they would need to give users an option of low-res download.

    I have 1.2tb (60 gig left) and I know I don’t want to fill my drive with just that one game.
    My kids have SSD’s… Not nearly enough room on those boxes for an extra 70/80 gig.

  46. When i read ”size matters” i firstly thought the size feel of the tanks. I think the realistic size feel of the tanks is more important then the HD models.

  47. Interesting post.

    However, I do not think the game client size will rise to 80gb.

    WoT does have a lot of content but I do not think it will top 50gb at the most.

    As for removing crap maps, doing so does not mean they will stop adding new maps…

  48. well if the client will get that big then i would have to say Bye bye to all my anime :( Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo D:

  49. Doesn’t every country have really fast internet of speeds 100mbps and above at affordable price ready for public?

    Only countries that doesn’t have fast internet are North Korea and other 3rd world country like the Philippines.

    I don’t think 80gb is really a problem. o_O

    • In the USA it is.

      The internet providers are full of shit there. They have bandwith limit.

    • Doesn’t every country have really fast internet of speeds 100mbps and above at affordable price ready for public?

      Countries – yes
      individual players – NO – and that’s the point.

      It’s not about the size on the harddisk.

      It’s about the time it takes to download and as described somewhere here about the graphics card HW and RAM speed and so on.

  50. Well… to me it does not matter how big the client is. As long as it aint over 100GB I can make do.

    And download matters even less, my poort country (Bulgaria) at least has badass internet, so no care there.

    However SS, didnt WG announce that their new models and textures are shared between nations? As in the first few tanks of each nation will be very big in size, but since consequent tanks use same modules (which look the same on tanks) and the same pool of textures, it should not be that much data.

  51. a) not to clog your client with HD models you don’t need even IF you can run them
    80Gb doesn’t clog anything
    My 500€ (Finnish prices are super high, remember that) came with a 2Tb hard drive.

  52. I would just like to note that on my connection. (Which btw is impossible to get faster here, US Net infastrcuture, eh) by my extremely calculations it would take roughly two weeks of 24/7 downloading to complete, and more likely around a month or two considering how lazy I tend to be with getting downloads done. Yeah, there is a pretty good chance that if it came to a full reinstall of the game at that point it just wouldn’t even be worth my time, regardless of how much I want to play. (Not to mention the huge burden on my Hard drive space which is a factor for me)

    • f2p game when u have to keep ur 400W machine running 24/7×14 is more then most games in shoops atm i think

  53. ok, one thought. 80mb for HD model. 30 tanks for team. i know its rare, but immagine there are all diffrent tanks. how many is there now? 350+ in all i think, around 380. so, u play Tx+2, thats one fifth, 76 to chose from. possible, and they are adding some, so its becoming more then possible u will hit games that have 30 tanks, not even one the same as all other. thats 2.4 gigs + map. i belive not hd maps r sth like 200mb, so 3gb to read. iv not rly good gf card, it has 1gb ddr, and most of that is in my ddr anyway, but iv sata drive that can hit maybe 30mb/s read. there is noway all 350 tanks will bre preloaded into my ram, im fine, iv 4gb i think. but i need 7x more. loading 30 tanks from hdd will take 100sec. preloading all (tanks) from hdd 933sec. wake up. when u have game that weights 20gb, maybe 2-5% of that is code. all other stuff is polygons and textures. sounds like major update. i will need 64gb of fine ram, i think no point of aiming in nothing under ddr4, thats actually still no avilable. and ur hard drive, ssd sounds like only reasonable choice. and i would suggest gf card with sth like 8gb at least. all but ssd are not even avilable in my shops.

    STOP THAT MADNESS!

  54. “- second idea would be to make HD models available (and downloaded) only for the tanks you actually have in your garage. Sounds stupid?”

    Actually yes – because you need to have them displayed ingame when engaging them.
    You might not own them yourself but others do.

  55. Large client sizes? How terrible…

    They sort-of have a solution to this already with the torrenting of patches and client downloads. Sure, it might take someone a bit longer to download it overnight a few nights while they sleep, but oh freakin’ well.

    Programs are not going to get smaller, just like internet bandwidth speeds are not going to get slower in the future – that’s just counterproductive. What do you think 4k HD media sizes are going to be when they start making movies in that resolution and sell them on the market?

    The solution is rather simple, and I’m pretty dumbfounded by how “Head in the sand” like Ostriches WG can sometimes be. If you want to lessen server loads – make more content “client sided” like the maps (so they can be a hell of a lot larger), and essentially send only terrain change and enemy location info data packets only (they probably do this already but with *everything* being server sided, they’re just asking for their own misery).

    Don’t want to use something like PB or Gameguard? That’s fine…. make your own in-house version and put more of the games internal workings client side…. you know… like almost everyone else in the MMO gaming industry does.

  56. I’m one of those guys who are not rich – but do not have good bandwidth. Updates to WoT are done overnight when no one is online. The Common Test Update hung when I did that last month, but it was only 2GB away from being finished. After an update is finished loading, I copy the update files to a thumb drive and put them on the other computers (saves time and bandwidth).

    That said. I think the idea of slimming the client down makes good sense. It would also make good sense for the client to “look” into the user’s garage and download all of the tanks there – and then slowly start downloading tanks that user would see.

    A Throttling Option would be great – allowing users to only user part of their bandwidth to download the client AND updates. This would all many of us to continue other functions (like work) while downloading updates and such.

    Good ideas, hope y’all implement some.

    Poe

  57. It’s not much when you compare it to other games.
    Battlefield 4 after the current expansions sits at 45GB (yep… huge download)
    Red orchestra 2/Rising – 30Gb
    Arma 2/OA (dayz) – 20-30GB (mods)

    lol not going to list everything on my hard drives, but there are quite a few games out there… that I don’t feel like uninstalling because of the sheer size of the re-download attempt.

  58. Seems it would be a simple matter to have basic game with a set number of maps and a separate downloadable map pack. Might even do theater map packs grouping maps by combat zones.

    Vehicles have to be included in basic game or patches, Maps can be downloaded in packs and added.