Ancient History of the WoT Soviet Tree

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Hello everyone,

ever wondered, how the World of Tanks trees started? As you probably know, the oldest trees in WoT by far are the Soviet and the German tree. The Soviet one probably came first. This was one of the first tree proposals from December 2008 by Pytr Bityukov, one of the “founding fathers” of World of Tanks – Slava Makarov (another “founder”) published it in July 2012 for the players to see. P.Bityukov sent this to S.Makarov on 18.12.2008.

By now I hope everyone can figure out that CY is “SU” and such.

SSSR

As you can see, the tree proposal lacks tiers (that system was not yet developed back then!), it was made in “Navyfield” spirit. A lot of the vehicles you know, but some earlier proposed vehicles were pretty interesting. For one, you have T-26 “twin-turret” on lower tiers – that thing actually had machineguns only! The tree is also very much focusing on historical progress (that’s why you have T-34/85 above T-43).

Keep also in mind that the entire tree consisted of historical configurations (that’s why the T-43 is below T-34/85 for example, with its 76mm gun) – by that time, the “module” system was not yet fully developed either. Another two curious things in this tree – first, the artillery has BM-13 and BM-31 rocket launchers, second, check the top tier light tank, the K-90. In case you haven’t ever heard of it (like I haven’t), this is the K-90:

k-90-2

Yes, that’s an amphibious tank. I’ll get back to it in some future posts, but basically it was developed in 1950, stayed in prototype only, had very thin armor and a 76mm LB-76T gun. So, as you can see, amphibians were originally considered. Oh yea and the Bronetransporter B-3 on “tier 1″? That’s a halftrack.

Anyway, moving forward in history to the next post of Slava Makarov from late July 2012. The second iteration of the Soviet tree from roughly February 2009 was already modified, they threw out the wheeled vehicles and halftracks, but kept the K-90 amphibean for now. At the same time, first “paid” (premium) tanks appeared in the concept, those are in the lower left corner.

USSR_tree_2

At the same time (still in February 2009), Mikhail “Storm” Zhivets proposed a completely different radical idea:

USSR_tree_3

He actually proposed that the vehicles wouldn’t have unlockable modules. In this very early version, World of Tanks proposal kinda resembled the “War Thunder” system with unlocking not modules, but various tank configurations (so much for “War Thunder is original”). The module system is actually patented by the way, it was registered from May 2012. Anyway, Storm suggested each vehicle to have only (its) historical configuration.

As you can see, Storm did split the tree into 3 branches (SPG’s, TD’s and tanks), with each branch splitting into further sub-branches:

- SPG’s split into 76mm SPG’s, 122mm SPG’s and 152mm SPG’s
- TD’s split into “ersatz SPG’s”, light SPG’s based on T-60/70 (ending with the GAZ-75 or SU-85B), SPG’s based on T-34 and heavy IS/KV based SPG’s
- tanks split into T-26 versions, T-60/70 versions, BT tanks, T-34 versions, T-44 versions and heavy tanks (with the IS-7 as a top tank).

Slava Makarov comments that this Storm’s proposal would be hard to understand for players and it was rejected, but it’s interesting to see, how different the WoT could have been, when it comes to the tree concept itself. Moving forward in time once again, this is how the last untiered version of the Soviet tree looked like:

USSR_tree_3

The colors have the following meaning: the red tanks were to appear in beta testing phase, the yellow tanks were to appear by the time the game was released to public, the green tanks were planned for future post-release updates. As you can see, the tree is starting to shape up into what we now know today (or at least what we knew around the game release). The only outlandish thing, that got thrown out, was the top arty, the heavy SPG “Medved” (Bear), which was basically this:

spg_medved_1945

A twin 122mm D-25 SPG project on KV-1S chassis, a variant of the S-51 from Spring 1945. According to Slava Makarov, “Medved” was cancelled because there were not enough hard data for its introduction. Damn shame, really – who knows, if more on Medved vas found, we might have had multigun mechanism by now.

Other tanks from the tree were planned a very long time ago, but we have yet to see them, such as the GAZ light tank destroyers or the ZIS-30 (so popular in War Thunder these days). Anyway, soon after, tiers were finally added (with a bit of an update, grey tanks mean “add in future patches, but later than the green ones”)

USSR_tree_4

And one last version, that came after this one.

USSR_tree_5

Notice how the both tiered variants actually already have “captured tanks” – that’s another idea that somehow got lost in the mists of time. It might still come in the future, but… you know how it is. Anyway, this is how the Soviet tree started. The nostalgia :)

34 thoughts on “Ancient History of the WoT Soviet Tree”

  1. Captured tanks can make some good money as premium tanks. Fairly easy to model.

  3. Twin 122 mm SPG with 174 shells? WoW

    EDIT: its uses the same gun as the KV-1S, so it could be called KV-1SS ;)

    • I wouldn’t mind having that thing at t6 or 7. Think 2 round burst @ 465 dmg with 10 sec reload for each burst.
      I just hope they don’t go all SU-122A on it (0.9 accuracy and 8 sec aim time for a gun with 1 meter splash range…)

      • I still hope for the other SU-122 arty :D (it’s ingame in form of one of the SU-85′s modules, the 122mm gun :D )

  5. What could the game have been like if the devs had released it with the IS-4 in its current configuration at Tier 10, and perhaps the IS-8 in a slightly modified setup, with no gold ammo for credits, and thus prevented the power creep that would eventually devalue the original end Tier units? They could have kept the game more historical and balanced, while still retaining the accessibility of an arcade game.

  7. That KV-3 on Tier 6 and KV-2 on Tier 5 :)
    I started to play the game, when those were already moved to where they are now.

    But, yeah – quite interesting.

    • KV-2 was released on tier 5, originally the KV-2 turret was a KV-1 option until it got split. If you think KV-1S is OP, you’d have loved the KV-2 on tier 5, it was hilarious :) (of course that was also during the time when MM was +/-3, not 2)

      • Uh I remember facing tier 10s in the KV-2? Might have to check some old MM chart.

        • Nah can’t find any mention of it. Must have been platoons with tier 6 heavies :p

          • back in beta there was a time when u faced T10 with T3.
            Because there were basically just 2 “rooms” which got filled with tanks.
            Tier 1-2 for beginners and Tier 3-10 for Standard mode… without matchmaking and anything… the first 30 were to be put in one game.

            So it happened to see a VK45B (onliest T9 from ze germans) to fight 3x tiger 1 or even worse opponents.

            one minor example: (dont have that much screens left)
            http://f.666kb.com/i/cmp5ani1jo72wdcsj.jpg

  8. The Medved…with twin D-25s? Damn am I glad THAT didn’t get into the game! With that kind of DPM it would be broken as hell.

    • Mind you that’s just 122mm. As a top tier arty, it would lack a bit of firepower (cause the pen of 122mm HE is rather low, same about dmg), but it would make up for it with the twin-barrels. I would actually go all the way up the Russian SPG line to get it, looks cool.

  9. Well….the original tree is pretty messy….even though is historically correct but it’s not noob friendly….

    SS can you find the original German tree plan as well?

  10. Days when the game was actually fun and balanced without t10 powercreep horseshit like waifutregeru 100 or 183 or any kind of bullshit. Oh and no retarded autoloaders. Maus was actually worth back then. Biggest “powercreep” was IS-4 at T9 and S-70 gun. Good ol’ times.

  11. Good read.
    It went well, but then you said a little something that triggered every horror in my brain.

    Alas, BB6s will always go north.