A Blast from the Past: 2012 German Tech Tree Proposal

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Hello everyone,

I recently recieved a message, reminding me of this little gem. It’s been two years since Overlord reposted this (by then highly controversial) take on the German tree, originally posted by Slava Makarov I think. In case you don’t remember Overlord or are too new a player to remember him, he was a developer of World of Tanks on EU server and in his time (think early 2012), he ran a huge thread, where you actually could – imagine that – ask a real developer anything and he answered, just like Storm and SerB did on RU forums. It was a glorious time for WoT: the game was new and fresh, the EU office was not filled with PR clowns. Overlord’s unfortunate departure to other projects was one of the defining moments in creating FTR, because at that point, with the EU community being deprived of information, I started translating from Russian to first Czech, then English. Or was it vice versa? Can’t remember.

In any case, Overlord reposted this tree on his blog (which is active until this day, do follow it for some interesting info!)

Germany_tree

As you can see, the tree was highly controversial, because the original post actually suggested that a lot of vehicles would be downtiered with losing their top unhistorical guns. That this approach proved to be correct was shown only later on, with some of these changes eventually really happening (remember how VK3001 lost the Vaderturm?). Another interesting moment is the Maus on tier 9 (with even worse mobility than the current tier 10 one) and Maus II on tier 10. In case you are wondering – Maus II project actually existed, it was an alternative turret project (described here).

Notice the proposed downtiering of the VK450X prototypes. Currently, the VK450X’s (especially the rear turret one) are insanely buffed compared to their historical project counterparts, they have way too much armor (sometimes twice as much!),carry unhistorical weaponry and use unhistorical engines. At one point, there was a plan to bring them to historicity, but what happened to it, noone knows – it probably died with no suitable candidates found to replace them.

A propos – candidates: notice the Lowe on tier 8. The fact that Wargaming used Lowe, which would otherwise be a perfectly good regular tank (it has options) as a premium tank is viewed by many (not just me) as one of the worst design mistakes made. Sure, it probably sold well, but it also forced the developers to introduce unhistorically buffed vehicles into the tree. It would have been a perfect tier 8 German heavy, simply ideal. Pity.

Speaking of blasts from the past: it’s been more than a year (a year and a third) since RU251 was first announced. At first, it was supposed to come along with the Aufklärungspanzer Panther in early 2013, then it was cancelled and the German scout line came out without it, ending with that horrible vehicle for more than a year. We will apparently see the RU251 in Patch 9.3 along with the Soviet LT8 and US scout line – I wouldn’t be surprised that by the time 9.3 came out, the RU251 wait would celebrate its year-and-half “anniversary”. The reason for the RU251 delay (apart from the usual WG shenanigans) was the fact that until recently, very little info could be found and I don’t think I will spoil anything if I say that a German EU community helped Wargaming to acquire (some of) the said info, big thanks go to him and to a certain developer, who listened.

Either way: here’s a greeting to the “old guard” from the past, especially to Overlord. Thank you for your past and current work and pieces of information you brought us.

54 thoughts on “A Blast from the Past: 2012 German Tech Tree Proposal”

  1. Woah, woah, good times ! I remember Overlords thread! I remember looking after his answers through tons of garbage questions but it was fun! These were really goo times. Now we get PR EU bullshit and incompetence all the time, less SerB action, and now they have an idea to stop adding regular tanks ?! I’m really startled of what might happen soon…

    It’s like there are more people working at WG that want to make business rather than games.

  3. I like this tech tree better than the current one!!

    I would love the drive the Maus II

    Whats interesting is that the lowe is a regular tier 8. What made it become a premuim?

    • I especially like VI tier Tiger with short 88 and VII tier KT, with long 88 as top gun apparently. Ferdy on tier VII with its historical 88 is also nice ;)

      • This tree always made a whole lot more sense then how everything was set up. WG just didn’t want to go through all the trouble of shifting the entire tree though and decided it was easier to keep things how they were.

        The decision to make the Lowe a premium happened after they abandoned the idea of these tech tree changes. It was already modeled and at that point it didn’t fit anywhere else in the tree.

  5. i remember overlord, and if i recall correctly he also got most of the shitstorm when he brought back news from the developers, mostly nerfs to the german tanks :/

  7. This would have made a lot of sense.

    But at low tiers, Tier VII and below, the Germans would have owned their Russian counterparts pretty badly… and since this is a Russian game, Russia should never be below anybody else hence the current tech tree.

    • with proper balancing they wouldn’t ;) imagine that for example taht on tier VI, Tiger P would have 100mm frontal armor instead of 200mm (both stats are historical, the one Tiger P that germans didn’t convert to Ferdinand SPG was uparmored by bolting 100mm of additional armor at the front) and of course no 88mm KwK 43 L/71 ;) and, of course, it would have Tier VI heavy HP pool ;)

      • Why would they? The ARL44 is a copy of the Tiger and plays perfectly fine on tier 6. What would bother me is that, for historical reasons, I’d like the Tiger I and IS 1 to stay on the same tier.

        Plus, if the DW is tier 5, then the B1bis needs to be buffed and gain a tier too. It was a way better tank than the DW project (and not that far behind the KV1, anyway).

        • Sorry, in what way is ARL44 a copy of tiger? Anyway, IS is a later design than tiger, but fear not! kv1s is basically a tier 6 IS, you could play pretend ;)

          Tiger P wouldnt have to be OP with 200 mm armor, that british tier 6 heavy has tough hull armor and its far from OP. Slowing tiger P to brick-like speed, giving it lower rof than tiger, slap a weakspot or two and you’ve got yourself great mediocre tank for mediocre players.

          This tree would obviously be much better in every way possible

            • Well, I see yor point but no, not really. Alot of tanks are in +/- historical config even tho could have better guns etc, off the top of my head I remember something about IRL BL9 being able to fit and easily replace any other 122mm gun on tanks that had them, so we could have bl9 wielding IS or kv1s.

  8. To be honest SS, i dont think that the awful panther horrible, its actually quite funny to drive around.

    • It is quite fun. But You have to admit it’s in every meaningful way sub-par to it’s tier contemporaries. Big like a barn, so-so mobility, turn radius of a battleship, kind of ‘meh…’ view range, dreadful weapons. It’s selling point apparently was the ability to ram, which I still can’t get, how the f**k someone could think that will be a good idea. And on top of that, outside of stock config it’s absolutely unhistorical. Not to mention being butt-ugly. When I saw a preview article for AufPanther in which SS shown us drawing from Panzer tracks with what could have been a historical top config for the tank, I just fell in love. And then WG hit me like a 16 ton weight… Ehh…

    • It’s crap. Oh, did I forget something? It’s shit. Yes, it’s crapshit as tier 7 LT. A light tank that bigger than IS-4? almost same size like E-75? Shit camo? Acceptable acceleration, good top speed, but shit DPM. What’s the good point? It can ram. Ram? Light tank? Are you nuts?

      I play mine only to opened Indien Panzer, and prepare myself for sexy RU251. When RU251 finally comes out, I will sell it immediately.

  9. It looks like the Henschel Tigers especially will be buff if looking from tiers perspective…but I swear WG will nerf the soft stats(e.g.tracks) to compensate…..just like the ST-I/1 and IS-4(after 7.4), which them both has worse soft stat than E-75

    But if Tigers are at t6, what’s the point of 3601H?

    • it was a medium tank those days, and it was more mobile ;) there was no VK 30.02 M in plans those days ;)

  10. Well, we still might have something like this, if additional hulls come ;)
    VK 36.01 could get hull from Tiger H prototype (which actually is the stock configuration of Tier VII Tiger ;) ) and maybe one additional turret, usable only on the new hull (the classiacal looking Krupp turret)

    • Precisely. Even recently it was mentioned again that alternative hulls will come and IIRC the plan to fix historicity of VK.4502 (P) was to combine them in one tank with A and B type hulls. So after all we might see Maus II in game.

  11. I remember the discussion about the Lowe, but as a new player then it went over my head.The whole point, as was said often back then, was about realism v profits. Of course profits won.

    • It was a real project, just a maus with current E-100 turret, the E-100 was meant to have maus turret in the beginning

      • The Maus II turret and the E 100′s turret were the same in shape, but the Maus II turret had thicker armor

  15. MAUS 2? whats that? the lightweight prototype you posted about awhile ago?

  16. That’s the problem with tiers in this game – some tanks spread over more than one. And, what’s the point of unhistorical weapons on some moronic cases like pz4d, when it’s got removed in “historical setup” – and, allegedly, the only purpose of introducing that tank was historical battles…

    • add a hull option to Pz. IV D, andit will become a Pz. IV Ausf. F2 or even a Pz. IV Ausf. G ;)

  17. “VK450X’s (especially the rear turret one) are insanely buffed”
    And its still the worst tier 9 heavy in the game. (4502 p Ausf. B)

  18. May i ask: what’s the difference between Maus and Maus 2?
    I know that 2 “mauses” were made, but one of em didnt have turret and 2nd had a turret.
    Having a tank without turret in WoT whould be completelly useless, even if you loose the front turret weakspot.

    • Sheesh. There’s a link to the Maus II article right above the tech tree. Can’t you people click?