Wargaming Inside Info – What’s Cooking?

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Hello everyone,

remember the guy who leaked the Wargaming translation process? He’s back! This time, with even more interesting info from Wargaming kitchen – having access to internal WG network including discussions is very useful for WG workers, not so useful when you have to deal with a disgruntled employee…

Here’s what he wrote:

The Weather

While the development of XboX WoT is relatively independent on the WoT PC version, there are some features that the developers want in both games. The idea of weather was set in motion some time ago with a test of the principle on PC version, with following test beds:

- snowstorms on city maps (Himmelsdorf, Severogorsk, Windstorm) – this was quite a long time ago, Windstorm was not implemented yet at that point and was still only a concept
- sandstorms od desert maps (tested on Sand River)
- night battles on Karelia, Westfield, Malinovka

The weather was basically set on a timer during the test, for example the sandstorm started 7,5 to 10 minutes into the match and would last till the end of the match. In other test rounds, the effect was there from the start. The test was done mostly for serverside calculations and lacked any good visuals. As a result, it looked like the tanks were disappearing on field of Malinovka 70 meters from you. As a result, the weather was put on ice and the tests will apparently be resumed once Havok is implemented on PC. On Xbox, the weather project was implemented successfully. The original formula was simply that the sandstorm/snowstorm/night time would decrease visibility by 50/65/40%, but these numbers were for testing purposes only and are completely arbitrary (won’t be used).

There was actually one specific result of this weather test – Winter Himmelsdorf, it was decided that instead of waiting for the snow weather effect, it would be implemented straight away and the feedback on that map was very positive.

Physics, Visuals and “Huge Migration”

Developers are preparing the client for something called “huge migration”, basically, if I understand it correctly, a massive physics update. This has not been released yet including visuals because there are currently issues with the way lighting works in the game. On some new models, lighting doesn’t display properly and the developers want to fix that first. One of the main issues is the fact that on some models (American T34) the lighting makes them look “plastic”, because the surfaces reflect the light incorrectly.

More HD models are being worked on, nothing too special there, but apparently there is an issue with the Soviet IS tank texture mapping on the “base of the turret”. The order HD models are being worked on is: Suspension – Tracks – Sides – Front – Rear – Hull – Turret- Bottom. Three or so developers work on every model and a fourth or fifth “assembles” the entire model, which creates some issues, when the collision and visual model did not match, gaps were left in the model etc.

There is even now a bug with something with the bottom of the textures of the tank, I haven’t really understood what it is about, but it will be fixed once the models are re-made into HD.

Flipping tanks

This part is problematic because without knowing the context, it’s hard to imagine what the developers had in minnd.

The issue above with the tank bottom is tied to the flipping of tanks. Developers stated that – and I quote: “weight baseline 1.8 times extended via kinetic force more than the target tank to actually make it “flip”, a high speed collision will NOT flip a tank unless it exceeds 5 times the kinetic force of the tank weight multiplied” (if a medium tank collides with ELC at full speed, the ELC will not be sent flying, but will be destroyed and will be sent back a couple of meters, not with salto or anything). To flip a tanks needs something called “lever point”, which is not found on tanks, but on their tracks (in order to “save server bandwidth” – not sure why would that help). That is why when you get bad lags, you can see the hull sinking into the ground, but the tracks stay on the ground – as it is now, the tracks and suspension “hold the kinetic force of the tank”, this is also the cause for some of the “tank jumping” you can sometimes see in funny videos. The tank weight must be surpassed by the kinetic force to make it flip (you simply need more weight and power to flip the enemy, you can actually combine forces with a friend to flip someone).

Bots

It takes 25 bot reports per day (within 24 hours) to make support staff check someone for botting. The response time of a mod however can be up to a week. Daily, WG RU recieves 17500 bot reports via “player is a bot” report function within the game, less than 3 percent of those however are confirmed as real bots and resetted and banned

The rest are interesting tidbits as well:

- the next minicampaign reward will likely be the Grosstraktor
- World of Tanks Xbox will apparently be selling a Super Pershing “Freedom bundle” with a very special skin for the Super Pershing (American flag, basically a pretty wild scheme), but the kicker is, the crew will be 100 percent trained with a 100 percent Brothers in Arms perk, tank with full equipment (rammer, stabilizer, gun laying drive?) and 20 cans of soda – once per account, the cost is apparently set at cca 50 USD – it’s possible that this was actually Microsoft’s idea, but this is not confirmed.
- icy terrain might be reworked a bit, still in primary testing phase, the idea is to somewhat reduce the handling and braking force, not like the War Thunder “skating”
- speaking of War Thunder, when Ground Forces were released, Storm and one other WG Minsk producer went to check it out, they noted the “sliding” of the tanks as not good (“tanks looks like are skidding on ice all the time”) and it is difficult to keep them going in one direction, but they did like the large maps
- developers want to make a new jungle map based on South America, but they don’t want “another Dragon Ridge”, still in concept phase now
- apparently, talking about Ukraine is banned at WG. There is a clan openly officially supporting the Ukraine separatists on RU server, WG doesn’t know what to do with them, they will apparently be banned if they start “politics” in the game
- apparently, currently it’s vacation time in Minsk, the development of WoWs was sped up a bit by transferring someone to the team
- it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content

103 thoughts on “Wargaming Inside Info – What’s Cooking?”

      • Silentstalker, it might not be legal to publish private, internal messages of a company. Besides not being legal I also find it quite disturbing, I like to read novelties, but I dont want to see their problems discussed in open public.

        I remember how the CzechOut incident was almost entirely made public, but keep in mind those were proofs about the corruption.

        I feel that more infos will come, so keep that in mind :)

            • It is possibly not “legal” in the sense of “he is breaking his NDA”, but that is his choice. Plus, I don’t see any really “nasty” stuff in there (publishing internal financial records would be worse), so I am kinda fine with this.

        • SS is basically a journalist, so it’s perfectly legal for him to publish all the leaks he wants as long as he gets them from someone else. If SS was the one doing the digging himself he might get in trouble, but all he’s doing is passing the info along.

  2. ” apparently, talking about Ukraine is banned at WG. There is a clan openly officially supporting the Ukraine separatists on RU server, WG doesn’t know what to do with them, they will apparently be banned if they start “politics” in the game”

    and if Russians talk about supporting Russian separatists it’s ok? cause i don’t think those Russians don’t say anything about it!

      • Probably he means “the separatists who are russians in ukrain” and not the “chechens and others”.

    • Ukraine separatists are the ones backed by Moscow. I have not heard of a Russian separatist movement in Russia.

      Don’t forget that Ukrainian players also play on RU servers, so WG will want to keep the peace. If both sides get arguing on the server, it’s not good for business. WG however has to tread carefully, because if they do it wrong, they may lose a large part of their income. It’s not so easy, you know?

      • They will perhaps ban players talking of politics, but only 3-days ban for EFE clan members who wish jews families to be raped and murdered? :)
        Sure politics is a much more awful topic. Gj WG \o/

    • I actually saw some russians on test server saying fuck USA, EU, Ukraine is Russia bla bla .

    • Talking about politics and especially about topics so close to home breeds flaming, troll, shit, rage, insults, racism, bigotry, idiots, et cetera. Regardless of which side you take.

      Might surprise you, but these things can drive people away, especially new people. WG is not Soviet propaganda bureau, as you flowery people like to claim, it is a business.

      So no, WG does not consider it O.K. to allow Russians to “talk about supporting” the Ukrainian SEPARATISTS.

      • It’s pretty dangerous to talk about politics as well.
        I wonder how dangerous it is in Russia?

  3. Don’t forget that the sliding in WTGF is still part of Beta, along with tank weights and a bunch of other stuff… it changes constantly…

    Tank flipping is, and has been for ages, possible in GF, the other day my KV1 got spit roasted by 2 AA guns, they shot my gun/gunner up, so I simply reversed up and pushed him onto his side, and then went forward and rammed the other to death….

    • GF is no longer in beta. As soon as you let people pay, you lose the right to call your game a beta.

          • nope… open beta… I have accounts for both before and after “open beta”..

            They only stopped calling it beta and saying it was release version the next year…

            At all times items have been purchasable…

            How about “early access” games… are they beta or not? Still paid for…

            • No, you were never able to use real money in WoT during closed and open beta. And the open beta stopped in april 2011.

              Gaijin are just using the old beta excuse to not fix the game, while happily accepting your money. Not that WG are the best at fixing issues either, but at least they don’t hide behind tsome dubious beta tag.

              • Nope…Gaijin are completely open about the game being in open beta, and I enjoy testing the game for them. I still fly more than drive, but I enjoy watching the game evolve on a weekly basis.

                I hope arcade mode always has the rally style handling…makes swinging around behind opponents and setting their engine bay on fire so much fun :D

              • Yes you could pay for the gold back in CBT…
                I’m playing WoT since late December 2010 i think, and you could buy gold back then already.

                Sure, you got some gold for free every day, so you could actually just wait and keep your gold for either premium account or premium tanks… But you could buy it as well!

                WoT should still be called beta imho, because so far it is still broken in many aspects, many things promised to be released literally 2 years ago are still missing, some new bugs are introduced now and then.

                Many things ARE better, but the game is far from finished imho… So is WT:GF… But the second one is at least called Beta, so you shouldn’t expect it to be finished. You can expect WoT to be finished (and it’s not) since it’s released…

                • I was also in CBT in Dec 2010.
                  You could NOT buy gold back then, you were given a gold stipend every day but you couldn’t go out of your way to buy more even if you wanted to. At least on the NA portal [I don't think the servers were split until open beta] there was no option anywhere.

        • Closed Beta? Around 6-8 months IIRC.

          Open Beta? A month, and that was mostly to see if the servers could handle the stress.

    • yet another die hard WT fanboys.
      you posting this is just to make sure people don’t get the wrong idea about your beloved game.
      we’re not here to badmouth your favorite game. our opinions is not as biased as yours at least.
      grew up.

      • Oh how wrong you are…

        If you actually take the time to read my post… you will see that I wasn’t slagging of WOT and bigging up WTGF… I was actually pointing something out..

        WOT has tons of issues constantly, hence all the whining about FPS drops, lag, moving dead tanks, spotting, etcetera et-fucking-cetera…

        WTGF has less real problems that WOT does, and its still openly admits to being in development…

        I still play BOTH, Wot is arcade, WTGF is more “sim” style… and you can bomb tanks or shoot planes with AA…

        so…………… GTFO….

        PS.. It’s “grow up”…

        • WT(GF) has a bad and boring gameplay (amounts of clueless morons are impressive there as well). Maybe some aspects of it are “simulator like” but gameplay is worse than “arcade” (disguised RNG and some sort of fail non-simulator spotting system, hitboxes and physics are pretty flawed as well). Not to mention with some new fixes you spawn underground in WTGF, such good fix.

          For both games I would say once you release final version of the game people will get bored of it and it will also lose community in the process.

        • WT:GF has more issues now then it had in CBT
          Still has the render bug (which means vanishing tanks)
          DM models are still all over the place and not consistent,
          TKing is bad,
          Still has the small maps(made for arcade, forced on to sim players)
          Gun barrels gets destroyed alot,
          Rewards have been reduced,
          I really liked the game at the start of CBT(had alot of bugs though)
          Almost none of the insane amount of bugs found in CBT has been fixed,
          Spotting system,
          Physics has real problems,
          Forced mixed battles in sim mode(i will explain why that is bad in next line)
          Plane mode=tank mode
          Arcade=superarcade
          Realistic=arcade
          Sim=realistic
          so to get realistic style tank gameplay u really need to play sim battles,
          but its hard to play sim planes
          (which means that insanely good pilots are something u meet in sim battles)
          Forgot: hitting an invisble rock taking your tracks off or damaging something else,

          WOT has issues too
          but most here know them

          • I see less issies than in CBT, in fact I see very few real issues for a beta
            Never seen the “vanishing tanks”.. no pun intended.. I’ve just enver seen it happen
            DM models in Wot are still terrible 4 years on.. and the inconsitency is even worse.
            I have been TK’d once, and done it 2 or 3 times.. so don’t recognise what you are playing, the fines are massive,
            The “small maps” are still as big as WOT large maps..
            Guns get destroyed? Oh dear… you want hitpoints?
            Reduced rewards? You mean you are not getting the 10x scoring we did in early CBT?
            The amount of bugs fixed during CBT compared to WOT while live is ridiculous… how many times has Storm said “There is no moving corpses, we fixed the moving corpses, we didn’t fix the moving corpses, there are no moving corpses”.. to pick on just one element… oh yeah.. “no bots in WOT”…
            Spotting is fine, it works MUCH better than WOT spotting, at least tanks dont invisi-shield 65m in front in plain sight
            Physics is very much in Dev, and is stated as such.. where the fck is Wot physics? We had 2-3 years of cliff-hanging at 60kph…
            Forced mixed battles.. that is half the damn point of WT.. MIXED!

            Pfft…

        • WoT, like many online games, is full release, with constant development. Take, for example GuildWars 2, that game, is without doubt, released. But it’s still in development, new things added, bugs fixed/created.

          WoT is as much in beta, as PacMan, at this point. And WT will be similar in state, whenever they drop beta tags, I hope.

  4. - it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content
    Wait wut??? DLC for WoT? No way O.o
    But if it would be permanent, that would be absolutely epic :D

    • as DLC means u have to buy with “Money” right i believe only 10 server popullation would buy that, this is stupid, it wont work at all

      • Think again… you will have a fun mode… WITH LESS TOMATOES!
        #worthsthemoney

        • I have seen a lot of tomatoes on The Karl and Football mode lets talk about The latest mini game Football mode, it has 3 vs 3 correct? if all of em play thats ok, but 2 vs 3 (one botting or AFK hell should i know) then mostly the only 2 active would be defeated, if trust me i had experienced it during filling 50 wins quota for the mission

        • Sure, it’s clear only good players spend money in the game.
          Never saw a tomato premium tank owner of my life. ;p

          • are you sure? there are a lot 0K battles with 44% Winrate has T-34, Lowe, Super Pershing etc.

  6. Three or so developers work on every model and a fourth or fifth “assembles” the entire model, which creates some issues, when the collision and visual model did not match, gaps were left in the model etc.

    Yep i knew it it’s hard, hence the slow pace of HD models being delivered. That’s what you get for using a cheap 3D scanner such as NextEngine. That scanner is not made to scan huge tanks.

    “huge migration”, basically, if I understand it correctly, a massive physics update.

    Yes that is probably about switching completely to HAVOK physics templates. For everything. Right now the “physics” are just a few scripted behaviours by WG themselves. When HAVOK comes, everything will change. Real physics behaviour than what we have. Especially for the tanks. Cant wait!

    • You will be disappointed if you expect so much from Havok. Havok is still only “a few scripted behaviours” – only written by someone else.

      And I doubt they will switch completely, might be something else. Still not every player card supports Havok, which is why they can’t switch completely to Havok, only for those things that don’t matter when players’ engines can’t calculate them (read: purely visual things and things that calculate on server). Different behaviour of tank on server and client would be a serious issue.

      • And what does Havok provide?
        - more realistic fence destruction, and destruction of objects in general?
        - parts falling off when someone shoots you?
        - …
        Thats it?

        • For now yes. Later could be even more. (like snow on tanks if they stand still for too long)

        • Guess it provides all the eyecandy you can think of, the limit is only what devs can think of and the size of the client.

          You could for example go through a desert map and get your tank dusty, then drive into water and have the bottom part washed, you could get black marks on the tank when standing next to burning and smoking wreck for a moment, see the water getting muddy after you drove through it … you name it really. But they have to start somewhere, just like with hd models, few at first, more later.

          Edit:

          One thing they might and possibly do when introducing havoc is how vegetation interacts with tanks. For example in WT GF when driving over really small trees or bushes they simply bend under the tank and spring back after you drove over them. It looks nice and way better than bushes clipping through the tank model.

      • “Still not every player card supports Havok”

        Havok uses the CPU to calculate physics. I think you have it confused with PhysX, which is Nvidia’s proprietary physics engine.

        I guess it’s always possible that they might go with GPU-accelerated Havok, but more likely than not it’s going to be on the CPU for compatibility (e.g. with computers using Intel XTREME6WTFBBQ integrated graphics or equivalent).

  7. “…because the surfaces reflect the light incorrectly.”
    Not only muricans – all HD models glow white on edges.

    • It’s realistic you know, because all tanks IRL glow white on edges. At least that’s what the modeling department say.

      • then maybe they could remove those green and red silhouettes since tank’s edges already made white ones?

  8. - it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content
    Would be better if unlockable. Something to achieve is always nice.

  9. Skidding and sliding in WT:GF? Funny but i never saw such a thing. Maybe the physics are a bit different in sim battles or is it just that i drive only heavy tanks? That KW-2 feels realy heavy, slow and stubborn and its difficult to drive.

  11. “Another Dragon Ridge”?
    guess the EU whine abt that awesome map is too stronk to be ignored….

    ps: “freedom bundle” –> 4th of july is coming so maybe for that?

    • The first dragon ridge was better than the latest versions IMO.
      But… WE NEED MORE DESERT MAPS!!

      • Screw off, desert maps are campy, boring and horrible for half of the tanks. I want to puke each time I see El Haluf, Sand River or Airfield loading and I’m not in an American tank.

        • I don’t want to get a desert map with so many rocks either. BUT…
          IF they implement havoc AND weather RIGHT, then the dunes COULD “travel” on new maps thus you are forced to move / reconsider your hiding position.

          • maybe not just travel but be mapped out randomly at the start as well, like a real desert. would definately change to dynamic of sand river.

          • Moving dunes?

            Sounds like a job for voxels. As a bonus, with a physics engine in place, you could slowly blast dunes apart, only to have them slowly reform here and there.

            I can hear the CPU cores running the physics threads screeching in agony already.

  12. - apparently, currently it’s vacation time in Minsk, the development of WoWs was sped up a bit by transferring someone to the team

    “WoWs was sped up a bit by transferring someone to the team”…
    May the SerB be with you.

    – it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content

    I like this idea very much! (and please use the tankangels again :) )

  13. – the next minicampaign reward will likely be the Grosstraktor

    Seriously? It’s ugly as ****. Not to mention giant POS.

    • limited achievements/reward makes some people able to say “i’m better than you”

  15. WEATHER: like it’s soo hard to put RANDOM visibility conditions with boundaries +25%, -50% for very heavy sandstorms or snowstorms of fog or night (rare conditions, typical -25%) which would fix both weather and day/nighttime spotting values server-side – and that’s all you need, the rest is just fancy graphics.
    C’mon WG, get a grip…

  16. - it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content
    ______________
    Purchasable content? Nah, they’ll realise only a few people would actually pay to play it and will be free. It would counterfeit with their newest policy to remove all the pay2win elements from the game.

  17. Just make Karl and T-62A Sport mode available to only those with premium accounts!

    • NOBODY ACTUALLY FOLLOW THIS LINK. ONLY BUY FROM THE OFFICIAL WORLD OF TANKS SITE OR AN OFFICIAL RETAILER IF YOU WISH TO BUY GOLD AND PREMIUM.

  19. – the next minicampaign reward will likely be the Grosstraktor

    What do they consider a minicampaign? This is only a low tier tank after all.

  21. “17500 bot reports”

    Ok so, just because I feel like doing a bit of math:

    Let’s say that out of these 17,500 reports, about 50% of them (and that’s very generous) land on players who get 25+ reports each.

    That leaves: 8,750 reports
    Divided by the average # reports for those type of players (let’s say 30): about 290 players get called out for bots. Only 3% of those are true?
    That’s about 8-9 bans a day. Hardly scratches the player base, if I’m doing the match correctly.

    Or do you mean that less than 3% of the 17,500 are actual bots, report wise?
    If so, less than 20 bans a day still, on average.

    Just being curious/mathy today I suppose.