I’ll just leave this here. Thanks to Maiorboltach for this one.

Hello everyone,

I don’t usually post just a few pictures like that, but this is pretty interesting. You know we have the M56 Scorpion coming up as an American premium tank destroyer – but other countries used it too. Here’s something rather exotic – it was used by Morocco as well, here are the pictures, courtesy of Saàd, who lives there:

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Hello everyone,

some of you might have noticed two things:

- with the introduction of 9.4 second test patch, Tank Inspector started crashing, when attempting to pull data from the client
- the test introduced a whole bunch of “odd” vehicle files with the letters “IGR” in their file name

As you might have guessed, those two events are related. Hillin (Tank Inspector developer) started digging and discovered those files. The vehicles are the following: AMX 13 90, AMX 50 100, AMX AC.Mle.1948, WZ131, Caenarvon, Cromwell, Centurion, FV304, IS-3, ISU-152, Jagdtiger, KV-2, Panther II, Tiger, Tiger II, KV-85, Sherman Jumbo, STA-1, StuG III Ausf. G, T34 (Heavy), T-44, T49 (Light), T69, T71. They are all in elite configuration and the models are identical to the regular tanks (no changes).

This is how they look in Tank Inspector Pro:

Now, to explain what this means: these vehicles are meant for Korean server (and possibly the Chinese one), specifically for internet café gameplay. Here in Europe, this sort of thing died out, but in Korea, café gaming is a culture thing (as explained by Daigensui). If I understand it correctly, you simply “rent” these vehicles in an internet café and in selected cafés cooperating with Wargaming, you will (apart from the standard premium bonuses) get another 50 percent to XP and credits bonus for your account, as well as gold for a certain amount of battles played.

Whether this is related to the leaked supertest “premium Tiger” in any way, that I do not know, but I don’t think so.

Man, it’s been a while since the last one of these. Let’s see what’s clogging up the ol’ mailbox.

Q: Several sources state that Soviet tank crews were forbidden from opening their hatches in combat and had to fight while buttoned up, reducing their ability to observe the battlefield. Is this true?

A: Not entirely. TL;DR: Soviet tank crewmen must observe their surroundings with open hatches out of battle. When contact with the enemy is made, they must close the hatches, but may reopen them if the target is lost. In urban combat, hatches must remain closed.

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Hello everyone,

last night, the Golden Joystick ceremony took place – perhaps the most prestigious current game award (or so Wargaming claimed, when they won in 2013 with World of Tanks). Wargaming had three contestants present:

- Best Online Game category – World of Tanks for Xbox
- Best Online Game category – World of Warplanes
- Best Mobile Game category – World of Tanks Blitz

Here are the official results.

So, how many categories did Wargaming win? Well, none. In Best Online Game category, neither WG game was even in top 3 (I guess that’s not really surprising).

But don’t worry, Wargaming, you still win the Golden Donkey award and I am sure that’s like totally more valuable to you guys ;)

Hello everyone,

as you know, 9.5 will bring the “Firefly line” of medium tanks, combined with a load of British turretted tank destroyers. Yesterday, Storm announced that it was decided this line would have a new tier 10 after all. Well, it’s the end of October and all deadlines for modelling are gone already, so it can really be just one candidate: FV4005 Stage 2

So, here’s a short post to tell you, what are you going to get for a Christmas present. Because, you know how everyone moaned about oneshotting vehicles? Well, here’s another one and this time, taken to extreme.

You see, the FV4005/2 carries the same gun as the FV215b (183). Only it is just as sluggish and it has no armor whatsoever (in brackets, FV215b for comparison):

Turret front – 14mm (254mm)
Turret sides – 14mm (101,6mm)
Turret rear – 14mm (76,2mm)
Hull front – 76mm at 57 deg (152mm at 55 deg)
Hull sides – 51mm at 12 deg (50,8mm)
Hull rear – 32mm (76,2mm)

And no, it does not have an autoloader. The vehicle weighed 50 tons and was powered by a 640hp Meteor Mk.IVB engine, giving it power-to-weight ratio of 12,75 hp/t. Its maximum speed was historically 34,6 km/h. All that in a package, that’s just as tall as the WT E-100 (which implies it will have just as bad camouflage, as camouflage factor is generally derived from vehicle height).

If we are to compare it to the FV215b (183) in the game – the armor comparison is above. To be completely fair, only a small part of the FV215b turret front is actually 254mm thick, but still, it’s quite a difference compared to the 14mm of turret. FV215b is powered by a Meteor 800hp engine, but it’s 10 tons heavier than the FV4005. Still, it has better power-to-weight ratio of 13,4 hp/t with the same speed (34,3 km/h).

What I am trying to say in this post is that the hard stats (armor, speed) are just really, really bad. That means they will be compensated somehow – and I think that “somehow” will be gun handling – accuracy, rate of fire and other balance characteristics. In the end, what I fear we will get is yet another one trick pony, a derp version of the WT E-100 – no armor, no speed, sluggish, but with ridiculous gun performance. Because, you know, that’s exactly what the game needs, a crossbreed between WT E-100 and FV215b (183), another balancing nightmare, that will always either be OP, or useless. Well, good luck to the guys, who will balance this thing.

- on Supertest, the STA-2 (upcoming Japanese tier 8 premium tank) did perform fine, so it’s possible the stats leaked yesterday are final
- next Tuesday, there will be a PvE test
- next Wednesday, there will be the player invite/referral system test (oddly enough, it’s being only tested AFTER it was announced in 9.4, so if the test goes bad, this feature will not come after 9.4 as promised)
- ISU-130′s depression was buffed to -3 and gun traverse to the right changed from 9,72 to 10

Also, the Insider has a hunch that after the STA-2 testing is over, T-54 Model 1945 (Soviet tier 8 premium MT) will be next.

Enjoy!