Christmas, FTR Future in 2015 and some other random crap I wanted to rant about

Hello everyone,

so, tomorrow’s the Christmas day here and there are only a couple of days left till the end of the year. It’s time to look back – and forward. If you forgive me, this time, I’ll just skip the contributor review, I will make a separate post later on. Thank all of you who contributed of course – it’s just in this post, I want to focus on something a bit different, the past and the future. It’s going to be a long post, so be warned. Gonna split it in parts by topics.

Of me and Wargaming

Right… where to start. A lot of people think that I actually hate Wargaming. This is a matter I explained several times, but still the feeling lingers on, fuelled by my… let’s say more negative posts. It’s not true, at least mostly not. My attitude towards Wargaming is actually quite complicated. For me, it’s about the specific people. There are people I respect immensely and in a way am glad I am not bearing their burdens of responsibility – people such as Storm, or Evilly. Practically all of the people I really respect are Russians or Belarusians, although I must say that despite having some disagreements, I also am very fond of American server’s very own historian, The_Chieftain (and his epic hat), I also remember Overlord, who moved on to WoT Blitz and god knows what he’s doing now, haven’t heard from him in ages. And let’s not forget the historical and balance department, those are some awesome guys. And the supertesters, some of them are pretty great as well :) Won’t give names, reasons are obvious.

On the other hand, there are people who I truly detest, like the EU staff, who I think are generally a bunch of pisspots. Yes, I know many of you like Ectar & Co., I don’t. There are exceptions of course. Then there’s Yuri Pasholok, but that’s a very specific case. We’ll see how he acts in real life, won’t we? According to WG guys I met, he’s coming in January to Prague… pack a raincoat Yuri, the weather here is shit. That’s global warming for you.

Overall, I was surprised myself to find out that there are more specific people I like than those I dislike, at least specific people – strange, yes? What I really dislike is the way Wargaming shifted in last months. Maybe it’s just me… I don’t know. I just have this nagging feeling that something changed in last half a year and Wargaming as a whole moved much more towards the “money at all costs” policy. I mean… too many offers, the discount system is almost arcane, hard to keep track even for me these days. I get it actually – World of Tanks is still the main product that HAS to be used to make as much money as possible. World of Warplanes didn’t work and World of Warships… that I don’t know. The feedback for that seems to be really positive, but even if the final game is MUCH more interesting than what we’ve seen in the test, I really don’t believe it will ever cross the “niche genre” boundaries, because ships – that’s very niche thing (tanks on the other hand are not niche in post-Soviet countries, there is a huge fanbase of armor, the Great Patriotic War and all that, much larger than a ship fanbase I’d wager).

You might have noticed that Wargaming now has activities all over the world. From what was essentially an oversized “garage company” of years ago, it transformed into a global company with many interests, including banking, venture capitalism and software development. It is absolutely clear that unless they do something suicidal, Wargaming will never want for money again and despite what many malcontents say, Wargaming will never go broke. We might not like it, but we have to respect that Wargaming marketing (despite the negative community feedback) is not stupid and in the end, they do whatever brings them most money. It’s trading profit for popularity, that is eventually gained elsewhere.

But that’s Wargaming, not World of Tanks itself.

As a product, I think World of Tanks is in a way “spent”. While 2014 brought some new and interesting features, it was nowhere near to what was expected in late 2013. Back then, a year ago, I said that 2014 would be a great year for World of Tanks, but I was wrong, it went from rapid development of the early years to much slower pace, especially when it came to new tanks. Some might disagree with me, but I do think that content for ALL the players is the lifeblood of every MMO, but for World of Tanks, the introduced features such as Strongholds are attractive only to a limited number of players. How many players do play those modes? 20-30 percent maximum? Well, you see what I mean. For me, the most important contant are the new tanks, but in 2015, the amount of this content is not likely to increase much – we’ll get a French branch without midtier content, an EU tree branch (one) and one more branch of godknowswhat. Adding new tanks has one advantage though – it’s safe. I mean, there’s not THAT much you can fuck up with new tanks… well, okay, unless it’s outrageous minmax retarded stuff like WT E-100 and FV4005, but let’s hope they learned from that.

On the other hand, new modes and such features are risky. We saw that clearly on the example (failure) of historical battles and confrontation modes. They are probably not as expensive (money-wise) to implement than new tanks, but it takes longer to tweak them (before they work properly anyway) and I do think the manhour cost might be higher as well.

In the end, I am skeptical about World of Tanks in 2015. I do think that apart from interesting vehicles, it’ll bring some ingame content for limited audience (perhaps more CW functions, perhaps more e-sports), but in the end, when the end of 2015 is upon us, the feeling we will have will not be of joy, but of blandness. I am even skeptical they will ever introduce Havok in any meaningful form (perhaps with very limited “pretty” destruction of small objects, but with rapidly disappearing particles and no “big building destruction”).

But perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am, for all your sakes.

Of For The Record, past and future

I think many of you noticed this – I was tired. Really, really tired of FTR. The crisis came around October to November, when I was practically decided to drop the entire blog completely and walk away. I was convinced that I’ve hit the ceiling in readerbase, but I was wrong in that. Actually, comparing stats from 2013 to 2014, the blog practically doubled, sometimes tripled in readers per day. And it’s still growing, we’re not at the ceiling yet, no way (there was a significant drop in summer, but hey, that’s summer, then it skyrocketed). Especially these days, the everyday readerbase is double the way it was in summer and double-triple the amount it was in winter 2013. I actually really appreciate it, you guys are great.

But it was tiring. I have to admit, there were days when even thinking of FTR made me sick. Count in some bad personal shit in the second half of 2014 and other issues and, well… was not a good time.

Why did I continue? Good question. Money’s not the reason despite what some think – really not worth this much effort (and it still takes the same effort as it did a year ago). You have to be a really dedicated person to do it (or obsessed, hell, noone says I am right in my head, but then, few really dedicated people are), I guess that’s the reason why every attempt to clone FTR failed until now. On the other hand, I am not under the illusion that I am irreplaceable. If I leave, someone else will start somewhere eventually. Hell, maybe even WG EU will stop sitting on their fat asses. But the main issue with FTR for me was the fact that it had no purpose other than its existence. I mean, it’s nice to have a blog with tons of readers, but where does it lead? Nowhere, I thought, no future. It would eventually just diminish and die – that is the way of all things. After all, WoT won’t be here forever either.

Sure, there’s the theoretical option of cooperating with Wargaming more closely, but… as you can imagine, that has no future for me either. They are not interested and I am CERTAINLY not interested in working with WG EU in any way, I’d rather drink my own piss (no offense, Bear Grylls). Nah, I’d make THEM drink it. And let’s face it, some of them hate my ass and I can see why and can’t blame them (see above). So fuck you, WG EU.

There is ONE venue of cooperation with Wargaming however that I am active in and that is the Czechoslovak branch research. No, that’s not just some dream or whatever, that’s actively researched with the participation of foremost Czechoslovak armor historians. I am not quite convince WG is very happy with me being included in this (since I know the historians personally), but… well, the best I can do is to provide info on the branch and translate (which I did already) and facilitate the – let’s say data acquisition. Which I am doing. So in a way, I am a part of WoT development the way Daigensui and Soukoudragon were with the Japanese tanks in 2013, so I got that going for me, which is nice (and yes, I do read 9Gag).

Make no mistake, it was and still is a lot of fun. We’ll see how it goes, I hope WG doesn’t fuck the entire thing up or scrap it. No matter what you might think of the plan, it actually makes sense when it comes to pure numbers, Czechoslovak community is large. It’s a combination of factors really, but even if it doesn’t work out, it was FUN working on it, you know. It was a shitload of work done too and yea, I am bragging now, so I better stop. No, seriously, this was one of the few things that actually kept me with WoT and FTR (apart from some twisted sense of duty anyway). The work will continue, in January.

Okay, back to For the Record.

The current plan is to keep For the Record going as it is now through 2015. No limitations, no changes.

So, I guess you are asking what changed. The Czech branch, certainly, but there is something else too.

That’s right. Armored Warfare.

Unlike Gaijin (where I instinctively immediately disliked the Ground Forces and was mostly indifferent about the planes, even though it’s clear as day War Thunder airplanes are superior to WoWp), I actually like Armored Warfare concept and the devs. Yep, it’s a WoT clone with a better engine – but that’s actually a smart thing to do, isn’t it? They are friendly, their staff is nice, but most importantly, they are eager and not afraid. And they speak English, I am sure you can see how that’s a huge advantage. So, basically, I decided at one point to cooperate with them, they seemed interested and – well, can’t tell you any details, but seems… interesting. And I am not the only one, not by a longshot.

As I mentioned before, the deal I have with Edrard (to whom I am and always will be grateful) prevents me from writing about Armored Warfare on For the Record. That’s why FTR (the current one you are reading) will continue to be dedicated to World of Tanks and only to content related to it. The original plan was to create a copy of FTR for AW, but then I asked myself… is that really wise? For me and for them? I mean, it’ll just draw people from their own portals to me. Hence the delay in everything (plus I had other stuff to finish). In the end, there probably will be a split AW FTR. Future will tell. But you know what? For now, I feel great again. Sure, AW might be a huge screwup, sure, they might not even dent WG, but who knows? 2015 could be an interesting year after all.

Damn, that was long.

Okay, enough ranting. TLDR: FTR goes on.

Okay, one more thing.

Merry Christmas to you all, happy holidays and… thank you. For reading this far and for sticking with me.

132 thoughts on “Christmas, FTR Future in 2015 and some other random crap I wanted to rant about

      • do a AW FTR!!!!!! please! i am planning on playing AW and WoT both in the future. you always have lots of info about WoT and it would be great if you could do the same for AW

      • SS you could look into these two games ^^ And im glad you expressed on how you feel. I just play wots to help others do the right thing and proud to do so, I truly win when i tough the newbie how to become a better player then i am.

        these are just ideas.

        http://trialsofascension.com/

        &

        http://www.istaria.com/

        Its only a helpful idea. if your willing to try. i wont get upset if you say no thank you.

      • Silent, it seems you are creaking under the weight of your own blog. You would not be the first to have this issue. I would suggest one of the things: 1) take a well earned break. Or; 2) get someone to work with you on a full time basis to share the responsibility. Or; 3) catapult your success into something of more worth, use this as a place to help charities that you care about or issues that affect you. I hope one of these can help.

      • “On the other hand, there are people who I truly detest, like the EU staff, who I think are generally a bunch of pisspots. Yes, I know many of you like Ectar & Co., I don’t.”

        Totaly agree with that. Ectar and his Ape brothers this little UK guy with the big head who looks like a hobbit. Dont remember the name but saw them at a com. Throwing crap invite codes in the mass like apes throwing there own excrements and playing with it. Especialy lets remember the live chats and stream chats where the wanted you to like and follow them to get bigger numbers. They promised codes gave nothing and ended in retarded insanity massban chat massacers. Not to mention the leaked codes… Never saw something incompetence like that before.

  1. No, Silenstalker, thank YOU for not giving it up and providing us with more info than we may ever hope for.

  2. There is a simple answer to what has changed during the last half a year:

    Russian economy has taken a nosedive. That must have scared people in Wargaming as well. I’m not surprised at all that their economic attitude has changed.

  3. Merry Christmas Silentstalker :D

    For me, you are and will always be the main news about WoT. So whatever choice you take, I will continue to support you and if you ever need any help with anything(maybe slovenian/yugoslavian tanks, history), my offer of help is always welcome :D

    Drink some nice egg nog mate ;)

  4. LOL you dont hold back on your hatred of WG EU. Also merry christmas and a happy new year to you too ss.

  5. Keep up the good work SS, despite the haters and trolls, almost everyone appreciates what you’re doing. I know I do.

  6. I don’t know… I am still eagerly looking forward to most of the new content. Aren’t you (and many other players) just, you know… tired? The people who played all and aren’t really interested in it anymore, game finished?

    • I for my part still really like playing the game. many things are not going the way i’d want, (like: i think arty needs a serious and complete rework, and game would be better without WT-E100 and maybe FV4005) but it’s still fun for the most part.

      But i must say that updates lately are just some hours downtime for me… it’s been a while that i didn’t give a shit about the actual new content… T49 was nice, but meh… the last time i was really looking forward to an update was (0.8.4?) the update with fv215b 183.

      I completely agree with SS when he says the last year was a slow year for WG and there was really NO significant new content. Maps are constantly being added and removed, they are generally very badly balanced… the biggest change this year really was the update yesterday… Something has changed sometime early 2014 or slightly before and has to change back… i might be wrong, but didnt storm take charge around that time?

    • I’m a rather long-time player now, although not as old as some on here. The game has changed. A lot.

      Is that good? Well, people like what they like, ya know? They like the things they latch onto to not change. So that said, I’m tired. Of WoT, WG, wondering if optimization will screw up next patch(9.5 gave me reduced ping/+30 FPS, Winterberg is pretty and good for FPS, I like the models of the Sherman III and Firefly and Archer), and most of all I’m tired of asking myself, “Why would this tank be in supertest? Is what they think we want so disconnected? Is RU really clamouring for that? Why?”

      Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of WoT. But I like what it started as: a thought-requiring, plodding(action-wise), strategic, multigenre, idea. I like that, and that direction. But online games change, so I’ve ceased to spend money on the gameplay I want to play, and now I spend on the game I can play, even if I question the validity of a true ‘world-wide’ game.

      Will I stick with it? I probably will for quite a while yet. But I see AW as a much better alternative to this. Western, modern, forward-thinking, but still building on the concept I fell in love with in 2011. And I think that regardless of new titles, WoT is still a good idea.

      You’ve changed, WoT. But I still love you, and I’ll be waiting for you, back here on the old german TD line. <333 forever.

  7. since you mentioned the ground forces they released the american patch with authentic ww2 tanks like the walker bulldog, m103 or t32.

    • They really really limited themselves with WW2 stuff :) I would like to see how it would work if there were some Mauses or Leopard 1s :D

    • i really love WT planes but seriously the Tonks are bad man, they should work on the mechanics and make it more fun (like in planes)

      • What do you mean by ‘fun’? I liked the planes in 1.25, but not in 1.31. Do you mean more fast-paced? Because I think saying that will earn you more respect than a poorly disguised gush.

    • but as of today, only the rank 1 tanks (reserve crap, couple of Stuarts and M3 Lee) + M5 Stuart and M4A1 sherman were released to public (M5 and M4A1 only today) so it might take a couple of months for those tanks you mentioned to come out.
      They promissed a couple of tanks every 3-5 days and we got 2 tanks after a week. Hopefully the situation improves after Christmas

    • I mean, they’d have nothing to add otherwise. Oh, let’s have an entire nation composed of 50 different sherman variants. And some cats.

  8. SS:

    Thx for what you have done in the past several years, really appreciated. I’ll continue on translating your stuff and more historical articles to our own site, the XVMCN. I’ve been doing this for almost two years and still doing it. The reason for this…I guess I feel duty of spreading the knowledge to more players, and to another player base. If possible, please tell Daigensui to publish her third article about Japanese TD. Really looking forward to it.
    Merry Christmas and Happy New year.

  9. Nice post SS , Good luck , Just know one thing : me and thousands more will always stand by in your worst times and best times ! merry christmas to everyone who celebrates it and those who dont aswell !

  10. Hey SS! longtime reader first time poster lol. Your efforts are much appreciated.
    Thank you!
    Constructive criticism is not a bad thing for a company & customer base. Apparently with the growth here you are doing something right. What brought me here was the vile nature of the WOT forum.

  11. Yup, WG have grown far too complacent about their main product.

    Thanks for all your efforts during 2014 SS & keep up the good work. Cheers

  12. Silentstalker, you are a hero to the World of Tanks community. Thank you so much for all you’ve done, mate. :)

    And have a merry Christmas yourself!

  13. Thank you~ Eagerly looking forward to your posts everyday.
    Merry Christmas to you as well.

  14. Merry Christmas! Hope you get Lorraine 40t models under your Christmas trees. :*

  15. Hey SS, I noticed that you didn’t mention SerB neither in the list of people you like, nor in the one with people you hate. Do you have mixed feelings about him? :)

  16. Whelp, for me FTR is the main WoT site no matter what. I visit official site only when I need to use premium code :P

    So well, helluva good job SS. Keep it up and have a good Christmas and happy new year. Same goes for all folks here on FTR :)

  17. Dude, great to hear you’re feeling good.
    You know, life always has its ups and downs, but aslong as you have something to refill the battery, everything’s fine.
    Stay true to yourself, feel free to post about anything game or politics related you want, even if you loose some readers, MANY will stay.

    Its too bad you dont like warthunder planes, because its a great game imo. I would really enjoy reading about any machines (mmo game) in your blog, without any restrictions, but we’ll see what future brings.
    Have a good time Silent and merry christmas!

  18. Merry Christmas a happy and healthy new year.

    My suspicion is that WoT to AW will be a repeat of World of Warcraft to Warhammer online. WoW was in decline, lots of people thought WO would be the a WoW killer. WO had lots of good ideas and in the first month or so took a lot of WoW players. Them WoW patched stealing a lot of WO’s best ideas. Result WO died but WoW was temporarily invigorated. Just proving competition in a market is good thing.

    I certainly hope for the health of WoT that AW pushes it harder than Ground Forces managed to do.

  19. Thank you SilentStalker for that, what you do.
    Merry Christmas (with Jesus, not santa :) ) and happy new Havok-year (i hope it will be havok year)

  20. Got into a habit of checking FTR almost every day. Sometimes I read the Comments too and want to add some logic and common sense, but I remember it’s the Internet and ….

    Keep up the good work, Merry Christmas!! and thank you for all your work and dedication. Also, please trust me on this: it’s OK to take breaks!!! not the end of the world ;)

    • Amen to this.

      SS- regarding where to go, perhaps you have other non-gaming related interests? How about starting another site with, say, your writing, or photography, and link to that here? That way if you burn out on FTR, you can do something else and people will still see you are alive and well.

      And thank you for all the hard, thankless, work you put into giving us the players useful bits of info on WoT. I am like many others here, I loved the game to begin with, but their constant dropping of the ball, fiddling with tanks that don’t need it, empty promises, has burned me out. I rarely play the game now, but still read and hope it will improve.
      My ultimate question is: Eventually WG will run out of tanks to add…then what? Start making them up completely? Move on to post-ww2?
      Sooner or later the German line(s) will be full, and then all the German fans will decry like the French fans do. Ditto the American or Japanese lines. WG should be thinking about improving the game, not just adding more tanks.

  21. Thanks SS, keep it up :) We all enjoy coming here everyday (I hope anyway lol)
    And yes, the EU population is treated like garbage, and I don’t know how terrible the staff is, but NA can feel you.

    Our own workers seem to be fine, but holy crap, WG hates the NA players… All these specials ya’ll have received daily, we got none of that crap… Just a few bundles for the holidays all at once, but hey… :P If russian population fails, they just might have to suckup to us :) Go EU and NA :)

    Merry Christmas all!

  22. Merry X-mas SS! And thanx for the many great reads. I know you make a lot of small happy moments in life for a lot of people. Thank you for that.

    Now, as for the question where it all leads. I think your blog contains a massive amount of interesting tank info. Why not collect it all and make a tank knowledge base website out of it? I happen to know a guy who did the same for airplanes and he puts adds via Google on it and earns some 1000 USD per month from google adds. Worth a thought?

    Regards and enjoy these nice days.
    //Martijn

  23. Thanks Silentstalker!
    I just wanted to say that i read almost every post from you and im really looking forward to AW and your Blog about it.

  24. Thanks SS, though perseverance you earned yourself a legion of brothers (and sisters possibly) and we’all stick with you to the end Captain SS o7

  25. “Of me and Wargaming

    Right… where to start. A lot of people think that I actually hate Wargaming. ”

    I never got that impression, as far as I know you are doing a good job of keeping an objective view about WoT, and this is very hard to do. There are many things wrong with it, I know it, you know it, nobody does anything. All we can do is express our complaints, and that’s exactly why sometimes even you point out the shortcomings of this game.

    Can’t wait for AW, finally the monopoly on tank simulation-arcade games will be broken and WG will be forced to start to listen to players complaints and improve the quality of the gameplay. Right now they don’t have any reason to do this, hence the outrageous “offers” which have only one goal : to milk money.

  26. Welp, I gotta say thank you as well.
    Since almost 2 years checking FTR on my phone became a daily routine for me, I dunno. No other blog managed to keep me interested for that long
    Keep up the good work, merry Christmas, live long and prosper etc etc

  27. SS: You are doing FTR all on your own. it most be hard work. What you need is more People to write on your blog. I am sure there are a lot of readers who are willing to write news and articals for you. And believe me, there are a lot of really qualified and specialist readers among them.

    Use your readers or at least take same people to help you.

  28. I’ve rarely read anything on the official WG sites since someone linked me FTR. After 20 years of MMOs this blog reminds me of good old Allakhazam for Everquest (not the database-kind, but the sheer amount of up-to-date information and insights), and I wish there were more dedicated people like Silentstalker for other games. This is community work at its finest. Sure, he goes a bit over the top sometimes, but anyone with a basic understanding of English can read between the lines and take sarcasm for what it is – unless he activly decides not to.

    I wish you a merry christmas, Silentstalker. Keep up the good work!

  29. I got bored as fuck of the actual game ages ago… played it too much for too long… not enough “new” stuff, too many bugs and shit, devs don’t give a shit (or give a good impression of it..).. there just wasnt anything else to play…

    The most fun to be had in Wot is trolling morons, in Gen Chat, in-game chat, troll-toons, and generally fucking with anyone who is up their own arse, or dumb…
    ..but even that got boring… there is a limit to how much fun can be had by winding dipshits up into tk-ing you and going bye-bye-blues..

    Oh yes..

    Cancel Christmas… and no more merciful hangings!!!

  30. “Merry Christmas to you all, happy holidays and… thank you. For reading this far and for sticking with me.”

    It’s a pleasure to read and stick with you. Keep up the good and important work and I hope you get all the things you deserve for Christmas :)

  31. Hi SS,

    Merry Xmas! Daily visitor here too, appreciate all the work you obviously put in!

    You need to be kind to yourself, you do a brilliant job, and like many people, I’m not just here for WoT news, but for your unique commentary. FTR is more than WoT.

    Micro

  32. Well, Merry Christmas :) .
    And i still think the correct way is to move FTR somewhere else, leaving only WoT Q&A here and expanding – not only AW, but general stuff: other games you like to play or you’d like to play in future, more various articles on more generic matters, like modern tanks and armament and all other thinks that may come to your mind – so you wouldn’t be restricted when you get into the mood of posting such…

  33. Thumbs up SS, you are doing an AWESOME job. Keep it up and you will always find your readers. And do not retreat – as we all are your fans. Merry Christmas.

  34. Been reading every day for years now, and I think this is what I read.
    the teachers always say that reading is great… and this is what I read.
    Instead of sneaking a phone to play games or text, I read ftr. this IS my entertainment. In band, when us percussionists are waiting for the band, I pull out my phone and read ftr, and every time I read, it is a great joy.
    just thank you so much.
    Happy holidays btw

  35. THANK YOU for a year of invaluable info and fun stuff to read! I hope and pray that this new year brings you joy (professionally AND personally) , peace and prosperity.

    Merry Christmas and may God bless you!

  36. The problem I now have with WoT – something which has grown since 9.3 – is that the game is now looking very old, whilst WG seem intent on making it more and more expensive (in terms of premium stuff).

    As a collector/whale, this drives me away from the game because whilst I don’t mind throwing my money at it, the feeling there’s zero serious development going on with the game means I now question whether it’s even worth my time, never mind my money.

    As a gamer, the whole thing is getting boring – yes, the actual battles still amuse me. But, CW is still the same cluster fuck of mis-communication, map abuse, match rigging, and paper-tank-meta crap. SH was amusing for about a week. Historical was okay, but far too complicated/difficult for 99% of the playerbase to cope with. TBs and Companies consigned to memory.

    When consider that for all the millions of players, and being 4th largest MMO by revenue (or whatever it is), the fact that the code cooks GPUs when in garage (mine went during CW), the GUIs are still arcane, no mutlicore support, ancient engine, laughable sounds, and laggy servers, you gotta wonder why the fuck anyone bothers with it.

    I think 2015 will be the beginning of the end for WoT – not due to any one thing, but just a combination of all factors, declining RU revenues, launch of MW, and EUs continued hopeless management of the region. Once an MMO starts to decline, it rarely comes reverses that slide until eventually you’re just left with the hardcore supporters.

    I wonder if the marked increase in troll pricing by EU is an early indicator of declining player numbers/revenue? Certainly seems quieter most nights and weekends than it did last year.

    Anyway, keep up the blog SS – you’re currently the most useful man on the internet.

  37. Hmm, any wagers on when SS’s next infamous mood swing is? ;-) ‘I quit FTR because… a girl said I was ugly today!’ lol

  38. You are my prime source for WOT information and provide about 70% of such.
    I thank you very much for your dedication and wish you joy and outrageous pleasure for the festive season.

  39. Silentstalker, thank you for the time and energy that you put in every day to help keep us informed. May you enjoy the holiday with your family and friends. I look forward to many more times when I will have the pleasure of perusing your blog. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

  40. Keep up the good work, haven’t played a battle in 3 months, still read FTR every day

  41. Keep Up the good work, I have been a daily reader of FTR for several years, I sincerely do not understand why WG EU can’t do one third of the job you are doing on you own +Edrard.
    I understand your resentment, but to me you are part of WoT in some fashion, this blog is an institution for plenty of EU readers and I am glad to see that you intend to continue posting.

    Besides our consideration I hope you earn good money with all the readers you have, you deserve it. Maybe one day WG EU management will change for the best.

    Anyway good luck in all your future endeavours.

  42. I for one am really looking forward to Armored Warfare coming out.

    I’ve had it with Wargaming’s poor customer support or lack of it completely, the garbage form letters you receive, the apparent inability of their moderators on the North American board to even “understand” English. This is a world company. No it’s a company that doesn’t care or give a crap about the NA player base or the EU player base. Only focus is on the Asian Server (hearing it’s the most corrupt of all) and the Russian servers.

    $$$ money rules the day at wargaming, it’s not about the game, the development of the game, working with the player base or anything like that. It’s all about how much they can milk out of their only cash cow before the cash cow rolls over and dies. To wargaming we pay the bills but we are all idiots. Had enough of Serbs pompous attitude and storms comments.

    The inability of WOT to actually stop Illegal mod use is a complete joke. They claim botters are being banned sorry just not seeing it. More and more inactive players and bots being run daily.

    Players with less that 2K games that have 6+ tier X tanks. Not possible! Yet you report stuff like that and you get thanks for your submission, ohhh ya investigations are private bullshit.

    Warpack and other illegal mod packs are being circulated from various person to various person hourly. It’s getting worse not better. Yet they fiddle while Rome burns.

    The Games used to be fun. 25K+ in games now done with every Tier X vehicle except Tier X arty unlocked (4 left to go Brit, Rus, French and US).
    Battles Now they just aren’t fun.
    Match maker is broken and they won’t fix it. Game play has disintegrated to futile lemming rushes by idiot players. Loser line forms to the left.

    For the most part garbage maps with garbage content on the worst random map rotation ever invented.
    Only enjoyment comes from playing with platoon mates, but when you all see constant bullshit every game it becomes a head shaker. A long time ago if you had 1 or 2 WGA members in a game it was pretty clean. Now they just don’t care they run their crap directly against the WGA members.

    Another thing that constantly bothers me is the Use of Arty in the game. The whole concept of how arty is used in this game IS SCREWED! Arty that fires laser beams from the international space station game in game out. Trajectory arc and hits by arty that are virtually impossible. Now New Mods that make Arty even more lethal. Using 2014 technology on 1940/ 1950 tanks.

    Looking forward to Armored Warfare and perhaps maybe that will bring some enjoyment back . Once it arrives fully this future ex WOT player will be looking at wargaming from one direction the rear view mirror.

  43. I have the same feeling, they are just milking money until the last possible drop. Guess what? There will be no HAVOK – they cant handle it anymore, they realized it and just following the simple way – add more and more tanks and missions to keep players p(l)aying.

  44. A bit late to the party, but I just had to say thank you, SS, I really appreciate all that you are doing and I am sincerely glad to hear that things are looking up for you. Hope you see this, and also, Merry Christmas and Happy holidays to you as well! :)

  45. Thanks for all the effort into making FTR for us SS. I have been reading this blog since last year and only signed up 4 months ago. I hope you will have success in this, the AW FTR, and life. Merry Christmas dude :).

  46. SS, thank you for all your hard work. While I know you started FTR in service of the EU community, please realize that you are a significant source of WoT/WG news for other communities as well (probably all non-RU communities). In that way, your thoughts and contribution is significantly global in nature. I hope that serves as a motivation for your 2015 articles.

    Personally speaking, your blog is the first news source I browse on a daily basis, even during days/weeks that I do not play WoT. You are to WoT (again, for non-RU communities) what MMO Champion is to WoW, and look at how many people it takes to run that particular site…

    Have a very nice Christmas and New Year. Thank you again.

  47. New reader looking forward to your insights in 2015. Best wishes and Good on you!
    Vancouver, Canada

  48. #1. Imgur is “better” then 9gag (imo)

    #2. Don’t worry about the end game, Keep it up as long as you can/want, when you’re ready to move on just hand FTR over to your #1 pick.

    #3. A lot of pages start like this, Gamespot, and other blogs turned company, Eventually you can hire some people to help and move FTR onto more games (even if you just stick with WoT).

    There are always options, life is never very fair and you don’t get to many chances in life to take the next step. FTR has been around for a long time and has a reputable name. 90% of WoT players know what you are talking about if you say “I read it at FTR”. Turn this into a company, YOUR company.

    Of coarse that’s all just possibility. Everyone appreciates the effort you put into this. Sometimes you have to evolve and become bigger, sometimes you have to let it go.

  49. I have to agree with all the guys above, great job SS, is there any more news on the false info that was given to you by WG staff re: the xmas missions, is this likely to happen again?

  50. SS – thank you for all that you have done here; this blog, and the semi sane bunch of commenters (far more sane than I, I might add) have provided a ton of entertainment and info for your readers, myself included. Whatever you choose to do, we are grateful to you and appreciative of your efforts; thank you, and merry Christmas…

    And to all you crazy, sarcastic, occasionally nonsensical and often butthurt bastards who regularly post in this section: never change. I love you all… Merry Christmas to you too!

  51. Ello SS,i just registered because you are the most honest guy about WOT stuff…(read your blog everyday though before i registered)…good luck in whatever u choose too do and happy xmas from England :)

  52. Thank you SS. I read your blog every day. your efforts are amazing and I could never duplicate them, your dedication is something to be admired and followed.

    God bless,
    Merry Christmas from the USA!~

    ~KA

  53. Sadly, nobody mentioned the great political fuck-ups happened in FTR, which pissed off many and caused SS to go standoff against them.

  54. Merry Christmas and thanks allot for all your work, detailed info and awesome posts!!! you really are dedicated and just so you know, FTR is the only website i disable Addblock on :) Cheers!

  55. Silent, keep up the great job, and as I’ve told you before, я всегда к вашим услугам, если понадобится помощь!
    Thank you for FTR!

  56. SS Many thanks for FTR, great job and please keep at it.

    A new reader of FTR, but a great insight into WoT with some great topics/articles on it.

    WoT has changed a lot since I first started playing it and in some ways not for the better. As others have already commented WG are clearly more interested in the money they can make rather than the game and the player base.

    My biggest gripe regarding the game is probably not a lot different to other players: -

    1 – Rushed releases of new versions with very little new content. It’s almost a case of lets release a new version for the sake of it so players think the game is being developed. IMHO they should limit releases to possibly quarterly or just 3 times a year, this would allow for more content/changes and give them a chance to reduce the number of bugs in each release.

    2 – Fictional Tanks, this has got to be my biggest pet hate. Stick to tanks that only existed on blue prints, don’t introduce over powered fictional hybrids. They’re fun, agreed, but the novelty of coming across them or possibly playing them soon wears very thin. Also, what period of tanks does WoT cover? It seems it’s slowly creeping closer and closer to present day, won’t be long until I pop over a hill in my T29 only to come face to face with an M1 Abrams!

    3 – BOT’s which are a joke and nothing is done about them. In addition to them how about putting in controls where Premium T8′s can’t be bought the moment an account created? Oh hang on, I forgot the money made by WG! This boils my blood, having a player with less than 1k of games played trying to drive around in a Lowe with no idea of how to play full stop, never mind the map of the tank they’ve just shelled out for!

    Enough ranting from me, gone off topic :-)

    As said great work SS & Merry Christmas

  57. First of all, Hello everyone as it is my first comment here on FTR

    decided to register now, just to reply to this article, even tho im reading FTR for about 2 months now and playing WoT for almost 3 months, hell im even reading FTR now when im at work and im not even playing WoT nowadays because i’ve got no net connection at home

    this might be quite simple and irrelevant (also i might be not the best writer), but what i mean is your work means a lot to whole lot of people to the point some come here just to read what you write (i really like your style, havent read anything purely because i liked how it’s written in a while) rather than about what you write (even tho i must admit every piece of information i read here was invaluable)

    well that’s it for praising, in short – i hope it will motivate you at least a lil bit for next year, cheers

  58. Am I the only one who thinks SilentStalker should just do the same thing as The Mittani DOT com?

  59. Merry Christmas to you too, SS!

    Having seen a lot of video footage of AW simply makes me think it won’t be as much fun as WoT for me. Maybe they will change a lot of the stuff which is still extremely wonky, like the driving physics and the AI behaviour (driving physics look horrible, especially when a tank went a little airborne going down into a riverbed, I immediately was remembered of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rikTiT2OwqQ). It will have it’s place for sure once released, just because of the modern tanks alone (maybe this will force WG to finally make a tier 11 / 12 even though they said they’ll never make it?). But so far it doesn’t seem to be the definite WoT killer, not at all.

  60. Merry Christmas to you too Silent ! We might have disagreements about some things, but you definitely are an extremely talented and professional blogger, very courageous to compensate for WG EU’s lack of thought. I’ll definitely follow you wherever you write. ;)

  61. I created a profile just to comment.

    I read your blog every day and every day I am impressed with the time and effort you put into it.

    Please keep up the good work and know that there are legions of fans who deeply appreciate what you do.

    Enjoy your holidays!

  62. Frank,
    as always, words can not adequately express my thanks, for all you do.
    Best wishes and luck to you in the future. I will keep reading and help bringing new readers to you.

    I am building a fire breathing screamer of a computer next month, you won’t have to hear about my Dinoputer and poor FPS anymore. Need to be ready to Beta test AW, WoWS, and look to a bright future.

    Merry Christmas,
    Samantha

  63. Hm, i missed this thread fore some reason,

    so happy holidays and the best luck for the future to everyone and ss, keep up the great work.