Hello everyone,

the review today is not “weekly” per se, as the last one was delayed and posted this Wednesday, but I am trying to keep schedules as much as I can wherever possible.

Either way, no Paypal donations in this period, but I recieved some encouraging e-mails, thank you all for any support you give me, sometimes it’s really nice to read some of the positive things from you, saves my mood every now and then :)

One thing that is worth adressing is the fact that during the recent Patreon monthly “cycle”, the amount of contributions dropped by cca 30 percent. It wasn’t long before I recieved a couple of gleeful e-mails (anonymous of course), mocking me and FTR for losing reader support.

The truth is however quite different. During the recent Patreon monthly “cycle”, for whatever reason, roughly one fourth of contributions did not “count”, they got into the “pending” status (which meant delayed to the next cycle – won’t count twice next time of course, one month was simply skipped) – here I would like to thank Patreon support staff for the superfriendly way they handle things on their end, it really is actually a pleasure writing with them (not exactly common these days). Count in some personal issues I had to deal with (still have to, hence the reduced weekend content) and it wasn’t exactly the best week ever for me. In the end, some of the “pending” charges got through, the issue is still ongoing. Will keep you posted.

So, once again, thank you all who keep supporting me! :)

PS: Some positive FTR changes for the future – we will be getting something called “CDN” – I have no idea what exactly it is and how it works, but Edrard said it will speed up FTR across the world access by (if I understood it correctly) storing data on some localized servers or something like that. Sounds useful and it’s not that expensive a service. Oh yes and some improved image thingie that will optimize too large images for web use. What is planned is also a better message system (I am getting TONS of spam from FTR mail system). So, stay tuned :)

Thanks to Mydragonsfly for this one :)

There have been a lot of things that used World of Tanks art – cups, t-shirts, mouse pads… but fireworks, that’s new :) Something tells me that this is was not done with WG permission… (made in China, lol). Hmm. I wonder how safe this is…

Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

as you’ve read before on FTR, 9.2 will bring various new medals for team battles and one for clanwars. Two of them will be multiple stage medals, although the exact conditions of getting them are still unknown. Here are the pictures of multiple stages of them.

Rotmistrov’s medal for certain amount of Clanwars battles. It’s named after the commander of all Soviet armored forces in WW, Chief Marshal Pavel Alexeevich Rotmistrov. A strange choice indeed, because Rotmistrov’s combat command was not exactly successful, he got removed from active command allegedly because the unit he commanded suffered very high losses during the battle of Minsk in 1943. He was “kicked up” to strategic level and became the supreme armor commander in February 1944.

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3378731.html

Hello everyone,

the fact that the rear turret VK4502 was scheduled to be buffed at some point was no secret. However, interesting info appeared on Russian forums. The supertest client contains a VK4502 Ausf.B armor buff as such:

As you can see, the frontal “machinegun” weakspot disappeared and the frontal hull armor was buffed to 200mm or so, it’s really hard to tell from one gif, as the colors are close to each other. The armor is completely unhistorical of course, so they might as well buff it this way (it was unhistorical even before, historically this vehicle’s armor was 80mm thick or so), but I think the best course of action would be to replace this vehicle completely with something else.

Either way, please keep in mind that this buff was not mentioned even in 9.2 supertest notes, so it’s completely possible that it will NOT appear in the 9.2 live version. It’s good that the devs are thinking of buffing this tank though.

Hello everyone,

thanks to Jusuchin for this one. Some of you know the excellent Youtube video channel and portal Forgotten Weapons (if you don’t, it’s definitely worth checking out, although the guy who runs it specializes on infantry weapons, mixing it occasionally with some heavier stuff). He recently took a short footage of the M18 Hellcat fire (unfortunately, he wasn’t able to make a full video), but damn, the firepower is impressive…

Hello everyone,

an official Wargaming video about the 70 years anniversary of Minsk liberation from nazi occupation (the anniversary was on 3.7.2014 actually). The video has English subtitles and it’s actually quite interesting. Enjoy!

Hello everyone,

I’ll be brief: the current Kursk event also includes 50 percent crew retrain discount. Taken a few minutes ago:

This info is not in the portal post, I guess they forgot about it.

Hello everyone,

remember the guy with the Wargaming inside info (that got confirmed in time, for example the Freedom Bundle for Xbox)? He’s back. This time, he said he’d have to be more careful – the developers were not happy about some of the info being leaked and started purging the internal channels. So, we’ll have a look at some of the older stuff, that was planned and never got into the game, perhaps it will be illuminating for you guys. I will add some of my comments in the usual way.

Multi-turret and Multi-Gun Mechanism

Multiturret and multigun mechanisms have been alphatested several times already, the developers however are not convinced that the mechanism is of any use and should be developed further. Most of the secondary weapons are pretty much useless (such as the Maus gun) for their tiers, so it’s most likely the project was shelved completely due to the “what is the point of developing something that players will never use anyway” reason. One of the few exceptions would be the B1 hull gun.

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Hello everyone,

since it seems everything got postponed for a week (possibly due to the big Wargaming Cyprus meeting?), according to info I recieved today from a supertester, the 9.2 common test is planned for 10.7.2014 (next Thursday).