Author: Tyraforce

Today we’re going to have a look at everybody’s favorite WOT vehicle class called SPGs, arties, f… clickers, scumbags, lucky bastards, sky pigs, cancer, cowards and worse (see FTR Hall of shame for the full family-friendly list). This is the first part of a 3-part guide that will cover nearly everything associated with these much loved vehicles WG blessed us with. The first part will cover general info and basic guidelines, which experienced players might not find as interesting. More advanced stuff will be covered in parts 2 and 3. Let’s get started.

SPG ROLE & PHILOSOPHY

SPGs are a part of the rocks-scissors-paper concept and their job is to deal with heavies and campers in general. While many whine and wish arties were removed, this would only encourage people to camp harder and more people would just drive E3s, find a hulldown spot with a solid cover behind them and troll the heck out of the enemy team. Arties reduce the amount of possible camping spots and keep people moving. Also, they narrow the gap between excellent and bad players by suppressing the excellent ones and making their life much harder. They are the necessary evil that makes the game ticking whether you like them or not.

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Hello everyone,

so, as expected, the WZ-111 challenge post is here – and, as expected, you can, just like on other main servers, skip parts of it by buying the special bundles in the shop.

So, are these bundles identical to other servers?

- price for skipping one mission on RU server: 10 USD
- price for skipping one mission on US server: 10 USD
- price for skipping one mission on ASIA server: 10 USD
- price for skipping one mission on EU server: 9.95 EUR

Hello everyone,

today, I am going to have a guest – Whiskeydog, a Chinese server unicum, who will explain to us how WZ-111 is doing in random battles on Chinese server – and whether it’s worth getting it or not. Because there’s noone better to explain than someone who actually played this vehicle in random battles, yes?

So, without further ado, here’s what Whiskeydog has to say about this tank. Enjoy!

Before going about the tank’s performance, I think it should be clearly known that WZ-111 HAS limited matchmaking. I would say a 75% chance of standing atop of the team, 20% middle of the team, 5% or even less in the bottom (in which it can still fight).

Overall situation: WZ-111 is the most popular tier 8 premium heavy in Chinese server, and one of the most popular tier 8 premiums (SS: it’s possible that I mistranslated Evilly’s earlier quote that WZ-111 is the second most popular – in fact, the actual meaning is probably “it’s second in armour toughness – bouncing shells – only after the IS-6) .

Thanks to its good economic characteristics and 150% base exp gain (It needs well over 2,400 exp to obtain the “Ace Tanker” mastery badge for it), it’s very active in random, company, stronghold and team battles. Calculated from the rankings provided by XVMCN Team: about 150,000 players obtained WZ-111s , in contrast to 25,000~30,000 112s, about 120,000 IS-6s, 100,000 T34s, 65,000 Lowes and roughly 450,000 Type 59s.

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In Japan, they drift with cars. In Romania, with tanks :) Enjoy (thanks to whoever sent it to me, I apparently deleted the message)

Hello everyone,

today’s advent offer for EU server includes:

- 360 days of premium

Price: 86,24 USD (69,19 EUR)

Russian server stopped having the daily discounts at this point.

Hello everyone,

Anton “Evilly” Pankov confirms in a video that Wargaming will soon remove one (unspecified) vehicle from the game shop. This is likely to apply to all servers. The reason for the removal is that this vehicle starts to be too numerous and it’s too powerful for a premium tank, so in order not to have to nerf the tank, it will be removed from the shop (like the KV-5, LeFH and Type 59 were before).

There is a very high suspicion that the vehicle to be removed is the E-25, but it was not confirmed yet. It was mentioned numerous times (even by WG staff) to be too good however.

Hello everyone,

looks like there’s a very nasty business brewing in the east. Generally, the news from the ASIA server, that get on FTR only concern two things: one is WG information (sometimes, stuff on ASIA server gets released early thanks to the agility of WG ASIA staff) – the other was Tanitha’s former Q&A thread.

But, as it turns out, ASIA has its share of dramas and Wargaming fuckups. This time, it involves a stronk unicum clan, VPA (Vietnamese People’s Army). No, these guys are not trolls – you see, the former separate Vietnamese (VN) server merged with SEA server to create the ASIA cluster. Therefore, Vietnamese players actually do play on ASIA (I can see actually a LOT of visits on FTR from Vietnam and Philippines for some reason – hey guys!).

Anyway, back to stronk drama. I recieved about two dozen e-mails about the same issue, which – for ASIA server – is completely unprecedented. Obviously, ASIA players are interested in this matter and Wargaming’s attitude. The thing is, most of the e-mails contained just a link to a VERY long drama thread, which I did partially read. The short version is: VPA clan rigged CW campaign battles and WG did nothing about it, save for fuelling the fire by locking threads.

Now, before we begin, for the record: I actually like Tanitha (WG Asia producer), he’s been forthcoming and generally pretty decent, but in this case, it’s somehow my impression he managed to drop the ball and – if anything – he did let this issue blow out of proportions. But I am not well-versed in the matters of ASIA server, so I’ll instead let someone else speak, who is – an ASIA server player (I hope he doesn’t mind, but after spending two hours reading the stuff, I didn’t manage to produce anything better than his summary – quite the contrary).

Explanation of the VPA Issue

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Hello everyone,

a short post about the mystery of the third 2015 branch. Please note this is NOT a leak, just my thoughts on the matter, it’s completely possible I am totally off.

So, about 2015 branches. We know there will be three of them and we know in which order they will come, roughly. The first to come (was already mentioned by Storm indirectly, as well as other WG people) will be the French AMX-30 “branch” (AMX-30 prototype, AMX-30 and a bunch of lowtier stuff, like the Somua S-35, not a full branch). This is due possible around Spring 2015. In summer a new branch is planned, which is a mystery. And then, as a third branch, the first part of the EU tree in late 2015 (as far as I can tell, it looks like it’ll be the Czech branch, but who knows with Wargaming, right? We’ll see in January).

In any case, it goes like this:

- Spring 2015: the French
- late Summer 2015: ???
- late 2015: EU

So, the real question is, what is mystery branch in the middle? You might think there are many, many options, but… not really actually. Not that much anyway. Let’s use the elimination method to try to guess then:

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