Armored Warfare Pre-Alpha: First Impressions

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Hello everyone,

so, as I announced earlier, I was offered a chance to be amongst the first 500 in the first public (pre)alpha test of Armored Warfare, the upcoming tank game by Obsidian Entertainment. Naturally, I grabbed it, curious how this game would turn out.

A little explanation first however. Experienced game developers know that when you make a game, the first thing you can (and should) release is not even alpha – it’s the proof of concept of sorts, a minimalistic version of what you intend the game to be – and let people critisize it. It’s not closed beta, it’s not even real alpha, it’s just a small version of the world your game will bring to the PC screens, one day. As such, a lot of features are missing, as the client gets cut to its core, not to distract the testers by any immediately unnecessary features. This is called “minimum viable product” and you can see more about this concept in this video.

That’s exactly what this pre-alpha was and that’s how I approached it. There was a developer warning that some stuff will be bugged and testers are encouraged to report the issues. The test took place yesterday and took 4 hours.

As many of you know, Gaijin based its tank part of War Thunder on one point: “it’s different that World of Tanks” – and that was it. Same tanks, different methods – some like War Thunder tanks, I don’t, I think it’s a major clusterfuck and it sucks. Obsidian on the other hand went a different way. Their basic idea is that whatever we might think of Wargaming and World of Tanks issues (disappearing tanks, arty, RNG etc.), the game concept is actually very good (just look at the massive success of World of Tanks) – so why not use it, build upon it and improve it?

And so, Armoured Warfare begun as a pure WoT clone with modern tanks. But is it still one? Let’s have a look at it.

First thing you will notice after logging in (the installation was fairly okay and fast) is the garage, which is very familiar. Basically it looks like a WoT hangar, but better. You can immediately see that a lot of features are missing, you can’t upgrade the tanks and such for example and there’s no real money system yet, all you can is actually… play, with tanks. And some tanks they are.

In the test, there were several pieces of hardware, from an advanced MBT (T-90) over a light tank (Stingray II), scout (Weasel), tank destroyer (wheeled Stryker) to artillery (Akatsiya). The level of details on these tanks is very high – especially the T-90 model is of higher quality than Wargaming HD models. Very pleasing to look at. Naturally, I selected it first and pressed the “battle” button immediately. The garage UI is pretty sleek by the way and and the background music I really liked for some reason.

So, the battle then.

The graphics, as you can imagine, especially on one map (the Graveyard, an old overgrown airport with various wrecks) are very, VERY good. Even in this poor unoptimized engine iteration (testers were specifically warned by developers that this client is not optimized and has significantly higher requirements than the final product will have), the map looks stunning. Sounds of gunfire, planes flying overhead, stuff exploding… I really liked it. And then there’s the night. And rain. The terrain looks very natural, not like an artificial gameplay arena in WoT. The price for this look is that you have to pay more attention to your surroundings, but that’s okay, it is really, really pretty. And you can turn on the tank headlights, imagine that! Took me a while before I discovered. The next thing I discovered was this not being a good idea – yep, doing that will make you a big fat attractive target. But it’s pretty.

Second map is like a city and it kinda resembles Himmelsdorf, only without all that dark filter shit. The city looks bright and has this mediterranean and modern flair. Not bad, but a bit bland. Ah well, no matter. The tanks look very pretty all of them, especially on highest details. And how fast is this thing going? Well, as fast as World of Tanks apparently. On a solid computer (no bleeding edge, but solid), 50-60 FPS, depending on situation and map. Drops to 40 in worst situations, but that’s max details and rain, smoke, explosions, tanks and shit flying everywhere. Not bad for a pre-alpha – even this build beats WoT to pieces – WG will not be able to match it anytime soon, not without HD maps and, knowing WG, that’s like two years of work from now. So yea, the Cryengine works.

Then there’s the fun part, the tanks. The tanks feel like tanks, not like electric toys on tracks. The movement can be compared to WoT (thanks god – no WT sliding), but it’s smoother and overall very, very good. The tanks also feel FAST – much faster than their speed would suggest, rushing forward in a Stryker is quite an experience. Even the T-90 is no slouch. You hear the engine roaring (better than WoT’s “droning” engine noise) and the steal beast belches smoke and fire, as you move forward – and it’s quite a fire. The explosions, gunfire and fire effects are simply beautiful, miles ahead of anything WG has ever shown. Pressing that fire button and watching an enemy tank exploding really does feel good.

Generally, the basic gameplay really impressed me. With proper development (again, pre-alpha stage!), this game will resemble Battlefield more than it does World of Tanks and yes, that is a good thing. At the same time, most of the things in the game are really easy to figure out and intuitive, which is extremely important for new players.

The battles were very fast paced. No camping. I assume it is the nature of the vehicles as well – AW will mostly lack “really slow stuff” like the T95 or Maus, simply because these dinosaurs died out right after the war and 10 years later, there were no such vehicles in service anymore. The game is definitely somewhat faster than World of Tanks in almost every respect. And there are some pretty original things too, like the light tank deploying smoke grenades, that cover you for a very short while (not eating shells, just a vision obstacle). Extremely useful!

But…

But of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There were a number of issues, I’ll run over them quick.

- the test was EXTREMELY laggy (despite solid latency of cca 50ms), probably caused by the server itself not being ready or something, practically all players reported these issues
- the UI is very cluttered with unnecessery stuff – basically it’s like full XVM, newbies will be lost in it
- ramming is very unsatisfactory, the vehicles feel like they have little weight when you ram, they just stop from one another
- some objects destruction effects are not implemented, they just switch to their destroyed model
- artillery works just like in WoT and given the nature of the battle, it’s either OP as fuck (it can fire guided missiles, so you can imagine the joy), or (much more common) completely useless, you won’t hit anything (a lot of RNG).

The last point however was mentioned by the AW developers to be reworked to a completely new model – hopefully it’ll be something more competitive, but quite frankly, given how fast the vehicles are and how easy it is to flank someone, I think the game could do even without arty altogether. Considering the above, I have no idea why it was even included in the test.

Conclusion

Considering this is even a pre-alpha stage, I was very satisfied. Yes, the engine needs serious tuning. Yes, the server needs fixing as well, the lags were sometimes like WTF level. Yes, there were only five tanks. But I do have a good feeling about this (and I rarely do about a game). So, the question that is on some people’s mind is… will it be a WoT killer?

No, of course not. At this point World of Tanks is in the same position World of Warcraft is, the defining element of its genre.

But, I think it will bite off a chunk from the playerbase – specifically the playerbase that pays most per capita. And no, that’s not the Russian one…

176 thoughts on “Armored Warfare Pre-Alpha: First Impressions”

      • Games like the Crysis series run much faster and with a higher level of detail on my computer than WoT.
        There is a good chance that Armored Warfare will do the same compared to WoT.

        • Same here, I play even Crysis 3 on high LOD, and WoT on minimum… As ridiculous as it sounds…

        • My only real concern stems from the usage of CryEngine.

          Take a look at: https://www.google.co.za/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=crysis+black+screen+bug+site:forums.steampowered.com

          Long story short, CryEngine had (Maybe still has?!?!?) a bug which affected a lot of people, including me, attempting to play Crysis 1,2 and WarHead which causes the game graphics output to simply cease after 10 to 30 minutes. The game is still running, you can move around and hear sounds but the video output is gone.

          As with many such bugs, there are lots of purported fixes that work with varying degrees of success. Personally, I tried them all and none of them worked for me. It seems like Win 7 64-bit + GF660Ti is not a combination the CryEngine in those older games plays ball with.

          Ordinarily you’d ask why it’s even an issue, Crysis 1 came out ages ago. The issue is, the bug was present in Warhead and Crysis 2. Maybe it was fixed with the version of CryEngine in Crysis 3. I’m pretty sure I’ve run into it in another non-Crysis game that used CryEngine though…

          I hope so, because I’d hate to play AW for 10 minutes and then have to restart the client…

            • Not drivers, not cracked. Google the issue, it affected a LOT of people.

              Hopefully it’s not an issue anymore…

          • I never had that bug, and have crysis 2 on ym steam acc. Played it a few weeks ago and passed the campaing a few times, no bugs like those whatsoever >_>

            Only had the fullscreen bug with DX11 enabled, other than that nothing at all.

    • It will probably be better optimised than world of tanks and wll have multi-core support so you can probably run it on a laptop (not a calculator like WoT, I have actually tried that with my GDC, bad idea.)

      • Besides you can now build PCs at least in the UK for under £300 which meet the recommended requirements for AW and connect it to your TV with an HDMI cable and then use a wireless keyboard and mouse. Simples :D.
        Though I recognise that sometimes cash is tight and it isn’t possible to meet a £300 cost for playing computer games.

    • CryEngine is really a good game engine, it depends on the developers if they can optimize their game :]

      • AW looks like it will suck. Plus, we know SS is in bed with AW and desperately wants to leave WOT’s behind so he’s bias and going to pump it up and pray it’s good, even if it sucks.

  2. As long as less polaks/ruskies play it, due to playing on potato rigs, then i’m all for Armored Warfare.

      • The only reason to get a console is to get a ps4 and play unharted 4/ the last of us. Well, and its great graphics for a cheaper cost than a good pc.

        • “great graphics” which is why with the latest games for PS4 (AC Unity, BF4, Watchdogs) don’t even run at 1920x1080p resolution. And almost none of the 1080p games run at 60fps…
          Though I concede that the price is lower on a playstation. But you will never get a discount. You can wait even a couple of weeks or sometimes on day one for PC you can get a 50% discount on the price of games for the console.

          • Hah. You can build a PC for the exact same price as a PS4/XBone. Then you don’t have to buy $60 games every time.

            I don’t see anyone ever doing taxes on their console.

        • It is not cheaper then a good PC mate.
          Console gaming is more expensive then PC gaming.

          2 SUBJECTIVE exclusives are all the PS4 has? Yeah. PC has hundreds of times more. Backwards compatibility. Emulation. Modding.

      • Sorry Soviet, but your wrong on that count. Many people from our great western nations will arrive with our master race pc’s to keep the commies in line.

          • I live in America, XBOX doesn’t frigging exist, PS2/3 are the only consoles you will see and barely people play it because of its game prices. PC rules specially due to CS 1.6, LoL, UT, NFSU2 and WoW.

            • Where in America? The US, Canada, Mexico? Or maybe south America? Central America?

              The US is console land. Their market is still console oriented. Things are getting better though.

    • “Polaks”, what you call them, contrary to what you say, play on pretty good rigs, I bet my rig is 2x better than yours. It was a russian video about speeding up your computer, wasn’t it?

      • I am also very much against Xenophobia (discrimination based upon country of origin). Besides, the level of computer people have varies from person to person, not region to region. I know for certain coming from the UK that for a long time I played WoT on a terrible PC, it was a laptop from 2011 with a celeron and integrated graphics. I still ended up at 1700 WN8 overall atm, which has been on a consistently upward trend. I now however have invested in a proper PC with an FX-6300, 16Gb RAM, R9 290 and it is orders of magnitude better than what I played on before.
        edit: Evanescence, you may have an awesome PC, but I would never say it is twice as powerful unless you are on something ridiculous like an i7-5960x, 64Gb RAM, with 4 980s in SLI because on the internet you never know for sure.

        • I am just sad that polish people are blamed for all the evil on this world, with me being thrown in the same bag.

          • I entirely agree that especially in the UK, so many people give polish people shit. Every Pole I have ever met has been really friendly and extremely hard working. I cannot say the same for every Brit, by a long measure.

    • This is maybe the worst chain of replies I’ve ever seen… It goes from dumbass console wars (I can’t belive people still do that) to racism and xenophobia in a few lines of text… Wow.

    • Probably not.

      A lot lf players spent a lot of time (and even money) in WoT so not everybody will play AW

          • How dare you think of such?!
            I love WoT:
            - its broken arty for 5 years
            - its broken MM with even worse platoon MM
            - rigged secret skill MM
            - graphics which look like 2007
            - fantasy tanks
            - #noruskiebias
            - broken gold ammo
            - WG laziness
            - WG EU super laziness

            Nope, no reason to get tired of WoT…

            • Honestly, I can live with almost all of those…
              But not the RNG masking some faggotry that makes red players perform magically, enough to keep them in the game, rather then being tired of never landing a shot 50 games in a row and leaving “because the game sux I can’t hit anything”.

              Seriously, fuck you WoT, I’m tired of bullshit snapshot tomato IS3s bouncing 270mm pen shells from 3 different people.

            • Yeah, and if it wasn’t for “#noruskiebias” and “broken arty” and unreal RNG you wouldn’t have such fame for your YT videos.

              Although I totaly agree with all you mentioned and still love the game. It’s the only game I can actually get frustrated and LMFAO at the same time xD

              #KurwaVagon2Stronk

      • since when “if you spend a a lot of moeny and time” you have to keep playing?, that’s pretty stupid, when the game starts gettign you angry and stressed ever since you watch the icon in your desktop you stop playing it, period.
        doesn’t matter if you spent XXX ammounts of time or money in it, you just stop because it’s toxic(unless you’re a masochist).

        • WoT doesnt have anything to spend on. Bought T8 prem and one T3 prem for sealclubing, 4 garage slots with discount. And that was 2 years ago.

          • Woras, i know a lot of people that have spent hundreds(or more) of dollars and they keep spending “because they did so in the past”.
            i’ve heard them buying those stupid packs over new years and facepalming

            i do concur that spending a dime on wot had no point after the pre-launch preorder for the M6A2E1, maybe a little in the middle for premium but that’s it.

  4. Considering dumping WoT for this. I live in SEA, will I get shit amounts of lag in the final iteration or will they only be “US/EU only servers”?

    Also, time to refresh my YT subscriptions page like mad to see them gameplay footage.

  5. US will go to this, Russians to WoT and EU split between. Then WG EU will try to keep as many players on it’s servers with gifts and… Oh wait, my mistake, WG EU will just charge more money and expect us to stay. Overly attached WG

    • Do I need to remind you who gave money to Obsidian to make AW? Advertisement power is quite big for them :)
      Plus – RU cluster already sells packages for AW, host contests and etc; meanwhile westerners dont get such.

    • WG doesnt give a shit about EU remember ? This company is here only for money, and for their country. If they had any care about fun for EU, we’d already have parts of Havok (remember we dont have it because “optimisation”, because russià calculator cant keep it, even tho almost all EU with any gaming intentions can)

      As long as their russians stay, they’re ok.

  6. Well, I hope WG gets off their ass because they see money flying to their competitors…

  7. Not impressed to hear about how arty is being handled, but you know alpha.. stuff can change. All-in-all looking forward to this game very much. WoT has become a joke.

  8. Affirmitive, had almost same thoughts last night during the test. Liked it very much. Had also one fight against SS. And i also liked the way SS responded to all players. You are a nice guy SS :-)

      • Well, if they fixed the fucking collision models, fixed sliding, got rid of the BR systems, made bombers less overpowered in realistic…
        It’s just not happening, is it?

        • Its the “oneshot or be oneshoted” stuff…
          Or “its not a pen but your loader is dead as fuck”.
          Or “4mins to fix your tank – go afk”.

          • “oneshot or be oneshoted” stuff… –>like it was in RL you mean?, like a PROPER TANK SIMULATOR you mean?, then yes, it’s AWESOME.
            “its not a pen but your loader is dead as fuck”. –>never, unless HE and concussion
            “4mins to fix your tank – go afk”. –>not anymore, unless your tank has everything broken a single living crewmember, so it’s done correctly(and now you have repair assist and towing, but you woulnd’t know since you quitted whining)

        • They made an even this weekend with full simulator damage and driving/flying models, no HUD, but allowed for simplified controls.
          No BR bullshit tiering, no Tokyo Drifting around corners, no crosshair for bombers….

          And you know what? It’s amazing.
          It’s completely amazing in that quasi-simulator mode that allows for simplified controls.
          Unfortunately, this is Gaijin, so they’re going to fuck it up.
          They’re going to fuck it up badly, introduce more bullshit high tier easy-mode premium to get a influx of cash from a game they are completely fucking up by taking the worst possible decisions.

          Proof that they have a great concept that can blow WoT out of the water, but it’s Gaijin incompetence that’s keeping WoT in first place.

          That might not happen with AW.
          In fact, it probably won’t.
          Obsidian has the budget and the time to do what they want to do, refine it, make it stunning, and develop it properly.
          Unless WG makes some radical changes, the only people WG will keep are Russian nationalists with a hard-on for the T-54, T-34 and IS7. Those same people with a failing currency, potato computers, and a 0 fuck attitude where they’ll freeload and never pay anything.

      • Your opinion is very important to you isn’t it? ever thought that you and SS are only opinionated swipes? The point is that you seem to forget that others might just feel differently about games that aren’t the mighty WoT (less you and more SS that point though). Jeez I need to stop coming here as its getting more fucking pointless each and every day.

        • no i also share the opinion war thunder is bollocks , judging by the player base, so do many others.

    • Yes it was, and very disappointing they did not pay any attention to the arty issue with WOT and players asking for tank vs tank. What is the future plans with this game? Updated Aces High game with aircraft and ships?

    • As I always said, never wot-killer.

      Those who prefer “realistic gameplay” will go to WT, those who like arcade WW2 will go WoT, and the ones who want arcade modern will go AW.

      These games are not competitors, not really, they’re more completing each other so every gamer can find his style of game in one of these three.

      • Those who prefer realistic gameplay will go to WT, realise that realistic isn’t much fun. Go back to WoT or AW. :P

        • Not that realistic isnt much fun.

          That WT’s definition of “realistic” would allow cats go fly and tanks to drift like a soap.

  13. I am looking forward to the release of AW as wot is getting worse patch after patch. There was talk of Armoured Warfare having some mechanism to balance players with a league or shill based or whatever I hope this is true to as I am sick of trying to drag 10 or more idiots to a win.

  14. Just as a question what is the file size for Armoured warfare? Is it bigger than WoT and if so by how much?

  15. I honestly hope they’ll introduce artillery into Armored Warfare the same as it has been done in the Wargame series of games.
    So, instead of blatantly copying over the World of Tank’s one-shot wonder system, they should focus on a little more realistic approach. Like the idea of artillery being able of firing multiple shots in a row NEAR the target, thus possible stunning the enemy, albeit by detracking/damaging modules or demoralizing the tankcrew. That would make a little more sense than them being able to screw over a target on the other side map with deadly accuracy.

    And giving them smoke shells would add another dimension to the game. Firing these shells at enemy vehicles would temporarily block the vision of these opponents for the duration of the smoke generated by the shell. It could also solve possible camping issues, since opponents would have to move up to get out of the smoke.

    Well, those are just my 2 cents.

    • Smoke shells require teamplay.
      And, as good as the game may seem, players wont get better than in wot just because the game is better balanced.

      Cases of actual teamplay in WoT is just too rare in arcade, so smoke shells would be used by platoons or competitions teams, but almost never in standart random battle

      • Honestly, teamplay should be encouraged and rewarded more. Dealing damage shouldn’t be the main reward-factor as it might currently be.

        If AW manages to create a game that isn’t majorly focused around dealing the damage, we might end up with a good game that actually has some rather strategic-thinking people! Oh well, who am I kidding?

        Anyway, I’m sticking to the idea of implementing smoke. Should be fun :)

  16. How can you post about this… I mean NDA even forbids mentionting about this game: “By participating in the Armored Warfare Focus Test you are agreeing to maintain strict confidentiality of all information relating to Armored Warfare: do not post information, screenshots, videos or streams pertaining to the Focus Test in or on blogs, forums or social networks.”

      • -no stream
        -no video
        -no screenshot

        -infos ?
        Nah: only things that devs already said: 5 tanks in the game, smoke, modern era, and all that.

        SS just posted his feeling about the game, and how it went optimization-side. Nothing he posted was any kind of spoiler, or thing that had not been sais before.

        NDA respected

        • Also, some bloggers/youtubers are allowed to post.

          See Jingles’ WoWS and AW video. AW used pre-selected video, though, but the point stands.

  17. I just don’t get it, basicly they could advertise this game as “Wot but better, no arty, no camping” an what do they do “Meh, fuck that let’s include the most controversial thing in gaming histry, let’s include arty with GUIDED FUCKING ROCKETS” I mean what the actual fuck? Why not just implement a system that makes your tank destroyed every 10th game, just because? If I had 3 wishes, one would be to get rid of arty in wot and erase the memory of it :D And I know I will be labeled artyhater, you’ll say “hide in artysafe” and all kind of bullshit, but if you really think it is possible to play the game by being in artysafe all the match, you are either a troll or retard. When there are 3+ arties, you are most likely fucked

      • Well, i’m complaining because SS said that there is arty, and by the way he discribed it (sometime OP sometimes shit) it seems totally borken just like in wot. They just shouldn’t have included it at all

    • The thing with the guided missiles in AW is that some tanks can be upgraded to have counter-missile systems (what exactly that means I don’t know) so that they don’t just get wrecked by them.
      (My guess as to counter-missile is some sort of armour, or whatever they do in real life.)

  18. Sounds nice, only two bits I disagree with:

    The optimization: First, I am not really sure how it will manage on servers. It’s something else to have 500 players (meaning about 10 battles at most) and 200000 players at the same time. Scaling might not be easy and some players might be off-put by HW requirements. But hopefully it comes out nice.

    Heavy tanks and camping: It’s not really true that camping died after WW2 – only the pace of movement increased. If you have two close forces near each other, you get to massive camping anyway, because moving or shooting means revealing your position (f.e. current Ukraine conflict is mostly camping and trying to get more forces than enemy). Unless you have a massive advantage, which on symmetrical maps with 15vs15 isn’t true, of course.

    Btw, the last line – you mean Americans? I am quite curious, because some of them might be taken away by WoWs – after all, that’s what won them lots of wars and is their biggest pride today. For USA people war in Europe wasn’t interesting – war in Pacific was.

    • Americans actually view the army and marines as the ones who really did the winning, but we need lots of ships to get them anywhere, plus fighting the japanese navy and stuff. Actually i think most american find the war in europe more interesting because most americans families came from europe. With the war in the pacific its more like japan never stood a chance against us but we paid them back for pearl harbor. Plus we don’t like thinking about dropping 2 nukes on them, as it makes some feel guilty. There is no such feelings about germany.

  19. Hey, I know WT has a lot of flaws, but it is a diamond in the rough. Sure, some patches make one step forward and two steps back, but the game is slowly changing into something amazing. And I’m so bloody tired of WoT. I haven’t played it in almost two years and I still feel sick and tired when I think of coming back.

    • I find it amusing that the article where it says “Then there’s the fun part” essentially describes WT to the letter :D, but SS is too blind to see that.
      he even contradicts himself when he says tank do not feel on tracks and then tells that the movement is like WOT, wot motion is the most unrealistic shit ever and it’s a movement ON RAILS, every tank of said model turns exactly the same.
      in WT since you can lose grip you can skillfuly use it to perform excellent stalingrad-drift 90° turns to flank tanks or escape, just like we saw in Fury!.

      i’m with you on wot piotwor, it made me sick as well just by opening it

            • They need to fix obsolete UI and camera stuborness, then reduce oneshots by a huge amount. Maybe then it’ll become better.

            • To each is own. I can see why some people would hate WT.Still,if you are to compare the two games (WoT and WT),WT wins hands down,simply because of the massive content it has.
              Planes and tanks in all possible scenarios,Arcade for quick easy battles,Realistic to feel like it’s historical but you are still helped,Simulator for hard-core gamers who want a real challenge and a few new mods (2 I think) that combine the Sim with Realistic.
              You get in one of the sim battles and it’s completely different game from arcade. You have to use you eyes to spot tanks/planes and make sure they are the enemy, ears to listen for bombers, you need to approximate distances, know how to bomb, know how to shoot AA to bring down planes, how to avoid getting your plane in a spin and how to get out of it and many many other things.
              On one hand it requires a lot of skill and on the other it feels so realistic. When you actually get a kill you feel that you deserve it, that you have done something to get it, not like in WoT where getting kills requires you to point your mouse at an enemy and press fire,maybe aim for a weak spot now and then.Not, that I’m saying WoT is bad,I enjoy both games, but WT is just on another level…

            • Agreed. WT planes is great, WT tanks is awful.

              My experience of WT tanks has been that it’s:
              * Hilariously imbalanced
              * Horrifically unstable (Client crashes in GF battles ALL the time)
              * Awful physics
              * Super campy
              * Schizophrenic (Realism one second, bullshit every 2 seconds after)

              Personally, I just laugh when WT fanboys go on about how realistic the game is. It’s so far from being a simulator it’s not funny…

              • As I said, to each is own.
                For client crashes, I find the game way,way more stable than WoT. You can minimize it when it’s loading, you can play with UTorrent opened, it never crashed for me, it never had interface bugs.

                For balance, yes, I agree there are some serious battle-rating problems, but they can be solved in time.

                Physics,I can agree to some point. When tanks touch each other they act very unrealistic and weird. On the other hand the driving physics seem to be more realistic than in WoT. I have never driven a tank but from what you can see in videos WT is more close to reality than WoT.

                Camping,definitely not. Playing WoT TDs,that is camping. WT rewards always pushing,always being on the move. Of course in the end you can camp if you want to but it’s boring, you are useless for your team and few people do it.

                The game has indeed problems,that I hope will be solved in the future, but regardless of you enjoying the game or not it is far more realistic than WoT.

                • well if wot required no skills or decent decision making xvm would be pointless , there is a lot to be said of the skill required to play wot , more than all the War thunder fan boys understand , just because it is a “sim” , a term to be used lightly , doesn’t make it any more or less difficult to play. Note I am refering to the tanks , i understand that planes in sim are very difficult and probably require a joystick but the tanks?

                • I never said that WoT doesn’t require skill to play. I have about 10k battles and about 56% win rate so I know it does.
                  The thing is in WoT skill means you know how to abuse the spotting system,or a cupola or range finder weak spot which you can shoot until you kill the enemy, or to circle a slow tank to death, etc…
                  If you would re-skin the tanks in WoT to unicorns you would have the exact same game.

                  In WT Sim battles a skillful player means that he knows how to change gears, how to shoot at long range with each shell and each gun, he knows how to stay in cover from bombers, the properties of each shell and the module placement of each tank, etc…

                  Long story short, in WT GF Sim the skills needed to succeed resemble the skills of a real tanker, in WoT a skillful player doesn’t have anything to do with tanks, he has to know how to abuse/use the game and tank models…

                  P.S. You can play WT planes without a joystick but its damn hard

        • you haven’t played recently i take it, it improves by leaps and bounds…

          it also was good from the momento it went “live”, i don’t know what you find “bad” and “clusterfuck” about it when it’s a proper tank “simulation”

  20. Actually SS, WoT is not in the same position as WoW.

    I don’t get why so many people forget, or ignore it but, WoW’s first iteration (what we now call vanilla WoW) was a clone of EverQuest and Ultima Online. It didn’t do anything new or different, it just fixed all the issues that the previous generation of MMORPG’s had, that kept them from being as good as they could have been.

    WoT and WT:GF are first generation tank combat games, AW would be the first entry in the second generation of this genre. WoT and GF both have issues that prevent them from being as good as they could be. Obsidian entertainment is simply taking all of the things that they did right, and is trying to remove all of the things that they didn’t, in order to create a truly epic experience that’s better than anything we’ve experienced so far.

    That’s all Blizzard did with WoW, and we see where that took them, I don’t see why the same approach won’t take AW to the same place.

    Also, nobody heard of WG before WoT made it big, and WoWP failed, despite using the same WoT formula. Why? because they got lucky with WoT, and had no idea how to repeat that success, that’s why. They have made a few games prior to WoT, but none of them were the sort of success that Obsidian has had with nearly every game they made.

    Obsidian entertainment has been making great games for years. As in, they have a proven track record. They’ve made as many fantastic games as they have not because they keep stumbling into accidental success, oh no, these guys haven’t gotten lucky, they just know how to make great games.

    Also, Blizzard had never made an MMORPG before WoW, and Obsidian has never made any kind of MMO either, until now. The reason that WoW and AW are clones is quite simple, neither company had any idea what the hell they were doing, so they just copied what the previous generation of their chosen genre did and then iterated on it to make it better.

    I found forum topic elsewhere that, while being a couple years old, still makes some good points about what is, and is not, a clone, as well as pointing out some other interesting details that are relevant to the current situation of WoT and AW.

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1159367-Is-WoW-an-Everquest-clone

      • I think that any decline that it is experiencing is most likely through burnout. People just get tired of playing the same game. They stop playing for a while, becomes less popular. Whenever new content gets introduced WoW gets a huge increase in numbers.
        MOBAs have a very different target. Lower end specs for PCs, more casual players. WoW aims somewhat differently.

        • WoT has the same thing, they pick more players up right after each update, and lose them after a month or so. The difference however is that WoW hangs onto more players in between each update, which can be anywhere from 2-5 years apart, whereas WoT generally can’t hang on to more than it’s most dedicated players between each of it’s updates, which are only a couple of months apart.

    • “Obsidian entertainment has been making great games for years”

      Examples? Except good sequels (Bioware minions) they do nothing great.

      And, huh, but they have never made the tank game.

      I remembered a passage from one Russian humorous video about Adwanced Warfare (very rough translation, unfortunately):

      “This idea must be crazy. Ok, listen: role-playing games developers (!) make the MMO about tanks (!!) on CryEngine (!!!)”

      What’s even more fun: AW publisher – Mail.ru Company. Russian firm with a bad reputation.

      • So? Blizzard was an RTS developer, and they had never made an MMORPG before WoW, and it was pretty damn good.

        Also, the guys who founded Obsidian Entertainment were from Black Isle Studios and Interplay. So most of them have a lot more games under their belt than just the stuff they developed under Obsidian.

        As far as your statement regarding past Obsidian Titles, I beg to differ, simply on account of how practically everyone has heard of Obsidian Entertainment before now, whereas nobody heard of WG until WoT came out. Sure, they made some games in the past, but they weren’t what you would call really good or anything, they were just ok.

        You probably wouldn’t even know what they were without looking them up.

        That is, WG never had a great success until WoT, and they still don’t know why. Obsidian Entertainment has had plenty of past success, sure it was mostly with sequels to Bioware titles, but since they were better, who cares about Bioware, especially now with all the crap they’ve been putting out lately.

        DA:I is the only game they’ve made in the last few years that wasn’t shit.

  21. “especially the T-90 model is of higher quality than Wargaming HD models.”

    That is not what pre-release screenshots show…
    Since it is from you SS (you dont know a lot about graphics) I take this with a huge grain of salt.

      • What an API is, different types of mapping, different AA types. Physics tech.
        Go on Tweak Guides. Some good starting tips can be found there.

        Also AI tech (SS’s favourite Skyrim lacks hard here)

        He says it looks better then WoT’s HD models. How exactly?

        • Details, lightning, texture.
          If I see a car, and a nicer car – do I need to know from what or how that was created? Hell no.
          If you see a girl and prettier girl – do you need to know about what cosmetics were used? :D

        • It probably looks better because Obsidian relied on better vehicle artists. (arguable but valid)
          CryEngine offers good lighting right out of the box so that’s a big plus.
          CryEngine’s true power is in its…well, power. It can handle higher amounts of polys,texture sizes, particles and so on than its competition(not sure of UE4)

          AI tech and physics tech have nothing to do with model quality, its just you saying stuff to be interesting :D

          The point is, don’t forget the actual people who make the models and how they make them. Its down to the artists. Engines are just tools…some maybe more helpful than others sure, but its down to the behind-the-screen-device

          About SS not knowing graphics …weell, eyeball judging is still a method for comparing art.

          • Knowing techniques for graphics is important.

            I see the pre-release screenshots. They, at least there, do NOT look better then HD WoT models.

            AI and physics I throw around always as those are more important then graphics. It must be hammered home every single time.

            ALso, UE4 seems nice, but I consider only 4A engine to be CryEngine 3.5′s equal.

      • The pre-released shots also showed upgrade systems and a lighter UI and more tanks.
        SO… you realize it means the 2 builds are different?

        And the Pre-release ones are from a more advanced build?

  22. http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/91/915247cc901fd073df523ac2f4f1c09a78544dfcb1446c6d390afed92a597015.jpg

    http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/fe/fea6e0c2c416f420834dd62db3a93b8311b8fa5fa4d63178901bbb33a69b0d30.jpg

    http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/09/09a3e3c6040ad3cdbef74f06280883a4a0b8a0a4a27d0f536ad57d2490748420.jpg

    http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/523/877/7b7

    http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/523/852/ee3.jpg

    http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/25462822.jpg

    Yup. Pretty much all my feels about AW.

    I rly hope that it will smash WoT to the ground. Maybe then WG will finally start hard-working on their game and stop “not-giving-a-shit” about tons of stuff/problems

  23. Thanks SS, that sounds interesting.

    However I really wish they would do away with arty altogether, if they want to attract players from WoT they have to deliver on the big three: no RNG, no arty, no screwed-up matchmaking (like no ±2 tiering, no unbalanced teams, no mixing of skilled/unskilled players but everyone roughly on the same level).

    I mean, OK to have perhaps ONE arty that behaves like it does in reality, ie. shelling an area hoping for a pot-shot, but guided missiles? Forget it.

    • no rng? how do you propose that , no damage rolls on guns? no pen rolls on shells, laser like accuracy etc , sounds like a great game and not monotonous and boring at all.

  24. “- artillery works just like in WoT and given the nature of the battle, it’s either OP as fuck (it can fire guided missiles, so you can imagine the joy), or (much more common) completely useless, you won’t hit anything (a lot of RNG).”

    “guided missiles”

    THE TEARS, I can already taste them. <3

      • I don’t know how SPG work in AW but there are guided ammunitions for artillery in real life, but these shells are not called ATGM, SS must has been mistaken.

      • Well, nobody said anything about ATGM, meaning “Anti-Tank” guided missile”. He probably means something like a rocket artillery system with guidance in the terminal phase, as you said most likely GPS, radar or Laser.
        SS never wrote about artys having “ATGM”, he said “guided missile”.

          • Except rockets are always unguided. That’s the difference between rockets and missiles. There are other types of missiles besides anti-tank. Leave it to Woras to go spouting complete misinformed shit.

  25. After all the recent WoT nerfs aimed at forcing TD’s out of the game completely, I for one will move my time and money to AW as soon as it goes live

    • Same for me.. WG has no clue how to make a game “better”.. all that they do is screw the paying / longtime customers to please the shitlords that will be quitting the game after 500 battles anyways.

    • Couldn’t agree more.

      This game has gotten from the point where it felt like I was actually playing a machine that would roll into a battlefield and perform like a terminator, to a damn wheelie machine that feels like an armor-less paper tin can because every guy out there and his mother is either carrying a scary ass canon or just firing gold. Skill doesn’t matter because a tomato got WG power behind them.

      Either way I won’t quit completely as there are still a select few tanks I enjoy but most definitely won’t stick around for the sake of loyalty because they sure as hell destroyed the one class I fell in love with when I started back then, the Tank Destroyers.

  26. nice review, i hope there will be more betas around

    also it’s interesting there was no NDA . I hope you will be able to keep informing the rest of us xD

  27. I don’t have a chance to join the test and I’m quite disappointed about this “review”. SS has mentioned nothing about gameplay, just how nice the tanks look and how good the graphics is. Good gameplay is what make a game successful, not graphics ! CS 1.6 can still be enjoyable in a shitty settings.

    At least this “pre-alpha”, “proof of concept” (or whatever you call it) should show us how gameplay works. Or SS just forgot to describe it for us ?

    If gameplay of AW is just pure clone of WOT but applied for modern tanks then i see no chance to beat WOT.

  28. Pretty sure they won’t find a way to balance arty significantly better than in WoT.
    So it will be either no arty or same shit as in WoT.

  29. As for the article comments on AT missiles and arty…that is the nature of real armored warfare. One shot kills, ambushed with no chance to defend your self. Kill them hard and fast. For them to NOT put in AT missiles, would make this NOT an current time frame armored warefare game. Thing about firing those lovely one shot kill missiles…they are ALWAYS in short supply, take longer to load than stuffing a shell into a cannon barrel AND you have to be going dead slow or stopped to use them. Well, that’s RL and we all know how unfun that can be.

    And no, I’m not talking out of my ass. I’m a US Army Cav scout. I look forward to getting into the beta. :)

  30. Pingback: Armored Warfare: První dojmy účastníka alfatestu

  31. You guys forget one thing. ANTI CHEAT? a game can be totally fucked by cheats. Especially a game set to become very popular.

    That light deploying smoke grenades is one example where the use of a cheat can be useful.

    I hope they will have the same server side protection as WOT.

  32. Not sure why you would break the NDA Silentstalker ?

    “By participating in the Armored Warfare Focus Test you are agreeing to maintain strict confidentiality of ALL information relating to Armored Warfare: do not post information, screenshots, videos or streams pertaining to the Focus Test in or on BLOGS, forums or social networks.”

  33. Something about AW and AW publisher. There is a reasons for concern, unfortunately:

    First: AW publisher – Mail.ru company. Yes, it is Russian. If I’m not mistaken, they saved from bankruptcy Obsidian. Never mind. If you think that in this game will not be crowds of terrible Russian players – forget about it immediately=). Perhaps will be made separate servers. Maybe=).

    Second: Mail.ru. Yes, it’s a problem. This company has a bad reputation: They are really LOVE concept “pay to win” in their games. They promised “soft” Donat (something like WoT) but we’ll see.

  34. Pingback: Pre-Alpha-Review | German Warfare

  35. Here’s a new slogan:

    “World of Tanks: An armored warfare simulator.”

    I’m going to make that my sig on the forums. :D

  36. too bad SS is already decided what the conclusion is before even starting the game… just looking at the way he reviewed WT and WoWS both beta/aplha stage the very first iterations of the games publicly available… WT has for example made huge steps since the first day.. and warships just had their second beta weekend.. alpha code
    and yet theres another prealpha he really liked for some reason despite being a clone of WOT without an idea what it really will be like at launch.. just hope
    ps The battles were very fast paced. No camping. .. that is a good thing? you rush you die.. simple fact

  39. Too much youtube for a certain somebody.

    What you played is a finished product that is lacking final polish and stuff that “might” be added due to new ideas they might have on what to include.

    You should have saved yourself the time to write the intro, because absolutely nobody other than the dev team or dev QA at most QA as a test to give some feedback, actually have access to anything that is earlier than a beta, which is what you played and experienced SS, the beta of AW, so raise your standards way more and lower your expectations for performance and everything you understimate or in other words, over estimate the words and apologies of the devs.

    For future reference, there is no such thing as closed alpha or any other term and mediatic excuse, when somebody that isn’t an employee gets access to something, it’s already Beta at the very worst for the company, that applies even to early access games.

  41. last time i tried Crysis 2 on my old Fossil-spec Samsung laptop (17 inch and it’s an office laptop? wtf?!) it lagged so hard ragequits are mandatory. now with my ROG, who knows what’ll happen…

    but since I can handle Firefall at high+bloom, I think it’ll work.

  42. hahaha read the lines of conclusion – “will it be a WoT killer?
    No, of course not. At this point World of Tanks is in the same position World of Warcraft is, the defining element of its genre.”-WOT fan.
    i can see he is crying .
    it will be a WOT killer .