Hello everyone,

so, the day is finally here, right? The 9.13 Czechoslovak tanks are on the test server and I would really like to thank the few brave Wargaming developers who pushed this idea to their superiors. Especially one guy who doesn’t want to be named and his pony lover friend from balance department, both of who are seriously the coolest game devs. It was seriously cool to meet you guys in person (too bad I was so tired from the trip, I was babbling god knows what at that point). It’s not an understatement that without them, the branch would not exist – and this is how it should be, you know – the developers listening to and working with the community. Now, I am not saying that the community should be listened to in everything (that would end in a disaster) but when it comes to such things as introducing new vehicles?

Why not. In fact, it’s no secret that Wargaming is working on the Swedish branch with two community members, Renhaxue and sp15. Unfortunately, unlike me, they are limited in what they can divulge due to actual contracts (whereas me, Daigensui and Soukoudragon who helped with the Japanese branch were… let’s say less formal). But I think it’s going to end well.

Of course, Yuri Pasholok, Dmitry Shein and their colleagues from historical department did a lot of work too and it was really nice to meet them as well in Prague, I really liked the book Yuri wrote and gave me about the T-60 light tank (I wish this stuff was available in English). And finally, special thanks go to Pyotr Bityukov and of course Sergey Burkatovsky, who was involved in these decisions on the highest level.

With that being said, how well did the branch go?

Pretty well actually. Of course, nothing is perfect and multiple things didn’t the way I imagined they would, such as:

- the national sign with the blue triangle upwards: completely historical but not the variant I’d have picked
- camouflage: German camo? Really? Someone was lazy as fuck. I even made a post about possible camouflages.
- Kolohousenka has no wheels!
- LT vz.38 top gun has wrong mantlet, but… well, it’s a stretch anyway
- T-24 turrets (*sigh*)
- apparently the Konštrukta T-34/100 has busted armor (the armor model of the mantle for stock turret should be there for top turret and vice versa)
- the T 50 is really a stretch, some things are wrong (like the false side armor IS-3 style, where historically ammunition was supposed to be stowed above the tracks)

But what the hell. Tested the line, really liked it, good job :)

So, what now… now I work for My.com (Armored Warfare) so my focus lies elsewhere. I still follow WoT of course but mostly for job reasons. I am really curious as to what will happen with it in 2016. I think all the players and tank lovers will find 2016 very interesting due to the improvements the respective devs are making to AW and WoT both.

So yea. Should be fun :)