3.8.2013

Well, first and foremost (so he doesn’t kill me or something :) ), Ilosz (EU server) made an interesting WoT magazine – 1st Issue. Graphically it’s very pretty, you can check it out at that post adress.

- SerB on why the various “Stalin” inscriptions were removed from the game (apparently only for EU client): “It wasn’t me or Storm – European office deals with Europe and despite they (at least a part of them) yell “For Stalin!” when drunk, they thought it’s not worth it to have a conflict because of him with a part of the local internet-patriots – not ours, not Soviet, burgeois people.” (SS: I hope this translation is ok, someone correct me if it isn’t)


- historically, there was a project to install the BL-9 gun on IS-3 (it can be found in archives, SerB might write a book about it one day)
- it’s not clear what will happen with the Stalinist inscription, when roaming is activated (SS: as in, there will be ‘For Stalin!’ tanks from RU server roaming to EU server)
- Q: “I will spam ‘For Stalin!’ when I go to EU server using roaming!” A: “Your country will hugely benefit from that and without any doubt you will protect our history from the attacks of revisionists!” (SS: it is irony)
- Q: “I have seen a WoT screenshot, where the loader destroyed the tank by dropping the shell on the ground. Under what conditions can that happen?L” A: “This is a special feature, used for punishing players by the game administrators. Another one is that the tank commander can shoot any of the crewmembers in the head with his pistol, the driver can intentionally drown the tank in a river, radioman can send the tank coordinates to the enemy artillery and the gunner might fire into the allies.”
- SerB on model errors (for example KwK 40 L/48 too short): “Everything is possible, errors are not out of the question.”
- the coming removal of Panther top engines is an attempt to make the tanks as historical as possible
- KwK 44 L/70 gun was not any more powerful than the KwK 42 (SS: KwK 44 was a Czech Škoda development for Panther Ausf.F, it had better optics, but power-wise, the gun could IIRC shoot the same shells as KwK 42)
- KV-122 (KV-1S with 122mm gun) was historical
- E-25 has good viewrange, because “the optics are good”
- top tier German and Soviet HE shells too expensive? “Don’t shoot top tier German and Soviet HE shells”
- Q: “The current Soviet LT branch is ugly, will you fix it?” A: “I am sorry, but Soviet light tank designers from the 40′s cared little for our branch beauty”
- ingame currently running event overview? “When it’s done it’s done”
- there was a Wargaming company party to celebrate the 15th anniversary, “with different drinks”
- it’s possible that the French and the Chinese will get a lowtier light premium tank
- SerB states his longest string of defeats was around 15 in a row

114 thoughts on “3.8.2013

  1. > (SS: it is irony)
    You saved us from at least part of the incoming rage, thanks.

  2. Q: “The current Soviet LT branch is ugly, will you fix it?”

    Some people deserve to be trolled.

    • I like designs, like the MT-25 is a horrible design, but the T-80 is absolutely a piece of art to me.

  3. Ilosz (EU server) made an interesting WoT magazine – 1st Issue. Graphically it’s very pretty

    It is not. Rectangles with walls of texts (sometimes with weird font) over too expressive graphics.

      • I think that he merely copied it from the article’s text, anyway I find SerB’s favourite communist quote, “learn, learn and learn”, kinda fitting.

    • Also the usage of the term is by no means limited to hard-boiled Marxists, FYI. At least where I’m from “petite bourgeoise” (well, translation thereof) is fairly widely used as a sarcastic catchall term for various stuck-up middle-class twits – you know, the sort who according to the stereotype are obsessed with “keeping up with the Joneses” and constantly worry about what their neighbours think about them.

      I believe once upon a time those kinds of people were also referred to as “square”, dunno why really.

    • Actually, its just a common term in russian MMO community corresponding to european and american players. Usually cut down to “burgs”. Not pretty, but it is used mostly without offence meant. Yes, this one usage could differ, but i doubt it.

      Not that im saying russians arent commies.

      • Pretty sure the *actual* Russian Communist Party – or whatever its name now specifically is – is more or less a political nonentity these days, actually. They seem to be more into this “uncrowned czar” act now.

        • Like all other parties except United Russia, tbh. Didnt hear anything significant about commies for some time now, so they actually might be _below_ that level atm. Their electorate is shrinking anyway, since they mostly target those, who actually saw ussr.

    • I can’t understand how anyone would like a “for Stalin” inscription. He was the Soviet Hitler.

      • Stalin:
        -executed all jewish communists like Trotsky that wanted the world revolution with russia as a human fuel and gave country peace
        -pulled the fastest industrialization in history
        -won ww2
        -iron order was kept
        Russian people liked those things.
        If Hitler won ww2 and then Reich fell apart in 1991 nobody in Germany would hate Adolf and cry over some jews and gays.

        • Considering I’ve read of a guy who joined the SS solely to find out the truth about a relative of his who’d been murdered in those mental-patient euthanasia programs (and eventually ended up visiting the fucking Auschwitz as a technical consultant on delousing clothes), uh-huh. And please recall that the Nazis got started on prison camps very early to their reign as a means of punishing dissidents…

  4. - it’s possible that the French and the Chinese will get a lowtier light premium tank

    And the British?

  5. Its totally bullshit to make the panther tanks historical by removing engines. This game isnt historical in any aspect anyways. Most of the tanks didnt even have the top gun in real life. Its totally useless to strive after historical accuracy in a fictional arcad game like wot.

    If WOT were historical correct the tanks wouldnt even need the top engines to reach the advertised speed, which you need in WOT for example.

  6. “- the coming removal of Panther top engines is an attempt to make the tanks as historical as possible”

    Then how about making the KV-1 and KV-1S as historical as possible?

    • And fixing their ROF, gun depression, penetration, view range and myriad of other thing to historical values. Also, KV-1S with 122mm – there was a SINGLE prototype, used as a testbed to obtain fire data on 122mm gun, never saw combat, never mass- produced (if it was so good why not?). There was a project to install BL-9 on IS-3 and it failed miserably – the turret was blown off when they tried to fire the gun.

      • Because the overall much better IS was starting to come off assembly lines around the same time, IIRC.

        Also IIRC on first test firings of the D-25T the guns had a worrying tendency to occasionally blow their barrels – famously such an incident severely injured Voroshilov at one point – but the bugs got fixed by the time mass production started.

        Your grasping at straws produces idiotic arguments.

      • a) If we were to remove the prototype guns, many of the tanks in this game would have to be nerfed (the M18 Hellcat, the M6 Heavy Tank, the Panther, the Tiger, the Cromwell, the Churchill, etc.)

        b) There is no such thing as a “historical” view range. It is a balance parameter, and the KV-1S already has the worst of all the Tier 6 heavy tanks.

        c) No BL-9 was ever mounted in the IS-3. But it could take the M-62T2. Would you like that instead? :)

        • 1) The nerf would hit American and British tanks most severely. German tanks, if given historical ammo and ballistics, would have no such problems. Panther with historical KwK 42 – oh, yes please.
          2) There are things such as optics quality and commander’s cupola design (among other things). Germans were unparalleled in both, especially with optic coatings which was alien technology for Allies. Tank optical systems can have up to dozen lenses – it is not same thing to pass 85% of light as opposed to 30%. Let’s just say German optics were clearer and brighter :-)
          3) Yeah, just put 60′s guns to every WW2 tank that could mount them.

          • You HAVE read the postwar French assesment of the Panther’s observation systems compared to those of the Sherman, right…?
            Yeah, that’s what I figured too.

            • You most certainly didn’t. The ONLY objection French had, compared to Sherman, was that *gunner’s* sight was magnified (on Sherman it has no magnification). In theory that allows faster acquisition of targets (to be more precise, it allows gunner to more easily switch to targets after commander “painted” them, due to wider field of view). What French failed to mention was that commander had azimuth ring on the inside of his cupola in Panther, and instead of relying on his gunner to acquire target visually, could direct that same gunner (who also had same calibrated azimuth dial) to *exact* bearing of enemy tank (thus negating magnification “issue”, and since gunner’s sight was magnified he could estimate range more precisely – greater probability of first round hit). A slight mistake on their part, I am sure…

            • Uh-huh.
              Please re-read the relevant passages again, in detail, and stop spouting shit.
              http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/chieftains-hatch-french-panthers/

              Notably the part about the “hand-off” from the commander with excellent all-round visibility to the gunner suffering from a very serious case of tunnel vision indeed.

              Oh, and FYI from ’43 or so onwards Shermans had a 3x magnification in the gunsight. Eat me dah’ling.

    • you should know already that when it comes to KV1 and KV1S they will prove you that them being overpowered is historical. Im more hopeing thet they will give u back exp for that engines then.

        • Yeah, so much that they rofl stomped them. That “terror” could not even achieve 1:1 kill against “hapless” pz3 and pz38t…Stop believing in fairy tales. There were occasions where they proved superior and inflicted casualties but where tactical and operational failures and came not even close to fulfilling role of heavy breakthrough tank they were designed to be.

          • Oh, the general failure of the Red Army during Barbarossa was patent. That hardly alters the fact the KVs were well-nigh immune to damned near every weapon the Germans had and could literally *roll over* their impotent antitank guns in the absence of shells to shoot with, which wasn’t too uncommon actually as the Soviets’ logistics buildup had fallen FAR behind their raw tank-production rates before the war ergo their armoured formations tended to be desperately short of virtually everything needed to actually *operate* the damn tin cans…
            Soviet central planning at its finest, you could say.

            The KV and T-34 seriously scared all sensible and far-sighted German officers, who viewed with real and well-founded alarm all signs of the Soviets starting to figure out how to actually use them effectively.

            Kind of the same deal as with the nastier sorts of French tanks the previous year. The Germans were able to make do regardless, but that hardly made encounters with the beasties any less shocking and unsettling for the people at the sharp end. Even virtually solitary B1s and KVs demonstarted remarkable – and remarkably similar – capability to rampage through whole colums and put them to rout.

            • It’s pretty accurate what he’s saying. Most French tanks just made sauerkraut of German panzers, most battles in France where decided by the Luftwaffe rounding them up before German panzers went in. Same thing in Russia. The KV was an absolute beast that could close in to German positions so far that it could effectively knock out everything. Problem with the Russian tanks where that they often lacked armor piercing ammo an only had high explosive charges against fortified positions. That’s also one of the reasons why Russian tanks scored less German kills, not because they couldn’t, but because they lacked the ammo for it. KVs would have rounded up Germans completely if they would have had proper supplies.

            • Hell. Had the Soviets had half a clue rather than their collective head firmly lodged so far up their collective butt they could see what had been the evening menu the Germans ought not have made it past former Poland.

              Though in all fairness had the French high command not had the Idiot Ball glued to their hands a year earlier the Germans would instead have been morosely gazing at another trench hell while wondering what the fuck they were now supposed to do…

            • Wasn’t talking about Kellomies’ source. I agree with what he said (and with what you said). Bullshit nest reply was for “Germenz OP – Russian shit” history expert.

            • Though I would add to the French tanks – Yes, Luftwaffe was decisive there. But the problem also was that instead of being united into their own bigger units, they were mostly used to only support infantry and were spread out making them ineffective.

            • ^^
              Steven Zaloga, “KV1&2 Heavy tanks 1939-1945″

              KV tanks produced (all variants): 4749
              KV tanks lost (all variants): 3400+ (no data for final year, 1943. – probably well over 4000)
              KV tanks lost (all variants), 1941: 900+ (virtually all)

              KV was so successful that Germans got to gates of Moscow despite this “terror”.

              Please say hi to Mr. Zaloga and inform him that his “information is a bullshit nest” (data obtained from Russian archives).

            • I actually regret not being at home atm. I would be more than glad to name all of the authors who all agree on one thing about the KV tanks – they were very good.

              Of course that doesn’t mean they were indestructiblea they didn’t have any flaws. But their main problems were lack of AP ammunition, retarded people in command of Red Army and similar things. The tank itself was very good.

              Yes, many of them were lost. But also many Tigers were lost. And many pieces of other good tanks were destroyed. Does that mean they are shit? Not when you look at how they performed before they were destroyed. But if you look only at how many were lost, then yes they are shit. Along with the already mentioned Tiger or a Pz38t or Somua S-35…

              Oh, and if Mr. Zaloga just says that many of them were destroyed and uses statistics to prove that, he is right and you just made up your opinion on numbers that don’t reflect the battle performace that much. If he actually said what you said, “KV tanks are shit”, then just give me his e-mail address. I’d like to ask him how he came to such conclusion.

            • Not quite correct, Marty. That’s what’s called a “commonplace” – another example would be how “everybody knows” that Medieval knights’ armour was so heavy they couldn’t get onto their proverbial high horses without a winch. [/soapbox]

              See, the French had MANY classes of tanks which they deployed according to very different principles. The cheap little infantry tanks were certainly parceled out to local infantry support; that was their whole job description. (The Germans used StuGs for the same job, and other armies had their own solutions.) The Cavalry conversely operated its “automitrailleuses de combat” in massed combined-arms units, the DLCs, very similar in fact to the German Panzer divisions. While back again with the infantry the heavy Char B1s were *supposed* to be used en masse in their own specialist “corps de rupture”, the DCRs, for breakthrough operations – the formations were actually remarkably scant on support arms not related to set-piece assaults. In the event they had to be thrown ad hoc into emergency counterattacks against Guderian’s “sickle cut” however they now reached the scene – and between the units’ operational inexperience, somewhat unclear doctrine, the general chaos, the reliability issues of the hardware itself and the tender attentions of the Luftwaffe the B1s mostly ended up scattered all over the place.

              By the by, the German’s main ersatz counter to the B1 “Stahlkoloss” was AFAIK the humble 10,5cm regimental artillery piece. (It later proved insufficient against the KV…) Conversely the French artillery unsurprisingly turned their plentiful “soixante-quinzes” on the rampaging Panzers when the situation demanded, presumably to some real effect as the later workhorse of the Allies, the US 75mm gun, was its direct evolutionary descendant and at the time most of those Panzers were assorted terribly flimsy little tin cans.

            • You have no idea what you’re talking about do you, Anon, nevermind now why apples and oranges are different things? The way the Red Army was handled 99% of the time during Barbarossa it’s no surprise they in effect had to write off ALL THEIR FORCES IN THE WEST. The Germans ran out of steam long before the Soviets ran out of troops of course – they apparently started getting a little worried when they noticed they had *destroyed* more divisions than their projections estimated the Soviets capable of raising – and the Red Army learned its lessons, however slowly.
              Including how to employ their big tanks gainfully.
              None of this alters one bit the fact that for all its shortcomings – and they were legion – the KV soundly overmatched anything the Germans could put to the field for years, and the latter were *painfully* aware of it. They could usually work aorund the problem by actually having a clue as to how you actually use your forces, but that only lasted so long the Soviets were still fumbling after their red thread.
              Once they found it, well, the whole Eastern Front started coming apart in a rather spectacular fashion.

            • I’m aware of those many (one could maybe even say too many) types of tanks used in French army, including infantry tanks (FCMs, Hotchkisses, Renaults,…). I was refering to them also using other tanks in the infantry tank role. Somuas for example. But then again, I read mostly articles/books about the vehicles themselves (the technical info), not about tactics, etc. This was just something that I picked up from additional info that was sometimes present just to show how the tanks performed and how they were used.

              That being said, you have the upper hand when it comes to knowledge about units and related things.

              And I never said that the 75 mm gun was bad. AFAIK, Wehrmacht used them and Germans even created their own type of AP ammo for the guns and did some upgrades.

            • The S35 was the Cavalry’s prize toy, IIRC. Odds are you’d find them fighting in “penny packets” due to circumstances rather than doctrine by what I know of it.
              It’s probably worth noting also that especially in the later years of the war the Germans, too, mostly used their AFVs individually or in small groups to support the ubiquitous Kampfgruppe task forces – this obviously wasn’t mutually exclusive with a doctrine of using them in massed units in larger operations. Similarly every army’s tanks and the like seem, by what I know of it, to have spent most of their time in humble infantry-support duties; small skirmishes and “outpost wars” were, after all, the everyday reality of the war between the rare “big pushes” that required concentrating them.

  7. - the coming removal of Panther top engines is an attempt to make the tanks as historical as possible

    Yea like you did with PZIV and removing the only thing it was worth about it. Its L70 gun and making it “historical” by giving it shitty version of 75mm, and what’s even funnier is that PzIV nowadays is mostly played with its unhistorical derp gun. Oh the irony.

    • It’s not a bug. The amount of XP required to unlock a tank depends on which tank you are coming from. It costs 8,500 XP to get the VK 36.01 (H) from the VK 30.01 (H), since both are Tier 6, but will cost considerably more from the Pz.Kpfw IV, a Tier 5.

      • You can’t get the VK3601H from the VK3001H. The lines diverge from the PZ IV, you choose one of them. Plus, if there was supposed to be a 30-50% discount on the 3601H why does it have 27000xp and the 3001H 26000xp? Where’s the discount? Even if it wasn’t supposed to be 8500xp it should have less XP than the 36001H which isn’t in any special offer.

  8. “- the coming removal of Panther top engines is an attempt to make the tanks as historical as possible”

    lol yeah right WG historical, as if the 75mm L/100 even existed in real life as a functional gun and AS IF Panther Schamlturm turrets existed for Panthers. :P

  9. - SerB states his longest string of defeats was around 15 in a row

    and then he banned enemy team in match 16 :P

  10. if they remove the top enigine of panther for historical correctnes than they need to remove a lot of engines.
    for example the pershing, in real it had the engine and transmission of the sherman and was extremley underpowerded.

    remove top engine plz …

    • If you can, find yourself a copy of Hunnicutts Patton. In there you’ll find the M26E2: a Pershing fitted with the Continental AV-1790-1 engine. The 1 developed 740 GHP and that is the one ingame. The Persh should however have the GAF not GAN as stock.

  11. OMG WG NERFING MY PANTHERZ WG U SUCK FU WG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111

    …the plan is to give panther another engine and buff it’s characteristics, so it handles more or less the same, isn’t? But hey – whiners gonna whine. The same shit goes on every time wg changes something, every patch ruins wot, screws with the matchmaker and ninja nerfs premium tanks to oblivion. This game is actually so bad, that wg has it’s employees pointing ak’s at the heads of the players, so they keep on playing and paying.

    K dude, can I go to the toilet? Yes, you with the big gun, looking over my arm. Hm? What? I have to write at least 50 posts/comments praising wg? You sick bastaygkjujy

  12. - SerB on why the various “Stalin” inscriptions were removed from the game (apparently only for EU client): “It wasn’t me or Storm – European office deals with Europe and despite they (at least a part of them) yell “For Stalin!” when drunk, they thought it’s not worth it to have a conflict because of him with a part of the local internet-patriots – not ours, not Soviet, burgeois people.” (SS: I hope this translation is ok, someone correct me if it isn’t)

    Trotsky was brilliant while Stalin was comparatively retarded. Its unfortunate for Lenin and Trotsky that Stalin’s “go it alone” version of communism that failed Russia is now considered a successful leader historically.

    • It’s because Stalin feared Poles since they trashed him when he served under Budionny…

    • Then again from what I’ve read Trotsky was a fire-breathing True Believer in the whole world-revolution thing. Him in charge instead of the distinctly un-adventorous Dzhugashvili might well have resulted in a genuine effort to try exporting Communism via proactive military adventurism at some point – do note that there’s prior examples of that from the in many ways similar French Revolution.

      • This is a good point but Trotsky (like Lenin) believed only global communism would succeed not Stalin’s pathetic understanding of the subject matter (Marxist dialectic is a very tough read). Trotsky was correct Stalin’s wouldn’t work, and perhaps Trotsky would of failed too. Stalin was such a paranoid derp, he feared something about Trotsky even in Mexico, enough to have someone put an axe in his head.
        http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm

        • Stalin being paranoid and vindictive should not be news to anyone, and in several sources I’ve seen Trotsky described as “possibly the only man he truly ever feared”. That he had the guy whacked is only too characteristic.

          Be that as it may, the fact that Stalin was by and large content to keep his brand of Communism a domestic problem made him a far lesser general problem to the world at large than he could have been.

  13. >>- E-25 has good viewrange, because “the optics are good”

    Could you please transplant them to AwfulPanther and buff viewrange?

  14. Historical balancing is bullshit anyways, and it isnt relevant to have these discussions since all tanks in game and all aspects of them are purely fictional. They dont even have the right historical names. Sure the modules existed in real life, but many of them were never mounted on these tanks anyways. So wether the 122mm was mounted on the kv1s or not is totally irrelevant, since the object 704 never had the BL10 either in real life, or the jagdpanther the 105mm. There are endless of examples where tanks never had those guns, nor the engines mounted in real life. Thats why I find it strange to make the panther tanks more historical, when they are flawed from the beginning.

    I dont see the need to give the panther tanks another engine and buff them, what for really? Why not keep the same engine if the speed wont change, or rename the top engine to some bullshit historical one, since that is so fucking important. Many guns in game alreaddy have less penentration than in real life, so that is another fail, as well as top speed.

    I have no problem with prototypes or fictional tanks, but when WG claims they are making historical changes, that is just a fucking joke, because nothing is historical to beginn with.

    The game is a fictional arcade style, which means the player can customize the tanks with modules that existed in real life, either as prototypes or in blueprints. No different than other vehicle based games where you customize your vehicles with aftermarket parts. But as we all know, not realistic at all.

    • Why not?
      Its Historical when ever they are able to nerf a German tank and its for balance whenever they are able to nerf a German tank.

      And now somebody will hop in and call out loud BUT THE IS7, yes it is the only russian tank nerfed below its realistic capabilities.
      Just like the German Jagdtiger/Kingtiger/Tiger and Panther are below their realistic capabilities.
      Not to forget the German Penetration values are nerfed and the russian ones are buffed.

      But actually i dont care anymore i know which tanks to play and which tanks to avoid and it would be funny if they are able to bring the Schmalturm down to his historical weight and buff its turret traverse.

      • Rather forgetting that they did a similar thing – removal of modules for “historical accuracy” – on the Soviet tanks, especially with the upper tier medium line which had their best guns removed. Also the whining of people who saw their SU-26′s best gun removed. And the KV-2 was once a Tier 5 tank, but has since been made a separate Tier 6 tank and so on …

        I’ve never believed in “Soviet bias’ for a while, and I’m still not seeing much concrete evidence of it that doesn’t fall back on confirmation bias.

  15. Russians minds are so spoiled by communist propaganda. Stalin (by the way Georgian not Russian) killed millions of them and they still worship him.

    • Idiocy is not related to nationality. BTW – look at all those SLAVIC NEONAZIS (especially Polish ones – considering Polish were among top casualties along with Russians and Jews = mind blown) – seriously!? By their logic, they consider themselves sub-human and they should kill themselves…

      Yes, please!

    • I hear there’s a Neo-Nazi movement in – kid you not – *Mongolia*. The mind boggles.

  16. Its bullshit to remove modules to make it historical, the game is a arcade one, which means you can modd your tanks with modules that would never work in real life. Its like that in all games. I mean half the tanks did only existe in protptypes, wooden models, or in blueprints, so kinda silly to make the game historical. No values are accurate anyways.

  17. “- SerB states his longest string of defeats was around 15 in a row”

    Yeah…. I think that was me lol

  18. If my arty loader could’ve shot his commander for saying “that was close” over and over again he definitely would’ve done it about every other game…