Again, not much today (which will likely last until mid January, because, you know, orthodox Christmas and all that)

- Q: “One of the HT individual missions is to ram two vehicles to death in one battle. That’s impossible, did any developer ever do that?” A: “So, you want to compare statistics with me? :D P.S: No offense”
- LT8 gold ammo penetration will not be nerfed
- regarding the real life IS-7 loading mechanism – according to developers it’s not an autoloader, more like a mechanized loading assistant
- apparently the winter fun mode will come “soon”

Not much today. But the supertesters will recieve new tier 8 Soviet MT premium (T-54 First Model aka T-54 Model 1945), so it’s not all that bad.

- a shell always counts as a “point” – some player insists that when touching the ground, a shell turns into an “object” because it “touches” the ground, but this is not true (SS: there is one situation where it’s completely possible to fire and have the shell explode on the ground instead – when you have low terrain settings, some pieces of terrain are simply not displayed, which leads to strange shell explosions. Developers suggest not using lowest terrain settings unless absolutely necessery)
- module weight is a balance parameter (SS: here, the dev completely avoided or misunderstood the question, so – just letting you know, no point in dwelling on why engine X weighs half as much as engine Y or something)
- developers are still experimenting with tank viewrange nerf
- in 9.6, old light tanks will very likely be rebalanced (buffed), specifically their firepower apparently (SS: it’s not clear, but I think they mean accuracy on the move)
- Blitz replays will be incompatible with PC version (SS: duhhh… yes, people ask such stuff)

- Storm is not that keen on large maps (1500*1500+). He states that it was tested and slow tanks would be even worse than they are now and they would just camp the bases. In general, focus would shift from shooting to moving and that becomes boring really quick
- Storm confirms that XP bonus for blocking damage with your armor (“tanking”) will come
- Tiger II in HD: “when it’s done it’s done”
- the reason the British switch (FV4202) was not implemented was that the agreement with the museum (Bovington) about making detailed photos of the replacement and measuring it took a LOT of time
- Storm confirms that US tier 2-3 tank destroyers and arties will be switched around, specifically – T18, T82, T57 and two more new vehicles on those tiers (SS: IIRC one is T3 HMC). This switch will happen later than 9.6
- Storm confirms that the French and Japanese new tanks are problematic due to the difficult collection of historical sources
- 9.6 will not bring many new HD models

Hello everyone,

what follows are the answers from Storm’s stream he made earlier today. I didn’t link it (obviously, no point since he was speaking Russian). I gave up after a while and translated Maiorboltach’s summary instead, thanks Mario :)

- the reason the British were implemented in 9.5 is the fact that WG had the most good materials (sources, like drawings and such) for this branch
- with other nations (French, Japanese MT’s), there are big problems with data collection
- in WG concept, a branch without tier 10 doesn’t count as a branch, that’s why FV4005 was decided to be implemented
- it took long to decide whether to implement FV4005 or not
- in the end WG decided to make one of the tier 10 British TD vehicles heavily armored (FV215b) and one less armored (FV4005) to differentiate them
- FV4005 turret armor is historical, Stage 2 was implemented because Stage 1 had an autoloader and no turret
- the 9.5 branch is composed of only vehicles, that existed at least in prototype or even fought in the war

Continue reading →

Don’t forget to get your free 1 day of premium – the bonus code is 2015WGNY.

- the 9.5 minimap will be reworked further, according to Storm
- the new 9.5 minimap can reduce FPS, but only a tiny bit
- the “flickering transparent bush” bug was not fixed. According to Storm, there was no way found how to fix it without losses to FPS. This bug emerged in connection with the changes in render, that in turn were made to optimize the game and so it’s not possible to roll the render back to the version before the bug appeared
- regarding implementing a damage panel, Storm doesn’t want to do that at all
- additional hangar filters will be implemented
- player stats reset for gold is not planned

Continue reading →

Again, nothing much today, but on 24.12. at 17:00 CET (or so), there will be a stream with Storm, where he will talk about game development, so we got that going for us, which is nice. I will watch it and prepare a summary of course.

- developers do not think that a lot of the feedback regarding recent patches was negative, quite the contrary
- Winterberg was developed as official Ruinberg on Fire replacement
- Individual Missions will start on 15.1.2015 (they are not active in the 9.5 patch client)
- according to developers, it was never promised for Sixth Sense rework to appear in 9.5 (SS: true, it will come later)
- you can enable or disable extended minimap functions in the settings
- according to developers, the Severogorsk map was not removed because of the “veteran players whining”, but for objective reasons. Statistics were analyzed and a decision was taken to remove the map for rework (SS: notice the “for rework” part)
- M56 Scorpion is still in the process of balancing
- Panther 88 will appear in ingame shop likely in patch 9.6

And that’s all really.

Again, nothing much today.

- according to the WG developers, the setting options for 9.5 minimap are sufficient (SS: reaction on the criticism that XVM minimap is more customizable)
- retraining the crew from one role to another (radioman to gunner for example) will not come in 9.5
- the minimap in 9.5 is just the first iteration, it will be upgraded in the future (for example with gun traverse angles for TD’s)
- releasing Panther 88 to the shop without having it tested by players is fine according to developers, as “they have ideal supertesters because they are like regular players” (SS: he’s referring to the fact that the supertesters are recruited also from people with regular and sub-par winrate in order to represent the playerbase of the game better)
- Panther 88 “is like regular Panther II with a bit more DPM”
- it’s possible that the individual mission conditions will still change after 9.5 is released
- girl crews are “currently obtainable only via IM’s”
- WG is working on new maps
- regarding the FV4202 switch: “All in good time. Plans are not guarantees. They are ideas, that can run into issues with their implementation.”
- it’s most likely that Severogorsk will be removed forever (and not just for rework)

As predicted, it was confirmed on RU server that the patch 9.5 will come out on 22.12.2014. EU patch – either the same day, or a day later (no info on that yet). Russian server already has the “preview” video of the patch – nothing too interesting in it, nothing you haven’t read here before anyway (will look at it).

Other than that, M56 Scorpion was moved to tier 7 and rebalanced on supertest apparently. Otherwise not much today.

Unfortunately, absolutely nothing new today, apart the apparent issues with Belarus and Russia for Wargaming. How much impact will that have – well, that remains yet to be seen. But considering it’s the end of the year and it’s Christmas soon, I don’t think we’ll see any breaking news in the following days. Oh well, gonna keep checking anyway.

But the Maus armor is slightly fucked on the 9.5 test, so we got that going for us, which is nasty:

(green zones should be spaced armor)

I don’t do this in general, but a small favour, that might be liked by people. Want to win one of three tier 8 premium tanks, just “like” the Wothungary.eu FB page. Basically, they’ll pick three winners out of those people and give them tier 8 premium tanks.

Oh and did you know which real life locations is Himmelsdorf based on?

Otherwise, not much today. The only piece of info is that the individual missions in 9.5 will be disabled, they will be enabled only after the New Year marathon. It’s possible they might change yet between 9.5 relase and their enabling.

Also, a WG employee confirms that regarding the 50 percent discounts on gold and premium account, it in effect means that because of the falling Russian currency, it means that the players can buy their premium account and gold for the same prices as they were a few months back WITHOUT discount (SS: it got really expensive for the Russians because WG shop prices are tied to USD). Another developer however adds that there might be something like a “double discount”, when you buy the gold with discount now, later on you can buy stuff for it, that is also on discount (SS: this is valid for RU server only).