It’s possiblet that in the end, the 9.5 patch comes on 22nd of December instead of 23rd – connected to the E-25 removal. Just a theory though, in effect it’s one of those two days. Makes no difference.

- Yurko2F (developer) states that the statement “increasing the viewrange over 500 meters on your vehicle using equipment works fine, it allows you to spot an enemy faster” is correct
- Q: “Why not have the individual missions work automatically without having to accept the mission manually?” A: “And it would be even better, if the past battles counted as well, yes? I’d just start the game and all the missions would just get completed.”
- vehicle buffs and nerfs happen “when necessery”
- some player claimed that whenever he has a longer break from WoT, when he returns he always ends up on the top of the team – according to developers, this is just conspiracy theory, there’s no such feature
- shell types in your ammo rack have no influence on the probability of your ammo rack explosion, they however DO influence the power of the explosion – specifically, HE and HESH shells explode more, so the turret, ripped off by the explosion, flies further
- according to Storm, “a lot of” features for solo random players are planned
- there is no official estimate of how much current optimization works (“removing the bottlenecks”) will improve performance of WoT on good computers
- the only thing Storm says about the falling ruble situation: “it’s a complicated question”

- Storm confirms that the impossibility to complete Individual Missions in platoons is a bug in the test, it will be fixed
- Storm states that the situation where even very powerful computers run WoT at under 50 FPS is caused by the lack of optimization – many of those bottlenecks are being fixed currently
- according to Storm, it’s not possible to have icons always appearing over the tank names in the 9.5 minimap, as this solution reduces the performance of the minimap. This is how it currently looks in 9.5 test 2:

- (related to the above) WG was forced to abandon the solution XVM uses currently for technical reasons
- Storm confirms that some individual missions will still be reworked, but the platoon requirement for some will stay (SS: people are asking over and over)
- Mittengard is a newbie-only map, experienced players driving lowtier tanks (pedobears) will not be allowed to play it (this will be implemented via a new special MM rule)

Oh, it looks like Wargaming is trying to shut down leakers. Again. A great initiative to remove them once for all, that includes – surprise – “blogs spreading leaks”. Guess who they mean. Heh.

- 9.5 test 2 individual missions are not definitive, they are still being set up
- platoon requirement for IM’s is not going to be removed
- Storm can’t comment on Russian premium shop prices
- Q: “IM’s suck” A: “And not playing them is not an option?”
- according to Storm, the Panther 88 mobility is worse than the one of Panther II. When confronted with the stats (hull traverse, terrain resistance), Storm stated that the system is more complicated than that
- the 9.5 minimap enemy tank names will be made a bit brighter
- in the test, IM’s are bugged (you can fulfill “platoon missions” only as a solo player), this will be fixed
- it’s possible that the ramming still is bugged, it will be checked
- Storm confirms that Kaspersky antivirus can cause 5-10 second freezes in the game. Removing it will fix them. WG is already working with Kaspersky on it
- Storm, reacting on some idiot accusing him of not understanding the game since he doesn’t have that many battles: “How many times do I have to repeat that we have enough people, who play the game 24/7? Only in my office there are several people sitting around me, each with over 30k battles. I do have people I can ask regarding various game questions.”
- “light” version of the client: “no exact ETA – when it’s done it’s done”
- British tier 5-7 TD’s have the same guns, because “we haven’t found any other fitting ones”

Check out Listy’s article on British demolition tank!

- platoon requirement will not be removed from individual missions
- lowtier tanks will have the transmission split from the engine (as the hightiers did) as well
- developers are not considering implementing the option to buy premium account for X amount of battles (SS: as in, buying premium account for exactly 100 battles and such)
- developers are not considering adding the option to “freeze” your premium account (when you are not playing) either
- next year will bring several “fun” events (like Karl, football and races), one will come “very soon” (SS: the “8bit” one with three tanks leaked earlier)
- developers are considering adding bonuses for getting the barrel rings/stars for average damage, for example for one star, you get +2 percent to XP bonus, for two stars it’s +5 percent and for three it’s +10 percent to XP. This is however only an example – no guarantees it will be exactly so, but yes, the mechanism will be developed further
- developers are working on a special “light” client for bad computers, resembling something like the “WoT Tweaker” application, Evilly confirms that yes, there will a special “reduced” client for weak computers
- apparently, when the “infected replays” issue was posted on RU server, it was still possible to upload infected replays to wotreplays.eu (specifically, the EU server). Evilly will investigate whether it was fixed.

Today there’s nothing much new (again). I do feel however that I should inform you that there is a SHITLOAD of leaks from WoWs weekend test on Youtube. Just look for “World of Warships” videos posted yesterday. I suspect this is intentional and controlled, because noone could be possibly stupid enough to actually invite tens of thousands (or god knows how many) random players without any screening and expect them all to obey the NDA.

- SerB states he’d like to see the “Mammoth tank” (nickname for ST-II, twin gun variant of ST-I) in the game
- IF (SerB’s emphasis on “if”) the twin gun mechanism is implemented, it’s possible that the MTLS tankette will be reworked to use it
- there are apparently no plans to sell the Grosstraktor as a separate tank outside of expensive bundles

- Q: “Why are we forced to get the lower tanks before we can get the Object 260?” A: “How forced? If you don’t want to – don’t play personal missions.”
- Storm states that he considers the current (9.5 CT2) way the personal missions work to be “better for WoT in long-term perspective”
- Evilly (for RU server) states that Grosstraktor and T-34-85M are being sold only currently, it’s possible they will never be sold ever again (SS: yeeeeeeeeea right, remember KV-220…)
- Evilly hopes that the FV4202 mission (premium FV4202 “for free”) will come in first quarter of 2015, the replacement (Action X Centurion) is not modelled yet
- Evilly doesn’t consider it a problem that RU players guessed the marathon tank (WZ-111) correctly in advance (SS: damn right, these things SHOULD be known in advance – surprise my ass)
- apparently, the WZ-111 is quite popular on Chinese server – second place after the IS-6 amongst the heavies
- Storm confirms that the individual missions in CT2 are NOT final – the number requirements will be reworked and 10 mission parameters, that would have negative impact on gameplay will be reworked as well
- the platoon missions will stay in the individual missions
- Storm explaining how the individual missions idea started:

“The idea of IM’s was born after the introduction of CW reward tier 10′s, when there was a massive butthurt along the lines of ‘let me get these tanks somehow’. There were many proposals such as ‘give us these tanks if we have all the tanks in the game unlocked’, they will remain rare and unique’ and so on. We decided to make it easier.”

Hello everyone,

the news about potentially infected WoT replays already reached the US server. News EU server – of course not, because WG EU, that’s why. So, until 9.5 (which will be released cca 22.12-23.12, at least that’s the plan – in it this vulnerability will be fixed), you have still a chance to make a replay that will open 1000 Pornhub browser windows… not that I am giving anyone any ideas! :)

No, seriously, be careful. This could lead to some really nasty stuff – a very primitive example of it being a replay, opening a browser window with a phishing page, that will say your client is out of date and will ask for your password to “verify installation” – but a real attack would be more sophisticated.

What you CAN do is download/use replays from wotreplays.ru/eu/com – the site now checks for rigged replays and does not allow you to upload them (yes, I tried). According to a developer from wotreplays.ru, they already checked like 900k replays and the rest will be checked shortly. Replays from last 2 months at least are safe.

- Storm basically confirmed that the supertesters are really testing accuracy nerf, but it’s too soon to draw any conclusions, those are just tests with various parameters
- the platoon element in individual missions will stay
- the manual activation of individual missions will stay
- some individual missions or elements thereof (compared to CT1) will be removed
- only a single IM will be “active” at any one time (SS: as in, you can’t do two IM’s at once)
- IS-7 will not be replaced by anything as Soviet top tier heavy (“for political reasons”) (SS: here, the “political” is likely a metaphor, as in “it’s too popular to be replaced” – the main “issue” with it is that it’s unhistorically nerfed)

Not much today. The test server was already disabled and next iteration (this time with real vehicle values) will follow.

Also, Storm made a rather large topic, collecting the feedback on the Individual Missions. Or Personal how they are called today. Whatever. Basically, as far as I can tell, the two largest “issues” with them are:

- the fact they don’t activate automatically like achievements and you have to manually select them
- the presence of platoons in requirements

Unfortunately, Storm did not provide any answer as to whether WG will do anything with them based on the feedback or not. Okay, one more very important piece of news. Remember the “replay vulnerability” post? Well, Wargaming just acknowledged the issue by a special portal post. TLDR: replays can be modified to run malicious code.

According to the post, this issue will be fixed in 9.5. In case you want to know your replays are safe, download them only from wotreplays.ru/com/eu (based on your server). This WG site contains a check against this issue, so replays from it should be safe. And of course, not a peep on EU portal… after all, who cares about potential nasty exploits, right?

Also, interesting how this issue was on Reddit for days and this warning was only posted after the matter made it to FTR and Russian blogs…

Nothing really new today, sorry. But you can check the “happy holidays” WG EU video.

…..

Yea, I know.

Meh. Just enjoy your evening.

Check out the Chieftain’s Hatch article on the Ripper camouflage (written for Xbox WoT)

- A-32 will not get its highpenetration HEAT shells back (SS: IIRC A-32 is RU exclusive)
- Storm states that IS-4 armor (during HD rework) will be somewhat improved
- Evilly states that Xbox WoT doesn’t have the same number of players as the PC version, but WG’s not complaining (SS: in the sense it’s not considered a failure)
- developers confirm, that the Panther 88 and other premium vehicles, intended for the premium shop, will not be possible to test on the test servers in the future (funnily enough, in the same thread a day before, the same developer replied that it will appear in the next iteration of the test, later he changed it to the answer outside the brackets)
- M56 Scorpion is still being balanced
- developers confirm: Individual Missions tanks (StuG IV, T28C, T55A and Object 260) do NOT earn more credits (like premium tanks). They earn “as many credits as regular vehicles”