In case you are interested – here’s an extremely interesting article about the Yom Kippur war (thanks to Brenthos for this one). In fact, the entire blog rocks.

- Storm explaining the HD textures issue once again: “We talked about releasing the textures in a simplified form, which can be seen starting from patch 9.3, because all the HD models are available by default with reduced texture quality. The quality of HD models will stay the way it is now. In short – the quality of upcoming HD models and tank textures will be the way it is now.”
- Q: “Why was SU-76I removed from the shop?” A (SerB): “Because it pwned newbies.” On the same matter, Storm confirms this (with sad “as usual”), he adds that the vehicle was tested properly, but a mistake was made and they are investigating it. Currently however, everyone is preparing for DevCon (SS: developer meeting) and the decision will be taken next week. Oddly enough, Yuri Pasholok in another comment says “told you so”, as in he knew about the imbalanced status of the vehicle.
- the changes in historical battle mode will be “radical”

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- there are some vehicles, that still need nerfing, the developers however were busy with other things
- no plans for the KV-5 radioman miniturret for now (too early to talk about the Sixth Sense rework)
- Panther 88mm did really well when tested in CT 9.4
- Storm agrees that the Stalingrad minimap is not very representative, it needs to be fixed
- currently, the feedback on Russian server is that the clans are starting to set their Stronghold attack time to 3-4AM, when the chance of being attacked is very low. Developers will consider what to do to remedy this.
- the bug with tiny minimap icons was not fixed, developers didn’t manage to do it on time, the problem is however considered insignificant
- 9.5 will be bigger (more important) than 9.4

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- World of Tanks models will not have cloth anti-dust covers on the guns (the way War Thunder models have for example)
- it’s not certain that Panther 88 (SS: and thus patch 9.5) will appear until New Year, but Wargaming “will try”
- 9.4 causing mods to stop working again? “Try playing on a clean client. You will get fewer issues :)” (SS: according to Russian feedback, a LOT of mods stopped working again)
- official 9.5 info will be available around the time when 9.5 hits the open test
- 9.5 Firefly branch will “start with medium tanks and then turn into TD’s” (SS: actually, that’s technically wrong, it will start with light tanks – M2A4 and Honey)
- the bug, where when you played a Stronghold battle and it didn’t count towards statistics was fixed
- in 9.4, the Chaffee Sport crew gets automatically retrained to regular Chaffee (not in RU patchnotes apparently)

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Hello everyone,

patch 9.4 is coming out on RU server today (in the night) or early tomorrow , so we can expect EU patch this week as well, likely on Wednesday.

- Q: “Why is Wargaming against introducing new matchmaker?” (SS: I think the player means skill MM, unclear) A (SerB): “There were already two ‘new matchmakers’. How many more there will be is not known for now. But they will not be designed by players.”
- SU-122-44 will not get preferential MM
- Storm apparently liked the Fury movie
- Storm states that the tank textures will not be in the future in such a resolution as from 9.0 onwards (HD models), but the resolution will be higher than pre-9.0
- according to Storm, the HD models from 9.2 onwards are of higher quality than the War Thunder ones
- Storm, when asked, where exactly is the “sufficient armor” of the Lowe: “Gun mantlet.”

Apparently, a news appeared that in 9.5, Himmelsdorf will be removed, along with a screenshot of alleged Storm’s post. It’s a fake, Himmelsdorf will not be removed.

- Vickers MBT has its own branch planned. AC Sentinels are dealt with separately.
- FV4004 hull will have “regular Centurion armor”
- it’s not yet sure whether FV4005 will have 360 degrees turret traverse

If you are interested in ships, check out this very interesting article about the story of one Soviet cruiser and “big gun” ships in general.

- Q: “Are you aware of the number of players reporting “no damage” penetrations?” A (SerB): “We are aware four years already that a part of the players consists of whiners, posting permanently all kinds of crap in this forum topic.”
- while you don’t get damaged from collisions with objects, you can actually get damaged by the environment, if you drive from a certain slope too fast and crash. In such cases, the damage is not determined by the height difference between the starting slope point and the ending point (SS: eg. “what distance you cover by going downhill”), but by your vertical velocity

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Transcript source: FTA VK community

Hello everyone,

recently, a WoT Blitz stream took place on Russian server. Here’s what was said in it (related to Blitz, not classic WoT):

- the recent tests went really fine, resulting in significant FPS increase
- Android version is ready to be taken to next stage of testing, release is planned until the end of the year
- iOS version will have better graphics
- minimum version of Android to run Blitz will be version 4.+
- there will be a second round of Android testing
- there will not be separate servers for Android and iOS
- camouflage and perks will come next year

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On Russian server, for October, 18101 players were allegedly punished based on the report system, 3748 participants in rigged battles were punished as well and 2882 botters were banned. That’s a nice “harvest” for October.

- apparently, Lowe armor is fine (won’t be buffed)
- by the end of third campaign, M60, VK7201 and Object 907 will not be ready in HD
- the HD model for IS-3 will be IS-3 Model 1945, not the modernized version (IS-3M)
- developers are working on new engine sounds
- after the ramming changes of 9.4, the cases where tanks just bump to one another and one of them rapidly loses 1 hitpoint should be considerably less common
- the exact ramming damage mechanism will not be disclosed
- armor deformation (holes from ramming) will not come anytime soon
- the option to pick your setup for team battle based on the map you get is planned, no ETA currently
- it cannot be generally said that in the new 9.4 ramming system ramming damage will increase – what will increase is the difference between damage done by ramming heavily armored and lightly armored spots
- the influence of tank weight on ramming in 9.4 will not change, the same goes for spaced armor
- when it comes to team damage punishment in collisions, the tank that goes faster is guilty

Just to make it absolutely clear, because it seems that some people misunderstood the post yesterday: HD models (high polygon) are not getting scrapped, only the highest resolution textures are.

Oh yea and the third campaign is announced, check the portal.

- the fact that there is a chance for the Churchill GC to be moved to tier 5 doesn’t mean the same situation applies for ARL 40, because the situation with it is more complicated due to the fact it’s the only vehicle on tier 6 for France
- Q: “How come WT E-100 killed me with my FV4202 in close combat, shouldn’t MT own TD at close range?” A: “It would seem so.”
- Q: “Why don’t you make maps with different side sizes, like 1,2*1,4 instead of just 1,2*1,2? Is there some sort of game or design limitation preventing you from doing that?” A: “No. We simply didn’t get to do that.”

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- in 9.5, Sherman Firefly will be researchable from Sherman III and Sherman III from Grant (SS: the connection between new/old branches will be Valentine to Archer)
- it’s possible Churchill Gun Carrier will lose the 32pdr gun and will drop to tier 5
- Q: “Back in the day, it was possible to always find a strategy 1vs1″ A: “In +/-3 MM as well?”
- in 9.5, Challenger and Avenger will be mixed into one vehicle. It’s possible those vehicles will exist as separate hulls, when alternative hulls are implemented.
- FV4004 Conway has “frontal armor roughly like a Centurion”, only the FV4005 has paper armor

And now, for interesting news – Storm: “Most likely, we will reject HD resolution” (he means HD texture resolution on high-polygon models), he reasons as such:

“HD textures for one vehicle have cca 80 Mb. 400 tanks * 80 Mb = 32 Gb of textures only for tanks. 80 Mb * 30 tanks in battle = 2,4 Gb in video memory only for tanks. And then there are maps and environmental objects, so the number above can be roughly multiplied by two. Maybe in 10 years from now on, we will return to HD. When resources and internet channels are sufficient.”

This matter was already decided. Storm adds that the display of HD textures on your own tank only was the first thing they did a patch ago to reduce the stress on memory. But after calculating the total size of the game client, it was decided to remove the HD textures altogether.

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