Confirmed info from E3:

- the ETA of the Firefly line is around the end of this year, but this is preliminary (SS: a lot of stuff got postponed lately)
- along with the Firefly LL line will come a turretted tank destroyer line, both lines will merge after tier 6
- Firefly will be tier 6
- the British turretted tank destroyer line will contain the Achilles (17pdr M10)
- confirmed that US light tank line is scheduled for in 9.3
- if everything goes well, the Soviet premium MT8 “light T-54″ will come in 9.3 as well
- it is not yet sure what tank will the Soviet LT8 go from

Remember how Wargaming removed the “battles played” from 1-day and 7-day Hall of Fame (probably to cover up bots)? Here’s a list of the data by Stormshadow and Manuel1324 (make sure you set the number of rows in it to some high number to see them all). Red players in the list had their accounts scanned and they do raise “warning flags” as bots (many battles, drop in performance, really bad performance overall). Stormshadow estimates the amount of suspicious accounts found so far to around 3000.

Overlord on skill MM:

Regarding all these MMing ideas, as you can see from the discussion it’s already divided. With WoT and its huge audience around the world it’s difficult to decide on such major changes the consequences of which are not fully clear. It’s mostly about making compromises right now to satisfy the majority.

and

Leagues are ok, to my thinking. They should be seasonal though, ie should be reset periodically. Also they need to account only for some relevant performance, not all-time stats.

- apparently, majority of players doesn’t even read any news on the portal
- Overlord on WG attitude towards XVM changing if XVM becomes paid service: “Regarding XVM, it might, since we are F2P and appreciate the free staff.”
- Overlord considers the gun barrel marks too easy to get apparently
- apprently, the developers are considering “renting” historical battles tanks the way the HB ammunition is “rented”

Continue reading →

Thanks to everyone, who participated in the historical battles today. If I recall correctly, next week there will be another round possibly. It was fun.

Unfortunately there are really no news for today (and I spent an hour just looking through everything). Summer’s always “emptier” than winter and autumn, holidays and all that.

Friday the 13th… ugh…

- there were no “hidden nerfs” in 9.1, all the changes were announced in patchnotes
- M103 accuracy on the move was not secretly nerfed

Oh yea, and one more little thing. According to Potoroo (US server), the gui_settings.xml in 9.1 newly contains the following lines:

<.name>roaming<./name>
<.type>bool<./type>
<.value>True<./value>

Without the dots of course. A sign of roaming coming soon? Let’s hope so.

Interested in playing Historical Battles? Well… one battle :) Check out the event Listy and Jingles are organizing! This Saturday, 1500 BST (1600 CEST) on EU1.

- Knopka confirms that the tank destruction sound was reworked in 9.1 based on player feedback
- the changes to OP and UP tanks (nerfs and buffs, previously planned for 9.1, are still coming in the future)
- Too little content in 9.1? Developer Fadalmahr reacts: “We can’t please you no matter what. If there are many features in the patch – you react like ‘what the hell did you stuff all in there, make it as it was before’. If there are few features – ‘nothing new, stop slacking’ Make up your mind :)”

Continue reading →

As you might have noticed, there is no Bryansk HB on EU server. While I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere, it is my speculation that the historical battles are so little popular that they decided to introduce one at a time not to split their playerbase, creating endless queues.

- currently, according to Storm, 10-15 percent of players are playing team battles (in the beginning it was 25 percent)
- IS-7 was not touched in 9.1, its accuracy was not nerfed
- it is not possible to visually change (customize) the barrel marks
- 9.1 uses 4.44.31 version of the FMOD

- Storm confirms that the Balaton HB was removed in 9.1 after all
- Panzer IV Ausf.H – this vehicle was being manufactured from 1943, yet it appears in 1942 historical battle Bryansk – Storm states this is because Ausf.D would be too weak and there is no separate Ausf.G in the game.
- Storm states that alternative hulls are necessary (SS: because of HB so there is an Ausf.G hull)
- apparently, 9.1 has some issues with quitting the battle to the hangar, the game gets somehow stuck – Storm states that this is connected to the high traffic, where the game sends a large packet of data with game results and the packet sometimes doesn’t get through properly
- apparently the bug with ultra-long map load times appeared again. Storm: “We didn’t do anything with map loading”
- Storm states that the situation with “moving corpses” is very complicated, the bug was not fixed in 100 percent of cases
- disabling the UI in battle improves FPS by a lot and removes some lags? Storm: “I wrote this before. There can’t be a non-resource-requiring interface. For its drawing and calculations there will always be resources needed.”

Nothing much today either. Russians are having the 9.1 tomorrow, we on Wednesday. Americans – next week IIRC.

The patchnotes don’t bring anything that much new and interesting as far as I could see (pretty much everything was tested already), the only thing that caught my eye was: “reduced the chance of getting the Ruinberg on Fire map”. Storm posted that it was him who added this.

Oh yea and they apparently fixed the bug where the tracers flew through tanks in some cases. Also, the battle loading time fix and the fix that improves performance when switching to sniper mode were implemented as well.

Anyway, the following answers are by Knopka and some developer (?) called Riot_Guy

- it will take at least 50-100 battles to get “kill rings” in 9.1
- the kill marks on the barrel are optional (can be disabled in options)
- Knopka on the new Kharkov map: “The map feels very big and there is a possibility to fight on it comfortably with every class of vehicle.” (she continues how the map offers chances for all types of warfare)

Continue reading →

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing new today, as it sometimes happens on Sunday. But you can have a look at new Chieftain’s Hatch about the mythical WoT tank MTLS-1G14…

Hmmm info is harder and harder to come by actually.

- developers are (SS: apart from improving performance for weak computers) also working on improving the game performance on maximum graphics settings
- Windstorm causing really bad FPS drops? “Our tests do not confirm that”
- there will be an ASIA server for both WoWp and WoT Blitz
- WoT Blitz ASIA server should be available at global launch, the date for WoWp ASIA server is not clear yet
- according to Overlord, the game does need an actual tutorial

Overlord on WoT vs WoWp Interface: “It is considered that wot ui is not novice friendly. In wowp we attempted to create so called layered ui to cater for both newbies and veterans. Didnt exactly work out.”

Overlord on WoWp development: “More substantial changes to gameplay, including new modes, are in the works. It’s not something that is easily done. Prototyping right now, which doesn’t involve the entire team and doesn’t mean we should stop doing anything else, including putting out new planes.”