Closed the comments on the “feedback” post to be actually able to follow them – you can continue under this post here. As I wrote before, I am known for getting angry really quick, so after I cool down (and defragment my drive), I’ll just fiddle with the settings (got some nice tips), clean up the PC and all the usual stuff. Hopefully I will make the game playable with some decent FPS. I am not quitting FTR either, don’t worry about that.

- the game will not stop working on Dx9 anytime soon
- the Schurzen on new Panzer IV Ausf.G are part of the armor model, they work
- Storm confirms: 12 tanks will be buffed in 9.1, 8 tanks will be nerfed
- the sound of the tank destroyed in 9.0 – Storm doesn’t know whether it’s “realistic” – the feedback is that half of the people think it’s fine, other half think it’s like a “pop” and not an explosion. The sound itself was recorded based on a 152mm shell explosion
- there will be only one client, but it will be possible to select via the launcher, whether you want to download HD models or not, at least that’s how the work in progress looks like, it’s possible that it might change still
- updated (HD) tanks on standard render appear without shaders and look “flat”, because the old tanks had the shadows drawn directly into the textures, while they are calculated in real time now, but that goes only for improved render, on the old one, it looked ugly. Developers will make some feature to work around this.
- the algorithm for automatic graphic selection is “complicated”, details cannot be disclosed

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/287461.html

Hello everyone,

since Patch 9.0 is active on the Russian server for a day already, Storm is asking the Russian players for 9.0 feedback. Apparently, some players have had their FPS actually increased (SS: but a lot of players complained about massive FPS drops). He also asks about feedback on the historical battles, HD models and everything else. He mentioned the “secret M4 nerf” and explained that they simply forgot to add it to the patchnotes – it happens when there is a patch with many smaller things, sometimes, something gets forgotten.

From the discussion:

- there will be no separate client for HD models and “old” models
- if you see a flash in the sniper mode and you have it disabled in the settings, it’s probably mods
- apparently, there might be an issue with long queues for historical battles as well, developers are watching it closely
- the sound of tank destruction was changed, other sounds only had their volume tweaked
- inside of the gun barrel was made darker intentionally
- there will be new effect implemented when the tank gets destroyed – massive flame and burning, followed (SS: if I understand it correctly) in some cases (certain chance) by an ammo rack explosion
- Sherman was actually statistically quite OP, that’s why it was nerfed in 9.0
- there is no Tiger I in the Ardennes and Balaton HB, there were no Tigers there historically
- Panther/M10 premium will be added to Ardennes later
- apparently, in 9.1, Maus will be neither buffed nor nerfed
- Storm is actually home today, he is ill
- if you see models at distance riding around without tracks, increase your model quality in settings
- there is something wrong with the Tiger suspension (“lifted”?), it will be fixed
- hangar puts a lot of strain on the videocard, Storm states it will be optimized (in 9.1/9.2)
- in the future, it will be possible not to download HD models
- WG will monitor the FPS situation, because many report FPS drops (Storm however adds that many also report FPS increases – apparently, weak computer owners report increases and good computer owners report drops)

Storm explains why the tier table was removed from the battle queue screen:

“Some guys wrote a mod, that analyzed the data from this table and allowed players to enter the battle at those times, where the chance to end up as a top tank was highest. This chance was made seriously higher. In order to fight this mod, we decided to disable the transfer of this data to the client. I didn’t post this earlier not to bring attention to this mod.”

- patch 9.1 will be more like a patch that fixes the bugs from 9.0

- Panther and Object 430 size changes were changed (both were made a bit bigger), this doesn’t appear in the patch notes, because it’s apparently insignificant
- World of Tanks is not influenced by Microsoft not supporting Windows XP anymore – Storm states that WoT will run on XP “at least for several more years”
- post-war HD battles won’t be implemented for now, because “it’s garbage – US and Russian crews in American and Soviet tanks”
- models having common parts (turrets and such) actually accelerates the production of HD models
- more info on the premium Soviet T-54 will come once the tank reaches the supertest stage

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/286750.html

Hello everyone,

Storm just disclosed some info as to what will happen in patch 9.1.

- TD camouflage bonus after shooting will be removed (SS: currently, when shooting, TD’s don’t lose as much camo as other classes, this will be a nasty nerf especially to very fragile TD’s with big guns, such as the Borsig and WT Panzer IV)
- some light tanks will be buffed (at the very least, MT-25 and VK2801), MT-25 should be buffed approximately to the old T-50-2 level
- tier 4+ light tanks will have their MM tier spread reduced (there will be exceptions for certain vehicles)
- 12 of the worst tanks (statistically) will be buffed and 8 of the best will be nerfed

From the discussion:

- Veider states that the camo issue concerns all TD’s, they are too stealthy, this is caused a lot by the TD stealth bonuses
- after the nerf, TD’s without armor will have to keep more distance from their targets
- the list of “good” and “bad” tanks will not be disclosed now
- Aufklärungspanzer Panther will not be rebalanced in 9.1, but later
- Tiger I will be nerfed a bit
- rear-turret VK4502B will not be buffed or nerfed
- improved anti-aliasing will come until the end of the year along with Dx11 support
- Tortoise is slightly OP, but the armor change (nerf) in 9.0 will have some effect, if it’s not enough, it will be nerfed
- FV 215b (183) is apparently doing fine
- rebalance is not based only on winrate

Source: Wotleaks VK community

Hello everyone,

russian Wotleaks VK community member visited the official launch event for the “Stalin’s Balls of Steel” book of Yuri Pasholok, where SerB allegedly answered some things. I will translate what was written (thanks to Maiorboltach for copying it to LJ), but…

This info is not confirmed and could be distorted. I do not guarantee it is true.

- multicore support will come this year
- T-44-85 will come this year (SS: I find this hard to believe)
- 2014 and the beginning of 2015 is dedicated to HD graphic rework, no new branches are planned
- buffing KV-5? “It’s done when it’s done” (SS: this seems unlikely)
- there will be more events like the Christmas one with the IS-6 – preliminary estlimate is summer, but maybe also during (Russian) May holidays
- it’s completely possible that there will be a separate Wargaming game with modern tanks
- Christie tanks will come gradually, we plan them for Fall of this year
- Italian branch – not in 2014
- the next WG (Tactical Press) book will be about IS tanks
- a couple of premium tanks will be released
- LT buff? “We will limit their MM spread and will introduce a couple of premium ones”
- next map to be implemented will be Kharkov

Check out Listy’s article about the 1974 Cyprus war!

Also, I wanted to post this before, always forgot – check out a (belated) interesting take on the WGL Warsaw finals…

- apparently, new clan functions will appear in 9.1
- “yellow” damaged optics do not reduce vehicle vierange, only red do (by 50 percent)
- “yellow” damaged tracks also do not reduce tank mobility
- transmission and engine are currently the same in World of Tanks, but for game purposes, there will be a separation implemented (SS: as in, hitting transmission will be different from hitting the engine)
- the “10 caliber rule” (SS: a shell flies the distance of 10 its calibers upon entering the tank, after that it disappears, eg. a 100mm shell flies for 1000mm) counts from the point of penetrating the armor group, the penetration of which causes damage to the tank
- T95 is doing fine statistically

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

thanks to elwiscomeback555 for linking this to me. What follows is another interview with V.Kislyi (WG CEO), that took place during the WGL finals in Warsaw, this time with a Polish presenter MrOmen. It’s slightly more interesting than other interviews because of one thing: Wargaming’s attitude to EU tree. Check this out.

The question about Polish tanks (and EU tree) came first (as you can see, Polish players do put an emphasis on that) and:

“I know we promised and – including myself – we were talking about Polish tanks and European kinda tree, well, the reality is that we, well, you have to understand, we had to release the British, Japanese and Chinese tanks before, because, you know, those were big nations, which were fighting with those tanks and then, you know, we keep getting new and new players, 80 million, eight zero million registered users we have today and they want so many other things. Let’s be honest to ourselves, adding another European tree will not add much of the variety. Of course, tanks will be little bit different, but when we had a choice, you know, historical battles, new physics, experiments with new gameplay modes and our resources, are not, you know, unlimited, we had to make hard choices. Until the end of this year, we have so many plans, probably we aren’t going to do EU tree in this year. We will make it some time in the future, but not during this year.”

Well, there you have it. The info is not new (we knew EU tree wouldn’t come this year), but you can see Wargaming slowly retreating from the EU tree and… that’s not a good thing. Tons of Polish, Czechoslovak, Italian, Swedish etc. players are waiting for it and that’s why this topic deserves a bit more attention and I will be dealing with that in a couple of future articles.

Note one odd thing: apparently, adding EU tanks is in conflict with Havok and HB according to V.Kislyi – so, programmers are now doing historical research and creating models? He probably meant HD rework.

Other info from the interview:

- no special rewards for hardcore players are planned (best of the best should go to e-sports and win real money)
- WG fill focus on CW and e-sports (CW – more casual version will be the fortifications)
- tactical tablet for CW is planned (SS: a map where commander can draw tactics and such)
- bitcoin support not planned
- WOWS: 10-15 min battles, has to be spectacular, it’s possible that WOWS beta will be until the end of this year
- all models in WoT will be reworked to HD, hopefully until the end of the year (SS: not really)
- Sturmtiger: maybe it will appear, but not high priority
- people loved the Karl mode
- Type 59 won’t go back in shop (will be kept as special prize)

Check Overlord’s QA on WoT Blitz, if you are interested in mobile gaming

- Storm on why the autoaim was changed in 9.0: “Current autoaim in cases of some vehicles (especially open SPG’s) sometimes aims at “empty space” around the vehicle and not at the vehicle itself. We fixed this by introducing new point where the autoaim is aiming. It won’t affect penetration chances.”
- rebalance of maps especially for historical battles is not planned
- it’s possible that “assault” and “encounter” modes will appear in historical battles
- it’s completely technically possible to implement skill/perks, working only under special conditions (for example perks specially for autoloader tanks, for TD’s etc.)
- regarding the alleged “arty nerf”, posted by Storm – he claims he was misinterpreted by “guide-makers, who misinterpret him because they are hunting for sensations” (SS: nothing implied sarcasm and what he wrote was very clear, anyway – Storm was probably referring to either Murazor or Jove). No arty nerf is planned for now, but it will definitely not recieve any buff, Storm states that statistically, everything is alright with arty
- apparently, there is a Russian social group on Vkontakte (VK, Russian Facebook) called “Women against World of Tanks” with like 7000 members, claiming that WoT destroys marriages because some men play too much (SS: no, this is not trolling, this really exists)
- one interesting thing I learned from EU/US. I won’t cite the source (he specifically asked not to), but according to internal WG EU data, World of Warplanes is actually doing fine on EU server, its popularity is rising. It’s the RU server, that has issues in this case, not the EU one (you might have seen the FTR post about the “failure of WoWp” – the graph in it referred to RU). I still think it’s a shitty game tho.

Hmmmm… a thought. You might have noticed that the QA is getting shorter (it’s also harder to “dig out” info from various sources). The reason for this is that the original thread, that used to be the “core source” of the translations, is practically dead. New answers appear quite rarely (from SerB – practically never, from Storm – more often, but still rare). The developers are probably busier than usual.

Overlord made a post about the new game modes, announced in the ASAP magazine. What do you think about them? Let him know! The same goes for the Maus reconstruction – let him know what you think.

Interesting fact about the Maus though. Yuri Pasholok made a post as well, where he hinted, that it might not be as easy as others imagine, because given the international situation, Russian researchers might not be exactly welcomed in German archives…

Apart from that, no real news today. Apparently (not related to EU unfortunately), one of the Russian servers got connected to one of the main internet lines in Moscow. Moscow players reported 3-5ms ping…

Hello everyone,

Daniel Chau of ESGN TV (Youtube e-sports channel) recently (in Warsaw) made an interview with Viktor “Big Boss” Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.

Inside:

- 40 thousand teams were fighting in the WGL regions, out of that only 14 got to the finals
- in organizing the WGL finals, Wargaming cooperated with ESL and Warsaw municipality
- he believes that e-sports will be competing on TV with traditional sports
- this year’s e-sports WG budget was 8 mil USD, next year it will be 10 mil USD
- WGL finals prize pool was 2,5 mil USD
- WoT is not intended as an e-sports game, the e-sports players simply came from the broad player base
- for WoWp to become an e-sports game, a solid userbase is needed
- WoWp is a “good game” and it does generate profit
- the biggest competitor for WoWp is WoT – players go play planes a for a bit and they immediately return to tanks
- Viktor Kislyi admits mistakes in WoWp development: FPS is not always optimal and there are also lag issues
- currently, Wargaming Kiev is working on fixing those issues, development will continue afterwards
- WoWs is in closed alpha, the battles can’t be hyperrealistic (fun is more important), will last 10-15 mins, experiments are going on
- no set release date for WoWs yet
- V.Kislyi’s dream is to make WoT e-sports big, he didn’t pay attention to e-sports before, but he was really carried away by Warsaw finals, he enlisted the help of pro e-sports players to make World of Tanks e-sports viable
- Kislyi is 37 years old and admits e-sports now fascinate him, he thinks e-sports is the future