- first round of British HD models: Centurion Mk.7 and Tortoise
- Churchill HD will come after 9.0, just like IS
- for now, premium Churchill will not participated in historical battles – maybe later
- the new HD hangar consists of real life elements, it was done according to real hangars and repair shops
- on the HD models, tracks are not dirty from mud by default, because “muddy tracks looks really strange on sand and snow”
- it’s possible the lists of vehicles for 9.0 historical battles might not be final (SS: Nashorn missing for example)
- non-premium new hangar will not appear in 1st round of test, it’s still being worked on
- night battles were completely removed (“players couldn’t see shit”)

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3116432.html

Hello everyone,

recently, Anton “Evilly” Pankov was interviewed in a video and Maiorboltach from Russian LJ community was kind enough to provide a written version of the video info. Not too much interesting there, but no info should be missed, so…

- Evilly likes cybersports, he tried to get into e-sports, but didn’t make it, now he works for Wargaming
- he played CS profesionally (15vs15 and 30vs30 on cs_assault)
- he started as a community manager
- there will be World of Warplanes cybersports, apparently in 1vs1 format
- WG apparently still has faith in World of Warplanes, because it is successful in Europe and “has everything ahead of it”
- Chris Taylor is still working on a “supersecret project”

The video is here:

Generally not very relevant.

Okay, today’s news – FTR was down for half a day and we don’t know why, something created insane traffic, but it seems to be alright now. We think someone hotlinked the pictures from FTR too much. Sorry for that, everything should be fully functional right now.

According to Storm, 9.0 test will come tomorrow.

- regarding WoT Blitz, “developers are more familiar with iOS than with Android”, that’s why iOS version comes earlier (there however will be android version as well)
- regarding the T-54, Tiger and Sherman models, released today: each of them is a bit graphically different. This is intentional: there are several ways that the developers (graphic designers) can follow and the goal (of test 9.0) is to find out, which one do the players prefer and then to follow it
- in first round of 9.0 test, only 3 HD models will appear (T-54, Tiger, Sherman), the remaining 7 will come in 2nd round
- the rest of the models will apparently be reworked to follow one of these three variants in style

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The only news today seem to be the fact that the limit of those small gold codes got increased by a lot, so more people get to it (before, the code was barely active for two – three hours, today, it was active ever since morning till the afternoon).

From Overlord about WoT Blitz:

- WoTB closed beta won’t start for a few days more:

We won’t start until next week – that’s for sure. So don’t expect news in the next few days.

- delay between iOS and Android tests:

Not sure about the gap between the two, a lot will depend on how closed beta on ios goes. If it’s short, then Android release is rather close.

- apparently, Ipod Touch “5 gen” should work as well (A5 chip)

Again, very little info today. Truth to be told, I don’t expect anything groundbreaking until patch 9.0 hits the test server. Apparently, developers are very busy.

- the “Wotcoin” cryptocurrency has nothing to do with Wargaming

Again, not much today, however you can read Chieftain’s article about desert Sherman’s conversions

- Storm doesn’t know whether the constant refreshing of the garage (SS: the short “synchronizing” every few secs) will be fixed, but states that it’s not critical
- Storm is absolutely sure that there haven’t been any gun accuracy changes after 8.6
- confirmed: artillery bugs are already fixed in the supertest 9.0 build

Today, again, nothing unfortunately. I even checked the “lesser developers answering” section on RU forums (which is basically equal to EU/US regular questions thread) and the questions from there are so dumb that I just facepalmed and closed it for the sake of my sanity. The only “interesting” piece of info is that no matter how hard you beg (and some begged quite a lot), developers won’t tell you when the 3rd campaign begins.

What you can do is check the newest list of bots, the red ones on it were banned already. The fun part is: you might see the player “gritzy” on the list. He got banned and here, he moans like a bitch on the bot owner’s forums :)

Also, you might remember my post about Centurion AVRE and M728 CEV. Listy had some comments to add and posted a reaction on Overlord’s blog. It’s well worth reading.

Pretty much nothing today. The only thing that was going on a while ago (and I forgot to post it) was the supertest of the possibility to stream (via Twitch) directly from the client. I guess that’s good news for all the streamers out there.

Oh yea, and as for mobile gaming, current minimum requirements for WoT: Blitz are (according to Overlord) following chips:

Tegra 3
Mali-400MP
Adreno 225
PowerVR SGX544MP2

- according to the developers, 8.11 TD nerf caused the decrease of amount of TD’s in hightier battles
- according to the developers, the TD situation is like this: in the beginning, TD’s were actually quite unpopular despite their alpha and camo advantage and that changed only with the big arty nerf, where a certain number of artillery players transferred to TD’s
- one of the reasons the potential damage stat got renamed is the fact the developers are preparing to implement rewards for soaking up damage (SS: “tanking” in Warcraft terms)
- apparently, animated tank effects, such as automatic shell ejectors, are planned for “medium” future (as in, not far from now, but not soon)
- after 8.6, there were no changes in accuracy and shell spread within aim circle
- in 9.0, new premium and non-premium hangars will come, it will be “very cool”
- independent suspension will appear on reworked models only
- ASAP for 9.0 will come within next few days
- at some point in the future, there will be massive vehicle rebalances
- T-54 HD model will have the log on the back
- concrete-piercing shells will not be introduced to WoT
- arty shells exploding in mid-air and arty shells flying outside of the aim circle were caused by some bug in server connection between nodes during certain distribution setups
- 122mm IS not having historical gold shells in historical battles? “How terrible”
- tank names on minimap: when it’s done it’s done
- apparently, the “potential damage” will be renamed to “damage, reflected by armor” or something like that
- historical battles will have separate stats, like team battles
- according to Storm, confrontation has to be switched off, not just switched off by default, because those few people, who would switch it on, would constantly suffer from long queues and problems with MM and there would be a lot of whining
- in 9.0, the bug where missions don’t display the counter properly on the mission screen tab, will be fixed
- according to Overlord, World of Tanks: Blitz is practically ready for beta

One more thing to be clear: the fact 0.9.0 patchnotes appeared today (partially) is due to the fact that today, patch 0.9.0 appeared on supertest. According to regular schedule, that means that common test should come next Thursday. HOWEVER, this patch is anything but common and delays are inevitable. Storm posted that the test will come in 2-3 weeks.

- optimization of World of Tanks is being conducted continuously
- there is no need to rebalance arty in general apparently
- choosing your team setup for maps in team battles will come after 9.0
- current amount of arties in battles is 1-3 per team
- it’s not yet sure, whether confrontation will be completely scrapped or just temporarily disabled – Storm states that in order to work, it needs its MM fixed and there are no resources to do that for now

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