Source: numerous (added answers from another LJ post)

Hello everyone,

Storm recently made two KWG posts, one to wish the players happy New Year and the other to comment on the recently released KTTS video. Here is the info from the discussion:

- Q: “The graphics is somehow meh” A (Veider): “You don’t like the new IS-4 model? I started jerking off to it even when it didn’t have the texture yet and was still a set of polygons”
- dynamical dirt (SS: tank gets dirty when going through mud) will be implemented
- old computers will be able to play on the same graphics like they do now
- WG made a special survey on player computer configurations, that’s how they know about so many players using crap computers, they collected data on 2,5 mil configurations
- reworked Maus model will get extrernal (empty) fuel tanks apparently
- historical battles will be played on currently existing random battle maps
- independent suspension will not influence balance more than it does now, it is already being taken into account when balancing tanks at this moment
- Veider states that support rollers for now have less polygons even in HD graphics on the IS-4 model, because it’s very difficult to see them in the battle anyway
- there will be more HD screenies after New Year

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2909500.html

Hello everyone,

recently (today?) there was a stream with Dimitri “Fluke” Grigorov, a CW specialist developer. Maiorboltach (RU LJ community) was kind enough to provide us with a summary of what he said.

SS: Please note that I never really dealt with CW stuff (I try to avoid is as much as I can), so it’s possible I might misinterpret some of the stuff Fluke said (or Maiorboltach wrote) – at least the risk is higher than usual. I will do my best.

- the idea behind the CW campaigns is that the old CW were unattractive and boring and to push more players into playing in clans
- developers were not happy with the first CW campaign: it turned out that only very powerful clans with strong diplomacy could achieve the M60
- after that the entire concept was reworked, hence the Fame points and the second campaign turned out to have quite a broad audience
- the goal for second campaign was to award 10 percent of all campaign players with the reward vehicle – and the number of awarded players was based on this estimate. Developers consider the amount of rewarded players to be quite high, “even a lazy person could obtain it”

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There is some confusion about the Italian branch/tree now.

- Q: “You said that you will implement a separate Italian branch?” A: “As usual, we didn’t give that answer – I haven’t found the word ‘separate’ anywhere”
- SerB on the TD based on IS-4: “a 152mm gun, classic Soviet composition with the superstructure in the front, armor roughly the same as the IS-4 has, we don’t have any more data for now”, apparently there might even be a variant with a not-fully rotating turret in the back
- Jagdtiger 88 and Jagdtiger differ in maximum speed, because “JT88 doesn’t have the top engine”
- SerB states that while the policy of Wargaming is that premium vehicles have to be worse somehow than the regular vehicles of the same tier, this does not apply for reward/special vehicles: “If these are as strong as regular vehicles of the same tier – that is acceptable, but not required. Them being stronger – that’s not acceptable”
- there is no direct connection between height of the tank and its viewrange: the viewrange is set manually
- WG started to develop the graphics improvement (HD) a year ago, they couldn’t start two years ago, because they didn’t have the money to do it

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/267947.html

Hello everyone,

Storm recently made a post, wishing everyone all the best in the upcoming new year and is asking, if there is something the players don’t like about current graphics, whether it makes eyes hurt and why and if there is anything new the players would like to see, graphics-wise.

Storm adds that they know about current performance issues in WoT and are working on fixing it. Currently, developers are working on full multicore support for the render – Storm states that there is a lot of work left to be done, in fact it is a complete render system overhaul, there will be a lot of more optimizations.

From the discussion:

- there is currently a bug where the replays are not saved properly (only the last one is saved), it will be fixed
- there will be no such thing as one “HD client” patch, textures and models will be improved throughout the entire next year
- there is enough content scheduled to come out, so much that WG has a problem finding suitable candidates for outsourcing to do it fast, even if the price offered is high
- the first vehicles to be reworked into HD will be the “legendary” mass produced vehicles like Tiger (SS: eg. not a single nation)

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2905500.html

Hello everyone,

Russians had today a stream with some community members and leadership, including Evilly and some developers. Here is the info, as summed up by Maiorboltach (RU server).

- exclusive tanks will go primarily to clans. Random battle players will get exclusive tanks via missions similiar to the current IS-6 one (eg. heavy grind)
- IS-6 won’t get a penetration buff
- unification of two accounts won’t be implemented
- next patch will not be 9.0, but 8.11 – it will contain UI features, such as disabling the chat
- historical battles: the battle of Prokhorovka and the battles around Lake Balaton are planned (in the first wave). There will be the respawn mechanism and there will be non-equal balance (for example one team has 7 tanks and the other has 30). At first, there will be the same maps as there are currently in game, but eventually there will be maps made exclusively for historical battles
- when logging on the test server, you won’t have all premium tanks at your disposal in your garage, you’ll have to buy them like it was until now
- garage battles will be in WoWp
- it’s possible garage battles as a separate game mode will appear in WoT
- T-44-85 will come in 8.11
- newbies have a special MM now: for 20 first battles, newbies play only with other newbies (SS: eg. not sealclubbers)
- there will most likely be new premium tier 8 tanks
- small machineguns will not shoot in the game
- T95 will not recieve a speed buff
- Chaffee branch prolongement won’t be in the next patch
- Italian branch will not be a separate tree, it will be a part of the EU tree
- there will be a new game mode for clans in 2014
- there will be a possibility to choose map in “clan battles” (??? probably meant Team battles) soon
- there will not be a separate server for noobs
- very soon there will be a WoT Blitz stream
- Mac OS WoT client is being worked on, it will be available soon, currently it’s being tested internally
- T95E6 will be a reward for Clans with 90 percent probability
- WG is experimenting with night battles, currently, there is a new system of spotting and visibility being tested internally
- WoT XboX will be released in the beginning of 2014

Not much today. Players were “whining” more than usual and SerB was just skipping the questions

- Q: “What’s the point of waiting for the start of the battle for 2 minutes?” A: “a) putting a team together b) loading of the map for those, who have worse computer than you”
- responsibility of clans for the behavior of their members won’t be implemented (SS: as in, automatically punishing the clan is a member misbehaves)
- apparently the current aiming system is sufficient for the game (SS: some player was asking about more complicated system, like non-linear aiming times over distances)
- there was no hidden vehicle nerf (SS: in 8.10 apparently)
- there was actually a TD based on the IS-4 hull planned, there was also a TD planned on the WZ-111 hull (not 113 though)
- 122mm HE shells from D-25 do less HE damage than 120mm US shells because of the “construction of the shell” (SS: this is probably true – when researching various guns, one of the data required is the amount of filling of the HE shells, which probably means this is taken into account)
- generally, SerB is satisfied with the way HE shells work
- there is no turret armor behind the IS-4 mantlet
- it’s possible that when the multiturret mechanism is implemented, you will be able to fire with the high caliber machineguns (like the 12,7mm AAMG on the top of some vehicles for example), but SerB adds that it will do you little good

- Q: “How the hell are the guns of tier 8 and 9 German Waffenträgers balanced” (SS: as in, physically – so the vehicle doesn’t tip over when firing) A: “You’d have to ask engineer Hans”
- Q: “So, if the guns aren’t balanced, how the hell do you aim that thing when the hull is even a bit tilted?” A: “You’d have to ask gunner Fritz”
- historically, Chi-Ri had four types of suspensions planned: two models of Hara suspension, the Bugatti suspension and something called “blocked torsion bar” suspension. Two of those will be implemented on various hulls and we’ll think about the other two too
- various O-I models will be used as much as possible in the Japanese heavy line
- apparently, Italians will be the a separate (possibly next) nation to be implemented, they will apparently (not confirmed!) have a separate tank tree, but not very soon (SS: if that happens, I’ll get really pissed – Italians have less vehicles available than Czechoslovaks and most of the hightiers are just American copies (M47 with 105mm) or various fantasy crap, there is nothing Italian above tier 7)

Hello everyone,

what follows is the summary of an interview with Michael “Storm” Zhivets, that came out in the Czech WoT monthly magazine “Deník Nooba” (Diary of a Noob) ran by Carramba66 (the same guy who made the veteran charity happen). Its second issue is now out and if you can read Czech, I can really recommend it (it contains e-sports posts, reviews, historical articles and such). You can get it from this post.

As for the interview, it’s a bit older (from the beginning of December) – the issue of the magazine was supposed to come out earlier, but there were some delays in production. Either way, here’s the summary:

- Storm started in the Minsk game studio called Arise, that merged with Wargaming in 2007
- when looking back, he wouldn’t do any significant thing on WoT differently, apart from being more prepared for the huge influx of players (the servers sometimes weren’t handling the popularity of the game)
- his big hobby is fishing
- PEGI and ESRB ratings are very important for Wargaming, without them, some regional markets would remain closed – but as for the missing crewmembers, Storm states that the original goal was to make a game without violence elements
- roughly 75 million people around the world play World of Tanks, including women and elderly folks
- the fact Germans already have Panzer 38t and 35t will not damage the quality of the Czechoslovak branch, especially since there are other “copies” between the trees (Storm mentions “twins” in French and German tree)
- European tech tree will not come earlier than 2015
- the names of the tank crewmembers for EU tree will correspond to the country the tank was built in
- Storm states that while WT E-100 is very strong, it might face the same effect as FV215b 183 (SS: that means that while a lot of players consider the vehicle OP, statistically it’s balanced), he admits it might be rebalanced after a few months
- historical battles will appear in first half of 2014, WG is actively working on them
- no list of historical battles’ tanks is planned for now
- apparently gold ammo will be limited in historical battles (only to a certain number of rounds, so players don’t spam it)
- there will be new bonuses for the owners of premium accounts, but it’s too soon to tell
- there won’t be direct QA with Storm and SerB on EU server (the way Russians have it)
- next year, global graphics improvement for WoT is planned (improving the number of polygons, the quality of textures and 3D models)
- there will be 2 kilometer and even 4 kilometer maps
- spotting system will not be cancelled, but it will be reworked. For starters, the amount of camo factor will depend on how many spotting checkpoints are visible (SS: as in, if a tank shows only one spot checkpoint, for example the roof, it will be less visible than a tank just standing in the open)
- Storm confirms that APCR ammo does lose penetration over distance faster than AP

- SerB states regarding old (0 battle) accounts occupying “nice” names that there most likely will be a system, that will be renaming them automatically
- apparently SerB doesn’t think that the IS-6 competition will create a flood of IS-6 tanks, like it happened with Type 59 before
- there will be all three map types (desert, summer and winter) for lowtier tanks
- Q: “How much smaller are the tanks in game than they are in real life?” A: “That depends on your screen. On a 20 meter cinema screen, it would be roughly 1:1″
- the average life span of a tank in WoT battle is cca 4 minutes, for a plane in WoWp it is cca 2 minutes, as for the classes – the longest lifespan belongs to arty, the shortest – hightier scouts
- Wargaming participating in/sponsoring the Tank Biathlon? “Not even PR department deals with such stuff, that would be GR (Government Relations) department, which is even further from the development department than PR”
- turretless tanks will not have apparently anything flying off during an ammo rack explosion
- there is no plan to hand out 2-3 perk crews in connection with historical battles, you will have to grind them yourselves
- Storm adds regarding the War Thunder damage model that something like was tested some months ago internally for World of Tanks, the tests did not yield good results (“without perspective”), but states that even such a damage model will find its fans
- historical battles will have the same game mechanics as random battles (SS: eg. no hardcore mode or oneshots)

Don’t forget to leave 8.10 feedback on Overlord’s blog!

- there is no difference in server-client communication regardless of what class of vehicle you are playing (SS: some RU player is complaining that he gets lags only when playing arty)
- the fact 15mm BESA doesn’t have gold ammo is intentional
- 128mm on RhB WT can fully rotate because that’s how it was historically mounted
- apparently, decals of penetrations and ricochets will not be improved in the HD client, as “they are pretty even now”

From Overlord:

- Overlord has not heard of any upcoming damage nerf for gold shells
- rework of balancing methods is currently considered, there are no exact plans though (SS: related to the “new method” of showing whether a tank is OP)

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