Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2775202.html

Hello everyone,

today (roughly 2 hours ago or so), there was a stream with Storm, LJ user magnus_25 made a summary of what Storm said (well, partial). Here it is:

- map “Kharkov” is being made with all sorts of nice historical fluff, like fires, smoke in the distance and airplanes passing overhead. Apart from Kharkov maps, there will be Minsk and Königsberg historical city maps. They will have historical buildings modelled specially for those maps. These maps will be built on historical sources.
- Japanese tanks will not be OP – don’t expect imbalanced vehicles. But many Japanese tanks will have really good depression
- there will be no special maps for assault and encounter modes
- maps will be made more “life-like” and atmosphere will be added – burning tanks and such, so the player feels like he’s on a battlefield
- there will be a HD client with lots of graphic improvements, like turrets and pieces of tank (like boxes) being ripped off by fire, reflections etc. The amount of polygons and quality of textures will be improved. There will be new layers of textures, that will look properly under different light – grass will be grass, mesh will be mesh etc. There will also be independent suspension. This will be possible to disable, new computers will be able to work with it, old computers will be able to work with graphic level as it is now

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In other news, the WG EU portal bug is still very much alive and people are getting news in Polish instead of English. How terrible.

- the WT E-100 has a nominal turret back armor of 8mm in its stats, but that doesn’t refer to the back of the turret, but to its roof
- Storm states it doesn’t matter whether you call this patch 0.8.9 or 8.9 (“whatever you like more”), but WG utilizes the 8.9 version more
- Storm confirms that balance in 7/42 battles is based on special 7/42 rating, that is based only on your performance in 7/42 battles, which means there haven’t been enough battles played yet and that the stats are lacking. After a week or two, the stats will be there and the rating will start to show real value and the 7/42 battles (skill MM) will work much smoother
- for current 7/42 skill MM, regular personal rating is NOT used, it’s “survival of the fittest” according to Storm
- there is no specified coefficient for the difference between camo factor while standing and camo factor while moving for any one class, apparently it’s tuned individually for each tank (SS: a player mentions that according to experiments, heavies lose 50 percent camo while moving on average, mediums lose 25 percent of camo when moving and TD’s lose 40 percent of their camo while moving).
- Christie tanks won’t appear for now
- a ricocheted shell cannot damage another vehicle apparently: there are technical reasons for this decision: one shell hitting two tanks would somehow disrupt the server processes
- the fact the engine fire doesn’t kill crewmen is a gameplay decision

Hello everyone,

here are the answers from the last session. As usual, I changed the wording of the original questions to make them more comprehensible – but the merit is still there I think.

1. Is it possible for battle results (debriefing) screens to be saved into replays? If so, how high a priority does this have?

This won’t be touched for now. We are working on server replays. (Storm)

2. We know the developers are thinking of high-level (tier 10) content, similiar to 7/42 battles. But are there are plans for any low level content, based on the same principle? (7 players, tier 4-6 maximum as an example)

There are no plans for such content. (Storm)

3. The French and the Chinese currently have their light branches up to tier 8 and we know there are such plans for the Germans (RU251) and Americans, while the Soviets have only “paper” tanks for those tiers. What about the Japanese and the British – are there any hightier candidates for the light tank branch?

We haven’t found yet any fitting Japanese or British tanks. If we find data, we will implement tanks. (Storm)

Cannoneer explains this issue further:

The most powerful light tank of the Imperial Army (eg. until 1945) is the Ke-Ho, that we will have on tier 4. Many know already, that there will be Type 61 (first mass-produced Japanese post-war tank) and STA-1 (first Type 61 prototype) in the release tree. Before STA-1, there were technical requirements issued for a 20 ton tank with 76mm gun and after that for a 25 ton tank with 90mm gun – and after that the weight was increased to 30 tons because of the thicker armor. That means there is some potential, but unfortunately we don’t have information about the projects, that were presented by the company as an answer to the requirements. One player on the US forums collected all that is known at this moment about those projects here.

For Britain, there are two potential candidates. First is the A46/FV301. A46 is a project from 1943 to replace the Stuart and Chaffee with something carrying the 77mm gun (the same Comet has). FV301 is the development of the A46 project. Unfortunately, there are no drawings found for A46 yet.

The second is the light tank project by Vickers-Armstrong from 1960 (Vickers Design No. 45569 T), armed with the same gun as the Centurion (20pdr), but two times lighter. The development of this project led to the Vickers MBT. Again, there are no drawings of this tank yet.

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Looks like despite the previous announcement, the EU language fail (English portal in Polish and vice versa with a random sprinkle of German) is alive and well. Good job, EU guys :)

Apparently, WG Minsk loves to celebrate Halloween…

Also, World of Tanks: Blitz might apparently have infantry.

- there is indeed a bug in the average XP gain display, it will be fixed
- the Lowe weight decrease will have an impact on the vehicle dynamics (agility, acceleration etc.), but only a small one
- Japanese tank names will be written in latin (in RU client presumably), but based on the Japanese transliteration system
- apparently the crash issues (client crashing in Missions window and 7/42 battles) were not happening in common test
- according to Storm, many client crashes are the fault of faulty (obsolete) mods

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Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/255593.html

Storm wrote another post on the developer blog. In one of the following patches, Lowe will be changed for historical reasons (based on data from H.Doyle – WG wrote him a letter) so:

Weight will be reduced from 92,55 to 90 tons
Depression and elevation will change from -6/+17 to -8/+38 (-5/+38 when the gun is facing back)
Ammo capacity will increase from 40 to 80 shells
Upper part of the side armor will increase from 80mm to 100mm

Furthermore, tomorrow an urgent hotfix will came out, fixing following bugs:
- crashes and freezes in the Missions window
- crashes and freezes in 7/42 battles

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There will be a new feature – recruiting interface for clans. If WG EU doesn’t make an English version, I’ll just translate it myself and post it here.

- apparently, client and server shell trajectories can actually differ from one another, but just for a tiny bit
- it’s completely possible for the server aim circle to aim with different speed as the client aim circle, it’s usually the fault of poor internet and packet loss
- the “three caliber rule” for HEAT shells was cancelled “so that the player wouldn’t hear ‘we didn’t penetrate their armor’, when hitting thin surfaces under sharp angles (88-89 degrees), because the effective armor of even nominally thin armor (20-30mm) is very thick and the shell doesn’t penetrate it anyway due to the lack of penetration. In fact, nothing has changed, only the players will now hear a honest ‘ricochet’ instead of ‘didn’t penetrate their armor’. For other types of shells there is no need to cancel this rule”
- the aim circle spread when the tank is moving, the circle spread after shooting and the circle spread after moving the gun/turret are three different parameters, that can stack
- French tanks have more camo than other tanks? “We don’t comment on leaks”
- SerB states that in real life, Object 416 was classified both as a medium tank and a SPG, it was made a medium tank in order to fit the branch

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- according to SerB less than 30 percent of all players are in any clans
- there is some development of the visibility system being conducted. A player suggested the visibility system to encompass the view vectors of various crewmen (for example: the driver can see only forward), but Storm wrote such a thing (limited fields of view by crewmen) won’t be implemented. SerB adds that he’d actually like to have that, but he’s afraid that if they do that, there will be much confusion amongst the players regarding the visibility system
- BT-5 will most likely appear as an alternative hull
- rocket-carrying BT (“land torpedo”) will not appear most likely as a gun option
- WG is not aware of any project of a TD/SPG, built on AMX-40 chassis
- new high tier 8 premium with high alpha (490+) planned? “If there ever is such a plan, I will tell”
- apparently, visibility checks consume about 2/3 of server resources
- it’s possible to see someone who is online on another server as offline in your friend list – during peak times (when the server switches to “performance mode”), a share of data that is normally shared between servers stops being shared and this is one of its effects
- an undisclosed Russian historical source states that at least one Tiger took place in the Hoth’s assault to break the Stalingrad encirclement – it was allegedly destroyed by a 76mm Zis-3 gun. SerB states that it’s most likely not true – it was probably a Panzer IV with armor screens or something like that, he also adds that such a confusion (calling all the enemy tanks Tigers) was not uncommon. (SS: that is true, for example several accounts of Slovak National Uprising from people who fought in it call pretty much every SPG a “Ferdinand” – if these accounts were true, there were more Ferdinands destroyed in the SNU than there were ever produced)
- there were Soviet turretted tank destroyer projects (for example a T-34 hull with an open turret and 53-K gun (45mm M1937)), but they won’t be implemented for now
- Q: “Why do developers on one hand claim to fight sealclubbing and on the other hand they hand out tier 2/3 tanks en-masse?” A:”It’s the lesser evil” (SS: take that as you will)
- according to the developers it’s good and normal that there are various gameplay styles throughout the tiers, as it allows the players to pick the gameplay that suits them: “Simply play the game that suits you. I for example prefer tier 8-10″
- gun damage is basically arbitrary, it’s a balance parameter (no point in asking “why does gun A have more alpha than gun B”)
- other balance parameters include tank hitpoints, module hitpoints and other characteristics, that don’t exist in real life
- equipment, increasing the amount of ammo carried will not be implemented, other ways of carrying more ammo won’t be implemented for now either
- SerB states that WG would give out the T7 Combat Car even if WoT didn’t win, “as a reward for voting”

- having occasional FPS drops to 2-7 FPS? “Vacuum clean the computer”
- the reason for module saving throws is lower tier tanks having a fighting chance against hightier ones
- when the KV-1S is split into two tanks, the statistics will probably stick with the tier 6 tank, because most of the battles were played with the big guns anyway
- the aimtime in WoT is there to simulate accurate aiming by the crew

A bit of info about CW from Overlord, quite interesting:

“Regarding the Clan Wars, there are big plans for that mode to make it more accessible for players, which includes separation of CW into regular global map and another submode which is going to be less exhaustive in terms of time and effort – at the same time providing a new type of gameplay (garage battles). Plus, the game still needs a more accessible end-game mode than Clan Wars, possible with PvE element – survival, moba, coop, or smth similar. Don’t see a problem with T10 being awarded in CWs as long as they don’t offer better performance comparing to regular vehicles.”

and

“7/42 appeared to be the most succseful form of competitive play which doesn’t mean we are not going to try T10 in esport in future. And again see above for end-game.”