Thanks to Rabiesdog for this one.

Hello everyone,

the world was never a peaceful place and never will be, not for long anyway. Some of the conflicts are widely known and reported, but others pass unnoticed and forgotten while the eyes of the world are set elsewhere. Currently, the fight with ISIS and the conflict in Ukraine occupies the media, while in other parts of the world, fighting is still going on.

One of such conflicts is the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, which was going on with various intensity for nearly a decade, growing from a small, essentially tribal/sect riots to full-blown uprising. The latest development is the Battle of Sana’a (capital of Yemen) between the insurgents and government forces, resulting in the resignation of the prime minister of Yemen – as I write this, the battle is still ongoing with hundreds of dead on both sides, despite the Sunday peace agreement.

But why I am writing this…

This photograph was taken yesterday and published on BBC. It shows the Shia rebels with captured Yemen army equipment in one of the army camps. Notice the vehicle. It is a Czechoslovak-made SD-100 (a license copy of SU-100), manufactured between 1953 and 1957 (771 were made in total). Of the 771, 460 were kept for Czechoslovakia and the rest went for export to many countries, including Yemen – 50 vehicles were sold at an unknown point (presumably in the early 60′s). To be honest, it’s amazing to see a vehicle survive like that for so long – it’s literally a museum piece (the grass on the tracks suggests it wasn’t used for quite a while, but it looks better than some of the vehicles left to rot in western/eastern countries).

SD-100 was not very different from the SU-100, there were a couple of tweaks and the production quality was better than on the Russian originals (peacetime production after all). The last documented use of the SD-100 if I recall correctly is the Yom Kippur war in 1973 (by Syria and Egypt) in artillery role.

Hello everyone,

here’s the usual Wargaming patch introduction video. For now, unfortunately, only in Russian. What you can do is turn automatic subtitles on and then have them translated to English. Not too good, but at least it will give you an overview of what they mention. As far as I can tell, there is nothing really surprising in the video.

Inside:

- new light tanks, reworked Murovanka, vehicle rebalance, new Stronghold functions
- LTTB: “much like the legendary T-50-2, same high speed and maneuverability”, but with added firepower, “the gameplay feeling is practically the same as the earlier T-50-2″
- T-54 Light: well-armored and armed light tank, can withstand hits from tanks of its tier
- US light tanks: good mobility and viewrange, guns are fast aiming and firing fast
- M41 has an autoloader for 10 shells, it can destroy in 20 seconds most of tier 7′s and many 8′s, but it is light, low hitpoints, has to be careful in picking targets
- T49 can mount a 152mm gun – base shell is HE, it makes a lot of damage but playing with it is complicated due to low ROF, long aimtime and low accuracy, 90mm gun is for players who like the fire support role
- RU251 is one of the fastest tanks in the game with a good gun, it’s possible to play it as a mobile sniper
- KV-1S split (KV-85 on tier 6), KV-85 gets to keep the favourite 122mm gun
- new HD models
- rework of Murovanka
- new Stronghold functions (“Chancellery”, mercenaries)
- certain map objects now explode (fuel tanks, cars)
- explosion effect was reworked
- new punishments for leavers and AFKers
- new ricochet system
- transmission/engine split
- if a tank drowns while being detracked (forced drowning), it will count as a kill for the person that caused the detrack

Source: http://worldoftanks.eu/cs/news/pc-browser/46/change-your-password-event/

Hello everyone,

I’ll be brief – on EU server, if you change the password, you will get 300 gold. The reason is probably the recent big e-mail password leak.

Hello everyone,

once again, complete list of EU missions for the upcoming month got leaked, this time for October. Enjoy!

Top of the Tree (1.10.-15.10.) – E-100
Top of the Tree (15.10.-1.11.) – M48 Patton

8.10.-1.11. “Togtober” month event
- be in top 3 in XP in your team in random battle on a tier 4+ tank, get 50 percent more XP
- win 5 games on a tier 4+ tank once per day while being in top 10 in XP, get 1 gold repair kit and 1 gold fire extinguisher
- complete the previous mission 15 times, get a free TOG II + garage slot

30.9.-4.10. “Weekly Missions”
- play 50 random or team battles on tier 4+ tank while being in top 10 in XP, get 5 gold repair kits and 5 gold extinguishers (once per account)

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

tier 10 discounts for October will be as follows (30 percent discount, 15 percent credit gain bonus):

1.10.-15.10. – E-100 (E-75, Tiger II)
15.10.-1.11. – M48 Patton (M46 Patton, Pershing)

Hello everyone,

if you follow this blog, you have likely seen all the new tank models already. However, this time, I have something a bit different for you. These screenshots are more… artistic than usual, shall I say. There is only one problem – I was digging through the e-mail correspondence and I have not found who actually sent this to me and where :( So whoever you are, mate (Imgur nickname “Opera5387″), do claim credit please, because these screenshots are really pretty.

(right-click and “view image” for full size version)

Continue reading →

Thanks to ugly_joe, BlacKHeaDSg1 and Erik for this one :)

Hello everyone,

driving in Russia is dangerous business – apart from the usual things, you have to watch out for tanks falling from trailers as well. On 10.9.2014, near Omsk, a truck driver was transporting a T-72B tank for repairs. He went too fast into a curve, shaking his haul off the trailer. The tank ended on its roof with its barrel buried in dirt near the road. The driver recieved a 500 ruble (cca 10 Euro) fine for not carrying proper license to haul such heavy objects.

A couple of pictures of the event:

Continue reading →

Thanks to Legiondude for this one.

Hello everyone,

at recent Tokyo Game Show (what is E3 for America and Gamescom for EU, TGS is for Asia), Big Boss Kislyi had a speech and he mentioned Girls und Panzer – he’s apparently a fan. What is more interesting for the GuP fans however is that on 1st of October, new official WoT game mod is coming out, that will feature characters from Girls und Panzer.

Here’s a video from the speech (with some GuP footage or so).

Hello everyone,

I usually don’t care about anything that goes on in World of Warplanes, unless it concerns World of Tanks as well. In my opinion, that game is dead and it’s only a matter of time before they pull the proverbial plug on it (by that I don’t mean switching the servers off totally, just cutting the development down to zero). Sometimes, however, interesting things appear on their portal, like this one.

As you all probably know, there is no such thing as EU/US supertest. For those who do not know, supertest is a semi-internal Wargaming test server, in which (theoretically) reliable and skilled players participated (with the amount of leaks lately, you can imagine how that really works). There is a completely internal WG test server as well. About year and a half ago, European and American players actually participated in the supertest. It was cancelled after series of leaks (yes, the ones FTR played a major role in). Ever since, the participants of the test were only players from Russian server.

Continue reading →