just a quick update on the M56 Scorpion and how it is doing on supertest. Scorpion set of characteristics (including pictures) was leaked earlier, when the vehicle was introduced to the supertest server.
The feedback from supertesters about this vehicle is that with current characteristics, it sucks even against tier 9 vehicles, let alone tier 10′s. The developers allegedly agree, they too are unhappy with the vehicle performance. Current line of thinking is that this tank destroyer will definitely have limited matchmaking – it’s allegedly even possible it will not see tier 9 and 10 tanks in battle at all. This is however extremely preliminary at this point, further tests and tweaks are being conducted.
Personally, I was really skeptical about the competition and still am about the movie, for various reasons:
- they wrecked the Sherman they used (followed by a Wargaming money drive for its restoration)
- the “LOL SHERMUN WUZ CRAP TEH TIGER BESTEREST TANK OF WAR” trailer
- too much hype
- I don’t like Brad Pitt
Anyway, about the competition. The first funny part is that the “super secret tank” (reskinned Sherman to looke like the one from the movie – not sure which version, the one appearing on the screen, or the way the tank looked after the shooting) is not even in the game (probably gonna be in 9.3 files coming out after this weekend), but whatever.
The winning trailer looks good I guess. I am really not a WoT video expert, but I kinda expected a bit more. But fair enough, why not. What struck me as odd however were the other “trailers”, for example the one, that won third place.
I mean, so there’s the American T20, the M6 or whatever and a Hellcat at the end, what does that have to do with the Fury movie? Absolutely nothing? It looks like an action version of a random WoT video. I know it took probably some (even considerable) effort, but… well, I don’t know.
according to this article, Wargaming (specifically Viktor Kislyi) announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2014 that Wargaming (World of Warships) would cooperate with the creators of anime called Arpeggio Blue Steel, which is apparently warship-themed. Tried to check on the story of the anime and it makes no sense to me, so I guess it’s an attempt to make specifically the Japanese players interested.
Well, at least they are doing the advertising right:
here are the pictures of a very old map – and by very old I mean more than two years back. It was called Savannah and it never made it even to the open test server. The reason for that was that the developers considered the map too open and without cover – the artillery dominated on it.
Savannah was one of four maps, that were “leaked” around March 2012. The other maps of the batch were Mexico, Munich and South Coast. Munich and South Coast eventually made it to the game (Munich is now called Widepark), Mexico and Savannah did not. Below are the screenies of Savannah and Mexico. Too bad – now that arty was nerfed big time, I think it might be time to have a look at those maps again :)
you might have already heard of the Extra Credits Youtube show. It’s actually a really great show I like a lot, even though I sometimes disagree with some of their ideas. I think it was Vallter, who actually introduced me to this show and I am grateful for that. Anyway, here’s one part that you should find interesting. Go ahead, watch it. I’ll continue after you do.
So, now, you know the reason why there are no player-to-player ingame transactions in World of Tanks of any sort. By not introducing them, the developers essentially bypassed a whole lot of trouble, one of the biggest being raging inflation. Bethesda with Elder Scrolls Online went the same direction by the way, allowing auction houses to work only within guilds, removing the worst predatory practices, that appeared in World of Warcraft over the years by the “peer pressure” (players are much less likely to attempt to cheat their percieved guildmates).
In World of Tanks, the economy is completely closed, which means that the developers have complete control over its flow. Various elements of the economy, requiring both credits and gold, are introduced to keep the inflation in check. And yes, there is an inflation.
The mode is apparently 3vs3 Chaffee race (special fast Chaffee Sport). It takes place on completely reworked Port map. There are various obstacles, such as jumping ledges, exploding barrels and such. It ends with a very fast base capture it seems.
as a part of the “Remember Everything” series of videos, WG RU makes interviews with soldiers (not only tankers), who survived WW2 and are willing to share their experiences. Naturally, these videos are… let’s say written with Russian audience in mind, but nevertheless, they are very interesting.
In this video, Ismagil Nigmatovich Galiullin (quite an unusual name), former tank driver in WW2 tells the story of him becoming a tank driver and of defeating a Tiger tank by ramming it. There are English subtitles, you can enable those.
apparently, Wargaming EU will be doing an “Ask Me Anything” session today from 19:30 to 21:00 CEST (GMT +2) on the Reddit subforum. So, if you are interested in this kind of thing, go ahead.
The bad news is, unlike last time when we had Evilly, there is nobody from WG RU represented there, so the replies will likely be… limited. Personally, I wouldn’t really even know what to ask, but I would suggest – instead of asking “when” and “if”, trying to ask “why”.
Wargaming just published the Chaffee race video. We of course knew about it earlier from the leaks, but it’s nice to see they were correct :) The event will apparently start on 29.9.2014
today, we are going to talk about one vehicle, that could eventually appear in the game as “EU tree” tier 10 artillery. As you probably know, Czechoslovak branches are planned within that tree and every tree has to come with at least one artillery branch. What you might however not know is that of all the potential nations of the EU tree, there are only two, that can build a complete tier 2 to 10 artillery branches: Czechoslovakia and Sweden.
This is obviously the Czechoslovak candidate. Let’s have a look at it in more details.
Between 1946 and 1948, numerous (perhaps more than a dozen) various self-propelled gun projects were developed for the newly reformed Czechoslovak army. The exact numbers are not known and likely never will, as a part of the archive in Prague became flooded at some point and many precious documents were lost. What remains are the scraps of information, that take painstaking effort to piece together.
One of the challenges the Czechoslovak army faced was “what to do with all that collected German stuff” – during the war, Czechoslovak territory became a major strategic location, when it came to tank production (Jagdpanzer 38t and its variants, Marder, Grille, Sturmpanzer IV and others), but also repair. That meant that after the war, large amounts of German vehicles were recovered – either in state of repair from various workshops, or scattered around the countryside. Some the army got rid of immediately (Tiger and Tiger II tanks) because keeping them would be pointless (heavy, unreliable, no spare parts), some got pressed into service (Panzer IV, Hummel, Jagdpanzer 38t and others in limited numbers), but some the army didn’t really know what to do with (Panther).
