Wargaming to Support Game Developers

Source: http://www.charter97.org/ru/news/2014/7/20/107708/

Special thanks to Maiorboltach for linking it on RU LJ community

Hello everyone,

according to the article linked above, the London Venture Partners company along with Wargaming, Zynga and Nexon companies, agreed to create a special Seed fund to finance new game development (specifically for European game developers). LVP is no newbie on the gaming market, having financed previously the projects such as Supercell, NaturalMotion, Playfish, and Applifier, through which LVP made over 4 billion USD in last 5 years.

Via this fund, third party game project startups will be financed – in the initial stage, 20-25 projects will be supported, each by a sum between 50k and 500k USD – the developers of these projects must come from the European region including Russia. Russian gaming market is estimated to grow this year by 13,3 percent, making it world’s 12th largest gaming market with its 1,14 billion USD volume.

Wargaming is involved in this fund via its Cyprus office according to the company representative Artur Protopopov. He states however that he expects the fund to invest mostly European and not Russian projects, as the Russian developers will have a hard time proving themselves since the investing environment in Russia is unfavourable. At the same time, it is pointed out that the creation of this fund proves that the gaming market is growing and perspective field. The focus on Europe comes from the fact that Silicon Valley is “overheated” and the investors turn their attention specifically towards European market.

WoWs to be Introduced at Gamescom

Source: http://www.gamenguide.com/

Hello everyone,

you know how the first Wargaming’s Gamescom had dancing girls with army uniforms and the last one had dancing girls in pilot uniforms? Well, this time, we can look forward to seeing more sailor uniforms, as Wargaming confirmed according to the article linked above that World of Warships would be officially introduced during this year’s Gamescom. Those players, who visit WG’s booth will be the first one to publicly try out the WoWs demo version.

Gamescom expo will take place in Cologne between 13th and 17th of August and it will be (like the last time) streamed on Wargaming Twitch channel. WoT Blitz, WoT and WoWp will be shown as well. Personally, I thought I’d be coming to Gamescom this year (finally!), but but I won’t be in the end – mostly because I’ll be away when it starts. Those of you, who will be there however, enjoy!

Related to World of Warships – all the regions (ASIA, EU, US) are recruiting more alpha testers (for example here), so if you are interested in this game, go right ahead :)

Inconvenient Heroes

Hello everyone,

this article will not be directly related to tanks, but to history itself. In the past, I translated an article called “Inconvenient Heroes – Part I” by Václav Vlk sr., dispelling the myth of massive Czech collaboration with the nazis in WW2. Today, I am going to continue with second part.

Inconvenient Heroes by Václav Vlk Sr. – Part II

In order to explain our own history and to get rid of layers of propaganda lies, we will use the documents, created by the “other side” – the nazis. Let’s start with a quote from a letter, written by R.Heydrich to Martin Bormann on 18.5.1942, shortly before his assassination, where he openly stated the pillars of his policy: “The main idea is to strenghten the German influence (in the Protektorat) as much as possible without further interruptions, which means to practically take away any authonomy, to take way the Czech national identity itself from the people, to take away their leadership, to divide the people and to support everything that is German…” (1)

Newly published materials consist of the so-called Pannwitz report, or (in its full name) “Closing report of IV.Department of SD about the current status of Heydrich assassination investigation” from 21.7.1942, intended for the main SD office in Berlin for the Chief of SD, Müller (2). It is historically confirmed that Hitler himself knew about the contents of this report and thus it is clear that this report was not biased or lenient in Czech favor. Thus, it is an important document, showing the real state of things in the investigation.

Nazi – and later communist – propaganda created a lot of myths about the behavior of Czechs during the occupation, but the reality was different, as shown by the German document, named above. A “Special Committee” was created by the commander of Gestapo in Prague, SS-Standartenführer JUDr. Hans Ullrich Geschke on K.H.Frank’s orders. Here, it’s worth noting that the Gestapo interrogators, working for the committee, were not “dumb brutal thugs”, as they are sometimes depicted in movies. For the beating and torture during interrogations, Gestapo “invited” young SS members (aged up to 20 years) – these were the main direct torturers (dispelling the myth that some young SS members were just “innocent kids pressed by circumstances”, as some people like to point out).

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WoT for Xbox – Stream Q&A

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3399886.html

Hello everyone,

this post is based on a transcript of a WoT Xbox stream with Alexei “Inaki” Ilyin and some guys I’ve never heard about (I assume they are from RU community department). It was transcribed as usual by Maiorboltach, thanks.

The following answers concern WoT for Xbox. I am not sure if there are any Xbox players reading this, but… well, just to be sure.

- in current update, the status of WoT Xbox tank amount reached the state the PC version was in patch 8.10
- there soon will be “super platoons” of 7 people, which will be balanced against other “super platoons”
- if the game “has a cybersports future” (not sure), some cybersports options/activities will be added
- WoT for Xbox One will appear only when Xbox One surpasses Xbox 360 in sales and popularity, Inaki added that the Xbox One social component is still too weak, especially when currently WG is experimenting with Xbox 360 social components
- there will be no mods in Xbox WoT, ever
- currently, developers are considering adding penetrable soft objects
- clans will come “when it’s done”
- there will soon be “skins” for Xbox profile avatars, that the players will recieve for achievements in game
- Xbox version is not a PC port
- developers know about the players lacking more aim reticle UI customization and replays, this will come “when it’s done”
- upcoming patches will include only maps that are already in the PC version, plus some tank branches
- upcoming patches will not bring barrel rings
- balancing the PC and Xbox version is not connected, Xbox version collects its own statistics
- ingame missions will come soon

Saints and Soldiers – Behind the Scenes

Hello everyone,

this video appeared on Wargaming channel, without any portal news, so some of you might have missed it.

 

 

Well, the good thing is, the video has Nicholas “The_Chieftain” Moran, one of the best WG employees (at least in my opinion). I liked the “drive me closer” quote :) The Panzer III looks great as well. Apparently, they made the movie because they actually had access to these tanks in first place, which is IMHO not a good way of making movies, but… we’ll see. This video makes it look interesting.

Oh and there are subtitles in various languages.

Credit Income Bonus to Change on US (and EU?) Server

Hello everyone,

this might come as a bit of old news (two weeks late or so after all), but since it caused an outrage more than I expected (and frankly, I did not pay attention to the thread that much), it’s worth returning to the issue.

Basically, what happened:

You know how EU server gets 30 percent discount and 30 percent income buff for tier 10 tank discount events “Top of the Tree” (currently, it’s T92)?

Well, until quite recently, the US server recieved not only that (both discount and credit bonus), but also 50 percent discount and 50 percent credit gain bonus on tier 2 to 5 of that respective branch (for example here, the T110E4). This was a point of heated debates between players (50 percent income bonus on tier 5, especially combined with premium account, is quite a boost) in the past.

From roughly 2 weeks on (including the current Object 263 discount), the US server lost not only the 50 percent credit gain bonus for tiers 2-5, but also the 30 percent credit gain bonus for tiers 8-10. As you can see, Object 263 has just a discount. When confronted with the issue, here’s what Pizzastorm (US community guy) wrote:

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Rare Sherman Lifted from Barents Sea

Source: http://englishrussia.com/2014/07/20/tank-lifted-from-the-bottom-of-the-barents-sea/

Thanks to Urzum for sending me this one first (as well as 4 other guys who I noticed later sent me the same piece of news – I am glad you all remember FTR when you see such stuff)

This news was reposted a bit earlier by Yuri Pasholok and I kinda forgot about it. The Russians managed to find and lift a very rare Sherman variant from the bottom of Barents Sea – it’s the M4A2 tank (intended as lend-lease) with a 76mm M1A2 gun (M4A2(76)W). Until now, it was thought that no M4A2 survived the war (only M4A2E8 did).

murtank001-8_full

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