Thanks to Zorro Guevara for this one.

Hello everyone,

if you follow the news in the tank world outside of World of Tanks, you probably know that one of the biggest events of recent years was the sale of the Littlefield Collection. It’s been discussed for long months, that’s where The_Chieftain (US server military specialist) was shooting the short “Hatch” videos at (before they sell it to pieces).

So, a part of the collection was (unfortunately) already sold. Interested what prices did the customers pay?

Sdkfz.7 German WW2 halftrack – 1.207.500,- USD
M4A2 HVSS Sherman (76) – 345.000,- USD
SCUD missile launcher – 345.000,- USD
M5 Stuart – 310.500,- USD
M4A3 Sherman – 299.000,- USD
M50 Super Sherman – 293.250,- USD
M4A3 (105) Sherman – 287.500,- USD
FV214 Conqueror – 287.500,- USD
M3A5 Grant – 276.000,- USD
Landsverk IKV-73 – 212.750,- USD
M16 Quad .50cal – 201.250,- USD
Leopard 1A1A4 – 198.950,- USD

etc.

Three tanks are still being sold:

The Panzer IV Ausf.H current bid is 1.750.000,- USD
Jumbo Sherman current bid is 800.000,- USD
LVT-A4 Modified current bid is 375.000,- USD

The cheapest armored vehicles could be purchased for as little as 10k USD (M75 APC), stuff with big guns (M52 105mm SPG) for as little as 14k USD.

The entire list can be viewed here.

Source: http://habrahabr.ru/company/wargaming/blog/229933/

Hello everyone,

so, Wargaming started a first official developer contest for real money – a contest for the “developer community”. What Wargaming means by developers – basically two groups: mod makers and application makers. According to the text, posted on the habahabr blog (Russian programming portal), there goal of the entire event is to “improve the cooperation between Wargaming and mod/application developers” – of course, Russian developers.

The rules are in Russian and this contest is specifically oriented at Russian region (sorry, capitalists, no contests for you). The participants are to be adult physical persons, either single or working in teams. You don’t have to be a citizen of Russia, but you have to be Russian speaking (write the entry presentation in Russian), so you might as well be.

There is a prize pool of 80k USD (yep, 80 thousand US dollars), which will be split into rewards in following categories:

- best project idea
- best mobile or social network application
- best functional project
- best World of Tanks mod
- special award for product and service development for Wargaming community

The prize will be distributed as follows (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place)

Best project idea:
2000 USD+250k gold+Type 59, 1000 USD+150k gold+Type 59, 500 USD+50k gold+50k

Best WoT mod:
10k USD, 5k USD, 2,5k USD

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3394199.html

Hello everyone,

recently, there was a special World of Tanks Blitz stream with Dmitryi “Overlord” Yudo (WoTB producer), Alexei “Inaki” Ilyin and Aleksandra “Alabelle” Martinovich (some community manager), that showcased the WoT Blitz gamplay. The video can be seen here (in Russian of course, just for those who want to see the gameplay and such):

Maiorboltach was kind enough to make a transcript of the stream – the following lines are about WoT Blitz, NOT WoT itself. According to Maiorboltach, the sound was bad so it’s possible some of the things were misheard, but it should be mostly okay.

- patch 1.2 will bring premium tanks
- patch 1.3 will bring Soviet heavies with IS-4
- they will add one new nation every half a year
- it’s not planned to add arty at all, in connection with that there will also be no hightier scouts
- in the developer version of the game, there is an option to play the PC and tablet version on one server

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

so, I guess you’ve already heard the news, FV215b is considered to be replaced by the Chieftain, at least that’s how Storm wrote it yesterday. However, this info (or speculations about it) is much older. The first time I heard about the plan to put the Chieftain in some form on tier 10 was as early as December 2012. I was on a meeting of the Czech community and Tuccy (back then still just a community organizer or whatever the title was) was talking about the changes to the trees. I took notes in my cellphone of what he was saying (I still have them, he for example mentioned the second French line, little did we know…) and one of the things he said is that the Chieftain would become the British tier 10 heavy tank. The next day, I wrote it on the forums (back then, there was no FTR) and the post got immediately deleted (this was one of the impulses that convinced me I need a platform of my own, so Wargaming can’t come and purge inconvenient info by the way). Next mention about it was from February 2013 and the result was “yea, we thought about that, not in immediate future” – and that was it.

I wrote the above for you to understand that the idea is actually very old and that the Chieftain at some point “fell into the same vaporware hole” as the Sturmtiger, which sort of hints at the fact that implementing the Chieftain is problematic. But, Storm mentioned that the change might come around the end of this year, so hopefully that’s settled.

Which Chieftain?

So, now that this is decided, the real question is – which Chieftain will we see in the game? Originally I thought that there might be like three or four variants to pick from, including the mockups. I was wrong – there are like fifteen (maybe more) various prototypes and proposals, including the pre-production version. The most likely candidate I would say is the “P6″ prototype, that was mentioned in the past in connection with World of Tanks, simply because it stands physically in Bovington and Wargaming has access to it. This prototype was saved by Bovington from scrapping in 2011 and you can read about it here.

Continue reading →

Thanks to Bartol89 for this one :)

Hello everyone,

you already know that when the article title starts with “meanwhile in…”, it’s time for some funny or weird stuff. Or both. In this case, in Poland, at the XIV International Meeting Of Military Vehicles “Operation South” (in Polish – XIV Międzynarodowy Zlot Pojazdów Militarnych “Operacja Południe”), a T-72 tank drove into some kind of stand in the area reserved for vendors.Nobody was hurt. Police gave him a ticket apparently.

Source: http://kresy24.pl/53767/zdumiewajacy-fikolek-pancernego-kolosa-w-rosji-jechal-na-wojne-z-ukraina-foto/

Thanks to JakubCzyliJa for this one :)

Meanwhile in Russia, in Belogorod district….

According to the Polish portal that published the photos, no details of the incident are known. But ouch, I wonder how they managed to do this… my guess is that the vehicle somehow fell off a trailer or something…

Author: sp15 (US server)

Part I: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/03/07/swedish-tanks-part-i-strv-m21-29/
Part II: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/03/12/swedish-tanks-part-ii-strv-m31-strv-fm31/
Part III: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/03/15/swedish-tanks-part-iii-landsverk-l-100-and-l-120/
Part IV: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/03/21/swedish-tanks-part-iv-landsverk-l-60/
Part V: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/03/27/swedish-tanks-part-v-strv-m37-and-strv-m41/
Part VI: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/04/08/swedish-tanks-part-vi-sav-m43/
Part VII: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/04/18/swedish-tanks-part-vii-strv-m42/
Part VIII: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/05/08/swedish-tanks-part-viii-pvkv-m43/
Part IX: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/05/12/swedish-tanks-part-ix-tlp-46-and-strv-leo
Part X: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/05/15/swedish-tanks-part-x-strv-lansen/
Part XI: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/05/17/swedish-tanks-part-xi-ls-50/
Part XII: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/06/01/swedish-tanks-part-xii-emil-1951/

In 1952, the development of the next Swedish tank was well underway – despite the fact the work started as early as in 1951, it was only now when it really picked up the pace. In 1952, the project was reworked from a set of basic requirements and schematics into a functional design. More outlandish ideas were scrapped in favor of technologies, that had already been prototyped or tested and several new ideas were being tested as well. As an example, the suspension was changed to a hydraulic one, based on the Lvkv 42 prototype self-propelled anti-aircraft gun and work started on a prototype gun on the basis of the old 15cm Haub m/39 howitzer.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

this movie trailer appeared on English Wargaming channel, with the following commentary:

Tankers! Saints and Soldiers: The Void (http://wotcode.com/ssfb) is the third installment in the eponymous franchise, and the first that focuses on tanks. The film follows a cat and mouse chase between two M18 Hellcat crews and three Panzer III’s through the Harz Mountains of Germany at the end of WWII. We’ll be bringing you behind the scenes footage featuring The Chieftain over the coming weeks. For now, head over to the World of Tanks Facebook page (http://wotcode.com/wgvfb) to enter to win a free film t-shirt! The film opens in select theaters August 15, with an expanded NA theatrical release Aug 29.

After seeing the trailer, it’s obvious that this movie is not about tanks or war, but about racism, so thanks, I’ll just wait for Fury.

Author: Vollketten

Okay so the title is a little tongue in cheek, because the tank is regarded as being rather mediocre, but there were worse tanks, maybe not by much but there were. Either way, it’s an important tank for Italy both historically in terms of combat and in terms of technical development. No future branch of Italian medium tanks is going to be able to do without the M.11/39, as it will be required for historic battles, so we need to take a look at this rather maligned vehicle. It’s also a nice followup from the last tank of Italy we looked at in the ‘William Foster’s Italian Tank’ article here.

M.11/39 pre-production version outside the Ansaldo factory, July 1939

Continue reading →

Thanks to David Solomon for this one.

Hello everyone,

you probably know the WatchMojo Youtube channel, known for its top 10 lists of various things concerning movies and games. On 12.7.2014, a list came out with top 10 free to play games and World of Tanks is in it! On sixth spot that is. The list is as follows:

10 – Smite
9 – Hawken
8 – Tribes Ascent
7 – Path of Exile
6 – World of Tanks
5 – Dota 2
4 – Planetside 2
3 – Star Wars TOR
2 – Team Fortress 2
1 – League of Legends

Personally, I’d rate WoT higher and it also seems the author used some old footage. You can watch it here: