Thanks to Xardas060 for this one.

Hello everyone,

every modern main battle tank has its gun stabilized, but one of the best stabilization mechanisms is built into the Leopard 2 main battle tank. In this video, we can see the Leopard 2A5 from 11th “Lubuska” Armoured Cavalry Division of the Polish army. With the camera attached to the barrel of the gun, you can well see how the stabilizer compensates well for the rough terrain and keeps the gun levelled, allowing the vehicle to aim accurately and fire on the move.

Hello everyone,

remember the Bastogne Barracks Museum post here on FTR? To give you a quick rundown: it’s a well-estabilished museum, unfortunately the Belgian army that runs it decided to possibly shut it down. A petition was made to prevent that from happening and I asked for your signatures, because there aren’t that many important armor museums around Europe.

Well, there’s an update and it is not good. The decision might be taken around Easter. By the words of the petition organizer:

“At this time not 6, but 15 bases are at stake. Handing over the base to civilians is not an option, the costs to keep the place open are too high, and the city of Bastogne itself might not be interested because of their focus on their own Mardasson museum which has just been renovated.”

Since I believe every bit of tank history is worth preserving (too much was lost already or went to private owners, never to be seen again), I am bringing this to your attention yet again: please sign the petition, it doesn’t cost you anything and it might help one museum escape from the clutches of bean counters.

Hello everyone,

the Insider returns to react on current events going on in Wargaming.

Some guys from Wargaming RU in Minsk did notice the FTR article about WG EU ignoring the Warpack cheat mod (some of them refer to it as “Warcrack”). They were NOT happy. It will be mentioned during next WG RU – WG EU conversation. There are other problems however, that are scheduled to be discussed between WG RU, WG NA and WG EU:

- apparently, bots advertising scam sites (powerlevelling, “cheap gold”) have become a nuisance, especially on lower tiers
- on WG NA server, there is currently an issue with lowtier battles (tier 1-2), not enough players are playing them and the matchmaker has issues dealing with it. This is caused apparently by the fact that there have been few new players recently and you also get usually 1-3 spammer bots per battle (see above).

Lower tiers are not interested for old players (veterans) according to Wargaming because of the poor reputation the veteran players have, if they play low tiers due to the “rating system” (SS: apparently, WN8 is meant), because they get called “pedobears”, “sealclubbers” and such – and so, it is actually a shame for an experienced player to play on low tiers even though they are actually fun.

Other things that will be discussed are:

- new premium tanks (some planned Soviet heavy, no details)
- new branches (French minibranch, Japanese branch, Chinese artillery)
- new trees (Czechoslovak tree). Devs also want some Brazilian vehicle (unclear which) as a premium tank in the US tree
- World of Warplanes total overhaul, WG apparently hired a brand new team to completely change the game and bring it from the dead
- World of Warships (the content of this topic is unknown)
- World of Tanks for Xbox (some graphic overhauls, not sure)

And one more thing. The situation with the Super Pershing is unclear, but IF it got really nerfed (something about the frontal armor plates being strange), it is not intentional and will be fixed.

Hello everyone,

a few hours ago, first iteration of 9.7 did hit the supertest server (unnoticed, as everyone is going mental about the physics). A few bits of information before the flood is released tomorrow:

- apparently, 9.7 will contain only 5 HD remodel tanks: ELC AMX, E-100, Jagdpanzer E-100, IS-4 and T26E4
- Super Pershing armor got apparently nerfed AGAIN based on the first look, but this is unclear yet
- several new vehicles are in the files: Polish T-34/85 “Rudy”, IS-2 Berlin, ISU-122S Berlin, Cromwell Berlin – no idea what the last three are for, but they are not regular premiums
- according to private Storm’s comments on supertester forum, VK3002DB stats suck and it will be buffed

All for now. Funny thing though – yesterday, supertesters reported a new “city” map appeared on supertest… and today the “Berlin” vehicles. My guess? Some special event mode for the 70th anniversary, perhaps commemorating the post-war Berlin military parade?

Hello everyone,

this is the followup of the previous post – if you want to know the background and what Warpack is, read that post first.

Up to speed?

Okay, now an interesting thing happened. The owner of the cheater account, Milkm4n_PL, wrote me about his stance on the entire thing. Basically, as we suspected, Milkm4n is a test account to try out various cheats and other stuff. It’s not a new account (created on 23.11.2013) and the fact it wasn’t banned yet should tell you plenty by itself.

What he did himself was – he himself wrote a ticket (!) to EU support, asking them about their stance on Warpack. And here’s what the support replied to him:

“We do not penalize a specific mod indeed.”

Well, that’s very clear. And Milkm4n_PL was not banned, even though he practically reported himself, that should tell you plenty as well. Neither Antoine “Mod Intruder” Dodson (seriously, I really hope this is some fake name :D) nor WG EU care about cheating apparently. It proves also two more things:

- there is no automated anti-cheat detection (if there was, Milkm4n_PL would be banned ten times over)
- without that player’s replay, support CANNOT detect presence of cheats (my theory here is that replays have a list of mods the author of the replay is using embedded in them)

So – knock yourselves out cheating, I guess. Good job, WG EU – I wonder what Minsk thinks of this.

Hello everyone,

Russian Wargaming officialy confirmed that they will post new motion physics soon:

In case you are wondering what “soon” is – community contributor videomakers should recieve the “leaked” “exclusive” footage today (if they haven’t already) and post it tomorrow (or later today, not sure). Looking forward to it. As for the test, according to some leaks, it could come as early as tomorrow, although this is unconfirmed at this point. One thing is for sure however: instead of earlier announced two parallel tests (“realistic” physics and “simplified” physics), only the “realistic” option will be available at first, since the developers didn’t manage to make the “simplifications” work properly.

Hello everyone,

an interesting video appeared on the web yesterday – the trials of Mk.VIII “Liberty” tank in the USA on 31.10.1918. You can read more about the tank here.

This stuff is actually pretty rare, it’s nice to see how these behemoths moved.

Hello everyone,

today, a small micropatch 9.6.2 was applied on WG EU server. In case you are wondering what was in it – it was a technical fix, that remedied some interface issues in the personal mission window and the contacts window – and that’s all.

Hello everyone,

as you know, Wargaming takes e-sport very seriously and is dedicated to making the competitive part of the game fair and bal… hahahaha who are we kidding, nobody at WG EU gives a flying fuck about that and their latest fail just confirms that.

So sit down kids and hear the story, as explained by H311fi5h (from clan IDEAL, ranked 4th in that tournament) and confirmed by Kyrahihi (clan LGEND). By H311fi5h’s words:

“The last two weeks the “Clan Wars Winter Tournament” took place on EU server. The tournament was full of fail from the very beginning, but the most notable is the following.

The teams progressing from the group stage to the final stage (8 teams) were promised 25.000 gold each. The prizes were transfered to the teams today, but the 25.000 gold for winning the group stage is missing for all teams. When reporting the issue, WG employee Azkolek (French Community Manager) states this prize was not supposed to be part of the tournament (followed by some bullshit with translation issues and other excuses).

Azkolek:

At first this was displayed in every language, but not in English. This was fixed, but the line somehow re-appeared in the English rules only, but was still correct in the news article. We’re sorry for the people who got confused.

Fact is: At the very moment I am writing this email, the 25.000 gold is still listed on the official tournament page. I added a screenshot in case they remove it:

But that’s not all. The tournament rules also promise a bonus of 25% on top of the winnings from the final stage for teams with all players from the same clan. The rules state: “In the Final Stage, if the team has only members from the same clan, they will receive a +25% boost to their prize gold!”

Two teams, “The Legendary Peasants” and “KARP Alliance Please Ignore” moved all their players in the same clan before the final stage started. WG is refusing to pay the 25% bonus to those teams. This means WG is robbing the winners of another 100.000 and 43.750 gold. This means in total WG is cheating the top 8 teams for a total of 343.750 gold (that’s over 1100 € when bought in the gift shop).”

So, there you have it, clearly WG takes tournaments and fair play very seriously… and don’t forget to watch WGL!

Hello everyone,

Yuri Pasholok posted this interesting video on his blog. Another piece of the old MS-1 tank (a development of Renault FT-17, it was the first Soviet mass-produced tank) was restored in Vladivostok, Russia to working order. The video also nicely shows the insides of the vehicle – and yes, it is really cramped.

This particular MS-1 is known to have participated in the Changkufeng Incident, also known as the battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 (a clash between Soviet and Japanese forces, resulting in Soviet victory despite taking considerable losses). The restoration itself took three years, but the process was much longer, as before the restoration, the engineers had to obtain detailed materials in order to make the tank look as historical as possible. Today, only about five tanks of this type remain in existence and according to the people who restored it, this is the most realistically restored one.