Regarding the May Wallpaper…

Hello everyone,

upon reviewing the feedback to the “copyright” thingie and the WG May wallpaper (which STILL isn’t on EU server, apparently changing the names of days to English is very hard), I came to the conclusion that it is possible that the photo was different from the picture used on the wallpaper. Therefore I deleted the previous post. The castle is unmistakeably the same though, so – here is the wallpaper again:

su-100_1440x900_ru

And here is the castle picture (photo by S.Bailey via Wikimedia):

Corfe_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_349316

It’s the Corfe castle in Dorset, England. Interesting that they used exactly this castle, but why not. Oh and one last thing – do try to be… more polite, please. Comments such as “OMG SS U AN IDIOT” and such make me… irritated. Thank you.

Puckapunyal Military Museum (Australia) Photos

Hello everyone,

Australian player Wtfcaniuse from ASIA server was kind enough to share some of the pictures from the meeting with WG staff at Puckapunyal military museum and base in Australia. Here are the pictures.

Also guys, thanks to everyone for sending me MANY MANY pictures, at this point, I am sure I won’t get to publish every single one of your contributions, but I will do my best to pick the most interesting stuff. Thank you all!

A 17pdr gun

17pdr

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Belated Monthly Mission on EU – Super Pershing

Hello everyone,

it seems that some people are wondering, why the belated EU mission announcement?

And remember that time some WG folks said we might have another “IS-6 style” mission lined up?

Well… from US server (screenie thanks to Chris9000):

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Looks like the premiums are back on the menu, boys!

Edit: EU is getting a Super Pershing – link to calendar

SeDmsFy

Picture by Swoopie, thanks

ASIA Server – Vietnamese Flag Support in CW

Hello everyone,

remember the EU server CW event “let’s make a Finnish flag on CW map” in order to encourage Wargaming to add Finnish section to the forums? Well, ASIA server now has something like that too. In order to encourage Wargaming to add the Vietnamese flag in the game (funny, I wasn’t aware it wasn’t there, but then I guess I never paid attention) and since on 30.4. it’s the Vietnamese Reunification Day, a couple of clans adopted it as their clan logo and started conquering the territory on the CW map. And how did they do?

4X5UnFb

F3fBUfj

You can follow the event in this thread.

Sticky Turrets – Working as Intended

Hello everyone,

thanks to Matěj V. for this video (guys, leave your nicknames, when you write me on FB) – during the war, the British invented the infamous Sticky bomb, but that is nothing, compared to Wargaming’s destructive invention, the Sticky turret!

Seriously though, I am not sure this was intended, it looks like a bug to me.

 

Wallpaper for May

su-100_1440x900_ru

Without calendar:

With calendar (Russian):

Massive City FPS Drops

Hello everyone,

so, since it’s the X2 day, I thought I would give WoT a spin for a while. You know how I was earlier happy that the FPS drops got fixed? Yea well, fuck you Silentstalker, no smooth gameplay for you! For some reason, I get massive FPS drops in any city areas – Lakeville city, Himmelsdorf etc. – check this out:

Mines – low details, medium textures (*remembers War Thunder FPS with sad expression*) – 40-50 FPS

shot_013

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X2 Day – How Good is it Really?

Hello everyone,

one million “likes” on FB is quite a milestone (hell, I wish FTR had 10k) for Wargaming – and one that Wargaming decided to celebrate by giving us x2 XP event for free. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? But… how good it really is? Perhaps it is more like a… “Greek gift”?

Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful – but first thing anyone has to understand is that nothing is for free, not even this event. There is a price to pay – it will draw out crowds of tamatoes just like other infamoux “x2″ or “x5″ events and that is not a good thing. But what sort of annoys me are the conditions.

shot_014

In order to get this x2 bonus, you have to

- win
- be in top 10 of the 15 players

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European Tree part VI – Poland

Part I – Introduction
Part II – Italy, Czechoslovakia
Part III – Hungary
Part IV – Sweden
Part V – Yugoslavia

Hello everyone,

welcome to the sixth part of the European Tree series, showing you the vehicles, that could appear/fit in the possible European tree. Today, we are going to talk about Poland.

Of the major EU server communities (GER, CZ, PL), Poland is the largest, but also the most problematic, when it comes to their own tanks. Poland certainly has its place in the tank development history, but if we are to be completely honest – Polish tank development before and right after the war cannot match the Hungarian or the Czechoslovak one. This was caused by the historical factors, including:

- Czechoslovakia being an industrial superpower (literally, in the early 30′s, it was the biggest arms exporter in the world), inheriting most of the Austro-Hungarian industry potential
- insufficient armor production capabilities (manufacturing thick and hardened armor is actually quite complicated and only a few countries in the world had the capability to do so)
- importance and influence of other branches of the military

One of the most common armored vehicles in pre-war Poland (apart from armored cars) were the notoriously known TK tankettes, including those equipped with a rather powerful 20mm cannon. While Czechoslovakia experimented with tankettes as well in early 30′s, we got rid of them rather quickly after the infamous Tančík Vz.33 disaster – for some reason, tankettes prevailed in Poland.

tks20_mur

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World of Tanks vs War Thunder Ground Forces

Okay… where to begin. As you can imagine, I recieved literally dozens of e-mails over last couple of months, inviting me to try War Thunder (not only Ground Forces, just War Thunder in general). I resisted for quite some time, but about a month ago, I was like… fuck it, I should try it after all – and I got to try it today.

Trying it is one thing, writing about it another matter. I really wasn’t sure, whether to do it or not. I still am not, but what the hell, right? Anyway, my reluctance obviously comes from my position. This is a World of Tanks blog. If I bash War Thunder, I’ll get the “OMG SS TEH WARGAMING STOOGE!” reactions – as I did before. If I praise it, I will get “OMG SS HAETS WARGAMING FFS WT SUX!” – also happened before.

But I’m gonna write it nonetheless. I will try to express my feelings and compare these games regardless of my alleged affiliation. If it’s good, I’m gonna praise it. If not… well… the bashing will at least be honest.

And yes, I am completely aware that this is the closed beta stage, there is no need to remind me of that.

Disclaimer

I approached War Thunder as a complete newbie, who turns the game on for the first time. I did not read any manuals or anything about it on the web, apart from the “standard” stuff on War Thunder page. I did not read any guides, because I believe that a good and successful game has to be intuitive and easy to grasp (I am sure you already see where this is going and why I mentioned this specifically – if not, well… you’ll find out).

Installing War Thunder

Installation was very easy and user friendly. The game is not a “hog”, it has 8 gigs or so, not bad. There was however a mess, when I (based on some March WT post) installed something called “nightly client” or something like that – should have been specifically a closed beta client for tanks, but apparently this was cancelled earlier, the tank testing was moved to regular client and so I had to install the entire game twice. This has left me… annoyed. Another annoyance (this time caused by myself) was that I logged with wrong account (not the CBT one) and spend an entire afternoon figuring out why the fuck can’t I access tanks, when I realized I registered another e-mail for the CBT. Thanks for everyone who tried to help me by the way (especially Ronineter) and sorry for this, mea maxima culpa.

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