Source: http://top.rbc.ru/economics/11/04/2014/917322.shtml

Hello everyone,

so, I guess you have seen the statistic post “Third year in numbers” – yep, those numbers are interesting (150 mil battles, nice!) – but what about other numbers? Let’s have a look at some more data, as written in the abovelinked news article.

- in 2013, World of Tanks users paid 475 million USD for the game services (from March 2013 to March 2014)
- that officially means 4,51 USD per player, a number unheard of in F2P
- interestingly enough, if both numbers are at least roughly correct, that puts the number of WoT players at over 100 million
- worldwide, World of Tanks Xbox version number of users is more than 2 million players (only cca 100k of which are Russians)
- an estimate on WoT Xbox revenue is 9,5 mil USD

Thanks to MisterPatriot (US server) for this one.

Hello everyone,

as you probably know, the British FV215b (120) tier 10 British heavy is a fake. There never was a 120mm gun planned for the FV215b vehicle, Wargaming made it up and there is a high chance it will get replaced by something else (by what, I am sure most of you can guess). That however doesn’t prevent various kit companies from using WG stuff to produce models and further promoting World of Tanks fakes as existing vehicles.

Check this out:

OKB Grigorov is a small Bulgarian model-making company, producing various kits. You will be able to get your fake FV215b tank soon as a resin kit, according to their FB pages. Enjoy!

Hello everyone,

the following press conference (with Sergei “SerB” Burkatovsky and Anton “Evilly” Pankov) happened during the weekend Kubinka event. For those who don’t know: a special event for RU players was organized by Wargaming at the Kubinka museum. There were competitions, talks of historical tech and meeting with developers. Probably some other cool stuff as well. Thanks to LJ user “world_of_cactus” for posting it.

Now, I hope I understood the stuff correctly, because somehow, it’s kinda difficult to understand SerB (in this case I fully admit I could be totally off, it’s hard to understand over the noise)

Inside:

- WG 80 million users worldwide
- patch 9.0 lays down the ground for future updates (by introducing the HD standard)
- connection of WG to museums and such, because “we remember our history and are proud of it”

At this point SerB starts to talk about the past of WoT, how they started, improved graphics over time etc.

- this year, they want to introduce two new modes, one is historical battles and the other is the “fortifications mode”
- “fortifications” mode is not meant for only hardcore players like CW (SerB described how CW is hardcore)

(from another video)

- not all tanks will have viable (equally worth) alternative hulls

There was something about Havok as well. Can’t understand it.

Hello everyone,

when it comes to the tank industry, every nation has its own really weird shit, where the only question that comes to your mind when reading about it is “what were they smoking?” (followed by “and where can I get it”). For the Germans, it was the various “supertank” projects like the “Ratte” or the “Monster”, after all, those are widely known. For the British, there were a couple of outrageous terrible projects as well, but the Soviets IMHO beat them all with a concept so outrageous and silly that it immediately trumps the German fantasies.

Recently, Yuri Pasholok wrote a new book, called “Stalin’s Balls of Steel” – yes, the name sounds as awkward in Russian as it does in English and if you think the name is good, wait until you see its cover.

Yep, that’s it. Meet the Soviet “ball tanks”. Honestly, I am not sure how serious this is, because Yuri Pasholok is known for his elaborate trolling and this sounds very, very troll-ish. You don’t have to be an engineer to recognize that this idea is completely outlandísh (at least in WW2 conditions without all the gadgets even we don’t have) and I have doubts that any such vehicle could even move, let alone fight. Ironically, it was the Germans, who actually created something like that (the mysterious Kugelpanzer), but of course, that was on an entirely different scale.

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Author: Davis Kyle

Hello everyone,

today, we have a short guest article by Davis Kyle about the Indian Sherman modifications. Enjoy!

The Indian Sherman – possible tier 6 premium for World of Tanks?

Most people do not consider India to be a very innovative country for developing tanks, but they would not be entirely correct. India built their own Vickers MBTs (Vickers Vijayanta) and had and has a relatively modern army. However, backing up their front-line Centurions, they had some gun-upgraded Shermans they modified for the Indo-Pakistani Wars, that fit perfectly into the WoT timeframe.

There would be three gun upgrades compared to the regular M4 Sherman, Tier 5 American medium tank in WoT. The French SA49 and SA50 (as seen on the AMX 13-75) and the D56-T gun, found in real life on the PT-76, Soviet amphibious tank.

Both the PT-76 and AMX-13 were very advanced tanks light tanks on the export market, newer than M4 Shermans, but decidedly less common in India. Therefore, they were harder to repair and keep in service. Also, with the (albeit limited) protection and greatly improved reliability the M4′s chassis gave the Indian Army, it was enough to convert some guns to the Shermans to replace the totally outdated 75mm L/40 that most Sherman V’s carried.

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Hello everyone,

as you probably noticed already, FTR is back after more than 24 hours. What was the cause of the disruption? I actually don’t know. The issue fixed “itself” as far as I know last evening. It wasn’t on our server and it was no attack. Let’s hope it won’t repeat itself – if it does, despite the arrangements that are there currently, I’d have to start look for alternate solutions.

Either way, here’s a couple of invite codes I forgot from rwc81 and Fluidloneknight

VR6S3-EXF96-ZZUGH-FMSHV
VR6SN-3G89T-ASGBY-5AP4H

If you want more invite codes, feel free to get them at the Alienware site, there are like 3k left

Thanks to Arcanum for reminding me :)

Thanks to Orkel and Morten MotherBomb for this info.

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/

Hello everyone,

if you did read FTR yesterday, you might have noticed that Big Boss Viktor Kislyi (Wargaming CEO) gave series of interviews during the WGL finals in Poland to various magazines and portals. This time, he was talking about Occulus Rift support.

He said that they are aware of the thing and although impressive, the fact that World of Tanks is a F2P MMO that depends on massive numbers of players means that it will be supported only if the number of its users reaches 5-10 million, because otherwise, it doesn’t pay off. Same rule applies for Xbox One for example.

Thanks to Volketten for posting this video and Okinoshima for additional information.

The Royal Thai Army has been using Type 95 Ha-Go under the designation “Type 83″ (“83″ referring to 1939, in Buddhist calendar 2483) from 1940 to 1950′s. They took part in the WW2 operation (Thai incursion into Burma).

Hello everyone,

Silentstalker

And now, Dr.Pikouz:

Every WoT player has at least once seen, driven, heard of or died to an ELC. But most WoT players only know one version of the tank, presented to us as the “ELC AMX”. Which is, I make a small digression here, a heresy, since the WoT model is an ELC AMX Bis chassis, fitted with a TC 910 turret (made by St-Chamond) and armed with a 90mm D915 gun.

The ELC project was born in 1955, with the French Ministry of Defence (MinDef) asking to develop “a powerful anti-tank weapon, mounted on a lightly, but completely armored tracked vehicle, discreet, and able to engage and destroy every type of enemy tank up to a distance of 1.000 meters, or even 1.500 meters”. Two companies presented a serious project:

- AMX, Atelier d’Issy-les-Moulineaux, Issy-les-Moulineaux Factory, producing the ELC AMX
- Ets Brunon-Vallette, Brunon-Vallette Company, aka Even-Brunon-Vallette, producing the ELC “Even”

Amongst the projects developed by Even, was this one, on which we will be focusing :

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