according to all the signs (pingplotters etc.), EU1 server was moved from Munich to Amsterdam. Apparently there is a problem with Munich as a whole, because RU3 server, that was situated in Munich, was ALSO moved to Amsterdam (you can imagine how “happy” the Russians with low RU3 ping are about it). The latter is officially confirmed, the EU1 move is not, but it’s almost certain it happened.
This explains by the way why many people wrote on forums and other places that they experienced ping changes on EU1 (including me – earlier, 40-50, now 70-90, not including the lags).
apparently, in Belarus, WoT tank theft is taken very, very seriously. A criminal investigation was opened in the Belarus’ Brest region in a case of a World of Tanks account theft. WoT player, a 30 year old man from the town of Pruzhany contacted local police and said that his WoT account was stolen. He said to the police that his account contained an IS-8 tank and he spent like 1,2 mil BYR (cca 91 Euro) on that account.
After the report, the police contacted Wargaming, that helped them find the thief, because the account was continuously in use. The account was also blocked as a result. According to the police, the “hacker” managed to steal the account using the owner’s e-mail, because the password was really simple to guess.
Either way, according to the report, the “hacker” was charged with the crime of “illegal access to computer information”.
Wargaming usually presents us with articles, that are kinda nice. For example the history of the British flamethrower tanks (was it by Listy? I think so) – or Challenger’s historical posts. Every now and then however, they have what Rita would probably call a “brain fart” and just copy stuff from Russian portal.
Needless to say, that is not a good idea. For all their vaunted “remember history” campaigns, what Wargaming generally means is “remember Russian history”. SerB wrote it himself: if you want to do business in Russia, you have to be patriotic. No “we are all equal” – it’s more like “Russia stronk”. This of course comes with a “price” of having the historical post somewhat biased. I actually hate the word “biased”, but I guess it describes the situation best. This is not the first time Wargaming EU did this (some of you odlschool players might remember the Kliment Voroshilov weekend), but it’s not very common, thanks god.
remember the bot-hunting mod Locastan and St0rmshadow did put together?
Well, now a version is available for 8.11, with the list of bots actualized practically every day. You can download it here. And how do you know it actually works? Simple. Wargaming EU locked its thread on forums and deleted several more. That’s the best reference ;)
The Internet is a truly wonderful thing. At the touch of a button, you can access information that would have taken days, maybe even years, to discover previously. Over the past months (nearly a year, hooray!), SS, myself, and many other talented authors and researchers on this blog, as well as an uncountable number of others, have provided you with volumes information about historical armoured vehicles. Countless numbers and statistics have been provided to the public, countless questions asked and answered.
Except this one. This is a very important question, and many man-hours and millions of dollars have went into solving it in various other fields, but goes unnoticed by the average person.
you didn’t like the field of view change in 8.11? Here’s a way how to fix it.
- download this mod
- unpack it
- put the file “avatar_input_handler.xml” you just unpaced to the “World_of_Tanks\res_mods\0.8.11\gui\” folder (if the gui folder doesn’t exist, just create it)
- run the game
Now, the mod above was made for 16:9 screen ratio, so I don’t know how well will it work for other resolutions and ratios. You can however modify it to fit your demands. Here’s how:
- you have to open the avatar_input_handler.xml (in the folder you just put it in)
- if you want more field of view, you find the line and change the number after it for a higher one.
- be careful that you have to change the vertical FOV as well, otherwise it will look weird
- find the < verticalFov> line
- calculate your desired vertical FOV using this tool
- change the vertical FOV number for the one you just calculated
- run the game
I guess it will take some experimenting. Honorable mention goes to Locastan, who responded immediately to my request to create such a mod. Thanks mate.
I probably don’t have to introduce Jingles, videomaker extraordinaire and Wargaming EU’s finest, along with Quickybaby. Given my attitude towards Wargamine EU, I am sure why you understand while I haven’t written about him earlier, but he made an interesting War Thunder video, that everyone, who wants “more realism” in the game should watch. First the video (the first few minutes are touching another matter, but I will get to that also).
So, watched it? I did, because I think it was very interesting. In my eyes, the entire video said something that a lot of people seem not to understand.
Realism doesn’t equal fun.
I am glad World of Tanks is an unrealistic arcade game, because that allows the developers to balance it much more than if they only “went for maximum balance”. The video touched two important elements I think.
First one is the airplanes and tanks on the same map. You heard Jingles, it was just frustrating. You might say, yea, it was historical, but the thing is, the entire concept is flaw from game point of view. Whenever you have an enemy that can kill you with a huge advantage, it’s always frustrating, no matter that your fighter cover will kill him a minute afterwards. That won’t matter to you, because you are dead and frustrated. A partial solution is to introduce the AA tanks (flakpanzers), but guess what: that’s unhistorical. You see, in real life, the effectivity of AA tanks was not very high. When the Allies had complete air superiority later in the war, the recommended tactic was to load as many tracer AA rounds as possible and starting blasting away in the general direction of the enemy. You won’t hit anything, but the fighters and bombers will stay away, because despite quite low chance of being hit, noone wants to fly into what they percieve as a firestorm of tracer rounds. Obviously the abovementioned real life tactic is not exactly fun for the flakpanzer player, so once again, it’s realism vs fun.
Second is the obvious – camping and oneshots” Jingles mentioned – yes, this is exactly why World of Tanks doesn’t have a “hardcore mode”. In real life, the “campers” usually won – only it wasn’t called “camping”, it was called “an ambush” and turretless tanks such as the StuG were really very, very effective in it. Firing first gives you a tremendous advantage, especially, when you are firing into places you have ranged (as in, you know that bend in the road the enemy tank appeared on is exactly 300 meters away, because you measured it when you prepared the ambush). Needless to say, this was not fun for the guys in the tanks that got ambushed and it’s not going to be fun in any game.
I don’t know. This is not bashing War Thunder per se, more like the concept of hardcore battle mode. Being killed by 1 round drastically reduces the time you actually spend fighting and increases the time you spend travelling to your destination, loading etc. (unproductive time). I really hope they get to balance this properly, because if Wargaming did this, it would be a complete, utter disaster.
today, we are going to have a quick (not an in-depth) look at some vehicles, that could become American premium TD’s. Most of these were mentioned earlier and possible candidates. They say that there are no “suitable” candidates for the American tank destroyer – well… technically there are plenty, but they all have some issues.
It’s worth keeping in mind that currently, the position of Wargaming regarding premium vehicles is following:
- lowtier vehicles are sort of “reserved” for giveaways and rewards
- midtier vehicles are considered primarily for mission rewards (yes, more missions with tank rewards are coming)
- hightier vehicles are considered for “regular premium” slots, because they earn Wargaming the most money
As such, the priority of the implementation is obvious: the higher the candidate, the better. Let’s have a look at the candidates I could think of. Keep also another thing in mind: some of these have already been rejected and with some, I have no idea what the problem is with them.
T24 Gun Motor Carriage
The T24 was a proposal to mount a 3in (76mm) AA gun on the M3 Medium (Lee) chassis as an interim tank destroyer in September 1941. One prototype was built. Historically, it had very poor depression and elevation (-2/+15) and was too high (gun traverse was okay though, 16,5 degrees to each side). The gun was then removed and the prototype was converted to the T40. Officially, the project was cancelled in April 1942. As you can see on the picture above, the model already exists in the game and existed for a very, very long time (T24 was one of the first premium TD’s ever mentioned as candidates). Why didn’t they introduce it in the first place? I don’t know. What I know is that Wargaming is still aware of this design and it might appear one day, but its low tier (3?) makes it a poor option for America’s first premium tank destroyer.
