this is a small piece of info I came upon when reading one Russian blog (blogwotlirt) – by the way, to its owner: dude, if you’re reading this, why the hell do you put your blog as a “watermark” even on forum screenshots? I mean, for exclusive content (if you have any) I get that, but forums? Noone does that I think.
Anyway, Knopka (WG RU staff – I have no idea what she does, but she’s marked as a “developer”) states the following:
Basically, a Russian player was complaining that some features of Chínese server are China-exclusive. Knopka responds:
“Every server has its own features. For RU-server, there are plans to introduce tanks with unique looks and unique characteristics in the future.”
Hmm, I wonder if we get such a thing for EU server too, or NA…
if you like tanks and live in Nizhny Tagil (Нижний Тагил), you’re in luck. The city has a history of tank-building and according to wikipedia, Uralvagonzavod is currently the largest MBT producer in the world. This is where legendary tanks such as the T-54A, T-55 and T-62 medium tanks and T-72 plus T-90 main battle tanks were designed. The downside of this is, you might see the tanks a bit closer than you’d like…
BigAngryCat disclosed a few more bits of info about this World of Tanks record – more than one million players online (1 mil and 114k). It happened on Sunday night (19.1.2014) and according to Wargaming, it was quite unexpected, since the previous weekend it was “only” 937k players online. That’s why one of the players created the following poster – to give players some comparison – and Wargaming via BAC reposts it now. BCA also notices that the number is in fact incorrect and that at one point it was even 1 mil and 119k…
The poster states:
- it’s more than there were Greek, Serbian and Montenegro soldiers in WW1 (1,112 mil)
- it comes close to the amount of people participating in the famous Rio de Janeiro carnival (1,5 mil)
- it’s about as many as there were soldiers of the entire 1st Ukrainian Front before the Oder offensive on 12.2.1945 (1,16 mil)
- it’s more than the entire population of the Russian city of Ufa
- in 78 countries of the world there live less people then played the Russian World of Tanks
not so long ago, I wrote about airborne tanks and how pointless they would be in World of Tanks battles. Let’s have a look at the other category, that is sometimes brought up in various World of Tanks proposals and there was a time when players were asking “what about amphibious tanks?” quite often. Since then, this question appeared somewhat less, but it still pops up every now and then. Let’s have a look at it.
Short summary of amphibeans
There are technically three ways for a tank to cross a deep body of water without someone else’s assistance. First (and probably the least important in our context) is deep fording. The vehicle is converted with a fording kit (usually a large snorkel), that allow it to basically ride on the bottom of the water body. A lot of tanks can actually do this in a limited way, including for example the Leopard 2 or T-54 (the T-54AR is a Czechoslovak modification of the T-54 medium tank for deep fording). This is obviously pointless in World of Tanks, as it would completely break the game balance on some maps, if regular tanks could go underwater. Additionally, it would create the same issues as the other amphibious variants, but on even larger scale. We’ll get to that. It’s worth noting that the Maus was theoretically capable of deep fording too, but only with the help of another Maus.
Second are “native” amphibious vehicles, eg. armored vehicles, that are constructed specifically to float on water. There are several of these tanks technically viable for World of Tanks in fact, but they invariably would belong to very low tiers.
remember how the tier 10 discounts were the same last year? Unfortunately (fortunately?) they are not anymore. World of Tanks EU doesn’t have any tier 10 discounts, World of Tanks USA now runs a Jagdpanzer E-100 discount, while SEA server has following plan, disclosed by WG staff:
- 7.2. to 21.2. – FV215b (183)
- 21.2. to 7.3. – IS-4
- 7.3. to 21.3. – E-50 Ausf.M
After that, the SEA players are actually voting on what will appear. Pretty nice, SEA :)
in case you haven’t seen the portal: there is a QA planned for Reddit on Thursday evening with the the abovementioned three people from WG EU. Let’s see what interesting info they will disclose :) Might I humbly suggest the following questions for your consideration? They might produce interesting results for you ;)
- which three branches will (if all goes well) appear in 2014?
- what will happen to the FV4202 in 2014?
- what will happen to the FV215b (120) in 2014?
- will we see the Firefly in 2014?
- how will the Firefly branch look? (that one’s pretty interesting)
- will we see the Sturmtiger in 2014 and how exactly will its branch look?
- Sturmtiger: TD or artillery?
- what will be the American tier 8 light tank?
But then, I am sure you will come up with interesting questions on your own :) In case you don’t feel like reading it all, I will (in the night) make a write-up of anything interesting said.
looks like we will have some pretty interesting upcoming missions this weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Axis and Allies: – win 15 random battles (in a tier 4+ vehicles, as many times as you want), get 15 gold repair kits (you have to be in top 10 of your team XP wise)
recently, one old discussion came up in the Czech section – Type 59 versus T-34-3 (can’t find the link though). A Wargaming employee was basically saying these tanks are about the same while a player was arguing the Type 59 is clearly superior. But how is it really? Type 59 has the reputation of being an awesome vehicle, while T-34-3 has… well, not much of a reputation and I haven’t seen so many of those driving around.
Well, let’s have a look then. I took the press account I still have and took both for a spin. I tested both under similiar circumstances (100 percent crews, full similiar equipment – both had the rammer, stabilizer and gun laying drive, regular consumables). Furthermore, I don’t own either of these vehicles, but I am very familiar with the T-54, which the Type 59 closely resembles, so it’s not like I haven’t played with a “T-54 clone” before.
T-34-3
Now, I am sure you all are familiar with the basic T-54 clone layout. Agile, heavily sloped frontal armor, very thick frontal turret, decent gun, but usually poor depression and meh mobility. I am pleased to say, this has not changed for the T-34-3. It’s still a T-54 clone (and I obviously mean that in game terms, not historical terms), but there is one significant difference: the 122mm gun.
Balance-wise, the vehicle is actually not bad. When you look at the winrate comparison (“new method of evaluating tanks”) on wot-news for the T-34-3, you will see that its winrate curve matches the player winrate curve almost perfectly, which means it’s neither overpowered nor underpowered in general terms. That is good. As next step, we can compare it to the other tier 8 premium Chinese tank, the Type 59. The linked data is a bit obsolete, the Chinese 122mm HEAT for example got nerfed from 300 to 250 penetration, but it’s enough for you to get the idea.
Trusty is a really nice guy. He’s 23, he has nice webpages, he is into Call of Duty and World of Tanks. Trusty doesn’t like Jews (since he uses the word as an insult), what he does however like is abuse of power his ESL admin position brings him. Check this out.
