Source: http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/world-of-warships/artikel/world_of_warships,47221,3059429.html

Hello everyone,

Around the time of Gamescom and E3, where World of Warships was presented to the public for the first time, you might have seen a lot of praising articles about the game. What does that mean for the yet-to-be-released game now that the entire sphere of gaming journalism is being put on trial (see “Gamergate”) is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure: not all the reviews are entirely positive. A prime example is the recent coverage by Gamestar.de, one of the most important German gaming portals. German digital media outlets are notoriously meticulous when it comes to evaluating consumer entertainment. Whether they are breaking down the monetization loops of a free-to-play MMO, benchmarking the thermal limits of new PC hardware, or rating the beste online casino platforms for the local market, their critics rarely hand out unearned praise. Gamestar’s critical approach to Wargaming’s newest title certainly reflects that rigorous, no-nonsense standard.

The review is not a complete hatchet job, but it’s definitely critical (the title itself is ironic: “Racing boat armor on high seas”). It came out on 31.8.2014 based on the Gamescom experience. The review (written by Christian Weigel), apart from the general overview of the game play (WoT-style with ships, different classes, the “garage” etc.) notes following things about the game:

- the caliber of the guns cannot be increased, it is tied to the ship class according to developers
- the spotting system: the smaller the ship, the later it is “spotted”
- ships have onboard recon aircraft to spot the enemy
- the performance (mobility) of all ships was increased unrealistically to a speedboat level in order not to make the battles too long
- developers promised 100x100km maps, but the test map is just 30x30km, which means that you are constantly within the reach of enemy guns and all pre-battle positioning is pointless.
- the gameplay is reduced to sailing quickly in zig-zag pattern not to be hit while trying to get as many shots as shots possible off in enemy direction
- ships exchanging fire is a “terrifying experience” – the shell guns look visually great, but are unrealistic (they leave a white smoke trace). Counterfire works well and is easy to pull off.
- the fire targetting works like in WoT (automatic elevation), but you can select the elevation manually to a limited degree in order to decide, whether you want to fire into the hull or below the waterline
- the shells are either of HE type (against unarmored targets such as destroyers) or AP (against battleships)
- AP penetrates the armor and damages the modules of the ship, but it doesn’t cause spectacular explosions (these can be caused by aiming at “ammo rack” (powder hold) below the turrets)
- apparently, submarines are still completely not out of question

As stated above, the article is not written in the cheerful and positive tone we usually expect, when it comes to articles about Wargaming products. I guess that’s good. We’ll just have to see, whether the game will satisfy the masses as World of Tanks did. Personally, I have serious doubts about that (especially seeing the politics behind the branch selection), but who knows? After all, the preview and leaked footage looked great. But then, so did World of Warplanes – in the beginning.

Hello everyone,

on some Russian portals (FTA, Wotleaks), an information came up, that Wargaming is preparing two new lowtier Soviet tank destroyers – the SU-76BM and the IT-45. The names might sound familiar to you? Yup, that’s very, very old stuff. The information about IT-45 and SU-76BM came out first in May 2013 – they were supposed to be a part of a Soviet lowtier alternative tank destroyer minibranch.

The whole line was effectively scrapped ages ago, but the vehicles themselves remained on the supertest server (within the client) along with other various relics. WG doesn’t simply throw these tanks out, but there is no need to make any conclusion about their occasional appearance in WG videos.

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to talk about a topic that I intentionally avoided for a very long time, because to say it’s a mess would be an understatement. The history and designation of Praga export tanks is very confusing and… well, you’ll see. Trying to untangle the convoluted web of 1930s manufacturing contracts, canceled orders, and renamed prototypes can often feel as overwhelming as navigating the modern internet; you follow one promising link only to find yourself lost in a maze of dead ends, translated forums, or a random online casino cz popup before you finally find the single archived document you actually needed. In order to start, we have to return back to early 30′s and Praga’s TNH design.

It was a good time to be a Czechoslovak arms producers. Military production of Czechoslovakia was always of top notch quality (especially the Škoda artillery), but this all culminated between 1934-1935. In those years, Czechoslovakia was the biggest arms exporter in the world. While most of the production was sold to European countries, we exported armor to some quite exotic destinations, such as Iran and Peru.

The tanks, exported by Praga, are generally referred to as “Praga export tanks” and in this article series, we are going to have a look at them in detail. Or, rather, we will continue to be looking at them, since I actually already covered three of them in my previous articles. Those were:

TNH – export light tank, sold to Iran
LTH – export light tank, sold to Switzerland
LTP – export light tank, sold to Peru

The export light tanks were all based on the original TNH design, but the vehicles differed in a number of aspects. For one, they were generally smaller than the other TNH designs (specifically the TNH-S, accepted into service as LT Vz.38). They can be easily told apart from the LT Vz.38-based designs by the suspension: the roadwheels are smaller and there is an extra return roller.

The main difference of course was that the export tanks were made specifically according to the wishes of the customer. Most of the time, that included the engine and the main gun (plus the armor specifications), the suspension was always of the Praga type. Today, we’ll have a look at what Praga developed for Lithuania.

Lithuanian LTL

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Hello everyone,

thanks to LegendarySpecies from ASIA forums for noticing this :) Basically, in your player profile, you have two new medals, both for a feature, that is not yet in the game: attacks on enemy clan strongholds (in Stronghold mode).

First medal – Retaliation

Second medal – Fortress Crusher

You can check these medals on your player profile as well, amongst the unfinished achievements. Someone got probably too fast with putting these on the portal when the Stronghold attack mode was delayed.

…British!

through the history, Great Britain was perhaps the most influential navy in the world. From their island country, the British forged an unparalelled empire through the might of their navy and therefore, it’s only fitting that the British line would be the third one (since the first two were American and IJN).

Like that? Logical, no? Looking forward to sail with the HMS Hood? Well, fuck you then, because the third line will be Russian.

Yep, instead of possibly the mightiest navy in human history, we’ll have the Russians, whose naval achievements include losing to the Japanese at Tsushima and that’s pretty much it. The reason for this decision is purely economic one, since there are simply many, many Russian players and they have a “sense of national pride”, as one developer puts it. Don’t believe me? Check this out, here’s the original post:

The Stalin dev butthurt made me chuckle. But seriously though, this part is important:

Russian and British ship models are being developed in parallel and while we originally planned to release the Royal Navy first, we’ve since changed that decisions for business reasons. We are currently planning to bring in the Russian Navy as the first nation after release, followed by the Royal Navy.

To be honest, I believe that if we manage to create an immersive and fun game, fans of British ships will play it anyway. If they don’t like it and, as a result, don’t stay in the game then introducing those (or any other) ships won’t change that. The oldest Alpha Testers are painfully aware that I am quite passionate about the ‘gameplay vs. history’ line of argumentation. However, we do have a very large Russian community, who have a very strong sense of national pride, which in essence means that they like to play Russian tanks, planes or ships. Therefore, we see no compelling business reason why the Royal Navy must be the third nation.

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Hello everyone,

new invite codes are here. First, a couple of invite codes from Elijahbiker from US server. I am not sure they work for both EU and US servers, but they contain a M22 Locust and a week of prem an 1k gold.

DRT8X-H5WMH-YWBT2
STV26-GUZD9-FSAAT
DR9EH-YZR8Z-X6PN2

And a couple of CD-Action invite codes for EU by nurek11, Petethegrinder, Kookacz

DWRTB-7Y973-7UPDN-YRDDU-DGC3N
DWRT9-ZG3HX-A2G3D-N8RDK-EK7BA
DWRTX-TRX35-84VSD-PNM95-PG8S5

Hello everyone,

here’s a World of Tanks Blitz interview with Darya “Knopka” Klimchuk (community manager) from Igromir 2014. The sound quality is really bad, I didn’t understand some things.

Inside:

- 1.3 brings two new maps: “Lost Temple” (Asian themed) and Black Goldville (US themed)
- it also brings Soviet heavy tank line (T-150 to IS-4)
- WoT Blitz currently has 3 trees (US, RU, German)
- arty won’t be added
- 1.3 brought extended post-battle statistics (scouting damage etc.)
- developers are working on new graphic effects, specifically new fog
- for high-end mobile devices, developers want to add a grass render
- currently, Android version is in closed testing phase (performance is being tested), currently there’s no ETA
- Windows Phone version is not planned

Hello everyone,

a tank, full of Russian soldiers, destroyed a bus in Prague yesterday, running it over. No, don’t worry, not in real life – despite Putin’s wishes and boasts, the Russian army isn’t capable of doing that anymore. A new Czech movie, called “Krycí jméno Holec” (“Codename Holec”) was being shot in Prague, near the Czech Radio.

The movie is of Austrian-Czech co-production and is based on a short story, called “Italská spojka” (“Italian connection”), a fictional story from 1968, using however real characters and places. In order to shoot the movie, the entirety of the street was “converted” into its 1968 look.

The movie is a story of Austrian journalist Helmut Zilk, who made some of the most dramatic movie shots in 1968, showing the world the brutality of Soviet invaders. It’s a spy thriller and drama, should be interesting (well, at least for us Czechs). It is scheduled to come out in early 2016.