Hello everyone,

the Insider returns to tell us what the developers are thinking and talking about. And I think it’s very interesting.

The developer topic of the month… you guessed it: skill MM.

Lots of developers don’t want skill MM, because they are afraid it would break the game for a lot of people. Here’s one example of such a post to illustrate:

“This will make players with high battle count but not so great stats the boot on many ways, because theres a point when they realize they get thrown with the “special kids” class and he cant climb the ladder to be with his friends on the next class, whose clan only recruits on certain ladder class, this will also deprive the game of the ability of players improving, and would end up profiling most of players, not to mention, what would happen if an unicorn found himself not in the same “unicorn” league as his friends? this ought to create something bad, we’ll be excluding a large amount of players like this, and some might call our numbers biased, are numbers really biased? what happens when players that only want skill ladder matchmaking find themselves out of it supposed skill level because they happened to platoon to inflate their own stats and turns out his achievements are but a “fleeting dream?”

The list of such posts goes on, some developers are truly dug in against it. It’s not just anti-skill-MM rage, they are also brainstorming the ideas of how some of the disadvantages of skill MMM could be fixed. It is confirmed that the developers are actually really experimenting with skill MM on internal server. This is however NOT something that is sure to come and even if it does come, it will not be anytime soon, definitely after Havok. Nowhere near the foreseeable future anyway. Developers will wait for the poll results (the poll I posted yesterday) and they will run many closed tests to.

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Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/1/lets_racing_wot/

Map of the race track:

- the goal is to destroy all enemy tanks or to capture the base within 7 minutes
- M24 Chaffee (apart from being fast) fires shots, that do 50 damage (on average). It has 1000 hitpoints.
- the engine of the vehicle cannot be damaged during the race (all other modules can)
- driver and gunner of the crew cannot be killed, all other crew members can
- platoons will be matched only against other platoons
- M24 SPORT will be given to the players for free on 29.9.2014
- M24 SPORT cannot be sold, it will be removed from the hangar automatically when the event is over
- all the XP acquired on M24 SPORT will be transferred to T1 Cunningham after the battle is over (regardless whether you have it in garage or not)
- the entire crew will be (after the event is over) transferred to barracks and automatically retrained to standard M24 Chaffee
- the event (according to the missions on RU server) will last until 13.10.2014
- the missions for the battle will be as such: (win and survive, get 5000 creds, 1000 XP and 1000 crew XP), (win while playing in a platoon and while dealing 750 damage to the enemy, get 10000 creds, 2000 XP and 2000 crew XP), (win 50 times while getting 1000 base capture points, get 500k creds, 50k XP, 25k crew XP, 1 day of premium and 1 hangar slot)

Thanks to all of you guys, who sent me this survey.

Wargaming is all of a sudden interested in skill MM – to that end, they provided some players with a survey link over their e-mail :)

This is how it looks, so you have an idea:

The list of questions is:

- Vehicles of what tiers you used most in random battles in WoT for past 3 months?
- Do you have XVM stat-mod for viewing player statistics installed?
- How often did you play randoms in a platoon in last 3 months?
- With whom did you platoon?
- What prevents you from playing WoT when you have spare time? (options are: travelling with no internet, bugs, other hobbies, household chores, being tired, latest changes, family member occupying laptop, no internet, too many losses, spending time with friends/family, other)
- Do you evaluate the strength of your team in WoT? If yes, when? (before, during, after battle, not at all)
- To what purpose do you evaluate the strength of your team? (to estimate winning chance, to compare both teams, to work out strategy, to guess which my teammate is reliable)
- Based on which criteria do you evaluate your team during the battle? (the way they move, how they are active, running score, their rationality)
- Based on your experience, teammates of what skill level do you usually meet in randoms? (more skilled, less skilled, equal, different for each battle)
- How satisfied are you that you meet less-skillful teammates? (here they ask for elaboration)
- Do you evaluate the strength of your enemies in WoT? If yes, when?
- To what purpose do you evaluate the strength of your enemies?
- Based on which criteria do you evaluate your enemies during the battle?
- Based on your experience, how do players on both teams stack up against each other in terms of skill in randoms? (your team is often more skilled, your team is often less skilled, both teams equal, different for each battle, can’t say)
- How satisfied are you that in random battles, teams stack up against each other differently in terms of skill in each new battle?
- What criteria are the most important to you when estimating the chance of winning in random?
- Players of what skill would you want on your team (equal to me, lower, higher, various)
- What statistics reflect the player skill the best in your opinion? (damage, winrate etc.)
- Against enemies of what skill is it enjoyable to play? (lower, higher, equal, different each time)
- Would you like a special mode in random battles, in which you would play against opponents of skill equal to yours?
- Why do you think that would be interesting?
- Have you ever selected a server manually? (EU1, EU2, EU3 mentioned here as well, strange)
- If yes, how often do you do that?
- If yes, why do you do that?
- Is it important to you, on which server are you playing?
- How old are you?

And that’s all, folks :) Interesting survey.

Well… almost :) Something tells me, this video is not entirely serious… it’s presented by a guy, who calls himself “trustworthy developer” (and yes, I know it’s a reference to the Poka vse v tanke video) :)

Unfortunately, no English subtitles (only such worldly languages as Belarusian, Ukrainian and Kazakh). Inside:

- it will be in 3 vs 3 format (similiar to the soccer mode)
- it will take place on map Port (he’s making a joke about trying out the Westfield bridge, or Siegfried Line dragon teeth)
- Port returns: “this was the only way to return the map to the game”
- vehicle: modified M24 Chaffee (90 km/h, 1000 horsepower)
- it’s possible to platoon
- track is split on two sides, each team has its side
- the finishing part will be common (both lines will be unififed)
- it’s possible to get to the opponent’s parts by abusing holes
- it’s possible to shoot enemy tanks
- the price of shells will be lowered
- to win, you have to cap, or to destroy all enemy tanks
- there will be unique medal award in this mode
- there will be special missions, which will allow you to make nice creds and XP in this mode
- there will also be apparently a tournament with developers (not sure this applies to EU or RU only)

Enjoy! Stalin stronk!

Hello everyone,

today, we’re going to talk about maps and corridors. As you might have noticed, the “corridors” issue is the latest amongst the series of “flavour of the month” whine topics. The essence of the complaint is that maps (sometimes new ones on reworked ones, sometimes even the older ones) funnel players into a corridor, leaving them no room to maneuver.

From what I know, this whine started (as these trends usually do) on Russian forums, where Murazor (I think it was), one of the best known Russian video makers, made a video complaining about that. From there, I assume it infected various 3rd party sites and from them it got on the regular EU forums. This complaint is generally limited to more experienced and skilled players and generally is not taken too seriously by Wargaming (and for a good reason) – because certain degree of corridors is very beneficial, even practically essential for the gameplay as it is. Here’s why.

Logical map segmenting (of which “corridorness” is a sub-group) is essential for basic gameplay, especially when it comes to non-hardcore players. Like it or not, World of Tanks is a game aimed at casual players. That was always the truth and always will be. Now, imagine being in a skin of a player, who is not so good, new to games or simply has no experience. You see a map, that is clear divided somehow and you usually have to choose from several directions, that are defined by several methods, but the creation of clear and readable segment is perhaps the most important one.

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Hello everyone,

after quite some time, we’re going to have a competition. That’s right – and this time, I really have something cool for you, courtesy of the British guys from the Research Squad (Panther Project), specifically Mr.Brian Balkwill. Something about them first then.

You can find those guys on their website:

http://www.theresearchsquad.com/

As they describe themselves:

We are a group who share a common passion towards the preservation and restoration of historical items of interest. Our aim is to professionally document, research and publish studies on significant subjects in a variety of media, for the wider public to enjoy.
In addition to the books we publish, this site will contain large amounts of information in the way of galleries, drawings, diagrams and research projects for free use of wider communities.
To this end we are also currently working in close co-operation with The Wheatcroft Collection, a privately owned collection of some 200 plus major military and civilian items. Our intention is to publish a series of books on important items within the collection, whilst also working with the collection to raise its public profile via its website.

In short, they take things apart and document them and one of those “things” is the mighty Panther. You see, these guys made this wonderful thing:

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Source: http://www.dom1n.com/newsy/ferdinand-italeri-unboxing/

Hello everyone,

as you might remember, model kit making company Italeri launched recently a cooperation with Wargaming, introducing some of the vehicles, that can be found in the game, as special edition kits with various accessories. Dom1n managed to get his hands on the Ferdinand kit and here’s how it looks inside the box. The kit itself consists of two main parts – the hull and the superstructure. Those are already fitted together apparently.

For fullsize picture, right click and press “view image” (hosted on Imgur)

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Thanks to Ugly_Joe for this one

Source: http://simplepimple.com/2013/11/artist-builds-chinese-tank-using-only-empty-bullet-shells-10-pictures/

Hello everyone,

the following pictures show a model of the Chinese ZTZ-99, made entirely of spent shells and casings (in total over 48 thousand). The model weighs 6,5 tons. It’s currently on display in China’s Museum of Industry in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province.

That must have taken a LONG time to make…

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