Hello everyone,

what follows is the summary of Storm’s stream, that ended literally minutes ago. Holy crap, Storm talks FAST. I think it should be mostly correct, some things I didn’t hear properly or am not sure for, but that’s all in the text. Please note that if I made any mistakes, I will fix them later after I compare my text to the one of a Russian author.

- XP for tanking temporarily removed, will be tested and will return
- 9.4 – hopefully more vehicles will recieve split of transmission
- there have been many problematic cases where various accidents were considered “suicide”, that’s why the suicider punishment was removed for rework
- the bug where “early leaving” is punished when leaving a replay will be fixed
- the HD texture split only includes textures in maximum quality, they are almost needlessly detailed, they can be viewed only in hangar during zoom, therefore these were split for players who don’t need them not to download them
- developers will monitor the popularity of the HD textures
- EVERYONE will have HD models (as in, high polygon models), the only difference will be the texture quality and resolution

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First and foremost – regarding the “new bot ban system” – I was apparently wrong in accusing WG EU of inaction. Ectar posted that this system is in fact in operation for over a month. He wrote the following:

We didn’t want to do a new article as we didn’t want to warn naughty players that we were coming for them. We’ve had this new system active since the start of the month and 9.3 will bring an additional system to deal with AFK players and those players who leave a battle early. What we have active on EU atm is the same as what is active on RU. You don’t hear much about players being banned because no one wants to admit they got caught doing something they shouldn’t have.

So, I guess that’s that. Personally, I do not understand why keep such a thing secret – after all, the point of such a system is not only to punish, but also to deter (that’s why WG RU made actual portal posts about it). Make no mistake, the system is effective on RU forums (yes, I am paranoid, so I manually checked the list of players announced to be banned for botting – RU does that – and indeed, they were banned). I am actually impressed, it’s time WG as a whole took the issue of bots seriously.

- the LTTB turret is actually historical. Sort of. It’s a regular T-34/85 turret with slightly enlarged turret ring (1600 to 1660mm). It was however not designed for LTTB, it’s completely independent on that.
- the next gift tank (Panzer II Ausf.D) having too low penetration? “It’s still supertest” and “No comment on leaks”
- no tank will be buffed just because some developers don’t play well with it
- German 37mm and 50mm subcaliber rounds lose a lot of penetration over distance (more than others apparently). Veider states this is historical, based on some documents. In the future, this will be reworked so all the subcaliber shells of that respective caliber lose the same percentage of their penetration

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Hello everyone,

I am sure that the Polish FTR readers known about Polish Dom1n’s blog – personally, I consider it one of two best non-Russian WoT blogs there are (the second would be Eikarramba’s http://wot-com.de/ in German).

Recently, Dom1n was successful in acquiring some QA answers from Obirian and Quasars, WG EU producers. Now… the latter name might be familiar to some of the older FTR readers. This guy did QA earlier on EU server (once per blue moon) and… it was not successful, to put it mildly. So, take any answers here with a grain of salt. Also, if I mistranslated something from Polish, please let me know, the original Polish source is here.

- in 9.3 ricochet system, you will not be punished for having your shell ricochet and damaging an ally
- ricocheting your shell into an enemy tank will count as your damage
- shells will not ricochet from house walls

(followed by explaining the ricochet mechanics, can be found here)

- new LT8 models have each over 40 thousand polygons
- water does not provide camouflage bonus
- shooting a tank that is under water does not make the shell lose penetration
- there are plans to rebalance LT’s further, the Chaffee rebalance and introducing new LT8′s are the first steps

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Hello everyone,

while we are waiting for the 9.3 patch (not today), Russians already have it (be grateful, that also means the worst bugs that sometimes appear get to be fixed before the patch comes out). From the discussion:

- some mods again stopped working with 9.3, but other players reports their mods to be working
- the shots sound more muted when in sniper mode, Storm states this is intentional: “The price of realism” (later, he adds “try hitting a tank with a hammer with someone inside – he will barely hear it”, although he adds that he forgot the physics he learned, so there is no need to bash him on that if it’s not true)
- XP for “tanking” will definitely not come via a micropatch, Storm states that currently, they will fix the formula, then they will upload it to the server, they will collect statistics and only after that it will be applied – “when it’s done it’s done”
- Storm on new easy-to-obtain medals: “And I, as a noob, really like them”
- one of the T-54 turrets has its weight incorrectly displayed, this will be checked
- Storm states that there were various optimizations and fixes when it comes to graphics in 9.3, for some players, FPS grew

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