Hello everyone,

so, the day is finally here, right? The 9.13 Czechoslovak tanks are on the test server and I would really like to thank the few brave Wargaming developers who pushed this idea to their superiors. Especially one guy who doesn’t want to be named and his pony lover friend from balance department, both of who are seriously the coolest game devs. It was seriously cool to meet you guys in person (too bad I was so tired from the trip, I was babbling god knows what at that point). It’s not an understatement that without them, the branch would not exist – and this is how it should be, you know – the developers listening to and working with the community. Now, I am not saying that the community should be listened to in everything (that would end in a disaster) but when it comes to such things as introducing new vehicles?

Why not. In fact, it’s no secret that Wargaming is working on the Swedish branch with two community members, Renhaxue and sp15. Unfortunately, unlike me, they are limited in what they can divulge due to actual contracts (whereas me, Daigensui and Soukoudragon who helped with the Japanese branch were… let’s say less formal). But I think it’s going to end well.

Of course, Yuri Pasholok, Dmitry Shein and their colleagues from historical department did a lot of work too and it was really nice to meet them as well in Prague, I really liked the book Yuri wrote and gave me about the T-60 light tank (I wish this stuff was available in English). And finally, special thanks go to Pyotr Bityukov and of course Sergey Burkatovsky, who was involved in these decisions on the highest level.

With that being said, how well did the branch go?

Pretty well actually. Of course, nothing is perfect and multiple things didn’t the way I imagined they would, such as:

- the national sign with the blue triangle upwards: completely historical but not the variant I’d have picked
- camouflage: German camo? Really? Someone was lazy as fuck. I even made a post about possible camouflages.
- Kolohousenka has no wheels!
- LT vz.38 top gun has wrong mantlet, but… well, it’s a stretch anyway
- T-24 turrets (*sigh*)
- apparently the Konštrukta T-34/100 has busted armor (the armor model of the mantle for stock turret should be there for top turret and vice versa)
- the T 50 is really a stretch, some things are wrong (like the false side armor IS-3 style, where historically ammunition was supposed to be stowed above the tracks)

But what the hell. Tested the line, really liked it, good job :)

So, what now… now I work for My.com (Armored Warfare) so my focus lies elsewhere. I still follow WoT of course but mostly for job reasons. I am really curious as to what will happen with it in 2016. I think all the players and tank lovers will find 2016 very interesting due to the improvements the respective devs are making to AW and WoT both.

So yea. Should be fun :)

Hello guys,

lately, I keep getting the requests to actually make For the Record style blog for Armored Warfare or even re-open For the Record with AW content. Well, as I am sure you all understand, it’s not that easy.

For one, there already IS an excellent Armored Warfare blog, the Armored Talk.

http://armoredtalk.com/

It’s run by an American guy, a former soldier if I recall correctly and overly a very nice person to work with and talk to (in other words, an opposite of me). He does an excellent job, better than I ever could with the current workload (free weekends? lol, more like content writing time). Seriously, if you are interested in AW, go check that blog out. If you are not, well, then don’t :)

Now, about FTR. I got shitloads of questions about why on earth did I post that Terminator picture in the previous post. Yea, that’s a good question. At first it was just trolling. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there’s anything I could actually do with FTR. When it comes to World of Tanks, Rita’s doing a pretty good job I’d say – considering she’s been at it for three months and doesn’t speak Russian. In a way she has it way tougher than I did even in the beginning.

So, the question is… what CAN be done? Is there something that would interest you related to tanks, tank history, Armored Warfare, maybe even World of Tanks? I think I’m gonna write some more reviews and notes about the assembly of the Czechoslovak branch in WoT but that’s more like Rita stuff (afterall, the branch is coming relatively soon, 0.9.12 would be my guess).

Anyway, catch you later guys.

FTR is closed. As to “why” – see previous post.

You can get your information (translations, leaks) from Ritagamer’s new blog:

http://ritastatusreport.blogspot.nl/

Dear readers and friends,

now, that’s a change from the usual “hello everyone” and the Star Trek title – must mean something significant, yes? Well, unfortunately, it does.

I am quitting working on For the Record, completely.

The reasons for these are numerous, but the most obvious one is that I was hired by My.com, the producer of Armored Warfare, to become a content manager and a sort of historical advisor (minus the epic hat) with a hint of community management. My contract prevents me from doing anything, that would benefit My.com’s competition and unfortunately, running a Wargaming news blog is exactly the kind of thing that is prohibited. I wasn’t expecting this to come so suddenly (in fact, I was counting on running the blog for at least another month to take it all nice and slow), but the resolution of the situation came rather swiftly and I cannot wait – I’d be in breach of my contract. Don’t worry though, I won’t leave you without any info, there is a contingency plan (see below).

There are other reasons as well though and I do feel like I owe you a longer explanation though, so here goes.

This decision is not new. Some of you might remember that I was considering quitting completely as early as in the autumn of 2014. Wasn’t a good time for me really – along with some health issues, by that point FTR was practically a fulltime job (which didn’t change until today) and no matter how easy it might seem to an outsider, running the blog to any standard was completely exhausting. Another price, even more serious one, was the complete lack of any “life”, a price I was willing to pay, but I am no longer – I found someone very special in my life and suddenly found myself in a situation where I had to choose between my private life and working on FTR. Until today, I chose the latter, but I cannot do that anymore.

But that’s not nearly everything. For a long time, I was doing FTR mostly out of sense of duty, as there was unfortunately no true goal to the entire endeavor. While the FTR numbers between 2013 and 2014 practically doubled, recently, the growth generally just stagnated. I believe that as it is now, FTR has reached its limits, there is nowhere to expand – in fact, I had to get rid of some topics to be able to manage the amount of incoming information.

And add one more factor to that. There is nowhere to go for me even in World of Tanks itself. I am not really interested in becoming a unicum or anything. For me, the real fun with World of Tanks was participating (well, sort of) in the development. As you know, my goal was to have Czechoslovak tanks introduced into the game and by Wargaming actually agreeing to do that, there’s nothing left to achieve.

Combine all these reasons and you have a very tiring mixture. Make no mistake: I liked working on For the Record and I was happier working on it more than I was with my real job. Unfortunately, even with the generosity of the contributors (some were VERY generous and I won’t forget that), FTR could never bring enough money to work as a fulltime job. Well, maybe it could, if I spam the entire site with ads, but the thing is, I hate ads. Plus, ad revenue is extremely vulnerable to reader whims as the Adblock is just one click away.

Sure, you might think – why not contact Wargaming and maybe work something out? Well… for one, you know very well what I think of the entire WG EU. WG RU has some really cool guys and I never had a “beef” with them per se, but the thing is… I am also tired of this game and I don’t like where it is going. Sure, Czechoslovak tanks are cool, but what’s next? The development future and plans do seem a bit like stumbling in the dark from my perspective. I don’t feel like Wargaming has a clear vision, as there is little to achieve gameplay-wise left for them apart from making more and more money. Not that there’s something wrong with making money, it’s just that I have the feeling (especially lately) that it actually sometimes collides with the game development itself (cutting out content that is very expensive to produce, while introducing more and more premium tanks being the most obvious example). Perhaps I am wrong, but that’s how I see it.

That’s why I turned to who I consider to have a bright future: Armored Warfare developers, Obsidian.

Armored Warfare developers have a vision, that doesn’t consist entirely of selling you more and more stuff – and they listen to the players. An example: it took me two years to convince Wargaming to put Czechoslovak tanks into the game. It took me three minutes to do that with Obsidian.

What I do believe is that with proper development, Armored Warfare can not only go toe to toe with World of Tanks, we can even beat it on their own turf.Therein lies the challenge and the goal. Can I personally help to make it better with my dedication? I’d like to think that yes, I can. I have faith, something I lacked for a very long time, a faith that was in Wargaming’s case replaced by cynicism, stemming from some degree of knowledge of Wargaming’s inner workings a long time ago. I am sure you noticed that yourselves from the leaks as well.

I will not tell you that Wargaming is the Great Satan and Armored Warfare is our only savior. That would be stupid and it would be a lie. For all its flaws and the idiocy of some of WG staff, World of Tanks is a good game, even a great game (if you embrace arty that is :D). I just think there’s an opportunity here to build something even better – together with the players and developers actually listening to player feedback without having to spend years to convince them of a good idea.

And so, it suddenly all “clicked” together – their offer, my desire to do something I actually really like for a living and reasons to actually have some private life back. And I said yes. So this is it.

Now, before I depart, two things.

AW beta keys

If you are interested, I have beta keys for all the contributors, who ever donated to FTR. Just write me an email at fortherecordwot@gmail.com with your identification as a former FTR contributor and I’ll send you one. I wish I had beta keys for EVERYBODY but alas, I couldn’t get my hands on so many. But that’s okay… I am pretty sure that if you go to the Armored Warfare site and register for CBT, you’ll get there in no time, the beta has plenty of space for everybody.

FTR replacement

Second – as promised, you won’t be left without information. I was wondering for a long time how to do this – and I opted for one thing, one person who actually has no agenda and who I actually really trust – Ritagamer. Surprised? So was I, when she showed interest. Long story short: I did put her in touch with a native Russian speaker, let’s call him “Ivan”. Ivan will help her with translations for her and she will be posting them in the same style as I used on FTR. And yes, there will still be leaks. She will also cover Armored Warfare actually, so you’ll get everything in a nice, neat package. You can find her blog here:

http://ritastatusreport.blogspot.nl/

Make no mistake, it will be very difficult for her at first and the design of the blogger site is less than optimal, so please, support her as much as you did support me, she is taking a huge risk with this and it’s a lot of work. But, I am confident she’ll be up to the task – you know her from her streams, when she wants something, she gets it right :)

So, that’s it really. I hope to see you drop by on AW forums. This is for the record… signing off.

An information was leaked on RU sites that 9.7 common test should start tomorrow. Tried to verify it – supertest was planned for tomorrow, but the Russian staff is saying that the test will start “soon”, so who knows? Will try to confirm that.

- according to the Insider, the T-34/85 “Rudy” was never intended for the Polish branch in World of Tanks, but as a Soviet vehicle, “Fury” style. Its current estimated price is cca 24 USD
- according to WG RU developers, T-34/85 “Rudy” and Cromwell Berlin are premiums “in a sense” (SS: what this means is that while Rudy will be sold almost certainly the way Fury was, the Berlin tanks will likely not)
- Q: “Will T-34/85 Rudy come with a dog?” A: “Time will tell :)” (SS: yes, the Szaryk will be actually a crewmember apparently and no, he won’t get special perks)
- more details on this batch of premiums will be published later
- Krupp-Steyr WT is NOT the WT E-100 replacement (SS: duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
- AMX-30 will come in 9.7
- AMX-30 Prototype has 4 crewmembers
- HD Super Pershing model will be reworked, it will most likely not appear in 9.7

And meanwhile in Strongholds… presenting the airstrike consumable. That looks balanced.