It started with QB advertising and then some random guy started talking how he started playing WoT… my god – who cares, how some random guys started playing WoT? Three hours of stream to cover the entire Gamescom day, several games and this is what you waste it on? Incredible.

And of course, some mandatory “WoT is the besterest”… I mean, it’s a good game, but “unparalleled experience”? Please.

As a bonus, the chat was completely compromised by people spamming that retarded reference Alienware shit. Well, at least there was that hot Turkish chick again. What was less funny was that the competition thread on FB was immediately infested by spammers as well, so that didn’t work too well. The rest, in points:

- Some random WG employee: “we had the really nice big booth” – but you’re not going to see it, because we will show you a bunch of random guys instead (same goes for Gamescom atmosphere, dancers, WoWs…) Absolutely retarded.
- Eikarrramba (German community contributor) appeared to explain what a community contributor does (reading FTR and translating it :P Nah, I know you do your own stuff as well and you do it nicely, keep at it!)

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Not exactly out of supertest.

A new map based on “Normandy”, temporary name is “D-Day”

For those who did not catch the Gamescom WoWs part of the stream, Zetarn created a video.

Hello everyone,

along with Gaijin and Wargaming, there is a third company with their own tank game attending Gamescom – Mail.ru and their very own Armored Warfare. Now, they released this trailer…

And it looks good. But wait… it seems the developers left their FTP server open, hihi :) So what have we here… some screenshots, but also a very interesting presentation!

There is also the factsheet for downloading (the closed beta will start in Q1 2015).

And finally, the screenshots. They do look very nice.

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Hello everyone,

a mouse is usually a small animal being hunted instead of doing the hunting… but – what if we gave it the teeth of the crocodile?

Why is it needed? Where would it go?

Let’s start from the beginning. There are basically two reasons why a new German tank destroyer would be needed.

First:

Some time ago, the Waffenträger E-100 line was implemented. After some time, it was found out that the Waffenträger E-100 is far from ideal. While fragile, it was also overpowered and with its phenomenal firepower, it was able to chew through practically any tier 10 vehicle within a single autoloader cycle. That of course was not exactly an ideal situation and in 9.2, WT E-100 was nerfed, but it still remains one of the most feared predators on the battlefield.

Apart from being overpowered, it has another issue – it’s completely unhistorical – in other words, a Wargaming-made fake. There have been some hints as to the willingness of Wargaming to replace something else, IF a suitable candidate is found. So far, it was not.

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3436747.html

Hello everyone,

Belarus portal tut.by published an interview with WoWs developer Ivan Moroz. From the interview:

- developers expect WoWs to be successful, ideally as much as WoT
- the idea of creating a naval game is very old, even older than the tanks game idea
- the developer, Lesta Studio was chosen because it’s from St.Petersburg (which is a city connected to navy) and because it was an experienced team, creating special effects for movies. They have also been working earlier with navy-themed objects.
- WG has numerous historical consultants for ships, they visited ships both in USA and Japan personally
- the earliest ship is from 1904, the latest from 50′s
- the game will come out with US and Japanese ships, later Germany, Britain, USSR and some other nations will be added
- it’s possible that submarines will appear in WoWs, but specific task (niche) has to be invented for them in the game
- to be successful, you have to maneuver constantly while trying to bring your turrets and torpedo tubes to bear
- closed beta is scheduled for winter 2015 (SS: here I think it is a typo, should be winter 2014)
- the minimal configuration will be Core 2 Duo processor or better, 2GB Ram, 8600GT or Intel HD4000 or Radeon HD2600 or better videocard

And a few screenies:

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Hello everyone,

everyone knows Leopard as the German main battle tank, that won the competition and became a mass-produced vehicle, used throughout Europe. However, there is this impression that apart from the Leopard, the Germans did not develop anything else on the tank field in the 60′s. That is not true. Check this out.

This is the Blohm und Voss company proposal for a main battle tank, developed in the 60′s and patented in 1970, as found by Vollketten (Patent Application No. #2066169 from 21st April 1970). Its full name (in the patent) is “Armored Vehicle with Low Silhouette”.

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Hello everyone,

Russian portal has one quite interesting article about how the World of Tanks has changed in 4 years. Unfortunately, I cannot replicate its contents here (you’ll see why), but here is the link – it does not require you to read the Russian text, the pictures are pretty self-explanatory.

http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/1/what_is_new_in_world_of_tanks/

Just to quickly sum it up:

- first picture is the hangar change, new hangar was introduced in 9.0
- second picture shows the evolution of “anniversary” hangars
- third picture shows the changes in graphics, noting that despite the improvement, the game remains playable on low end PC’s
- fourth picture shows the crew UI changes, the post says that back then in 2010, the crews only had three skills, now it’s 25
- fifth picture shows the evolution of vehicles, back in 2010 the game only had German and Russian tanks, now it’s over 300 vehicles
- sixth picture shows how the maps were reworked in 0.8.0 with the introduction of physics to look more realistically
- seventh picture shows the changes in Himmelsdorf, the post notes that more city maps were added (Ruinberg, Ruinberg on fire, Winter Himmelsdorf) to bring more variety to the game
- eighth picture shows the difference between SD and HD model
- so does the ninth

Hello everyone,

so, here’s a little video from the series called Extra Credits. In case you don’t know it, Extra Credits is a series of videos, dealing with various aspects of video games in general and with their design. While I do disagree with some of their conclusions and view them as too optimistic, the core of the series is sound and I like the format very much (I was even thinking of creating something like that about various WoT aspects, but my lack of art skill kinda prevents me from it, so if you are more skilled than I am, go ahead, that would be very popular I think).

I am honestly surprised that Wargaming hasn’t contacted or worked with these guys before, they seem to be… how should I put it… easily available for hire. Not that it’s a bad thing, they seem to be quite competent.

Anyway, back to topic. A lot of people over time have complained about the randomness of World of Tanks in various competitive modes, especially in e-sports. And it’s true, there is always the 25 percent RNG factor and all that, but that’s not all there is. This video explains very nicely, why randomness in games (in our case, World of Tanks) is actually not a problem. Just… watch it and tell me, what do you think.