- regarding the fact that on some sites (wot-news, vbaddict) some vehicles appear as underperforming and need buff – “we do not balance the tanks according to 3rd party sites”
- IS-7, IS-4 and Maus guns to be buffed? “If we buff their guns, we’ll have to nerf other parameters”
- Indienpanzer is not “suffering” apparently either (SS: as in, it is not underpowered)
- the “rule of 10 calibers” applies only when main armor is penetrated (eg. when dealing damage), not after the penetration of spaced armor
- for the purpose of the spotting mechanism change (second part), bushes will count as obstacles, so if you got spotted while standing behind the bush, you will disappear when the camo penalty for shooting ends
- basically, regarding the point above, Storm confirms that a tank, that gets spotted on the open field will never disappear, unless it drives behind an obstacle (a bush) or out of view range
Littlefield Tanks – Sold…
Thanks to Zorro Guevara for this one.
Hello everyone,
if you follow the news in the tank world outside of World of Tanks, you probably know that one of the biggest events of recent years was the sale of the Littlefield Collection. It’s been discussed for long months, that’s where The_Chieftain (US server military specialist) was shooting the short “Hatch” videos at (before they sell it to pieces).
So, a part of the collection was (unfortunately) already sold. Interested what prices did the customers pay?
Sdkfz.7 German WW2 halftrack – 1.207.500,- USD
M4A2 HVSS Sherman (76) – 345.000,- USD
SCUD missile launcher – 345.000,- USD
M5 Stuart – 310.500,- USD
M4A3 Sherman – 299.000,- USD
M50 Super Sherman – 293.250,- USD
M4A3 (105) Sherman – 287.500,- USD
FV214 Conqueror – 287.500,- USD
M3A5 Grant – 276.000,- USD
Landsverk IKV-73 – 212.750,- USD
M16 Quad .50cal – 201.250,- USD
Leopard 1A1A4 – 198.950,- USD
etc.
Three tanks are still being sold:
The Panzer IV Ausf.H current bid is 1.750.000,- USD
Jumbo Sherman current bid is 800.000,- USD
LVT-A4 Modified current bid is 375.000,- USD
The cheapest armored vehicles could be purchased for as little as 10k USD (M75 APC), stuff with big guns (M52 105mm SPG) for as little as 14k USD.
The entire list can be viewed here.
Wargaming Developer Contest for 80k USD
Source: http://habrahabr.ru/company/wargaming/blog/229933/
Hello everyone,
so, Wargaming started a first official developer contest for real money – a contest for the “developer community”. What Wargaming means by developers – basically two groups: mod makers and application makers. According to the text, posted on the habahabr blog (Russian programming portal), there goal of the entire event is to “improve the cooperation between Wargaming and mod/application developers” – of course, Russian developers.
The rules are in Russian and this contest is specifically oriented at Russian region (sorry, capitalists, no contests for you). The participants are to be adult physical persons, either single or working in teams. You don’t have to be a citizen of Russia, but you have to be Russian speaking (write the entry presentation in Russian), so you might as well be.
There is a prize pool of 80k USD (yep, 80 thousand US dollars), which will be split into rewards in following categories:
- best project idea
- best mobile or social network application
- best functional project
- best World of Tanks mod
- special award for product and service development for Wargaming community
The prize will be distributed as follows (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place)
Best project idea:
2000 USD+250k gold+Type 59, 1000 USD+150k gold+Type 59, 500 USD+50k gold+50k
Best WoT mod:
10k USD, 5k USD, 2,5k USD
World of Tanks Blitz Stream with Overlord
Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3394199.html
Hello everyone,
recently, there was a special World of Tanks Blitz stream with Dmitryi “Overlord” Yudo (WoTB producer), Alexei “Inaki” Ilyin and Aleksandra “Alabelle” Martinovich (some community manager), that showcased the WoT Blitz gamplay. The video can be seen here (in Russian of course, just for those who want to see the gameplay and such):
Maiorboltach was kind enough to make a transcript of the stream – the following lines are about WoT Blitz, NOT WoT itself. According to Maiorboltach, the sound was bad so it’s possible some of the things were misheard, but it should be mostly okay.
- patch 1.2 will bring premium tanks
- patch 1.3 will bring Soviet heavies with IS-4
- they will add one new nation every half a year
- it’s not planned to add arty at all, in connection with that there will also be no hightier scouts
- in the developer version of the game, there is an option to play the PC and tablet version on one server
The Chieftain as Tier 10
Hello everyone,
so, I guess you’ve already heard the news, FV215b is considered to be replaced by the Chieftain, at least that’s how Storm wrote it yesterday. However, this info (or speculations about it) is much older. The first time I heard about the plan to put the Chieftain in some form on tier 10 was as early as December 2012. I was on a meeting of the Czech community and Tuccy (back then still just a community organizer or whatever the title was) was talking about the changes to the trees. I took notes in my cellphone of what he was saying (I still have them, he for example mentioned the second French line, little did we know…) and one of the things he said is that the Chieftain would become the British tier 10 heavy tank. The next day, I wrote it on the forums (back then, there was no FTR) and the post got immediately deleted (this was one of the impulses that convinced me I need a platform of my own, so Wargaming can’t come and purge inconvenient info by the way). Next mention about it was from February 2013 and the result was “yea, we thought about that, not in immediate future” – and that was it.
I wrote the above for you to understand that the idea is actually very old and that the Chieftain at some point “fell into the same vaporware hole” as the Sturmtiger, which sort of hints at the fact that implementing the Chieftain is problematic. But, Storm mentioned that the change might come around the end of this year, so hopefully that’s settled.
Which Chieftain?
So, now that this is decided, the real question is – which Chieftain will we see in the game? Originally I thought that there might be like three or four variants to pick from, including the mockups. I was wrong – there are like fifteen (maybe more) various prototypes and proposals, including the pre-production version. The most likely candidate I would say is the “P6″ prototype, that was mentioned in the past in connection with World of Tanks, simply because it stands physically in Bovington and Wargaming has access to it. This prototype was saved by Bovington from scrapping in 2011 and you can read about it here.
Meanwhile in Poland…
Thanks to Bartol89 for this one :)
Hello everyone,
you already know that when the article title starts with “meanwhile in…”, it’s time for some funny or weird stuff. Or both. In this case, in Poland, at the XIV International Meeting Of Military Vehicles “Operation South” (in Polish – XIV Międzynarodowy Zlot Pojazdów Militarnych “Operacja Południe”), a T-72 tank drove into some kind of stand in the area reserved for vendors.Nobody was hurt. Police gave him a ticket apparently.
15.7.2014 Part Deux
Hello everyone,
this is the second part, because one Q&A per day is not enough! News from Lithuania – a player who didn’t write his name or nickname participated in the meeting with WG staff and following things were said during the meeting:
- T57 Heavy will get a nerf
- accuracy formula is scheduled for a change, German tanks are going to “feel their accuracy” again
- the only thing left from the original BigWorld engine is server support
- there will be no more free premium tanks (SS: nope, no free FV4202)
- WG have plans to create a branch in Lithuania (Vilnius) or Latvia (Riga)
And back to Storm:
- Object 430 will be buffed a little
- according to preliminary tests of the new spotting system, 3-4 maps do have issues
- regarding the new spotting system (see previous posts today), camo net will not cancel the way reworked spotting system of moving/shooting tanks works (SS: as in, regarding the changes that will cancel the effect of tanks disappearing in the middle of the field, camo net will not change it)
- according to Storm, it is not yet confirmed that the new Prokhorovka has bad feedback, so he cannot say what will happen with it
- Storm states that it’s pointless to discuss Stronkhold with random players (specifically on Livejournal), there is a discussion with big clan members on feedback
Meanwhile in Russia…
Thanks to JakubCzyliJa for this one :)
Meanwhile in Russia, in Belogorod district….
According to the Polish portal that published the photos, no details of the incident are known. But ouch, I wonder how they managed to do this… my guess is that the vehicle somehow fell off a trailer or something…
15.7.2014
- apparently, M46 Patton will have “improved torsion bars” (increased the load capacity, good for stock tracks) equipment available in 9.3
- Q: “Why was FV215b 183 nerfed when Veider said 7 months ago in an interview that it won’t be nerfed?” A: “Situation changed.”
- IS-7, IS-4 and Maus are doing fine statistically
- “it’s possible” that the developers overestimated the importance of Object 430 armor
- tank names on minimap are planned, no ETA yet (“when it’s done it’s done”)
- water render was not changed after 8.11
- Veider: developers are working on reworking camo and viewrange system
- developers are considering camouflage rework (nerf), when a player asked whether RhB camo will be nerfed, Veider stated: “We are considering it. But we will not nerf RhB specifically, we will implement something systemic.”
Veider next made a few veiled remarks about upcoming changes, Storm showed up and unveiled the planned spotting changes.
Storm Announces Spotting Changes
Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/299430.html
Hello everyone,
in a recent comment, Storm explains upcoming plans and changes in visibility/spotting system
The following lines require at least general knowledge of how the spotting check system works – if you don’t know that, please read it on WoTwiki (it’s quite complicated).
- the most important thing is that the developers are reworking the Bigworld spotting check rays tracing system on the server, the plan is that this will increase the performance of the system a lot, which will in turn allow the server to make the visibility checks every “tick” (cycle) at all distances and it will allow the developers to increase the amount of spotting check points on a tank (SS: this means that tanks at longer distances will no longer have the “between spotting checks” advantage, it means spotting at longer distances will become easier)
- the “tanks disappearing in the middle of a field” effect will be removed. The increased camouflage coefficients after stopping shooting and stopping the vehicle (SS: as in, the tank is harder to spot when it doesn’t shoot or when it stops) will be removed in cases where the tank is in your view range and is not covered by obstacles (SS: as in, when you get spotted while driving in the open field and stop the vehicle, the reduced camouflage factor (moving reduces your camo) changes to “camo when standing” (unreduced) and the tank can “disappear” if it stops in the zone where the moving camo allows it to be spotted but the standing camo doesn’t – this will not happen anymore)
- a spotting check point for spots after shooting will be made at the end of the gun barrel, which means that you will have to hide barrels that are sticking out of the bushes when firing
- draw distance will be changed from 1000*1000 square to a 565 meter radius circle
The ETA on these changes is, as usual, “when it’s done it’s done”, Storm adds that the circle viewrange is the closest of all these changes.