WoT Platoon with a Girl? That will be 12 Euro, please

Thanks to Dejv for this one.

When it comes to World of Tanks, there is not a whole lot that would surprise me. Or make me smile in amusement, because I have this stupid feeling that I’ve just seen it all. Yet, from time to time, there are things that prove me wrong. This is one of them.

Ever heard of powerlevelling services? I assume that you did, if you ever played other MMO’s, such as World of Warcraft. But, just to make sure, here’s what it actually is: “powerlevelling” is usually a service, where you pay another person to play your game account for you in order to reach some goal (for example level up, or, in WoT, unlocking a branch, getting certain amount of credits and so on). In order to do that, that person needs access to your account, so you can imagine how giving anyone your username (e-mail) and password is NOT a good idea – don’t EVER try it, 99,9 percent of such offers are scams. As a part of such service, the site usually also sells “high level accounts” – you can imagine how are they getting them.

But, back to our surprising case. There is this site, called http://wot-leveling.com/. It’s oriented on Russian server, so I won’t be doing them any favours by disclosing their existence to predominantly EU and US server readers.

Continue reading

Kharkov Map – In Real Life

Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/1/fan_video_05-31/

Hello everyone,

this is one of the more interesting posts, featured on the World of Tanks RU portal – a fan video by the Russian player “Compmaniac”, who currently actually lives in Kharkov. Since the map “Kharkov” is coming to World of Tanks in patch 9.1, he made a video, comparing the ingame map locations to the real city of Kharkov, its landmarks and streets.

 

 

The video is obviously in Russian, but the pictures are interesting as well, it includes the massive building of Gosprom (also known as the Palace of Industry), the big round “Liberty Square”, the Kharkov University complex and the Chichibabin street.

The map is apparently based on the German air recon photo from 16.12.1941. The video actually contains a lot of interesting info about Kharkov, too bad it’s not officially translated in English. Oh yea, I forgot, WG EU… too much work I guess.

Edit

The_Grue was kind enough to provide the translation on what was said in the video. Thank you!

We are in Kharkov, this video is about the map that comes out in 9.1 and this is the first map modeled after an existing city. Let us take a walk around the places that have any significance in the gameplay – where battles will commence – and also the places that are notable in real-life Kharkov.

Continue reading

World of Tanks GPU Testing

Source: http://www.3dnews.ru/821006/page-2.html

Hello everyone,

an interesting article appeared on the Russian portal 3dnews, regarding the GPU benchmarking for the World of Tanks maximum graphic settings. The tested configuration was:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4,6 Ghz (100×46)
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
SSD: Intel SSD 520 240 GB
System: Windows 7 Ultimate X64 Service Pack 1

Drivers – AMD: AMD Catalyst 14.4 WHQL, Nvidia: 335.23 WHQL

They tested the average FPS. The tested resolution was 1920*1080 (lighter) and 2560*1440 (darker)

Since I can’t properly edit the picture:
МГц = Mhz
Гбайт = Gigabytes

And the result?

results_max

Hungarian armor part 6 – Turán II

Author: Károly “Karika” Németh

Silentstalker: Hello everyone. Quite some time ago, I started (but never finished) the series on Hungarian armor. Karika will now continue where I finished. Enjoy!

Part 1: Tas 44M
Part 2: Introduction and Straussler tanks
Part 3: Toldi
Part 4: Toldi II, Toldi IIA, Toldi III
Part 5: T-21, Turán I (development)

In 1941, before the first Turán I has arrived to the troops, it became clear that their protection and 40mm gun were already insufficient in tank versus tank combats against most of the enemy armoured vehicles, like the new Soviet medium tanks. That gun just couldn’t penetrate the sloped frontal armor of the T-34 and struggled even against its side, not the mention the thick armor of the KV series of heavy tanks – that’s why the Hungarian crew gave the “Borsóvető” (“pea shooter”) mocking name to the main gun of the Turán I.

A model of a Turán II

em062htec53xz

So, in the summer of 1942, when the first Turán I medium tanks arrived to the troops, the Hungarian Military Leaderboard (VKF) changed the order of the second series of Turáns: 55 more Turán were ordered with the original 40mm gun (49 were assembled before the end of the war) and another 205 vehicles were ordered from the Hungarian factories with a new 75mm anti-tank gun, capable of penetrating at least 50 mm of armour. But to make it into service as soon as possible, the VKF wanted it to be carried by a new tank on the basis of the Turán, with the same turret ring diameter, minimally changed turret and with unchanged engine, suspension, undercarriage or armour thickness.

Continue reading

US Server Only: Military Appreciation Stream (and Competition)

Hello everyone,

this is something I feel sorry for forgetting and not publishing earlier, but I think there is still time to remedy that. This post concerns pretty much American players only. As you – NA server players – probably know, this month is the Military Appreciation month. What this means is that Wargaming created five special gift shop packages – Charity Bundles. These charities are:

- Operation Supply Drop
- AMVETS
- National Military Family Association
- Battleship Texas foundation

The fifth bundle combines all four.

You can read about these charities here. The list of the bundles is here and 25 percent of the price of the bundle will go to the charity, so if you are thinking of donating, this is a nice way to do it. Alternatively, you can donate straight to the charity of your choice via this page.

Continue reading

30.5.2014

- according to Storm, further use of BigWorld engine very much has a future (SS: as in in WG games)
- it’s possible bigger maps will come, “but no promises”
- developers are not considering transferring to a different game engine, but modernizing the current one
- Storm confirms that the patch frequency is one per 1,5 months
- there will be a video showing how the WG team recorded the real tank sounds
- apparently there won’t be a third hangar for WoT

Posted in Q&A

Storm talks about 9.1 Test 2

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/294238.html

Hello everyone,

Storm is asking for Test round 2 feedback (performance, bugs etc) – he adds that the gun and Hellcat/Jackson engine sounds were returned to 9.0 standard because they were added to the test mostly to gather player feedback, there was no plan to release them in 9.1 live patch. The feedback on the gun sounds is conflicting, for the engine sounds it’s positive. Wargaming will take these opinions into account when developing the game further.

There is also a bug that changes the screen side ration, it will be fixed in the live server.

From the discussion:

- the 9.1 test sounds will be polished and they will return in one of the upcoming patches
- more tank engine sounds than Jackson and Hellcat are being recorded
- Storm states that the “moving corpses” bug was already fixed (players claim it is still there)
- engine sounds for exotic tanks will be recorded from “a similiar type of the engine”
- Storm doesn’t consider it a problem that the GPU is stressed in the new hangar more than in combat
- Chat 2.0 – “medium perspective”
- HD model mass-production system is not yet finished
- the mechanism of automatic platoon searching is not being developed yet
- the file “availablecontent.xml”, that appeared in the test client, does not mean there will be DLC, it is tied to the split of the HD and SD client
- the HB crew transfer without penalties “cannot be guaranteed for now” (SS: there was a plan for some of the tanks to act like “premiums” by being able to use crews from different tanks)
- there is little data collected from the test on the 9.1 historical battles
- reworking the decals and hit effects is not in near plans

Posted in Q&A