Hello everyone,

okay, here’s an interesting thing. As you probably know, I do generally not revel in or promote anything, that involves the word “unicum”, because it usually is not useful for all the viewers and this blog is for everybody, not just top 0,1 percent of players. However, this is an exception.

Player Taugrim created an interesting series of videos, called “Road to Unicum”. He is a skilled player, but that’s not the most important thing here. What is important is that in them, as he plays, he explains what exactly is he doing and why with his calm voice.

It’s not a guide for TOTAL newbies, you are expected to understand at least the basics, but I still find it pleasant to watch and generally easy to understand. The series is ongoing and it already has 11 parts – this is the first one:

If you like it, the rest of the series can be found under the following on the following playlist – when you have time, check them out as well. If the feedback is good (so far, the video rating shows very positive feedback), I will keep on adding more parts in the future.

Hello everyone,

I am sure some of you have already seen it, but just to be sure, it’s a very interesting video (thanks to Lert for this one).

When it comes to war and historical movies from it, most people automatically imagine black and white – but there are some color movies as well, which give the war an entirely new “meaning” – it’s sort of chilling to see all these things in color, it makes them much more real. Real people, real vehicle, real fates.

Here’s a set of clips from the last German major offensive of the war, Ardennes. Enjoy.

Hello everyone,

website (service) Raptr.com prepared a list of most played games in January 2015 – and how is World of Tanks doing?

You know what? It actually surprised me – two things. First, I thought World of Tanks would be doing better, but oh well, the survey is likely based on western preferences. Second thing however is the popularity of War Thunder. To be quite honest, I thought it would be far less.

Also, The Old Republic? I thought that game was kinda… dead.

Hello everyone,

the Insider is back with a portion of news from the developer chatter channels. Let’s have a look at what the developers are up to this time.

- the physics test will come relatively soon and everything is being prepared for it. The Insider mentions that it’s possible for it to appear in two weeks, which corresponds to what Storm said. More on physics:

The new physics have one interesting ability: dynamic change of terrain properties, based on settings (weather for example, when/if the weather system is implemented). In other words, you can make the same terrain behave as hard as a rock (a road for example) and you can switch it to “slippery” mode (for example when there’s ice on it). This is however just an advanced project, not developed yet – an idea. There is a concern about creating the movement “too slippery”. An example with a Hellcat is made by a developer in this matter, that for example, on ice, the vehicle is prone to small movement corrections (small slides) to make its behavior look realistic (SS: this is exactly how it works now in Armored Warfare, it looks awesome, but it makes the vehicles a bit more difficult to control)

- so far, the developer idea for the physics is that flips (turning on the roof) should not be easy to accomplish and that nobody wants “KV powersliding” – the idea is specifically NOT to make the physics feel like War Thunder
- developers treat the physics tests as real tests, the final product might be very very different. There will apparently be a lot of really strange and crazy stuff in the tests and developers expect harsh criticism for that, but they don’t care, as the test is really just there for them to collect data
- once again, some lowtier developer brought up the Sheridan for WoT and once again, it was denied for the usual reasons (missiles)
- SerB likes sushi and doesn’t like anime all that much
- developers suspect that a high ranking Russian Federation official is playing World of Tanks, as they tracked one IP back to “White House” (not the US one, but the Moscow one) and it comes from there at certain hours every week
- the fact that M6A2E1 is coming in HD was influenced by a certain post on American forums, where some player explained very carefully and at length why the model is wrong and what should be done with it. It wasn’t given any special priority, it just however happened to be hastened by the amount of correct info available. The model is not finished yet (some parts are still missing), but the errors were corrected based on that one post on American forums and should be fine now

Hello everyone,

and the 9.7 French minibranch (tiers 2-5) continues with the new tier 4 medium tank, SARL42

Characteristics (elite setup, top gun, 100 percent crew):

Tier: 4
Hitpoints: 340
Engine: 230 hp
Weight: 22,03 tons
Power-to-weight: 10,44 hp/t
Maximum speed: 40/16 km/h
Hull traverse: 28 deg/s
Terrain resistance: 1,055/1,247/2,11
Turret traverse: 31,3 deg/s
Viewrange: 330
Radio range: 740,4

Continue reading →

- according to developers, the statement that “accuracy nerf made premium vehicles with poor accuracy farm noticeably less credits” is not true
- the upcoming new motion physics will have no effect on game performance, as it is calculated server-side
- Storm doesn’t remember the numbers exactly, but for all vehicles with normal (non-derp) guns, the damage difference between 0.9.5 and 0.9.6 after the accuracy nerf was less than one percent
- regarding the question, why Wargaming doesn’t want to put serious hardcaps on any class including artillery: “If there are more vehicles of one class than we need, it means that the class is incorrectly balanced and we have to balance it correctly instead of introducing artificial hardcaps”
- TD as a class will not be “rebalanced” – Storm states that the statement that every team has 4-5 TD’s on average is false

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

okay, something lighter for now. There’s a corporate article on Wargaming website, describing how Wargaming America works internally. Well, describing… it’s mostly just a list of departments. Some things made me giggle a bit though, like this picture of Wargaming NA “business development” derpartment:

Check the sitting guy in the middle, he’s throwing a Latin Kings gang sign :) Makes me wonder, how EXACTLY are they developing their business :D

Russian server has this meme about black helicopters coming for anyone, who “displeased” SerB – maybe not that far from the truth, eh, Don Burkatovsky? :)

Hello everyone,

patch 9.6 introduced two premium tanks to World of Tanks: AMX CDC and STA-2. Wargaming (RU) made an introductory post to both – the CDC was posted previously (translated by FTR) and here’s the second one, based on the article on Russian portal.

The characteristics of the vehicle in the article are presented as such:

Hitpoints: 1420
Maximum load: 37 tons
Hull traverse: 44 deg/s
Maximum speed: 45 km/h
Engine: 500 hp
Engine fire chance: 15 percent
Power-to-weight: 14,7 hp/t
Hull armor: 45/35/25
Turret armor: 70/60/35

DPM: 2028
Gun: 90mm Rifled Gun
ROF: 8,45 RPM
Penetration: 185/275/45
Damage: 240/240/320
Accuracy: 0,37
Aimtime: 2,2s
Elevation: -10/+13

Turret traverse: 44 deg/s
Viewrange: 380 meters
Radio range: 720 meters

Armor:

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

today, a micropatch was released on EU server (and RU as well). For those interested, it contains the following changes:

- fixed the Tiger P bugged model
- fixed the display of player status in new reworked contacts list
- fixed the display (working) of promo screens (SS: “grats for your victory here’s a girl tanker” and such)

Thanks to Trixie for helping with the last :)

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/02/18/world-of-tanks-announced-for-xbox-one

Hello everyone,

Wargaming announced the Xbox One version of World of Tanks for 2015. Accounts and progress will be carried over from Xbox360 version.

Notice the seriously improved graphics (especially the flames look very good), but also there are some things apparently missing (compared to PC version), like the realistic track movement.