I like the Extra Credit series. They get some things wrong I think, but nevertheless, this is worth watching.

And what do you think, does Wargaming do it right?

Personally, at first, I thought WG does it ONLY right, but I realized that in some cases, WG might be… “slipping”. Not into P2W mind you (yes, I know many people complain about gold shells, but in reality, these aren’t used that much, a lot of the “OMG U GOLD NOOB” comes from noobs, who don’t realize that especially on high tiers, many tanks use APCR as standard ammo and whine about that).

What I mean is that some stock-to-elite grinds are just terrible. Lately, I’ve encountered this in stock Centurion and Centurion 7, those are pretty terrible as stock. There are however even worse cases. This strongly pushes the player into paying for free-XPing to elite status and certainly gives not much joy.

Hello everyone,

first, I apologize for the length of this post, but I humbly suggest it for your attention, because it concerns YOU personally as well. Today, we are going to talk about sizes. No, not THOSE kinds of sizes, but file size, client sizes. Have you ever thought about what the updating of World of Tanks does to internet?

Currently (patch 8.11), WoT client size is cca 13,5 Gb – you can check yourselves. If it’s significantly more, delete the content of the “Updates” folder (yes, you can do that safely). Some mods increase the size of the client significantly as well (model rework, the “Winter Mod” and such), but that is not really a concern here.

13,5 gigs – that’s quite manageable, right? Well… for now. There are rough estimates as to how big the client will be, when everything (maps, tanks) is reworked into HD. Last time I’ve seen, this estimate is around 80 gigs I think. Think about it: 80 gigabytes of World of Tanks client. Obviously, that’s not a problem for existing players (they will be “fed” via patches in parts and won’t have to download this all at once, unless they do something stupid and compromise the client integrity by using some shitty bad-written mods). It’s the new players, for whom this is an issue.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

after (literally) weeks of considering the matter, I have decided to drop the Hall of Shame altogether, despite the outcome of the previous poll. On one hand, it was fun, but I feel that it adds nothing to FTR anymore. I will ask you not to submit any more idiots per mail of Facebook anymore. It is my belief that even the clans, harboring most retards (EFE, FAME and others) don’t need further promotion anyway, everyone knows what kind of people they are anyway.

I hope you understand my decision.

SS

Hello everyone,

Patch 9.0 is getting released on 15.4.2014 (next Tuesday). This has been confirmed by Wargaming.

http://www.wot2014.com

Not much there, but the pages look cool.

Inside:

- fortifications – basically, clan bases with various bonuses, that give various bonuses (for example credits, XP, free XP) to the clan:

- there will be a possibility to fight over clan bases, this will be independent on CW’s
- features in this mode: airstrike, recon, mines, AI pillboxes (acting like artillery apparently)
- historical battles – uneven team numbers, special characteristics for HB tanks (different from the tanks of the same configuration in random battles!), heavies will have less HP, respawn model (heavies don’t respawn, lowtier meds do)
- garage battle mode is coming by the end of the year
- team battle mode will be improved (team names, special awards)

Continue reading →

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/sep/03/improbable-research-waste-weapon-system

Thanks to RW for this one

Hello everyone,

when I saw the abovelinked article for the first time, I thought it would be “one of those British things”, given the fact it was published in the Guardian, but no, it comes from Russia.

Apparently, Russian inventor Aleksandr Georgievich Semenov, invented a brilliant way of disposing ehm… “human waste” in a tank. You fire it at the enemy.

The basic principle is: soldiers shit in shells and then fire them. Nope, this is not a joke or a prank – this guy actually had this seriously patented in 2009 (two drawings – one of them postedabove – and 12 pages of text). Basically, a soldier shits into the open compartment in the shell warhead, loads the shell, and fires it either into “safe area”, or “at targets of opportunity”.

Well… everyone knows Russians are into psychological warfare, but this is brutal… even for them.