Talked to a guy, who previously wrote me some interesting info. According to him, the 9.0 test will not come earlier than very late March or early April. But… again, unconfirmed (more solid source than the last one though, no offense to anyone)

- P.Bityukov confirms the appearance of early model Panzer IV this year (SS: 9.0)
- SerB states that it’s completely possible there is an error in the US M68 gun weight (it’s too heavy), if there is time, the developers will move the weight from the gun to the turret (SS: the way module weight works is that although some modules have their historical weight, the important part is the sum of all weights, so module weight itself is basically a balance parameter)
- next account migration from RU to US won’t come anytime soon
- no TD hardcap is planned, because artillery (that was hardcapped) has very specific gameplay and TD’s don’t
- SerB confirms that there will be transitions between various branches of the EU tree (SS: for example, the Czechoslovak T-21 into Hungarian Turán branch)
- in the EU tree, tanks in different configurations will not change their nationality, because it would be a mess (SS: specifically, Czechoslovak TNH tanks in various configurations could belong to Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia etc. – the player was asking, whether by changing its configuration (turret, gun), the tank will switch nationality – yes, it’s a dumb question)
- M103 was picked for HD re-work in 9.0, because it was the only American heavy tank, that was in active service
- Tortoise was picked because it’s well known and high-tier, T-34/85 and IS tanks were picked because they are symbols of Soviet WW2 victory
- the Maus turret flying off in today’s trailer might not be the final version, but Storm states that they have seen a reference video from Syria, where a turret flies for ten seconds (!) after ammo rack explosion
- Storm states that “normal multithreading” (SS: multicore support I think) will not give the game the performance boost everyone expects, it’s not the universal solution to all problems
- Storm adds to the issue above that there is no universal optimization solution that would solve everything, instead, Wargaming has to improve things a bit on 10 different places and the result will come. These places are for example CPU multithread, GPU multithread, reworked grass, trees and bushes render, new optimized anti-aliasing, new optimized water render, landscape render optimization, more active model level of detail, new effects render. There is a lot of work now.
- the points above are being worked on
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