Hello everyone,

some time ago, I opened up a poll with the question, whether you want skill MM in random battles or not. To explain, the thing generally referred to as “skill MM” is a principle where battles are put together not only with players with suitable tanks, but also with players of the same skill level. The result was as follows:

42 percent of people do not want this at all, 58 percent do. Of the 58 percent, 41 percent of players wants to have this based on your personal rating and only 17 percent wants it based on winrate.

So much for the poll (7954 votes cast). Well… it was a bit pointless poll, because the cold hard truth is that it is almost certain skill MM will not appear in random battles (and by almost certain I mean 99,9 percent chance). Both Storm and SerB were clear about this matter and as far as we know, their position has not changed even a little. Personally, I was always against skill MM and I there are numerous reasons for that (for example, mixing noobs with noobs does not make anyone learn anything), but the thing that occured to me a day ago when I was watching my own stats is: how exactly do you define a good player?

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Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at the fake vehicles in World of Tanks. Please note that by a “fake vehicle”, I don’t necesserily mean various unhistorical configurations (there are TONS of those), but I will mention them too briefly.

The problem with World of Tanks is that it is the victim of its own success in a way. There can be no doubt that it was World of Tanks, that revived the interest in armor in general audience, not just the usual armchair generals, historians, tank enthusiasts etc. Suddenly, tanks are mainstream and with that comes the fact that given how World of Tanks was advertised as a “historical” and “realistic” game (just look at the flashback trailer from this year, you know, the one with unhistorical FV215b), players take the game also as an “encyclopedia” of sorts and take the vehicles in it as real.

In this sense, Wargaming sends a mixed message – some vehicles are practically ultra-historical, down to the precise armor angles and thicknesses (IS-3 is very historical), others are complete fakes, but since WG advertised the game as “realistic”, a lot of people believe these vehicles were real and that is possibly the thing I find I find most annoying about Wargaming: promoting fakes.

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Hello everyone,

just quick heads-up for you:

This Friday (10.1.2014) at 20:00 CET, I’ll be a guest at Rita’s stream (she’s featured now on FTR as the resident streamer, you can check her stream out by clicking the STREAM button in the right part of the FTR bar below the logo).

I will be answering questions about the game and tanks overall to my best knowledge (and that which I cannot answer I will attempt to find out). Whether you want to know about upcoming map changes, historical armor values, or how the competitive teams are tracking on the best offshore sportsbooks for the upcoming Wargaming League finals, we’ll try to cover it. You will be able to ask the questions in the stream chat, Rita will read the chat, pick your questions and read them to me. It will not be a short show, so I am sure there will be plent of time to ask everything you’d like to know.

Please note that since I am not a WG staff member, the answers for you will not be “official” per se, but I will be using official WG sources, such as Storm’s posts and others to find the answers for you. I hope to hear from you on her stream then :)

PS: The comments to this post are locked, as this is simply an announcement

Hello everyone,

usually posting about WG fails is not very entertaining, but this time, I had a pretty good laugh :) So, there is this competition, where you were supposed to fill the crossword with aircraft words. Pretty neat, huh?

Only they posted the crossword file already filled with solution and all. Brilliant. As a result, the competition was cancelled immediately.

Great job, guys! :)

Hello everyone,

those of you, who like to read about tank history probably know how much bullshit info and fake tanks are there around. This is something that actually bothers me, because there are some myths, that get repeated over and over (some of the most annoying myths being referring to the Jagdpanzer 38t as “Hetzer”, the crap about Shermans burning all over the place and other bullshit by Belton Cooper and many others).

A special category of tank myths however belongs to fake tanks, that were never built or even projected. In this category belongs the myth that Löwe or Bär had working prototypes (they didn’t) and all sorts of German-related bullshit, made up by Wehraboos, modellers or simply ignorant or confused people (Krokodil, FlakMaus and others). There is one special subcategory of the previous group however: fakes, created intentionally with some purpose in mind. This is the category of Wargaming fake tanks like the 120 ton VK7201, WT E-100, T28 and T28 Prototype and other crap, that makes its way to history sites, because World of Tanks is supposed to be historical. We’ll take about that in next part.

Today however, we are going to have a look at a fake that – if unchecked – could spread and – in worst case – appear historical, the T-60P.

“T-60P” is supposed to be a (possible high-tier) Polish tank. It appeared first in this topic on European forums in the Polish section. Basically, the author (nickname Antonowicz) produced a story, where he claims that his grandfather was working in Polish plant in the 60′s (!) and that he mentioned (!!!) such a project being created as an upgrade to the T-54 by mounting a T-10M turret (!!!) on a T-54 hull. It was supposed to look like this.

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Part 1: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/01/03/the-legion-at-samara/

Ride accross the river, deep and wide…

They almost made it.

Immediately after the arrival of both flanking batallion to Samarskaya Slobodka, the units took all the barges and rafts they had and started their trek accross the river. Night fell upon the land and all that could be heard were silent whispers of the men, organizing the transport – and soft water splashes, as first makeshift boats touched the murky waters of Samarka river. Across the river, the enemy was waiting, hidden in the evening mists.

A part of the 12th Company, led by 2ndLt.Tajbr would go first. They had no paddles, so they used their trench shovels instead. The men were grim and silent, paddling, or clutching their rifles nervously. There was constant danger that the enemy would see them and start firing on the defenseless barges and rafts.

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Hello everyone,

yesterday, I made a post about the light variant of the T-54 based on info Slakrrr from US forums found. I proposed this vehicle to become a tier 8 light tank in the post and the same question was asked by someone else too. Actually, a developer replied that WG is aware of this vehicle and is considering it.

Immediately after the article, speculations arose whether this tank can become Soviet tier 8 premium (possibly replacing somehow the ill-fated T-44-85). Let’s compare it a bit with other tier 8 premiums.

Now, we will be working with following premises:

- Type 59 as a premium tank is overpowered
- T-34-3 as a premium tank is fine
- T-44 as a regular tier 8 tank is fine

First, let’s compare it with the Type 59, to make sure it wouldn’t be OP immediately.

Armor

Upper frontal plate of Type 59 is 100mm thick at 60 degrees, T-54 (49) has 80mm at 60 degrees
Lower frontal plate of Type 59 is 100mm thick at 55 degrees, T-54 (49) has 80mm at 55 degrees
Turret front of Type 59 is 200mm, T-54 (49) has 180mm

In practically all the armor aspects, T-54 (49) is inferior. So far so good. T-44 has 90mm hull armor (under the same angle, eg. better), but it has weaker turret – significantly. But then, that is not that big a problem, since the T-54-3 also has that typical Chinese/Soviet round hardened turret (with 190mm frontal turret armor no less). I’d say armor-wise it fits.

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Source: wot-news.com

Hello everyone,

two cinematic clips of the Hidden Village map (that cam in 8.10) appeared on wot-news. Most players have probably seen the map, but even so, these clips are very well made, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

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Source: narod2.ru via Slakrrr (US forums)

Hello everyone,

what we have here is a quite interesting thing. Some of you (with very good memory) might remember one interview with SerB for the Goha.ru portal from more than two years ago (you can check it here), where – while discussing potential light tanks – he mentioned an ultra-lightweight variant of the T-54 tank a potential hightier candidate for World of Tanks. I’ve seen this interview before several times, but I honestly never found anything about this special T-54 variant, until it showed up on US forums today. It’s pretty interesting actually. Here’s what we know about it.

The article states that there was some testing of various types of tracks for T-54 tanks around 1949. At the same time, in May 1945, the design bureau of Plant No.183 (Kharkov) designed a light variant of the T-54 tank with improved terrain passability compared to the production T-54 model. This light variant could serve during special operations, where passability, speed and agility were needed more than superior armor protection. In order to achieve that, this light variant had wider tracks (580mm).

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