Hello everyone,
what follows is the summary of an interview with Michael “Storm” Zhivets, that came out in the Czech WoT monthly magazine “Deník Nooba” (Diary of a Noob) ran by Carramba66 (the same guy who made the veteran charity happen). Its second issue is now out and if you can read Czech, I can really recommend it (it contains e-sports posts, reviews, historical articles and such). You can get it from this post.
As for the interview, it’s a bit older (from the beginning of December) – the issue of the magazine was supposed to come out earlier, but there were some delays in production. Either way, here’s the summary:
- Storm started in the Minsk game studio called Arise, that merged with Wargaming in 2007
- when looking back, he wouldn’t do any significant thing on WoT differently, apart from being more prepared for the huge influx of players (the servers sometimes weren’t handling the popularity of the game)
- his big hobby is fishing
- PEGI and ESRB ratings are very important for Wargaming, without them, some regional markets would remain closed – but as for the missing crewmembers, Storm states that the original goal was to make a game without violence elements
- roughly 75 million people around the world play World of Tanks, including women and elderly folks
- the fact Germans already have Panzer 38t and 35t will not damage the quality of the Czechoslovak branch, especially since there are other “copies” between the trees (Storm mentions “twins” in French and German tree)
- European tech tree will not come earlier than 2015
- the names of the tank crewmembers for EU tree will correspond to the country the tank was built in
- Storm states that while WT E-100 is very strong, it might face the same effect as FV215b 183 (SS: that means that while a lot of players consider the vehicle OP, statistically it’s balanced), he admits it might be rebalanced after a few months
- historical battles will appear in first half of 2014, WG is actively working on them
- no list of historical battles’ tanks is planned for now
- apparently gold ammo will be limited in historical battles (only to a certain number of rounds, so players don’t spam it)
- there will be new bonuses for the owners of premium accounts, but it’s too soon to tell
- there won’t be direct QA with Storm and SerB on EU server (the way Russians have it)
- next year, global graphics improvement for WoT is planned (improving the number of polygons, the quality of textures and 3D models)
- there will be 2 kilometer and even 4 kilometer maps
- spotting system will not be cancelled, but it will be reworked. For starters, the amount of camo factor will depend on how many spotting checkpoints are visible (SS: as in, if a tank shows only one spot checkpoint, for example the roof, it will be less visible than a tank just standing in the open)
- Storm confirms that APCR ammo does lose penetration over distance faster than AP
