1.2.2015

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Check out the interesting articles on Overlord’s blog… an eyewitness account and the impression of the Ferdinand in battle and how chocolate for soldiers developed during the war.

- Storm confirms that the alternative hulls will be connected to the suspension module
- IS-5 will not have limited MM, but it will have 221mm pen gun
- T-54 in HD model is not correct quality wise, it’s an “early HD model”, which will be reworked (its quality will be improved)
- T-54 HD colour is not correct, the correct HD Soviet colour is the one IS-7 has
- there are no planned changes to various national colours. If tanks of the same nation differ in colour, it’s a mistake
- Storm confirms that the developers are constantly working on the servers and the matchmaker and they are constantly improving the game (SS: hmmm speaking of servers, anyone on EU has REALLY bad lags last few days?)
- Storm states that unfortunately, it’s not possible to make only one or two big patches per year instead of more small ones, for various reasons
- Storm on upgrades to the game: “Serious improvements need a lot of time for development and testing. That’s why they are so rare and why they get delayed. It’s easier to work with content. But that doesn’t mean we should not work with it at all, right?” (SS: “content” in this case means new maps and tanks)
- Storm confirms that the developers won’t remove the platoon individual missions for now
- currently, developers are analysing the IM results, it’s too early to tell whether there will be any changes

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WT E-100 and GW E-100 Replacements

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I’ll be brief.

Just returned from meeting with Yuri Pasholok here in Prague. He is quite nice in real life and so are his colleagues. It was really interesting. Have to settle my thoughts and then think of whether to write anything or not.

Anyway… this one I can’t keep for myself anyway, plus several people got told already, so I might as well tell.

The potential (not completely agreed, but very likely) replacement for the WT E-100 is Waffenträger Panther with a MASSIVE 15cm gun (very long, L/64 or so). No autoloader, very thin armor. As for the shape, as far as I could see there were several variants, one of which is practically identical to the current ingame GW Panther. Just think GW Panther with longer gun, that’s a TD and not an artillery. The gameplay will be similiar to the WT PzIV.

The plans are historical, it’s not a fake – they were found in Bundesarchiv. Saw them, don’t have them and wouldn’t publish them even if I did (not my property).

Oh yea, and they want to replace the fake GW E-100 with GW Tiger (of sorts, the superstructure is different) with 305mm mortar (Czechoslovak Škoda B20 actually). Alpha ftw! :)

Czechs Sell Tanks to Nigeria to Fight Boko Haram

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Source: zpravy.idnes.cz

Hello everyone,

it looks like vile islamist barbarians from the Boko Haram sect will have their lives get a bit harder soon. Czech company Excalibur Group, led by a former armorer Pavel Strnad, managed to acquire as many as 58 T-72 tanks (T-72M1 variant) from Hungary to sell them – with other heavy military equipment – to the army of Nigeria, locked in a savage conflict with the brutal sect.

16 vehicles in total get to be transported to Nigeria in the largest transport airplane currently in use, Antonov An-225. The estimated price of this part of the contract is somewhere around 197 mil. CZK (cca 8 mil.USD). Quite a bargain for such a firepower.

Nigerian army’s enemy, the Boko Haram islamic sect committed over 100 terrorist attack in 2014 alone, with the death toll of over 3000 people. During the last 5 years of the conflict, it is estimated that over 13000 people lost their lives and over 1,5 million people were forced from their homes and had to flee from the fighting.

Personally, I think it’s a good fate for these vehicles, to be used one last time by proper army.

Light Tank Q&A

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Hello everyone,

another part of “Developer Time” show (where a developer answers player question) was released on Wargaming FM radio. Here’s the transcript, courtesy of WoT Express community. The answering developer is Yuri Filippovsky, “game balance designer”.

- unfortunately, according to historical documents, AMX-40 was classified as a light tank, not much WG can do about it
- T71 started to fall behind in statistics a bit, it was decided to buff it a bit
- the statistics show that the light tanks do not fall behind a lot in XP and credit farming behind other classes
- RU251 will not be nerfed
- it’s possible that when Havok gets introduced, some tanks will have to be rebalanced, but WG is hoping this won’t happen
- AMX-40 is the most dull LT in the game
- the most important role of the light tank is to spot
- there is already a fun mode in development for April 1st, it’s not a “zombie” mode
- AMX-13/90 will not be buffed

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31.1.2015

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Regarding the IM “rigging”, that took place (the rigging post from earlier), I recieved a letter from that clan’s diplomat M4Karabine, who apologized for the incident. The players who participated were punished for their rigging attempts by their clan. Now that is something I can respect.

- “more than 20″ tanks in HD will come in 9.7
- Q: “War Thunder has different gun elevations on tanks than WoT!” A: “I really don’t care what gun elevation WT has.”
- T28 TD will be replaced by an “early” T95 prototype, which will visually be quite similiar to the current T28
- alternative hulls will come after most tanks are reworked to HD
- T-34-3 buff? “We’ll have a look.”
- top gun of the LTTB LT doesn’t have rifling inside the barrel, it’s a bug
- in 9.6 test 2 there are also some mild hangar visual bugs
- the feature where the more battles you have on the tank, the more “worn” it would look (rusty, dirty) will not be implemented
- modern camouflages (such as the Berlin Brigade one for the British) are not planned for PC WoT
- serverside replays will in distant future (SS: IIRC, this was first announced in 2013… oh well)
- it’s possible that Havok will initially be implemented to affect only tanks (SS: as in, various junk falling off the tank when hit, without the realistic destruction part)
- on Russian server, the names of players participating in rigged IM battles will be published, but replays of the battles will not be made public in order “not to teach the audience how to misbehave”

And that’s all for now. Hmm… not enough? You kids want a funny story before you go to bed?

Alright children… sit down, uncle Silentstalker will tell you one.

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“Happy” by Wargaming

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As you can see, Wargaming is working very hard on making the game better, using their time at work in most productive ways :)

 

 

An internal (unlisted) Wargaming video with WG staff singing “Happy” :) It’s quite funny actually (not sure why it was never shared). The staffmembers are recognized are Big Boss Kislyi, Ola, Asya, Evilly and Jabba the Hutt, the rest I have no idea who they are.

Armored Warfare Pre-Alpha: First Impressions

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Hello everyone,

so, as I announced earlier, I was offered a chance to be amongst the first 500 in the first public (pre)alpha test of Armored Warfare, the upcoming tank game by Obsidian Entertainment. Naturally, I grabbed it, curious how this game would turn out.

A little explanation first however. Experienced game developers know that when you make a game, the first thing you can (and should) release is not even alpha – it’s the proof of concept of sorts, a minimalistic version of what you intend the game to be – and let people critisize it. It’s not closed beta, it’s not even real alpha, it’s just a small version of the world your game will bring to the PC screens, one day. As such, a lot of features are missing, as the client gets cut to its core, not to distract the testers by any immediately unnecessary features. This is called “minimum viable product” and you can see more about this concept in this video.

That’s exactly what this pre-alpha was and that’s how I approached it. There was a developer warning that some stuff will be bugged and testers are encouraged to report the issues. The test took place yesterday and took 4 hours.

As many of you know, Gaijin based its tank part of War Thunder on one point: “it’s different that World of Tanks” – and that was it. Same tanks, different methods – some like War Thunder tanks, I don’t, I think it’s a major clusterfuck and it sucks. Obsidian on the other hand went a different way. Their basic idea is that whatever we might think of Wargaming and World of Tanks issues (disappearing tanks, arty, RNG etc.), the game concept is actually very good (just look at the massive success of World of Tanks) – so why not use it, build upon it and improve it?

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