Today’s issue is “interesting”. Basically, what happened: a flood of artywhiners, moaning about arty nerfs started spamming the developer thread and SerB switched to troll mode, as he usually does. Well… you’ll see.

- red screen of death is apparently back for 0.8.6, happens allegedly in sniper mode, the new detail reduction system automatically sets everything to minimum and then crashes. SerB’s answer: “Write a support ticket”
- the shell prices were rebalanced not only based on their damage and penetration, but also based on the type of the gun they are used in. That’s why the (weaker) premium KV-5 shells are more expensive than (stronger) premium KV-4 subcaliber shells.
- devs don’t think the tier 8 premium vehicles with limited MM will suffer from the tier 9 arty (too much)
- further measures to reduce arty amount (SS: RU server reports the same 5v5 arty battles as before)? “If necessery”
- currently it can be assumed, that tier 10 arty is balanced towards tier 10 tanks
- Q: “All the guns now have basically the same accuracy!” (SS: common complain is that the guns are too accurate) A: “How terrible…”
- Q: “Too many fires caused by accurate guns!” A: “How terrible…”
- Q: “Mods not working!” A: “How terrible…”
- Q: “Priest moved to another tier, wtf?” A: “How terrible…” (SS: this question was even in rhymes :) )
- Q: “The amount of arties did not get lower…” A: “How terrible…”

Well, basically, “How terrible…” was the answer on most complaints about 0.8.6. There is a lot of whine, including “hidden arty buff”. Some exchanges are actually really funny:

Player Vesil: “I am quitting the game!” SerB: “How terrible…”
Player Vesil: “You don’t have much of a vocabulary” SerB: “How terrible…”
Player LordStuped: “Do you have to make fun of players, who don’t like the patch?” SerB: “How terrible…”

- Q: “FPS dropped significantly…” A: “How terrible…”

(later, when asked whether he doesn’t respect players, SerB states: “It is necessery to distinguish players and idiots. Those are two (unfortunately still somewhat overlapping) categories. We do respect players, but with idiots it’s not that simple. This (thread trollflood) happens regularily – idiots come here and the thread topic is temporarily exhausted (SS: as in out of order)”)

- ingame penetration indicator works automatically, there is no need to manually adjust values for it
- dynamic camera is apparently fine: “you can turn it off (if you want to)”
- Q: “Why did you decide not to implement the British arty with autoloader?” A: “Beause the arty doesn’t come in this patch.” (SS: not sure what SerB exactly means, probably just a brushoff, either way, the British arty with autoloaders doesn’t appear in the leaked British arty branch)
- it’s possible there will be various sound settings for 2.0, 2.1 and 5.1 sound
- when near tank corpses, jerking of the aim circle left and right is likely the effect of dynamic camera
- 8.7 will be a simple patch, containing apparently only content (vehicles,maps), not functional changes. SerB confirms 8.7 will bring British arty.
- developers won’t be able to judge the effect of 8.6, when 8.7 comes out (SS: meaning it will come soon), the results will most likely be known in 8.8 tho (SS: later, Storm stated that it takes roughly a month to collect the date, it’s therefore logical to assume that the British arty will come within the month)
- the average battle duration is cca 7 minutes and it practically hasn’t changed since the game came out
- developers are considering the implementation of T58 (T57 Heavy with a 155mm gun) – not as a CW reward vehicle, but apparently as a regular one – but SerB states that it’s hard to balance (as in, overpowered)
- shell ejector animation might be added, “when it’s done it’s done”
- Q: “I went thru the thread, not enough concrete answers, just ridicule…” A: “I went thru the thread, not enough concrete questions. How terrible…”
- SerB explains his attitude towards forum whiners: out of all the active players (those who play once per month), only 1/10000 are whiners, who try to pretend to be the “voice of the nation”. SerB finds that amusing.
- Westfield map was changed (SS: not sure I know how exactly, something about the sloped access from the village near the bridge towards the left base being removed), it was intentional
- the game is changed in big patches (rather then series of small minipatches), because: “That’s the general speed of development. The project is complicated, any changes must be accompanied by serious program testing. That’s not possible when doing frequent minipatches.”
- it’s possible the possibility to sell Superpershing for gold will come even after 8.7 – it’s necessery to implement the mechanism for that first. “It’s not a complicated mechanism, but as this matter concerns money, it will have to be tested thoroughly.”
- SerB on arty: “It was created to limit the heavies and especially heavily armored tank destroyers. The changes were designed to reduce arty effectivity against fast vehicles, while keeping the “heavy tank killer” function.”
- SerB doesn’t think the shell distribution within the aim circle will change further
- current maps being developed are mostly based on exotic regions, so that Clanwars maps can use those. Future maps will be more traditional, such as a “USSR city in winter” (this is an example)
- there are still issues with making the friendlist and ignorelist longer, when it comes to easy ignorelist cleaning, the developers are waiting for the new reworked chat, they don’t want any temporary solutions
- 0.8.6 contains no “hidden” changes in engine fire mechanism
- SerB states that FCM50t is doing fine in 0.8.6, players just need to play it properly – as a medium, not as a heavy, it’s sort of “anti-Superpershing”
- there will be no “spring” special camo implemented
- there will be no “art of war” competition for arty, because the devs want to nerf it, not make players play it more
- it’s unlikely that second German TD line will come in upcoming patches, but it will most likely come before the Chinese arty
- MM mechanism itself did not change in 0.8.6
- the exact percentual effect of the camo net will not be disclosed (it’s not confirmed 0.8.6 camo net gives a 25 percent bonus)
- Storm is working on new camo system description article
- it’s not possible to make the dynamic camera not-optional, because that would mean transferring the camera calculations to the server. If it becomes possible, the camera will become compulsory.
- whether your ammorack is full of shells or not (whether you loaded all the shells) has no effect on tank characteristics (doesn’t limit movement like the weight does). This is intentional, so that people wouldn’t go into battle with only a few shells and then screw their team by running around with no ammo
- it’s possible that one of the upcoming patches will contain something to improve the account security (no details yet)
- worldoftanks.ru portal is visited by less than 1 percent of active players
- the gold consumables for 1/2 price can also an experiment (SS: which probably means that if it is successful enough, it will stay)
- functions inspired by some mods will continue to be added, if the mods don’t break the game that is
- further tier9/10 arty nerfs? “If necessery. We decide, what is necessery.”
- devs don’t consider the French premium arty (LeFH) to be directly nerfed, it won’t be possible to sell it for gold – as for mechanism changes (such as accuracy for arties, or the lower 105mm HEAT penetration), those affect more vehicles than just the LeFH, that’s why they are not considered direct nerfs
- Storm states that the sounds of impact were even more “bland” in real life, it’s not like the tank was supposed to “ring” like a bell
- the mechanism of bush camo was not changed from 0.8.5
- no rebalances of light tanks (in connection with the new tier 9/10 arties) are planned
- the E-100 turret moving, that was deemed “too much” earlier will be eventually revisited, but it has very, very low priority
- in 0.8.6, second ricochet of a shell is still impossible
- the developers are tracking the effect of various game changes on the amount of people buying gold
- apparently, there was a second Superpershing historical variant, but the developers decided to implement the one, which they had more data on
- the loader perk Adrenaline Rush 10 percent HP threshold won’t be increased
- according to SerB, the fact that the tank disappears one second after it is lit up can happen, it’s neither a bug, nor a change in 0.8.6
- the “tasks” on test server (SS: you know, the thing where you did recieve ridiculously high rewards for god knows what) was just an experiment
- apparently, voting (about WG matters) in the game won’t be implemented
- the ability to freeze accounts (including the run of premium account, “vacation mode”) will not be available anytime soon – and if it comes in the future, it will be very limited. Freezing only the premium time without freezing the account itself is not even considered
- currently, multi-level water (SS: as in, lakes at various heights, cascades etc.) is technically possible, but it won’t come soon
- Black Prince armor wasn’t changed in 0.8.6
- Storm states that when it comes to vehicle balance and gameplay, the “rock-paper-scissors” principle still remains, just that there are two triangles now (HT-MT-TD and HT-arty-LT) and some of the vehicles are not as firmly belonging to one group as two years before
- developers are aware of the various fan-made trees, they have been corresponding with some sensible discussion participants from the threads dedicated to these fan-made trees. On this, SerB states that players in general have little authentic info on Japanese tech
- Murazor’s (SS: a popular WoT Russian blogger) opinion is apparently not more important to devs than the opinions of other players (SS: parallels can be drawn here with SOME EU/US players, who think they influence WG at every step)
- the “sell this tank for gold” function will be available only in very limited cases when the vehicle characteristics will change significantly, definitely not a standard option
- the top Conqueror turret is balanced as it is apparently (SS: a player was complaining that it is actually worse than the stock turret in some aspects, SerB stated that one has to take into account the armor slope and the fact it can carry a more powerful gun)
- Soviet D-5T-85BM has 10 ROF on T-34/85, 11,11 ROF on T-43 and 10,53 ROF on T-44, apparently this is intentional
- SerB states that skill MM based on some statistics (doesn’t matter what statistics) is technically possible (SS: it will not happen)
- “expert” medals (SS: not sure how they are called in english, master?) do not take premium tanks into account, because some premium tanks are practically impossible to meet in randoms
- the 0.8.6 premium shells for the Konisch gun were “sold” automatically during the patch implementation, because the developers wanted to nerf them, added them to the automatic sell list and in the end didn’t nerf them after all
- open-topped vehicles have better viewrange than other vehicles of their class (!)
- some idiot made a video with him using illegal mods and posted it in the developer thread. Made SerB happy, apparently
- SerB states that as far as he knows, the side mesh screens on Panzer IV Schmalturm do not work as spaced armor, it’s possible they will be added, when all the models will are reworked

As predicted, today, the Russian server did recieve the 0.8.6 patch (EU server will most likely recieve it on thursday and US server next tuesday). The patch notes are a mess (they are HUGE, I really don’t envy the google guys translating them), but apparently, some things were ommitted from them, namely the T69 tank changes:

- ground resistance for the T84E1 suspension on solid ground reduced by 8 percent and on medium ground by 7 percent
- T95 suspension turn rate buffed from 40 deg/s to 42 deg/s and recieved a ground resistance buff of 8 percent on medium grounds
- engine AOSI-895-5 nerfed from 600 to 550hp

Also, please note that when the patch comes live, all the camouflages, regular experience, crews and combat statistics will stay on the vehicles they were before 0.8.6, even if that vehicle changes tier (eg. if you had 10k XP on tier 8 arty, that becomes tier 10, the XP will stay on that arty, so you will have a tier 10 arty with 10k XP)

Please note that ALL the arties will have ALL the installed unlockable modules removed, effectively becoming stock. The unlocked modules will be moved to your depot. Ammunition and equipment will also be removed from the arties and moved to the depot.

Components, that will get removed from the game (for example tier 10 arty second suspensions) will be sold for their purchase price.

We also have a trailer for 0.8.6. Because, you know, putting up a video, in which too many arties chew up the enemies is really a good idea for a patch, that’s supposed to actually limit the number of arties in battles:

Anyway, today there is nothing much to translate really, only one retarded trollquestion:

- there are no plans to allow the tank crews to retrain into pilots (in connection with the WoWp/WoT account unification)