Hello everyone,

for some strange reason (possibly to bait Russian fanboys), Wargaming made a voiceover mod with three Russian Wargaming “celebrities” – Asya, Ola and Kyril Oreshkin. Well, Ola you know, Asya is running this… I don’t know, videoblog? Not sure how to call it, but its name is “Poka vse v tanke”. And the guy runs some WG streams and makes RNG videos I think.

Anyway, here’s a video about how they made it:

And if for some reason you feel like downloading it, you can do that here on the page (site, direct downoad link is here, it has 78 megs).

Source: VK Wotleaks Community

As the title suggests – new descriptions of the three maps currently on supertest.

Mittengard (lowtier map):

A small town on the bottom of a ravine became an arena for heated battles of steel machines, movingst amongst the remnants of broken houses, trying to hide from enemy artillery fire while fighting their way to victory.

Winterberg (winter Ruinberg, the description is the same as current Ruinberg):

Concentric city streets, along with dense forests and bushes in the overgrown park allow for hidden maneuvers and redeployment of your troops. Although artillery fire is of limited use in the city, the debris provides effective cover for your troops.

Ghost Town (team battle exclusive):

The sea is long gone from the outskirts of this perished settlement. But rear warriors never retreat!

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3617848.html

Right-click and select “view image” for full resolution.

Upper row: France, China, Germany, Japan
Lower row: Britain, USA, USSR

According to the Wotleaks community, the pictures are based on WG staff. I am sure you recognize the last face of second Russian row.

Thanks to “Lovejoy-Fedora” and trankie00 for the piece of info :)

Hello everyone,

all plans change apparently – even the good ones :) Some time ago (roughly a month back or so), it was stated by Tanitha that there’s a possibility of Type 59 appearing for one time only special sale event on the ASIA server, along with other exclusive tank – BT-SV. While BT-SV was indeed sold, Type 59 was not. Now, Tanitha confirms that the thought was indeed scrapped:

The type 59 isn’t planned for sale. I just replied to a player’s question about rare tanks, that we are currently considering the type 59, so it was currently unknown. The type 59 however will continue in the same format as it has been for the past ~2 years..

“Currently not available for sale, unlikely to be sold again, no planned/intended sales, will continue to have limited availability as competition prizes”

We have some competitions coming up over the festive period where players have the chance to win one. So keep an eye out for those.

Hello everyone,

there won’t be much posted today (got some things I really need to take care of), just some leaks, gimme a few mins to upload them :) In the meanwhile, there are some invite codes for you, courtesy of Feep (US server) and EnslavedAtals

MK8TC-Y9DH3-GH8FZ-99WR2-MF256
MK8TC-NGCYX-EMN73-S6W9T-EUGMX
MK8TF-XKWKK-G3MDX-UEPPE-32H6X
MK8TG-8RUTV-WMV6D-7XF9V-XH2NU
MK8TS-NAAE3-4UC26-BWRGT-XB46E
MK8TR-2KE5A-3E9G8-VKB7Z-4VDDH
MK8TE-8E7T9-R8GY7-ERBX2-YBKXZ
MK8TF-N659N-EPGXM-PU6NP-7DE55
MK8T6-WAVZS-N9N6A-4TNW9-PYURG

Also: American server invite code giveaway – US server only. Thanks to Siemka_PL for this one :)

Hello everyone,

regarding the post today about the premium tank compensation – the “credits instead of gold”, according to the explanations of developers on Russian forums, this applies ONLY for bonus codes (as in, if you buy a premium tank in the shop and you already have it, you get gold, not credits).

The reason for this is to limit the amount of bonus code scams – this issue seems to be mostly limited to RU server: either people hoarding bonus codes and selling them for cheap, or simply stealing them (they “guess” the code based on several samples, it actually works very well). WG has been steadily removing various scam sites (these are common to Vkontakte and Livejournal), connected to this issue as well.

Anyway, that’s that.

Hello everyone,

Russian site habrahabr.ru posted an interesting information. Wargaming’s competitor on Russian market, company Mail.Ru (the creator of an atrocious browser-based WoT clone called Ground War: Tanks) was involved in a Arbitration Court of Moscow decision number А40-91072/14-90-176 (“Mail.Ru Games versus IFNS No.14″). The verdict was announced on 24.11.2014.

IFNS stands for Federal Tax Service Inspection – you know, Russian IRS. In early 2014, IFNS made a thorough audit of the abovementioned company, as a result of which it was found out that in the second quarter of 2013, Mail.Ru made cca 1,6 billion rubles (cca 26 million Euro) from “implementing additional game functionals”, in other words, for selling premium accounts, tanks and such.

IFNS decided to tax this revenue with VAT (18 percent) and ordered Mail.Ru to pay cca 292 million rubles as VAT backpayment (and possibly 58 million more as a fine for tax evasion). Mail.Ru was not trying to evade taxes, because according to Russian law these payments are exempted from VAT, but IFNS did it anyway.

In other words, IFNS considers the sale of virtual items (and this already concerns WoT, I am sure you see how) subjected to VAT.

Mail.Ru of course did not want to pay anything, so they put it up for a court to decide. And, surprisingly enough, the court sided with IFNS. I do not know whether Mail.Ru appealed (or whether that’s even possible), but the point is, it’s completely possible that other game developers (including Wargaming) will be soon subjected to “random inspections” and with a court decision in their hands, IFNS will demand more taxes (Russia needs money after all, I don’t have to tell you why). My first reaction to this was “well, that explains a lot”.

Conclusion

It’s clear that in the end, it will be the players, who pay the bill. But the real question is – WHICH players? Russian ones already saw the prices on their server soar with the plummet of the ruble (since the prices are tied to USD), so I think that as a “global” company, Wargaming might transfer those costs to regions with richer players. In other words, us. So, keep an eye out for price increases.

Hello everyone,

I am putting this here to give you an idea of how World of Tanks is popular in Russia. There is a World of Tanks FB group, which has cca 1,25 million “likes” – and that’s for the entire world. As you may or may not know, Russia on the other hand has its very own social network called Vkontakte (lit. “in contact” – there are more Russian-exclusive social networks such as Odnoklassniki, but that’s a long story). Anyway, this VK group has almost 2 million fans.

Wargaming did put up an event where if they get 2 million until 18.12., there will be (on Russian server only of course) two x2 XP days as a reward. Here’s a video accompanying it, with English subtitles available.