Tuesday 21 July 2015

World of Tanks Xbox One Pre-download

Hello Warriors,

World of Tanks Xbox One is available for Pre-download.
If you Pre-download they will give you a Premium T1E6-X1 with a universal camouflage and a WoT emblem that will remain no matter which map you are.


T1E6-X1

21.07.2015 Q&A

Hello Warriors,

No Q&A for today but we do have a hide and seek winner:

Thank you for emailing this Amazing Ace. :)

"How Japan Purchased a Tiger" RSR Version

 Hello Warriors,

yesterday was doing my occasional check on the portals and noticed that WG EU posted this article on how Japan Purchased a Tiger: http://worldoftanks.eu/en/news/pc-browser/47/victim-circumstance-japan-tiger/

Now, before I get taken wrong (again) I actually would love EU to publish more of these, seriously. The portal is a great way to engage the audience and get them interested certain in subjects that would be deemed boring in a class room for example. Thumbs up for that!
But, after clicking on the article in contempt, I started reading, my eyebrows raised at certain paragraphs and sent it to some of my contacts...

Eun Ae Sun, a historian who works with Japanese archives got back to me.
She wrote her version, and a very good one by the way, on "How Japan Purchased a Tiger" and also made a little dissection of the article posted above, correcting some of the parts:


Where did this Tiger come from?

From the records given to us, we have a general timeline of the events that transpired from 1935 to 1945 between Germany and Japan through their embassies. In 1943 Japan requested the embassy to inspect new tanks Germany had been working on. The man assigned to lead this team was General Hiroshi Oshima. In 1943, Hiroshi spent a large portion of time conducting tests and personal trials in Siverskaya (Leningrad Oblast) with the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion. While there he and his team were able to get a firm grasp on the Panzer VI Tiger’s capabilities. To Hiroshi’s standards, the vehicle preformed outstandingly and wanted it to be purchased for use.

(General Hiroshi with Oberleutnant Klaus Diehls 1943)

We’ve all seen the iconic photograph of the Japanese crew driving a Tiger. There has been some debate on it, but as far factual data on it goes, it was taken on the 7th of June, 1943. It shows General Hiroshi and a colleague mounted on the Tiger while in Siverskaya. After these events Hiroshi left the eastern front and went back to Germany. While there he again was presented with a Tiger at the Henschel Plant. It was then the General sent a request of purchase to Japan regarding the Tiger, with Japan confirming the transaction on February 28th, 1944.

While observations on the Tiger were conducted further at the Henschel plant, the Japanese embassy were able to test a single Panzer V Panther, and two Panzer IIIs, no purchases followed.

Body Art competition on RU

Hello warriors,

an interesting (if a bit awkward) competition appeared on RU server. The players are supposed to draw a World of Tanks themed vehicle on their arms or face, take a photo and maybe win. Something like this.



The prize for the best body art is 12k gold + some high tech keyboard. On the other hand WG is free to do as they wish with your photographs so the question is, would you do this for 12k gold?

I definitely want to see the results.. :P

Armored Warfare: New vehicles

Hello Warriors,

Armored Warfare just presented the vehicles that will be added during the phase 4 of the Early Access stage. They will be mostly lower tiers and brought to fill gaps in the vehicle branches.


T-54 (tier2)



M48 Patton (tier 2)

"FV201/A45" is coming to EU... or?

Hello warriors,

as you probably know, both the Russian and the American servers had the possibility to get their hands on the FV201/A45 premium tank. Granted, that tank's hardly the best premium vehicle out there - but it has its redeeming features.



The EU server should, according to Ectar, be getting the opportunity in "near future" (link)

But... that was written a week ago.

In the meanwhile, you have the option to get the KV-220 premium tank (both new and interesting) as a part of (surprise!) 30 EUR bundle.

I suppose EU server will have to wait before having the option to actually get their hands on the FV201. Why I have a feeling it will be a part of a 50 EUR bundle?

Keeping up with Serb: Alaska edition.

Hello Warriors,

A crazy club, the Flight Fundation Bravo-369, organized eight years ago a flight from Alaska to Siberia. Last year, Wargaming and our RNG lord Serb decided to join the project, this are some of the photos:


I'm usually a big fan of a man with a beard but for some reason I just cant compute Serb with one...some men are best kept baby faced.

World of Warships - Enabling Your Replays

Hello Warriors,

the Mighty Jingles has uploaded a video on how to enable your World of Warships replays. I've noticed this is one of the most frequent questions me and others get so decided to share:


Armored Warfare: Developer Digest #3

Hello Warriors,

Armored Warfare just posted its third Developer Digest, a summary of information answered in the forums by the devs:

 Richard Taylor (chief Armored Warfare developer)

On the upcoming “colorblind” mode:
Some recent changes we've made to the UI code will facilitate a faster implementation of colorblind support than we could have done previously. As such, we've got engineers working on a full implementation. It will allow you to switch between various presets designed and tested to work for various types of color blindness but it will also allow you to edit the pre-set RBG values yourself (via a config file) if you don't care for the colors we picked. The colors that will be changed by the color blind options include: Player, Allies, Enemies, Platoon, Objectives (PvE), Teamkillers. And again, you will be able to edit the preset colors via a config file if you would like to set them to something other than the sets we created.


Regarding the programming of the chat key:
That's a good point about the chat key. I'll bring that up internally. It might have just been missed in the keybinding pass.

On the disappearance of silhouettes of enemy vehicles:
We're still investigating the outlines issue and we know that it seems to be appearing more often in PVE. I wish we had it fixed already too, but it's proving to be a tricky bug to pin down.

Regarding the idea about the tanks getting progressively dirtier by passing through mud:
Having the vehicles get progressively more dirty with the environments they're driven through has been a pet feature of mine since the very first week of the project. Unfortunately, we just haven't been able to get it in yet. We do have a lot of the technology in place for it right now, it's just a matter of connecting it all together and unfortunately other more critical items are taking priority. But I'm not going to let it go! Generally, every additional graphics feature we introduce will have an impact on performance. But it'd be something you could enable independent of your graphics setting under the 'Advanced Settings'. At least, that's how I imagine it working right now. We'd have to see when we get time to work on the full feature.

Regarding the PvE mode rewards:
We are making adjustments to the PVE match rewards. There were some bugs, but we've also decided to cut Ammo Resupply costs and Vehicle Repair costs from PVE altogether. This will undoubtedly require some additional adjustments as we work on getting the PVE rewards in line with their design, but simply removing those costs for now is the next step in the process.



Andrew Rowe (Armored Warfare systems designer)

Regarding some vehicles having too high damage per shot values:
We're actively working on solutions to this. The T-80 and T-90's alpha damage have been reduced internally (and they've been given slightly faster rates of fire to compensate for the alpha damage decreases). We're also discussing several options for more global solutions, such as increasing the HP of lower HP value vehicles (e.g. AFVs), compacting the HP and damage differences between tiers, etc. There are several possible ways we could end up addressing this and it's one of the highest priority items on the agenda for the balance designers to resolve.



Joshua Morris (Armored Warfare lead producer)

Regarding the “no censorship” policy on AW forums:
It’s a good question, but from our perspective there is no reason to restrict any conversation about the other product as it only leads to this censorship actually draws more attention and leads to community resentment. We are fine with any constructive comments about any product, especially if it leads to making a better game. As SideStrafe pointed out in one of his recent videos "Competition breeds excellence" and we concur. While I also agree we are in the same genre, there is enough room for both products to be quite successful. The games cover different time periods and each has room for dedicated fans, or even shared fans.

Storm was recently quoted (accurately, I hope) that players don't stay for graphics but gameplay and this is an obvious testament to the good core gameplay of World of Tanks. He also correctly identified that we are still facing "serious issues" during our early access/beta phase that must be corrected to gain and maintain a new audience. I am confident that we will work out these issues and hope that World of Tanks can do the same so that they maintain their audience. To be honest there is no reason for Armored Warfare to target current World of Tank users, as there are FAR more EX-WOT players to introduce to the Armored Warfare that, for whatever reason, no longer play that game. Either way, both games will be better products over time and that can only be a benefit for the genre and the free to play industry as a whole. So this is why we don't mind anyone mentioning the "other game".