[WoT] Misc

Some misc info in this post.

Get Expert Opinion: Soviet Edition is now locked for new questions.

Follow the blog updates to check Pasholok's replies. Next week I'm going to post the last batch of Q&A with Doyle.

As a continuation of the famous hatred thread, below are the results of the related poll:

What annoys me most is ...

1. 0 damage hits - 786 (32%) - that's one of the persistent complex issues to be seen to in 2013
2. Arty parties - 636 (26%) - going to post some more info on possible solution
3. No skill-based matchmaking - 220 (9%) - just no way
4. Lack of tactics in random - 181 (7%) - some pre-launch IQ test?
5. Visibility / spotting system - 168 (7%) - no overhaul planned for now
6. 25% randomization roll - 121 (5%) - not subject to change
7. Insufficient optimization and bugs - 116 (4%) - 8.2 did a great job, however this is a continuous task
8. lack of game modes - 93 (3%) - more game modes are in plans
9. smth else - 40 (1%)
10. Ramming / TK damage system - 30 (1%)

[WoWS] People, Who Are Making the Game for You

Hi guys!

I came up with a great idea to introduce you those who’ve been developing the highly anticipated naval MMO World of Warships.

Let's start!

Anrew Gashkov aka Tarn, Lead Producer for World of Warships

It is he who makes final decisions on gameplay, economics, balancing and other project’s issues. He is also acts a mediator between Minsk and Saint Petersburg offices, promptly acting if something goes wrong.

Ivan Moroz aka Black Warrior, Production Producer for WoWS

An extremely experienced game industry professional, who’s published dozens of titles, including notable Pacific Storm by Lesta Studio.

Malik Khatajaev, General Manager at Lesta Studio (Wargaming’s St.Petersburg studio responsible for WoWS development)

The real stager at game industry, who founded the studio more than 21 years ago. Being a merit professional manager, he is also famous for creating comfortable and cozy atmosphere within World of Warships development team. 
 

Danila Volkov aka Danny, WoWS Project Manager

His will-to-win spirit and eagerness do their best for World of Warships’ future success.

Petr Porai-Koshitс aka PPK, Head of Game Design at Lesta Studio

An unbelievably creative person who leads GD-team with his ideas on how to implement just the best game features. 
 

Slava Makarov, the mighty Vice President of Wargaming. Each upcoming title by Wargaming depends on his approval and – just believe me – World of Warships’ strategic vision is in safe hands. 
 

Slava Goncharov aka Uldor, Historical Consultant of our game

He is the person who seeks the best references, drawings and blueprints for every ship, which will be delivered in the game just for you. 

Well, that's me, Alexey Levakov aka KGB. Being a producer for World of Warships, sometimes I perform as a talking head… As you can see, I’m incredibly fond of DSLRs (and mirrorless cameras), though I’m far from calling myself a professional photographer.

Vladimir Gremitskiy. Guess, who's the Head of Art Department? Yes, exactly the person, who’s looking at you with sharp eyes from the picture. His religious exactitude and thorough attention to details let us be sure that World of Warships is going to have the highest quality ship models ever made. 
 

Polina Malisheva is a Creative Director at Lesta Studio. Her experience and inapproachable artistic taste are the traits that will reliably assure World of Warships a perfect look. 
 

These are the people patiently developing World of Warships. In the near future you will get a chance to evaluate the result of their joint efforts and talents, playing our ass-kicking game! 

:)

Thanks for reading, folks.

KGB

[ALL] Happy Holidays 2012!

The year 2012 has been amazing and extremely eventful for us. I tried to make the summary short, but..

Minsk, Belarus
In blossoming World of Tanks we have seen 9 major releases bringing huge changes and massive improvements, from those I would especially mark out the legendary (yes!) 8.0 with new physics and updated graphic render and the long-awaited introduction of British tanks later in 8.1.
The upcoming year is going to be similarly successful with all the stuff planned.

Kyiv, Ukraine
Second major product of the series - World of Warplanes entered the closed beta in late May. The game had its own ups and downs, natural for its early stage. The massive and extremely secret (!) overhaul of the many persistent issues has almost been finished by now and we will definitely be glad to present the results some time in Q1 2013.

World of Tanks Generals, a collectible card online game, is currently at alpha stage and doing very good. Expect lots of new from this side in 2013.   

Saint-Petersburg, Russia
World of Warships was only announced in mid 2012 (even though had been in development for some time before that) but has done just awesome progress since then, the feedback from various focus tests has been scarily positive so far. And believe my word, the game will come up to your expectations. The first testing stage is coming in foreseeable future.

Somewhere in WG's basements in Siberia
Above are titles that have been announced by now, which doesn't mean we are not trying to broaden our horizons soon. For sure, you are going to discover a lot new in 2013.

Now to the key point. Thank you for staying with us throughout this period. All the best to you and your families!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year! Stay around in 2013 and see you in battles - ground, aerial, and naval ones. May luck be on your side:)

Always yours,
Overlord

[ALL] Bookworm Party

Following the two book-related posts here and there, let's discuss what books you would be interested in.

Tanks, warplanes, warships, particular models and weapons, history of combat and tactics, etc?

Digital copy, hardback, paperback?

English will do? Or other native languages preferred?

Acceptable price tag?

Amount of images?

Other ideas?

[WoT] Get Expert Opinion: Soviet Edition

UPDATED. December 27. Thread closed. Thank you for the questions.

Q&A sessions on German tanks with Mr. Hilary L. Doyle appeared to be rather popular. As a continuation of this good tradition now you have a chance to ask World of Tanks warfare expert Yuriy Pasholok who has got outstanding knowledge of tanks in general with his primary specialization being Soviet tanks. He is also the co-author of recently published Maus book.

Post your questions in comments to this post, I will shortlist everything with love and care and subsequently provide replies the way I did with Doyle's ones splitting them into bulletins. The deadline for your questions is December 23.

While considering what exactly to ask, keep in mind that Pasholok may not be familiar with advanced game concepts and game design issues, thus try to keep your queries more reality-related than WoT-related (Yuriy prefers 1:1 scale vehicles, if you know what I mean ;)).

PS: you can repost old Qs from this thread, since there were few of them on Soviet tanks.  

Ask away!

[WoWS] Previously Unknown Designs

Hi everyone,

I told you that my second post would be about ship blueprints and design, so here it is:

As some of you may know, the Yzuru Hiraga is the famous Japanese naval architect of the beginning of the 20th century. Such ships as Yubari, Yamashiro, Nagato are a part of his work.
Moreover, in 1916 he became a chief engineering director of the Eight-eight fleet program, according to which by the 1927 Imperial Japanese Navy must have had 8 top class fast battleships and 8 top class battlecruisers.

I will come back to this program in future posts, but now I want you guys to know, what could be one of the starting point of completely different IJN:

Here you can see one of the preliminary dreadnought designs, based on the famous Mikasa.
This blueprint was found in the Hiraga's archive, and is dated as 1903/1904 design - the time of ironclads sunset, the time where Russian Imperial Fleet was still alive, the time before Russo-Japanese War.

The ship is approximately 18000 tons displacement, has four main caliber turrets with dual 305mm 45 caliber guns, and can probably go as fast as 18-19 knots; it is very similar to South Carolina/Michigan, isn't it?

We all know, that the first dreadnoughts built for IJN were Settsu and Kawachi, but this particular design shows us, that history could have gone another way, and who knows, how could it change the future?..

KGB.

[WoWS] Answering Questions

So, let us start with the answers on previous World of Warships related post.

First of all, I'd like to say that many questions are already answered in corresponding topics on NA forums:

http://forum.worldofwarships.com/index.php?/topic/36-developer-qa-1/
http://forum.worldofwarships.com/index.php?/topic/322-developer-qa-2/

I'll try to answer all questions, that I consider worth answering.

1. What ships classes will there be in:
Battleships/Battlecruisers, Aircraft Carriers, Cruisers Light/Cruisers Heavy and Destroyers.

2. Maneuvering will be very important, because active maneuvering will help you to dodge incoming shells, like in real life. Of course I mean shells, that were fired from long distances - 20km and more.

3. We will start with WoT-like "capture the base" mode, with one or two bases. There of course will be more game modes at start, but I can't say anything about them yet.

4. Alpha testing of World of Warships will not begin this year. Expect Spring or even Summer 2013.

5. We will use our own matchmaker system, with some limits in quantity of some ship classes per battle.

6. For customization of ship's armament: we will use a preset system, which can be described as a whole bunch of weapons, FCS, etc, that can be researched and installed at once.
There of course will be some player-manually-selectable parts of ship configuration, but the main ship's fighting capabilities will depend on what preset is bought and installed.

7. There won't be upgradeable main caliber guns for Yamato and possibly for Montana and Iowa class BBs.
The reason is that these guns are good and more than enough to sink anything.

8. Players will be able to research and upgrade planes on their CVs; the mechanism will be similiar to research and upgrades of guns/turrets for tanks in WoT.

9. There will most possibly be a limit to at least one type of each plane type squadron on a CV, so that players cannot use fighters only or bombers only CVs.

10. No preliminary tech trees now, sorry. All I can tell, that I'm the person who is actually making the trees with the help of historical consultants, of course :)

11. CAs/CLs/DDs will be able to use torpedoes, of course. The question whether BBs and BCs will be able to use torpedoes is still open among our dev team.

12. Bismarck/Tirpiz class post-Washington BBs will of course be a part of HSF/KM  BB tree.

13. About naval strategies, blueprints and so on - I'll make posts on this topics, of course.

14. No, our gameplay mechanics won't mimic Battlestations game series.

15. We are trying to make a balanced ship trees and a balanced differences between different classes.

16. Our first nations will be the USA and Japan, as nations with biggest navies in WWII.

That is all for today.
Feel free to ask more questions, though my next post will be about ship blueprints.

KGB.

[WoT] How Is 8.2?

So 8.2 for World of Tanks is now out for both EU and NA servers. Time to share your thoughts.

What's your first impression? Encountered any critical or strange bugs / faults?

Any other relevant feedback? Fire away!

[WoWS] Extra Talking Head

I'm glad to present you the following:

Hello, boys and girls!

Let me introduce myself: my name is Alex Levakov, and I'm  producer of World of Warships, you may know me as KGB on NA and RU forums.

I've kindly asked Overlord to let me post in his blog, and he agreed, so you can start waiting to get some news about World of Warships from the first hands!

Now, what exactly do you expect to hear from me? What topics should I cover first? 

I'll post things about ship designs mostly, though some useable information about what is going on in the development of World of Warships in common. Post your ideas in comments to this post.

KGB

Hope you, guys will enjoy it. Mind who is the author of each new post from now on. :)

[WoT] Your Global War

Clan wars development has been rather... hm... let's say, slow lately. However, this is determined to change in future.

What new features and content would you like to be added?
More territories, historical/non-historical events, seasons for global map, wipe (!), mercenaries, clan tanks, more strategic elements (buildings and other objects to construct)? Anything else?

Any feedback counts!