November 5 - November 11 Poll Results

10025 players expressed their opinion in the recent poll voting for the most power tank in-game of tier 10.

The vote results confirmed the superiority of German armor among top vehicles in Russian-biased game World of Tanks. E-100 got 41% of votes (4158) and Maus finished 2nd with 27% (2664) leaving behind the Soviet IS-7 with 23% of votes. The American T30 appeared to be a total outsider claiming tiny 9% of love.

The public opinion was rather accurate this time (no need for figures to prove/confront:)). Stat-wise Maus is slightly ahead of the others, even E-100. Apart from that everything is correct.

As always a new poll is up.

Thoughts on the Upcoming 7.0. Vol 2.0

To speed up the development and release of 7.0 update, it was decided to partially remove new content from it.

The first victim is tank horns. Doubt, there would be much regret over it really. :)

What's definitely more important new crew skills and perks won't arrive in 7.0 either, the technical complexity of the upcoming update leaves little time for testing of the new features. Most likely the initial package of the new crew skills will arrive in 7.1 along with French tanks, M103 and other tempting content.

Damage per round for 8,8 cm KwK 43 L/71 and 8,8 cm PaK 43 L/71 guns will be increased to 240 (test value, will be proven at supertest and public test). The gun is available for a number of tanks: PzKpfw VI Tiger, PzKpfw VIB Tiger II, VK 4502 (P) Ausf. B, Panther II, E-75, E-50, VK 4502 (P) Ausf. A, PzKpfw VI Tiger (P); and TDs: Jagdpanther, Ferdinand:, there will be multiple RoF adjustments to maintain the existing DPM.

7.0 update has been on supertest for some time and already seen several revisions, when the major faults are fixed it will be pushed to public test. Hopefully, next week.

October 31 - November 4 Poll Results

6561 players expressed their opinion in the recent poll voting for their favourite contests and events.

Everyone knew the winner from the very beginning (yup, it was obvious indeed : )), however the results appeared to be completely one-sided with 94% (or 6189) of voters supporting bonus specials (x5 exp, and such). Greedy-greedy tankers!! :)

Tourneys/champs and in-game contests (MVP, Kill the Courier) got 2% of votes each, while only 63 players gave their voice to creativity contests (video, photo, literary etc) which is extremely low.

On a serious note, you must have noticed that bonus specials has become rather frequent lately.

As always a new poll is up (might reveal the performance stats to support or confront the results when the poll ends :) ).

New Community Portal for EU

The new community portal, redesigned similar to the current Ultimate Conquest website, has been released for US server a few weeks ago and is being released for RU server at present, and now it is planned for launch on EU for the upcoming week.

You can check out the new appearance here.

Please note that the community portal release will lead to several changes in Clan Wars mechanics: 

• If a province has no direct connection to the clan headquarters (or through other provinces), then the clan will no longer earn income from the specified province. If a clan does not have a headquarters, they will not earn income from owned provinces.
• If a clan currently owns one or more provinces on the Global Map, it cannot apply for landing.
• If there are multiple attacks scheduled for a single province, attackers must first fight against each other. The winning clan will then face the owner of the province in the final match.

These changes will be implemented in advance of 7.0 update due to many of them being web-based changes, rather than changes taking place on the game server itself.

Thoughts on the Upcoming 7.0

The major 7.0 update that has been in development for quite a while has almost made it to the finish straight, awaiting public tests (though it may take up to 3 weeks). Initial preview of 7.0 update can be found in the In Development section of the official websites.

I won't repeat the info given there, only share my thoughts on the key features and less noticeable stuff.


Massive Hitbox Overhaul

Nearly 30 vehicles (Tiger, VK 3002 DB, IS-3, IS-7) will get their hitboxes changed to ensure more accurate damaging mechanics. Tiger tank will finally get more detailed armor layout featuring 16 groups and benefit from skirt armor.

Map Debugging

Seems that we haven't done away with them so far, but this is definitely step in the right direction. It is going to be much more difficult to get stuck now. 

Multi-cluster technology

It might not bring noticeable changes especially for EU and US players at the time of its introduction. But it is going to be extremely useful in two ways:

• it will help us cope with overload of RU server (in peak times it has more than 235k players) allocating the load between several independent servers within RU region
• the feature has really great potential and it would be impossible to merge clan wars or enable account transfers without it

Customize it!

The camos announced as a a part of vehicle customization functionality long time ago finally arrives in 7.0 (there will be lots of screenies in the days to come). As for horns, we are still thinking of them. :)

Tiered Companies

Instead of one single company battle mode (10/90), we are getting 4 - 4/45, 6/50, 8/90, and 10/150 (where 10 - max vehicle tier, 150 - max team tier points).

There will be separate restrictions on light tanks and SPGs. E.g. for 4/45 submode it is planned to restrict both SPGs and LTs to tier 3. 

Report it!

Being harassed in-game or noticed some unfair play? RMB click on required player in team list, choose complaint type, and submit it! Customer support will see to it ASAP.

Mini-map v.2.0

Highly anticipated improvements, no doubt. It will be possible to scale the mini-map, toggle it on/off in battle, adjust its transparency, and we also added markers for Help!, Follow me! and Attacking! commands.

Tracers, anyone? 

They are back, however not exactly the way they used to work.

• for LTs, MTs, HTs, TDs: tracers will be shown within 25 deg / 445 sector in the direction of the gun
• for SPGs: tracers will be shown for tanks that are within view range in howitzer mode

For sure we would like to reintroduce 100% tracer effects, however safety and fair play are even of major importance. So as to combat cheating, we have to bring them back this way.

Don't rage quit!

If you leave the battle before it ends (and your vehicle is safe and sound), it will be locked until the end of the battle, giving your enemies chance for easy kill (exp/credits). If somehow it makes to the end of the battle, the tank will be blown up automatically. Full repair costs, yes. :) 

Balance Above All

They will be many balance adjustments in the upcoming update, the detailed patch notes will arrive upon the public release. Now I'm going to stop on a few curious things.

• T-44 is getting LB-1 gun (for 2nd turret) with the same specs as of T-54 barring RoF (slight decrease). This is aimed at bringing the tank on a par with the other tier 8 MTs (God help my poor M26 :( ).
• Conical gun will be nerfed on VK3601H, Tiger is getting this gun as it is now.
• Changed shells for 8.8 L/71 gun. Yes, damage increase is planned. However the current DPM will be retained.
• IS-3 is getting a new turret for stock setup, the existing stock turret goes to top setup. T-10 turret is reserved for future. :)

Graphics

New special effects including shots, hits, explosions are coming to provide better visualization. In addition to it we are introducing in-game colour-blind mod and option to disable smoke effects to ensure smoother performance.

More details will come in the weeks ahead.

We've hit them hard!

There will be changes to penetration mechanics. First of, we are reducing the normalization parameter of AP and APCR shells, therefore the effectiveness of sloped armor will see an increase.

Also the new mechanics for HE will be in place (defining the spot with the thinnest armor to burn through), ensuring more realistic and credible penetration and damaging.

October 22 - October 28 Poll Results

6333 players expressed their opinion in the recent poll voting for the tanks they looking forward to.

The majority of voters (42% or 2661 of them) are especially waiting for the revision of Soviet and American heavy tanks  (i.e the introduction of M103, T110, KV-4, T-150, ST-1, T-10). The 2nd place was almost equally divided between secondary TD lines for all factions (20% or 1270 votes) and British tanks (19% or 1228 votes). Only then comes initial package of French tanks planned for this year getting 14% or  886 votes. 5% of players look forward to other vehicles, perhaps they are interested in some sort of exotics like Japanese tanks or waiting for premium SPGs and TDs.

In general the poll results coincide with tank release priorities, apart from the fact the French are coming first, as it was promised.  Unconventional designs, oscillating turrets, automated loading, high tier light tanks - French really have something to offer to most fastidious tank aesthetes.

As always a new poll is up.

PS: Take a look at the current poll on the Russian website, the question is "Do you like Malinovka map?", the top answer is Yes, the bottom one is No. Tastes differ. :)

Matchmaking Improvements for EU

The same improvements that have been applied for US server recently now available for EU (since today's server restart).

This includes smart matchmaking system that takes into account the number of battles played on each particular vehicle. See the chart below:

First N battles (N varies according to vehicle tier, class, premium/non-premium status) on each vehicle are chosen not according to full spread, e.g. 8-12 for tier 7 heavy tanks, but according to decreased combat tier spread, allowing this vehicle to be at the top part of the team list.

Being only the first step of many, this improvement is aimed at helping players adjust to their newly-obtained vehicles.

October 15 - October 21 Poll Results

3169 players took part in the recent poll expressing their opinion on the new community portal for US server.

Almost part of the voters (49%) either like both designs or don't care much about the appearance of the main WoT portal. The other half mostly was positive about the new web resource (36% against 15%)

As always a new poll is up.

Initial Package of French Tanks

Initial package of French tanks (18 units) planned for 7.x update (Q4 2011).

Light:
Renault FT
D1
Hotchkiss H35
AMX 38
AMX 40
AMX 12t
AMX-13/75
AMX-13/90

Medium:
D2
Bat.-Chatillon 25t
Lorraine 40t.

Heavy:
B1
BDR G1 B
ARL-44
AMX M4 (1945)
AMX 50 100 mm
AMX 50 120mm
AMX-50 68t.

This info went public some time ago, just confirming the data.

EU Online Record

Following the example of RU side, the EU server reached first serious record on October 16, 2011 showing CCU (concurrent users) of 52.969 players.

Thanks everyone and waiting for 100.000!