[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.