For a long time players have been asking for a replacement mode of the M551 Sheridan, even the game developers have openly admitted they wanted it replaced with a more known version of the tank. Yesterday a new M551A1 Sheridan model was published at Art Station, a website where designers showcase their work.

Roman Agieiev, a 3D Artist at Room 8 Studio, published some stunning images of the M551A1 Sheridan with a Wargaming.net logo with a description “Sheridan M551 for Wargaming.net. Wargaming.net LLP All rights reserved.“. This, of course, lead many to believe a new model of the tank might be coming to the game soon, but will it?

I’ve reached my sources and none of them has heard of any planned replacement for the American branch, even if it’s just the model. Of course, this could still happen, but according to them, usually, these are discussed a few months before but so far, the M551 Sheridan was never a topic of discussion.

The model is quite advanced for the game, while it looks good it has ACAV shields and AN/VSG-2B thermal sights fitted, a late upgrade that in terms of timeline doesn’t fit with what we have in the game. Nonetheless, it still could be used in the game and Wargaming just chose a more stylish look to the tank? But what if this isn’t a replacement, what for could it be used for?

While others might have rushed to their conclusions, you all know that I like to discuss and investigate as much as I can about stuff like this and seems the wait might have paid off.

Today I’ve found more models of other tanks, all created for a Wargaming project, by the same artist and Tymur Tursunov, a Senior 3D Env/Chr Artist at Wargaming. These new models were the M1128 Stryker and M1134 Stryker. Together with these models I’ve found some other compelling evidence the M551A1 Sheridan isn’t going to be released in World of Tanks, neither are any of these other tanks, but that these were models used for the cancelled Project Excalibur.

Not so long ago a video was published on Youtube, soon taken down several times, that contained footage of a game called Project Excalibur and belonged to Wargaming. The leak resulted in a lot of blogs and Youtube channels received legal warnings to take all these videos down because it belongs to Wargaming.

I’ve still found quite a few videos from Russian bloggers, some even quite big World of Tanks Community Contributors, and it allowed me to look for these vehicles and I did find them.

All three vehicles were used in the game footage, meaning these new renders we are now seeing published on Art Station were, in fact, going to be used in Project Excalibur. The M551A1 Sheridan can be seen while being shot down by an attack helicopter, the M1128 Stryke is visible when showing the flash grenades feature and the most obvious one, the M1134 Stryker, can be seen several times during the video and identified by the two frontal numbers “25DD-DV52” and “AT-22”.

Project Excalibur has been proper cancelled, I’ve talked with several sources and they all have confirmed it’s now a dead project. One of the comments that most intriguing comments I’ve received about the game were that Wargaming had spent a small fortune in the game, enough to finance a small country and that after two years developing it, nothing new was getting out of it, ultimately leading to its cancellation.

This doesn’t mean Wargaming can’t recycle the M551A1 Sheridan model and use it for World of Tanks, but as my sources said, there aren’t any current plans to do it, for now, meaning we might have to wait quite a long time before it does get replaced.

M1134 Stryker

M1128 Stryker

Liked it? Take a second to support The Daily Bounce - WoT & WoWS News, leaks, and more! on Patreon!

Liked it? Share it with your friends. Facebook

Twitter

Reddit

More

Tumblr

Telegram



WhatsApp

