Check out this interesting interview with S.Zaloga (well, apart from that Fury part anyway), where he explains you why quoting Death Traps is a pretty bad idea.

Also, an interesting article about abandoned Soviet tanks on an island near Japan…

And finally, an interesting article about how the Finnish blew up a marauding KV-2… without any AT weapons.

- companies will not be reworked to 7/42 format

- developers are currently discussing whether to make girl crew voiceover (SS: yes, before they said they would, apparently not as clear now)

- Storm states that it’s unclear as to what to do with the T95/T96 and other US medium tanks. New US medium branch is not planned for 2015.

- Storm actuall asked the people responsible for the Stronghold situation. They know about the issue with large clans dominating the mode. There will be some fixes to remedy the situation.

- Storm confirms that there will be a change in shot distribution within aim circle. It will not be a simple sigma change, but a manually configured special variant, with a table showing “how much of what is supposed to fly where”, this table will apply to all the vehicles in the game. The reason for this is that it’s beneficial server load-wise.

- real life shell distribution from real firing tests is not viable for gameplay, that’s why WG has to have their own



- it’s “completely possible” the Japanese heavy branch will come this year

- there will also be a Japanese premium heavy tank

- Storm states that increasing the render range is not that easy – in order to do that, you’d have to transmit more data via packets and the packet size has to remain the same, so the transfer accuracy will not be as high with the same amount of data. The reduction of the accuracy would in turn bring strange behavior of tanks on long distances (jumps, teleports, sudden turns etc.)

- Q: “If you remove the company mode, what will the clans do for training?” A: “Play team battles for example.”

- it’s not clear whether the “6th sense as radioman’s skill” overhaul will come this year

- AMX-13/75 will be buffed in 0.9.7

- Storm stated that if they returned the confrontation mode and made it disabled by default, there would be too long queues (noone would play it)

- Storm agrees that “victory” should be a requirement for all IM missions (SS: as in to suppress anti-team tactics)

- new premium tanks will NOT have limited MM at all. Only in very extreme cases. When asked for proper explanation of this, Storm refused, saying only: “I am not sure I can express those reasons. Let me put it this way: for a longer existence of the project, this variant is more correct.” He later adds that it’s a really complicated matter and that they have an idea how to do this correctly.

- Storm states that while the details have to be discussed with map makers, it is a general rule that maps with hills on their edges and with lowered center (“bowls”) do not play well

- a player said that Sacred Valley is well playable – Storm replied that “many think otherwise”

- for now, there is no plan to add alternative IM’s to the platoon ones for single players

- regarding “thanking” players in battle (positive feedback), Storm stated that once, there was a plan to add an option to “thank” good players by sharing a portion of your XP and credits with them. Currently, there’s no decision on that.

- FV215b (120) will be removed from the game because it’s a fake, it will be replace by a Chieftain

- Hitlerpanther will appear in the ingame shop for gold as well and this is how it will be with all premium tanks: first in premium magazine, than in the ingame shop

- training rooms for a single player will not be implemented, the reason is server performance – it’s expensive resource-wise to have rooms for only one player

- a regular TOG branch (second British heavy branch) will definitely not come in 2015

- Waffenträger E-100 will be replaced. Its replacement will not have an autoloader and it will be based on historical project (SS: yes, I know what it is and no, you won’t find it on the internet, it’s a new thing from archives)

- Waffenträger auf PzIV will not be changed. For now.

- Storm will investigate whether VK3001P should be buffed

- animated parts of tanks (shell ejections) will be discussed after all tanks are reworked to HD

- Storm states that improved render will be optimized further and further until it reaches the “old” render in performance. After that, it’s possible that the old render will be removed altogether

- it was discussed a long time ago not to allow players to shoot their own teammates at all – this idea was rejected

- Q: “Why are there no credit/XP rewards for epic medals, such as Radley Walters?” A: “There are rewards for individual missions.”

- currently, there are no “totally bad” maps in the game – there are problematic maps, that will be reworked. If the rework does not fulfill its purpose, they will be completely removed the way it was done for example with Severogorsk

- it’s possible that perk rebalance will not appear in 2015

- the amount of crew XP needed to train skills and perks will not be reduced

- regarding the artillery appearing on the top of the team (as its top tank), Storm states that “nothing can be done with that, for now”

- Aufklärungspanzer Panther will not become a premium vehicle

- a player pointed out that the percentual difference between hitpoints of heavies and mediums is much higher on mid tiers than on tier ten for example. Storm replied that it’s inconclusive and that they are thinking about it.

- Storm confirms that 9.5 brought some client crashes. WG is working on that. But also adds that majority of the reports for crashes was caused by mods.

- Havok will come in “far future” (not anytime soon)

- no plans to change tank colours

- there are no plans to ban (disable) noobmeter (XVM)

- if you see a 45 percent winrate player with 250 WN8 on an IS-3, it does not automatically mean he’s a bot. It can very well be a bad player. Storm states that there are players with even worse results and they are playing in person, it was checked.

- the girl crew special perk “sisterhood of steal” counts as 0 perk, which means that the next (second) perk the girl gets will train as fast as 1st perk of a male crewmember

- there will be various events in the future, but the “White Tiger” event will not repeat

- content introduction does have limits – it’s not possible to introduce multi-gigabyte patches every week

- during the WT E-100 replacement, there will not be any “compensation”, the tank will simply switch

- for now, converting XP to crew XP is not planned

- the render range square to circle switch will not influence the frequency of vehicle data transfer from server

- “additional ammo” consumable/equipment is not planned

- gold ammo hardcap is not planned

- Prokhorovka is currently bugged – some of the bushes provide no camouflage whatsoever. This will be fixed in 9.6

- statistics do not confirm that platoons end up on the bottom of the team more than they should

- a player proposed that arty should lose all shell types save for HE ones. This will not happen.

- no plans to purge 0-100 battle accounts that haven’t played for years, for now

- new sounds, new vegetation render, DirectX11 support ETA? “I will not make any prognosis for now”

- after HD rework, AMX-50B height stays the way it is

- it’s possible that ALL the premium tanks, that have limited MM will soon be removed from sales. Storm admits that it’s possible that this will create a difference between old players with limited MM vehicles and new players, stuck with full MM vehicles and give the first group an advantage. He adds that “it’s hard to tell”

- HE penetration mechanism will not be changed

- IM reward tanks “do not have any advantages save for their uniqueness”, apart from being able to use other crews without penalties

- “flickering bushes” bug was partially fixed in 9.6

- “twitching” of tanks in replays is fixed in 9.6

- SU-122-54 will not be buffed anytime soon

- it’s possible Chinese 122mm guns have incorrect length, it will be investigated

- test will come “soon”

- new physics test might come in February

- one of the scenarios for Havok (that was shifted to “far future”, see previous post) is that the entire destructable building part will be scrapped and it will be only used for the realistic behavior of “junk” on tanks (like, shovels flying off)

- 25 percent penetration RNG will not be reduced

- Storm confirms that guns “significantly standing out in penetration” will have their penetration nerfed in near future