Hello everyone,

here’s a whole bunch of info from the “Insider”, he was really busy :) Please note one thing: this is an info, gleaned from leaking WG internal conversations and chain letters, but the summary is insider’s representation of what the developer things. It can be wrong, but I try to doublecheck some of the info with other sources and post only the stuff that actually fits, so it should be reliable.

First, some random stuff

- for Xbox, M6A2E1 arrives on 2.3.2015 (non HD)

- for PC, M6A2E1 will not be sold again (applies to EU and NA), the intent to make its owners stay really special, armor is still planned for rebalance (historical armor) when the HD model appears

- American T18 TD will be converted to artillery during the next big artillery rebalance patch. Artillery rebalance will happen at some point in the future, the one thing that could accelerate it is if the 9.6 accuracy changes prove to be really bad for arty class, otherwise it will take a very long time and has low priority. This change is the work of one of the US staff, likely The_Chieftain (SS: yup, IIRC, the proposed way is T18 – arty, replaced by T3HMC?)

- Minsk is getting tired of WG EU mismanagement of regular-to-unsatisfactory quality of customer service and are already planning something for it, however details are not shared by messages. A meeting is at hand. This means a lot of stuff, as WG will have to make changes to each and every language and their PR/Customer Support systems in order to “weed out” the deficiencies.

- NA server is considered the most “comfortable” community-wise, because “people are not at each other’s throats” and the staff is quite reliable, however “they know” that the suggestions forum is pretty abandoned (almost hopeless to post anything there as of now)

- a new chat feature that is considered is to leave messages to offline friends (only those that have you as a friend as well)

- WoWs will share premium resources (gold) just as WoWp and WoT

- WoWs vandidates for several mid-tier premium “boats” are being prepared, including a preorder one

- the new WG balance policy when introducing a new tank is to first add its “historical values”, then “overnerf the vehicle and finally strengthen it up”, because it’s easier to manage a vehicle with mediocre stats, because it involves less whines when actually WG announces nerfs and “everybody cheers” when they get buffed

About the Mauschen

- Maus won’t be buffed despite its t9 version coming out, so no 15cm gun for Maus (a developer here states that if they were to add a 15cm gun to the Maus, the “differences” with the E-100 would make the tank “a retard-on-wheels”, since “Maus should be driven for its armor, and we won’t balance it just because it’s not used in Clan Wars”. The tank is not for “everybody to drive, but anyone can get it”. Basically, to sum it up, adding a 15cm gun to the Maus would imbalance it and would make the W-100 look like a “wimp”, because it would be the same gun with much, much more armor, despite the E-100 being “one of the most used tanks in clan warfare”.

- tier 9 Mauschen should have one more set of rebalances before being added to public test, and yes, its double threads allegedly are a pain in the ass to penetrate and these things are currently “completely immune to HEAT”, thanks to the skirts + threads + hull armor

About the Japanese:

- no plans to buff Japanese tanks despite some devs saying that they are “mediocre at best up to tier 6″ in every aspect. Historically speaking, it would be impossible to rebalance, given that the Japanese guns, overall labeled as “weak”, weren’t really developed during that era. However, naval cannons are another thing. Also, for some reason, despite this performance labels, the tanks seem to be faring pretty OK in their winrate and player acceptance. Tier 7 to 10 are considered okay, many players seem to like the t7 tank autoloading gun.

- TD’s are scarce for the Japan tree as well, they’re looking into a gun that uses a 77mm caliber shell with no better performance than the one of the regular current guns of the branch, implementing it would mean “dragging that weapon for like 3 tiers and re-using the same gun for these tanks with different names now”, also quoting one of them saying “well, it either has a gasket-pooper or a behemoth gun” (some mounting a naval gun, one-shot wonders, almost like the SU-100Y).

- AMX 40 is now officially the worst tank ever, yet strangely, it has quite a number of fans, because “they like the ugly thing” and “duck” appearance, despite its gun being overly terrible for the tanks it faces. The rebalancing that will happen may increase its performance “slightly”. At some point (7.x era), the AMX-40 used to go backwards as fast as forwards.

- WG took notice of Japanese Anime called “Kantai Collection”, where some girls are naval ships (???), it’s possible they *may* do something with the publisher corporation, same as it happened with Girls und Panzer.

About China:

- Some of the WG staffmembers regret introducing the Chinese line before the European one, but they had not enough resources to assemble anything that would represent the euro line at that moment and even if they had, it would have a bunch of T-44/T-54 copies too, which would have been later scrapped by other tanks as they became available. The Chinese weere “surprisingly more active in helping us assemble the line (with a few stumbles and a lot of political suffering)”, especially when they announced their interest in opening a Chinese server (with their own rules) and the result is that the thing became a huge mess with all the payments and whatnot. However, Chinese tanks are popular there (as expected), but “it’s not something that we want to do again”.

- on that topic, WG is unhappy to see their game being converted into full derp mode on china, but “noting we can do about it”. There, it has a very strong pay to win factor- however, it generates a lot of income for them (Type59 floods) despite having to share their earnings with a third party corp. Also, the community is nothing short of “xenophobic” and.. (on a personal note), racist (“gaijin go home” type of racism) – even a certain KongZhong developer was recorded throwing racist insults around.

Random stuff again:

- BMPs and their concepts have been scrapped and shelved, there was one planned as a test, but it would have been “too high a tier” and “too weak a gun”

- Churchill Black Prince is gaining fame amongst some of the staff that plays and players too, apparently the tank is “comfortable” to drive and reliable, despite the slow speed and rather weak caliber gun, it makes it up for the superb accuracy and reload along with good armor layout

- AT-15A is a little more popular/better winrate now that it has limited MM and increased earnings “within the expected results”, meaning the tank won’t be seeing any more buffs or changes until the end of time

- no Löwe buffs planned

- WG will track AMX CDC’S performance in the following patches and see if the tank manages too poorly having a full MM and overall worse performance than the FCM 50t. If there’s going to be a buff, it will be slight, however the MM spread will remain unchanged

- if you want a solid performer, buy FCM 50t and not AMX CDC, as they are certainly planning to remove it from the store

- M56 Scorpion coming to stores “soon”, it’ll have full MM as well

- IS-6 won’t be removed from the store in quite a bit of time, as it’s the most purchased currently (SS: of tier 8 premiums? Unclear here)

- camo factor is still planned for rebalance, but first, WG will gather data on the TD nerf, as it’s the class that mostly “benefits from it” – meaning that they tend to camp more than any other tank, despite having the bonuses removed, since “it’s within their nature”

- IM involving setting certain amount of tanks on fire may get changed to be more RNG friendly