3981

Time to finish off the Tiger grind and get that KT off to a flying start. Tiger is just weak, a squishy sniping heavy is just a dumb role for any tank to play. I’ll be happy when it’s sold.

3982

I blew what credits I had on modules for my tanks–rammers, stabilizers, binocs, cammo–for the ones that lacked them. Half price was too good to pass up. Of course, I’m back to needing a million credits for a new tank, but with the T32 and the IS, the Tiger isn’t a high priority, and with the T20 and DB, neither is a Panther, really.

3983

Have you ever noticed that at some point… you say to yourself, “Damn I’m not playing at my best. Maybe I should stop now.” But then you look at a tank and say, “Hey I should run with that again.” And after you get popped in the first minute you say, “Why the fuck did I do that?”

3984

oh yea, all the time. just now i got blown up real silly like, logged off and looked at a few websites. then i logged right back on and gotten revenge lol.

3985

I was pretty impressed with wot’s customer service. When you submit a ticket they have a hilarious range of seven levels of importance you can attach to it, ranging from low to emergency and critical. The last ones must be for if your computer is about to explode. I chose urgent and an actual human got back to me in 15 minutes on a Saturday afternoon. After one back- and- forth he suggested rolling back my video drivers to fix my constant crashing. I haven’t tried it yet but he seemed confident it would work.

3986

I am having “Why the fuck did I do that?” moments all the time. It’s funny how even after playing for more than a year, after something like 8000 fights, you still do some really dumb stuff from time to time. I’d hate to be a real tank driver in WW2. :)

3987

Yeah, no exiting the battle and grabbing a new tank in real life, I guess. Then again, you probably had a better spotting system!

I’m finding the Panther to be…pedestrian. I have the long 75, which is a great sniper rifle, if a little lacking in the damage department, but the tank as a whole feels kind of sluggish even compared to the DB. Certainly my T20 is quicker. It does look cool though.

3988

World of Battleships is coming. I’m interested, though World of Warplanes doesn’t grab me. An interesting tidbit:

Keeping with the best traditions of the series, World of Battleships will offer a straightforward interface, easy-to-use controls, and a common economic system that will allow players to distribute resources between the three games for the ultimate progress in each of them.

3989

This is getting ridiculous. Judging by the speed of their updates, they barely have resources to slowly update one game, let alone develop two brand new ones.

Their US population is stuck at 15K max. They need to do more drastic changes more often.

3990

Different development teams for all three games.

US server population hit 18,500 a few days ago.

EU server population peak (was) 41,000 apparently.

RU server population peak (was) some 212,000 people (in Russia WoT is bigger than WoW).

There are apparently 5 million accounts for WoT worldwide.

So I kinda doubt they are lacking in resources.

And despite the lack of patience on the part of official forum posters, the game has averaged one large update a month, often with massive amounts of new content. How does that compare to other multiplayer-oriented titles?

3991

I wonder how closely it will resemble Navy Field.

3992

not at all, it will be 3d for starters. bluesnews has a whole bunch of promo shots.

3993

That doesn’t mean anything. Navy Field 2 was supposed to be in 3d. If you’re actually stuck with the ship’s viewpoint it seems like it’s just gonna be like a bunch of all-arty matches.

3994

I feel exactly the same. I’ve played the heck out of flight sims. Ever since F-15 Strike Eagle on the C-64. Looking forward to WoB.

3995

Their E3 booth was huge, and had a tank in it. Like, a real tank, made out of lots of metal.

They are rolling in money is my guess. These hardcore niche f2p MMOs fly under the radar of most of the industry and just make continuous streams of cash.

Chris

3996

It seems like every second bastard must have a Lowe in the garage - there is one or more in every tier appropriate match. They were US$30 pre price increase, now $50. That is millions of dollars in digital tanks sold I reckon.

It’s totally hookers and blow all round at World of Tanks HQ.

3997

When I talk about “resources”, I mean people, not money.

Different teams for three games most of the time means less people for one. It makes no sense for them to hire entire new teams, they are most definitely re-using people that are familiar with their architecture, engine, etc. Which means those people don’t work on WoT.

3 patches in 4 months is not exactly one update a month, especially considering that 6.4 was supposed to be a “release” update and was delayed for two months. Their “one patch a month” promise was given after the ridiculously long 6.4 and, granted, they managed to keep it so far for 6.5 and 6.6.

Also, the content of their patches is questionable. Yes, new tanks and maps are nice but does the game really needs the 2nd German HT line before everything else? They were talking about alternate game modes, physics and updated graphics forever and they are still not even close. Same as the redesigned spotting system. Their clan wars “module” is still in beta IIRC and lacking. Do we really needs a bunch of new tier 5 light tanks scheduled to be released in 6.7?

5 million accounts they’ve reported are “registered”, not “active”. 3 out of 5 of my friends are not playing anymore for more than a month but they are still counted in those 5 million.

Even if there were 18K people on at some point, it doesn’t help much if I see less than 14K most of the time and the devs said their matchmaker needs at least 20K players to work as expected.

Their Russian server is certainly blooming, no doubt, but the US one is not so peachy, I bet it’s far away from what they’ve estimated to have 4 months after release. And the growth rate isn’t exactly exciting.

I am mostly just bitching though. I like the game so far and play it a lot (although it does get difficult to play lower tier tanks as most the population has leveled up). It’s just every time I hear them talking about some new feature for WoT I can’t help but think “Oh shut the fuck up, it’s not going to be released probably even in 2012”. And all these new games announcements are not helping.

3998

I think Strigergg has it right; they really should be filling in the gaps in the existing game before branching out so fast. Maybe they have a better handle on this than we think, and it’ll all be good. I sure hope so, but I really would love a revamped physics system, better graphics, and more and more varied game modes for non-clan players. I’d also rather prefer either fixing existing lines or adding an entirely new nation rather than this plethora of bifurcating paths in existing lines.

But yeah, I play this more than I probably should, largely because it’s so easy to drop into and out of. I’d love to see some "chrome,"too, like tanks suspensions that actually articulate over rough terrain, and more and more varied combat damage visuals. Hell, I’d love to see some actual explosions and turrets being blown off, stuff like that.

Right now though I’m in that later tier grind, where all my vehicles are fully upgraded and grinding towards the next tier, which is usually 100k or more. Some matches lose money, like on the ISU with the BL10. If I fire too many shots and get too few kills, I can lose money–harbingers of things to come I’m sure.

3999

I’m guessing they got a lot of money really fast and hired a ton of people to port their existing engine to other games, hoping to cash in even more. It could end up being good for WoT though. If a naval combat game solves the problem of having more than one gun to fire, the M3 Lee may get to use the turret finally.

4000

This is all I really need. I can’t wait to watch the jerks that tilt over 45 degrees off the side of a hill to come tumbling down in front of me. I also look forward to removing people that park intentionally in front of my Ferdi on top of hills.