World of Tanks

[Agent Sorchus]

So I hear that tracers are coming back in 7.0. That is something that I haven't heard from the test servers and not something I was expecting since it was kinda low key.

Full list of 7.0 changes here, but I know that several players had said that they were waiting to play again when tracers came back so heads up. My guess is that it will come out around the ninth, but idk.

edit: you should check out the test #3 list of changes, because they are different from the original. IE the Tiger doesn't get the conical gun. (As a Tiger P driver that makes me almost happy since the (P) line has the undergunned Ausf A already)

[xthetenth]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal with the Tiger's going to be, I think they're testing it with and without to see the effect of the hitboxes and all so they can get a good comparison on what the conical does to the tank's performance.

I've heard the tenth for the release date, actually. It should bring a lot of nice usability upgrades as well as some real nice things like tracers.

[Simon_Jester]

The big shuffle with the KV-series tanks isn't for a good while yet, right?

[xthetenth]

Might be first patch next year. Not sure. Month and a half absolute minimum.

[Agent Sorchus]

Personally I think that the Russian Heavies are going to be changed in 7.2. See french tanks are supposed to come out in 7.1 which should come quickly after the 7 patch. And at least according to their originally intentions the Russian line was going to be messed with after that.

But 7.0 is a little delayed and could conceivably combine the two patches.

[xthetenth]

No, 7.0 is pretty much set, it's going out on the tenth. Then comes 7.1, which they're going to try to get out this month. After that is 7.2 which I agree is likely to contain the Russian Heavies.

[Simon_Jester]

Fuck yeah! Oskin's Medal! Woohoo!

[spaceviking]

I don;t know why but it seems like my metal go in spurts. I seem to get one every battle for a while, then nothing for like a week.

[Simon_Jester]

Sometimes you're at the top of your game, sometimes you're not.

Although if you're talking about the medals that come in multiple classes (10/100/1000/10000 X's achieved), then I don't know what's up with that.

[xthetenth]

There's a difference between spurts and stuff like what happened to me. I've played an unwholesome amount of this game, and somehow in the span of about three days I got three Billotte's medals. All three of the Billotte's medals I've earned. It's totally bizarre and I've seen stuff like that for other people. It's at the mercy of the RNG anyway, and it's still all three in about three days.

[spaceviking]

No I meant in game metals. Which sometimes I seem to pick up for shit games.

[PeZook]

No I meant in game metals. Which sometimes I seem to pick up for shit games.

Yeah, well, if you come over the medal's threshold, then it doesn't matter how you performed in this particular battle...

Aren't medals assigned to crewmembers, not tanks?

[Scottish Ninja]

It's both - if you look at your stats, it'll show which medals you've earned in which tanks; but if you look at your crew, it'll show the medals they participated in earning.

[Scottish Ninja]

Top Gun in the Panzer III Ausf. A.

Why is it that so many of the tanks I don't like have great win rates and so many of the tanks I do like have such crappy win rates?

[Nephtys]

It's really weird. My E8 has an even lower win rate than my hated A-20, yet I love the E8. When I lose, I lose. It's true. But when I win with that thing, I always have 3-4 kills, and usually around 10 or 15 penetrating hits on the enemy. That's pretty good. But somehow, it's got my lowest win rate.

[spaceviking]

For Sure, my Panzer 3 Ausf A has like a 70% win ratio. I think I have like 6 kills in 40 games for it. My Panzer 4, which I love playing, has like a 44% win ratio.

[Zinegata]

Due to its gun, the Easy 8 can be blessed or screwed over by the matchmaker far more than other tanks. If it's near the top of the pack, it will lap up Tier 4-5 tanks very quickly. But if it's facing Tier 8s and up, it will often find itself having to play the role of oversized scout.

Despite having only a minor effect, this is a reason why I would recommend camo training for an Easy 8 crew.

[TronPaul]

Started playing this again with Scottish Ninja (he steals all my kills). My username on WoT is TronPaul.

I love this game's gameplay but there are so many little niggling things that annoy me about that game. Especially how non-premium accounts couldn't form platoons for months.

I love the Lee and the T82. I'm starting to enjoy the Pz III Ausf. A now that it isn't stock (ie shit tier).

[The Vortex Empire]

So, just got the T-127 for free and played with Tron and Scottish Ninja all in T-127s. By god, is that thing sweet. I bounced shouts from heavies with that sexy machine. Also had that promo for 24 hours of free premium, and made like 200,000 credits in like 4 hours, so that's good too.

[TronPaul]

Some bad news about the upcoming 7.0 patch. (Thanks ScottishNinja for the tip)

7.0 feature descriptions Warning: Not a permalink

It's a common knowledge that World of Tanks has three main servers: North American, European and Russian, with each of them using one game cluster. The multicluster technology would allow to add one or several clusters to each server. Using a unified account on a certain server, a player will have the opportunity to play on any cluster of the server. The described option will be introduced with v.7.0 update; the additional clusters will be added later as required.

This by itself is not a bad thing, I didn't really care when I saw the line about clusters in the patch notes, however, their implementation is downright idiotic.
Multicluster Technology

Players in queue lists will be different for NA1 and NA2 game clusters. That would be the main feature, easily recognized by the tankers playing on different game clusters. If the two tankers wish to play in a platoon, enter the training room or join a random battle, they should enter the same game cluster (NA1 or NA2);

So to platoon, or even see other tankers in battle you have to be in the same cluster (chosen at login). This isn't how it should work. What should happen is that matchmaking is done by one server (or server cluster) per region. When the matchmaker makes a game it puts the game on whichever cluster has available resources and good latency for most players. I honestly wouldn't call WarGaming's "solution" a multicluster solution at all. Wargaming is basically making sub-regions for their region servers that can communicate, but cannot play with each other. This isn't the 90's, latency from West Coast to East Coast is decent, if not great. Once again, WarGaming's asinine decisions make me facedesk.


When this comes to pass we should probably all pick a sub-region (cluster) to play on.

[Simon_Jester]

For choice I nominate something on the East Coast of the United States- I know of at least three SDN members who are playing or have played World of Tanks who live in Eastern Standard Time south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But yeah, it seems like the company that runs this game has this weirdly stupid method of making their decisions- they have a wonderful engine and dynamic and a great scoring system, and then they just roll dice when it comes to broad questions of strategy.

Then again- they're based in Russia. Does anyone know what long distance latency in Russia is like? They may be basing their idea of what's practical because of their painful experience trying to play beta games in St. Petersburg against people who live in Vladivostok, for all I know.

[Agent Sorchus]

They are in Belarus, and the cluster technology isn't what they plan on having as a finished product. Essentially still more beta testing. Eventually they want it so that the clusters actually work.

[Scottish Ninja]

The reasoning behind the decision is clear when you look at it from a purely Russian perpective - the Russian server actually has the player load to make such a move worthwhile and generally avoids the negative effect of low player counts on matchmaking since both would still have enough players to make better matches regularly.

I think it makes a bit of sense if it's mainly for consistency: the code has to generally be the same whether it's the Russian, European, or North American server, but if they can vary the number of clusters between the servers then the Russians can get two, three, or more as necessary, while the US has the option to choose a cluster, that being the Henry Ford choice - "any color so long as it's NA1", and avoid splitting the limited playerbase where it's unnecessary and would cause more problems.

That only raises the question of how optimistic we want to be about Wargaming's decision-making process.

[Scottish Ninja]

Should mention these:

Free T-127 (Soviet premium T3 light) and a day of premium: just have to give them an email address and they'll send you a code.

Free Soviet Lend-Lease M3 Stuart + 750 gold + a week of premium: more involved, since you have to sign up for an IGN prime free trial, meaning credit cards or paypal come into play, though you can cancel it before paying a dime.

Props to Vortex and Sorchus who told me about the T-127 deal. That thing is hella fun.

[The Vortex Empire]

Especially when you've got a platoon of three of them just rushing the enemy base, like we must have done around 30 times the last 2 nights.