Armored Warfare

Bad news then. A significant amount of the playerbase is made up for Wo T refugees of various sorts. While they haven't degraded to the point of the crap you'd see on either Wo T's official forums or in the game itself, I've already seen a bunch of guys whining about the lack of an XVM-like rating system in-game, blaming the team for failure (despite being the first to die), or saying "If this was Wo T, I'd _____".

You'll pretty much just have to put up with the douches, because just like Tuefel Hunden said, online games have a bad habit of bringing out the arrogant loudmouths in folks.

EDIT: For the sake of something positive and keeping things balanced... I'll admit that the community mods and devs are far more approachable. None of that "mention the wrong subject or game and you're banned from the forums" sort of BS you'll see on the Wo T forums. Lot more newb friendly towards those asking questions too... just for the love of God, please don't be one of those guys making a half-assed post with barely any effort put into spelling or sentence structure, we're getting far too many of those!

edited 11th Jul '15 2:34:41 AM by SgtRicko

Well the Official Armored Warfare forums, for some bizarre reason, have begun to transform into a cesspool of whiners between the time between Early Access Period 2 and 3. Not exactly a pleasing sight for me, I was really hoping we'd get the better part of the Wo T community... but we clearly didn't catch them yet. Guess it's time for me to find a fan forum for the game that's away from these guys. Hopefully the devs find it too, might help them get some actually useful community feedback.

I'm starting to get feelings of deja-vu here. I remember the Command & Conquer fanbase essentially acting the same way: carrying unrealistic expectations for the upcoming games, particularly C&C3 and C&C4, and then acting like it's some massive personal betrayal when things don't live up to what they were hoping for.

It's the same story with the World of Speed forums: Now that Need for Speed World is history, a lot of the community has flocked to the forums with all their hopes and expectations. "Need for Speed World had this, so World of Speed must have this". "Slightly Mad, please don't be the next EA/Ubisoft" (never mind that it should by My.com that the whining should be directed at). Complaints about closed beta keys being handed out by means of "favoritism" (I call BS since I've seen them given out completely randomly). Sturgeon's Revelation is in full effect alright.

If you seek refuge from your cesspool, it's worth mentioning that there's armoredlabs forum (an product of wotlabs, which means that the community is essentially the same). There are days when I wonder why MMO forums turn into a septic tank of elitism and ignorance, and maybe I'll find out (and get RO'd in the process).

Thanks for the suggestion of Armored Labs, Rabid - just finished making an account with them. Now to see what they're like...

edited 15th Jul '15 8:18:47 PM by SgtRicko

For those of you already in the Alpha testing, Early Access Stage 4 will begin on August 13th and end on the 30th.

It's got the typical additions and overhauls as well as a soft reset of everyone's stats - sadly, this means you'll lose all of the tanks, modules and crews you've unlocked. Fortunately, you'll get to keep all of your credits and exp, both in stock and used. This means you could now potentially use those credits and exp to check out a new branch in the tech trees you haven't unlocked yet. The best part though is that the servers will now be active 24/7 from then on out - no more limited playtimes!

Early Access 4 server is now active!

The bad news though is that if you're not located within the EU region, the latency is going to be very problematic. Obsidian decided to go with a single server and drop NA for the Early Access phase due to the much lower playerbase in comparison to the EU server. The ping was already over 200ms on the NA server for me and that did impact my game somewhat, so I'm gonna have a bumpy ride from here on out until the open Beta phase (or until they decide to re-instate the NA server again).

Public Stress Test will be available from September 24th to 25th.

It's a short period and will only be hosted on the North American server so far, but you won't need to have any special access or permission to enter. Furthermore, the Early Access exp, credits and unlocks will carry over for those who had access. Not a bad time to hop in and try out the game early on, see if you like it's style vs World of Tanks and War Thunder.

Introducing The Open Beta

The game is finally going public within a week, and from here on out there will be no more progress wipes - you'll keep everything you earn.

Also, if you've purchased one of the Founder's packs you can start playing the game immediately. No word on whether those who only gained access through free giveaway keys or promo codes will be able to join the head start release, however.

edited 1st Oct '15 9:18:40 PM by SgtRicko

Finally an open beta, might start properly looking into this game now.

I might check this out once it hits see how it plays out.

It's basically World of Tanks 2.0 but in a modern setting, speedier, more diversity in both vehicles and weapons, and with a (rather barebones) PvE mission mode. It's much more graphically system-intensive too, so if you struggled running Wo T you're gonna have a hard time trying to get this game to play optimally. And since the core gameplay mechanics and controls copied Wo T, all of your experience should carry over pretty well.

Oh, and in regards to the premium content there's no gold rounds, and possibly no garage slot limits either. That's definitely a plus over the competition.

edited 1st Oct '15 9:25:54 PM by SgtRicko

How's the Russian tree look?

No such thing as a single national tree - rather, the trees are all thematic. Shiskin, the Russian arms dealer◊, tends to focus on heavy firepower and armor, or just pure firepower if not that. His arsenal also has some heavy-hitting light tanks and recon units such as the US Sheridan calvary tank, the Russian BMD airborne IFV line, and the British Scorpion AFV. They've got crap armor, but in return have devastating derp guns that can fire HE, HESH, or HEAT (and cannon-launched ATG Ms in the Sheridan's case).

The NATO dealer, Sophie, tends to be more varied. She generally prefers flexibility, accuracy, penetration and good armor for most of the MB Ts on her tech tree, with tanks such as the German Leopard series, the US Abrams series along with it's prototype variants, and the some random IF Vs. But her scout AF Vs beat everything Shiskin has by a longshot due to how incredibly speedy, stealthy, and long-sighted they can be, in exchange for having almost zero armor, vulnerable crews, and little to no HP.

Downside though is Obsidian is already getting lazy with the tech tree and cheating somewhat by counting modular updates or variants as whole new tanks. That's something I hated about Wo T since it made the grind feel repetitive, along with making it harder to distinguish the tanks from one another. Case in point, Sophie's tree has the XM 1 prototype, the M1 Abrams, the M 1 A 1 update, the M 1 A 2, and eventually the M 1 A 3 SEP armor update for the Abrams as the endgame Tier 10 tank. And yes, except for the XM 1 the Abrams line handles exactly the same, only with buffed stats each time you climb up a tier. Shiskin's tech tree will have the same issue too in the future, since Obsidian has mentioned that they're gonna have a ton of T-72 and T-64 variants probably filling up the gaps in the tech tree.

I feel the same way about Wo T: Too many T-54 clones and King Tiger-based blueprints in the endgame. You can try to justify the early Panzer variants since I only played one branch and I kill them all the same way. But you need to have something new in a MMO anyways, so pick your poison.

I'll give this an try when it comes out, though.

Then again you can't do too much with US stuff...unless there's information of new experimental tanks from them or such.

The game has officially entered Open Beta phase!

And downloading.

Must admit, I'm really not into how World of Tanks handles damage and stuff, I think Warthunder does a much much better job but the allure of modern vehicles is too much for me.

I've gotta give this a try.

I might as well jump on the bandwagon...

Why not? It's free.

Also taking forever to download. I'm still only about two thirds of the way there and it's been like 10 hours or so?

edited 8th Oct '15 5:12:55 PM by LeGarcon

My estimate downlaod time is jumping between 6 to 9 hours

It never too that long, even for me - and the Internet on Guam can be terrible. So unfortunately that probably means it's a server-side issue. The ping is usually over 300-350 ms for me, after all...

But then again, I had this site and plus two other websites open on Chrome, and I was playing Wo T too.

The connection is...not great to NA server. When I play World of Warships I can run the game and a video in background without that much connection problem...this just gives me hiccups.

Also, I still suck at the game...damn.

edited 9th Oct '15 10:23:41 AM by onyhow

I can imagine. There's eventually going to be an Asian server, but Obsidian isn't revealing any potential timeframes as of yet.

EDIT: A suggestion... if you're planning on starting Shiskin's tech tree, stick to the PvE modes for a while. His starter Tier I tank, the PT-76, is honestly a pretty bad example of how light tanks behave. It's only redeeming trait is the potential damage and penetration of it's cannon, along with the slightly higher than average total HP. Everything else about it sucks, and therefore it makes more sense to grind with it agains the AI until you can finally max out it's experience and move on to the other tanks in Shiskin's tree.

Wofili is much more forgiving though. The M113 is a pretty damned good AFV scout, even when pitted against enemies two tiers higher than it. Take advantage of it's good view range, great mobility on all terrain types, and the accuracy of it's 25mm HMG, and you'll be maxing it out within a couple of matches. Same with the V-150, but you'll need to be careful with how sensitive the driving controls are for wheeled vehicles.

edited 9th Oct '15 8:53:34 PM by SgtRicko