W.o.T. - This is an Improvement?

WOA, hit the damn breaks for a minute...

The Dev team at world of tanks has announced an improvement. Here is a link to that original text. Now I'm not one to throw my toys at change, but this has my oil clogging the pistons up a little.

I am totally cool with all the tier 5 and below changes. these in my opinion are skill building levels anyway.

I mostly play Tank Destroyers as I enjoy the idea of being able to mangle, blow up and outright murder a vehicle that by design intent is indestructible! My grind through the low and medium levels has for the most part have been enjoyable. Across my three accounts, I have a total of 5 TD"s, yes some I keep at low levels just for the fun! I currently have a T-6 JagdpzIV, T-7 T25 AT and a T-7 SU-152.

Enter my Jagdpz IV....I have hit Tier 6 hell. Now this tank does very well against tier 7 and below machines, Tier 8, I battle with and any tier 9 or higher, I may as well just go to the bar! On an average battle, I loose 1 to 3K credits depending on if I get murdered by a T-59, Lowe, KV-5 or some gold ammo wielding player. If I can get 2 to 3 kills or more and a victory, its hog heaven, now I'm talking 15-18K credits (every 6 or 8 games apart).

So here is my issues with the latest "improvement":

First - "Tank Destroyers have progressed a bit slower than most vehicles in the game to this point due to higher credit and experience costs for their guns than other same-tier vehicles. in version 7.2 we will be removing this disparity, resulting in similar costs to their counterparts."

My T-6 JagdIV is so close to T-7, The reason it is not tier-7 is not due to the experience gap (64,400xp to hit t-7), that I can deal with! the issue is that for every step closer I get in credits, I take five steps back from a few losses. I have even gone the way of a premium account on a trial basis and this does little to reduce the operating cost for this class of tank. Thanks Dev team for the thought but this don't cut the iron-hide here!

Secondly - "due to the re-balancing of the tank destroyer progression, we will be reducing the income of all tank destroyers by somewhere between 3%-8%, depending on the vehicle. This of course excludes tiers two through four, which will see credit income increases."

So now on top of the MM always putting me in T-9 fights, I get to loose even more credits on a per battle basis.

I guess I will be rolling in my Heavies or SPG's from here on out, bye bye Jagdpazer IV...

Please leave your thoughts and comments....

Doc

WoT battle of Kharkov Special

Commanders!

World of Tanks team is glad to announce Battle of Kharkov Special, the second special of spring, which is dedicated to the series of offensive operations on the Eastern Front of World War II, undertaken by the German Army Group South against the Red Army, around the city of Kharkov

Starting on March 8, 2012 at 11:30 UTC (3:30AM PST) and ending on March 12, 2012 at 11:00 UTC (3:00AM PST) the following discounts will be active. Curious what time this is in your region? Use this handy Time Zone Converter to help you out!

We welcome all players to try the following offers within the period stated above:

50% discount on following vehicles:

• KV
• T-34
• SU-85
• PzKpfw III
• PzKpfw IV
• StuG III
• M4 Sherman
• M3 Lee

And x3 experince for the first victory of the day!

Please note that selling the above-mentioned vehicles during this special will result in receiving credits equal to half of the sale price.

Be sure to take advantage of these discounts while they last! The above-mentioned items will return to normal price on March 12, 2012.

The Battle for My Gaming Time

Never before in the history of gaming has the competition been so fierce among so many different games. Back in what many still call the golden age of MMOs, late 90’s to 2005 a player had a mere handful of titles to choose from. The clear winner of that era is World of Warcraft and it is still the industry leader today. However times are getting tough for the once unstoppable gorilla of gaming as Blizzard has recently seen their subscription numbers dive significantly for the first time. Many will blame the direction the game has taken for this, but I believe it has more to do with choices available than anything Blizzard is doing wrong. To prove it I submit to you my email inbox.

Over the past several months I have received no less than 40 emails from games I used to play. By far the biggest two contributors to this total are World of Warcraft and Star trek Online. A former player of both titles, I have received emails requesting my imminent return and many olive branches of goodies have been propped up to entice me back. STO flaunted their new Free-to-Play format and then sent subsequent emails describing all of the new and wonderful features they have added since I left. World of Warcraft has equally been throwing the deals my way as they have now offered me four separate free time periods for my return. When I heard about the buffs they enacted for the Scroll of Resurrection feature, that allows players to bring back former players, I was surprised at the steps Blizzard was taking to recover their player base. Things like free Cataclysm expansions, instant level 80 for one character and free character transfers are perks this game would never have given out in the past. 

Several other games have sent me emails in the hopes that I will return to their games and most curiously I also received an email from Battlestar Galactica Online that urged me to log back in and report for duty. The only problem here is I don’t ever remember playing this game or even signing up to play, but they seem to remember me from somewhere so maybe it’s just my faulty memory rearing its ugly head again. 

Well the point of all this rambling is to convey to you, my readers, the urgency that gaming companies are feeling to grab as much of the gaming community as they can. New titles are being announced all the time and the number of games available to play is staggering. When even a gaming Goliath like blizzard enters an almost panicky mode of player retention, one has to wonder if things are getting a little TOO crowded. Many will contest that this is good for gamers and for the most part it is. More titles means more choices, but there comes a time when a market can reach an over saturation point, where supply outweighs demand. When this happens, many suppliers of our gaming needs will find it hard to stay open without enough paying customers.

Contraction of game makers is almost inevitable at this point, the only question left to be asked is which ones will stay and which ones will go. I just hope that it isn’t one of my preferred titles that gets the ax, but then again by that time I’ll probably be playing something else.

1 Year Later

March marks the one year anniversary of this little endeavor I started to write a meaningful and entertaining blog about PC online gaming. This year has been anything but easy for me and yet I am still here writing one year later. Although many of the goals I had set for myself, More blogs posts and Frequency of blogging, have been no where near where I wanted them to be at this point, I am still very determined to this blog and look forward to another year full of opportunities. For those of you that visit me regularly I say thank you and can only promise to provide more entertaining and more frequent updates to this site.

WoT Discounts the Big Boys

World of tanks has announced there latest special taking place from March 1st to the 5th. All nations are represented in this special and are in the Tier6 and 7 level. Here is the full post below.

The first special of March is here, and this one is called “Heavyweight Clash” to commemorate the first IS and Tiger encounter during World War II.

Since we know that you enjoy more than just those two vehicles, we’re discounting a wide variety of Heavy tanks – allowing you to choose which you’ll take to the battlefields this weekend!

Starting on March 1, 2012 at 11:30 UTC (3:30AM PST) and ending on March 5, 2012 at 11:00 UTC (3:00AM PST) the following discounts will be active. Curious what time this is in your region? Use this handy Time Zone Converter to help you out!

• Up to 58% discount on premium shells
• 50% off the following vehicles:
  • KV-3 - 539,100 (normally 1,078,200)
  • IS - 712,000 (normally 1,424,000)
  • PzKpfw VI Tiger - 628,350 (normally 1,256,700)
  • PzKpfw VI Tiger (P) - 638,250 (normally 1,276,500)
  • M6 - 320,150 (normally 640,300)
  • T29 - 725,100 (normally 1,450,300)
  • ARL 44 - 381,500 (normally 763,000)
  • AMX M4 (1945) - 647,750 (normally 1,295,500)
  • Churchill - 750 (normally 1,500)

Please note that selling the above-mentioned vehicles during this special will result in receiving credits equal to half of the sale price.

Be sure to take advantage of these discounts while they last! The above-mentioned items will return to normal price on March 5, 2012.