The Quest to 700 Gets a Reprieve

Wargaming announced today that World of Warplanes would be taking a delay to their launch date. For my eyes, its probably not a bad move. There was a hitch in the last update, which means that the British planes are not in yet, and you are going to want more than just a weekend to test those buggers before launch I would think.

The feedback has been…almost 100% positive. The forums are alive with congratulations and kudos and agreements from the playerbase (Someone even marveled that this must surely be the first time that a company announced a delay and had such a positive and supportive response!) The fact that they announced that this gives you more time to get to 700 battles and continue to earn tokens didn’t hurt either. Someone pointed out that if you already had more than 780 tokens to your name right now, if you continue to earn the 240 a day, by the time launch rolls around, you will be able to lock on to 6 months of free premium time. That is a whale of a catch!

For me though, I’m not sure. I’ve had to play 33 games a day to keep pace for the original launch date, and I’ve needed just about all those to get all the daily token allotments. I’m not sure I can keep that pace up for another 7 weeks after already having been running it for the last three.

I have 133 battles left, not counting my Closed Beta tally. And I have to admit, I will be resting easier when I see my battle count at over 700 without those CB battles added in…just in case. So I have 53 days to get 133 battles. I’m thinking maybe I will play enough each day to get 3 kills, 3 victories and all 10 of the easy to grab ground targets destroyed. This leads up to 140 tokens a day and probably won’t take more than 6 matches. That’s enough to earn another 3 months of premium, buy the one premium they are letting you keep post release (a prototype of the Brewster Buffalo), and have more than enough battles to earn my reward plane.

Kudos again to Wargaming for smart and savvy moves. They are just grooving through the mess this month. Good for them!

One of my Favorite Tanks Gets An Upgrade!

Silent Stalker announced on his FTR blog this morning the news that Wargaming has seen fit to grant a remodel to one of the oldest and rarest tanks in the game, the elusive Panzer V/IV. There are few of these puppies around on the US server. They were given as a “thank you” to early Alpha testers (those are unique in having a Greek alpha on the front hull), and were available as part of the “medium” preorder package.

As you can see, the model was a kitbash of two existing tanks already in the game – the Panther hull mated with the Mark IV turret. It was a cheap modelling bit for Wargaming, but a real tank. Only one was produced, as a command tank, and in real life the turret could not turn since it was bolted in place (the turret rings sizes did not match). In game, it turns just fine, thankfully, since its already a bit underpowered.

As it turns out, while its rare here, it shows up in the shop from time to time in EU and in RU. And it was always known that the model was not historically correct. As rare a bird as it was in real life, there are actually three surviving pictures of it!

As you can see, the hull is a little different (the bow MG is of the letterbox variety, not ball mount) with side skirts added, and the turret also has the armor skirts common to the Mark IV. While this was acknowledged, nobody ever thought Wargaming would spend the time and money remodeling a tank that few people had and few people seemed to want.

Until today. It appeard in the RU gift shop with a new artists rendition that matched the historical model. And when questioned, RU dev Evilly revealed that it had new artwork “because the model will soon be changed into that you can see on the picture 🙂 Looks nice, no?”

Needless to say, I’m quite excited. Though not an overpower tank, it is fun to play and rare on the battlefield, so I invariably run it from time to time. And these days, with premium shells able to be bought for credits, this has offset some of its handicap (weak gun for its tier) – particularly for people like me that run it not because it is a premium tank but because they enjoy playing it. I can shoot gold and still break even for the most part.

Anyway, kudos to Wargaming for spending some time and money just for the sake of historical accuracy and as a continued thank you to those of us that were there in the beginning. They have had their blips, but every now and then they go and do something like this that gives you a warm fuzzy.