Rememberies and other erata

Hey folks!

It has been a very long time since I have posted on here. Something I see on here, or seen talked about in here, is nostalgia for how the game used to be, or just remembering some of the absurdities we encountered in the past because of game engine/design idiosyncrasies. So, in order to remember the good, the bad, and the silly, I just wanted to share some memories and some ruminations with you.

I remember the first time I played the game, and there were only 3 nations. I didn't really understand the game back in 2011 as I was a competitive TF2 player, but it gave my dad something to do while he was recovering from cancer. I soon got convinced to join and play the game, and joined right about the time the French tanks were added in 0.7.0. What a different world it was.

In no particular order – just some memories/thoughts through the years:

AMX-40 could see tier 9's when it was introduced (and only the patch it was introduced in) because it was considered a 'scout'. Who else remembers the horror of being asked to 'go spot!' at 20kph?

Remember using loltraktors to block bridges or lock a Maus in place because physics wasn't a thing?

Also, 'spidertanks' hanging off the side of steep cliffs to shoot the roofs of tanks below pre-physics.

Dragons Ridge – I miss you the most.

MM changes through the years. Going from unlimited MM (when server populations were tiny) to +5, then + 4 then +3 and now, +2.

Who else remembers the 'arty crunch' because of the way MM worked and with arty only going to tier 8, matches at tier 8/9/10 all would be chock-full of 8-12 arty (depending on time of day/luck with MM).

Who remembers playing late nights (this may have been a NA only thing) and playing 7 v 7 or 8 v 8 because not enough players online, in randoms?

Who remembers seeing the first system requirements for HD textures, and being astonished at the file sizes involved and all the problems this gave the many players still on standard HDD's who had yet to move to SSD's? (this was before game engine changes that really optimized things)

Heck, who remembers all the optimization tricks we used to use back then, so we could load into a match and play before the 30 second timer finished counting down? Or to load textures faster so we didn't have brown potato blobs floating around the battlefield?

Who else is astonished to think back and remember – this game used to support old potato computers running windows XP and only 4gbs of RAM for everything (included GPU ram in that total)? It is AMAZING how far this game has come, and how well it has been optimized to run on even current 'potato' hardware.

Ah, all chat. How I do not miss the toxicity of teammates calling out where the scout was sitting in a bush, to get them shot because that player didn't approve of how the scout was spotting.

Ah, all chat. How I miss taunting the enemy team when they did something stupid.

The Japanese heavies have been in the game HOW long? i thought it was just last year…. oh goodness, I'm getting old and the years/patches have blurred together.

Clanwars. The teams change. The player changes. The drama never goes away.

"The game is dying/dead." It always has been. Even back in 2012 when I first started my own personal WoT account. You know, for any online game, to have been going for 11+ years (not including beta/alpha testing) is an amazing testament to WG doing something right.

'WG ruined the game with this patch! i quit!" Every patch has ruined the game. The purest form of the game is back in version 0.6.x where T-54's teleported around the battlefield because the netcode was so bad. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Remember grinding a tree from tier 1 to 10 used to take 1,000 – 1,500 battles, give or take a few dozen, depending on your skill level? Now, with x5 events, x5 boosters you can buy, personal XP boosters, Clan XP Boosters, top of the tree XP boosters to grind a specific line… It isn't far-fetched to complete a grind in 400-500 battles. The game is so much quicker to grind through and unlock than it was when I first joined.

Speaking of the quick grind, you know how people complain of all the 'terrible noobs' at upper tiers who haven't learned to play the game? Please see the prior statement where people are getting to upper tiers in easily 1/2 to 1/3 the time it used to take. They aren't learning anything, because they haven't had time to as it is so easy/fast to grind.

To end off these memories, let's bring forth the most disastrous thing to hit this game, and a mystery that was never solved. We never did learn the location of Serb's moon base.