I've stopped playing ALL other games that I own and have been playing WoT probably too much!

It's a great game, with enough sim in it to satisfy my tactical thinking requirements.

Friday night, beer and friends on teamspeak has been the best gaming I've had in a long long time. I wish all developers cared enough to do such a good job.

same - and the challenge! It's satisfying to be in my little PzIII light tank, avoiding the big guns and performing recon for the arty on my side and threatening the arty on theirs when I've gotten sick of plinking heavies at long range in my TD with an 88 or manoeuvering for flank attacks in my VK.

I'm about 10K short of the experience to get a Tiger. Can't wait.

The grind is excessively tedious if you don't have a premium account. To be honest, I've hit a plateau with this game. I still play to get my daily double XP and sometimes have a few hours of fun playing, but if it weren't for my clan, I would barely play this game. Co-ordinating with team mates makes this game so much more fun!

Yes the premium account is absolutely essential to cut the grind

As is buying the Lowe and using it to rack up transferable experience to help buy your way thru the vehicle trees (I'm finally at the tier 5/6 level with heavy, medium tanks and tank destroyers --- have no interest in artillery)

I've not played within a clan yet....so I am adapting to the roulette matchmaker....you really never know what you are going to get in terms of potential team play and experience. I've been stupefied by seeming utter incompetence and lack of situational awareness and initiative among team mates in some games while on the other hand conversely impressed by what appear to be spontaneous acts of coordination and brilliant examples of mass and maneuver to completely roll up an opposing side within 5 minutes while taking only two losses for the team

In short --- the game is tremendously re-playable and versatile in which you really never know what is going to happen from game to game regardless of what vehicle tier you enter.

I have spent more time playing this game in one month I think than the many years of playing IL2 --- and the best part --- I'm actually playing and not spending endless hours (weeks/months) under the hood configuring the game and my system in order to work around bugs or problems in the design of the game itself.

Ah yes, the game is beautiful in many ways - simple to get into (only need a mouse and keyboard, gasp!!!), beautiful graphics, detailed tanks, addicting gameplay...

I do not want to buy a premium account since I will then be pressured to play and play and play to get the most out of my money --- WoT is at the moment just a "daily thing" getting daily doubles every day after that, no pressure to keep on playing so I can go play other games or sim or spend time with the kids... Converting XP to free XP is just too expensive as well, so I'm just grinding my Lowe crew and getting them specialized.

I do agree about some great spontaneous coordination and winning battles. Usually 30 seconds into the battle I can tell if my team has a chance of winning. Pity the "n00b rush" occurs a lot and the whining in-game chat is hilarous sometimes. Thus I joined a clan to have more "coordinated battle" experience than a random roulette.

Well, no kids and no wife means a little more spare time and disposable income.

But the beauty of the game is that you can find (relatively) the same game dynamics at lower tiers that you can at upper. I find the low tier fights much more fluid due to the speed of the lighter armor.

One thing I have found which is hilarious is I have been in a few high tier fights with the Lowe in which a T1 Cunningham appeared either on my side or the other side and I had to laugh and think WTF? All he could do was run around and scratch the paint of nearly every other vehicle in the fight. I remember one such occasion I was in the Lowe and spun my turret in response to getting hit indicators coming from my left rear and saw a little PZII with 20mm parked right up against me (and under my 105 --- which BTW I have learned to game the game --- you can have two tanks butted right up to each other and if the barrel points through the hit box of the other tank it won't register a hit when you "fire thru them" --- so this is a bug) Anyway that little knucklehead poked away at me till I went to back over the top of him since --- I could not shoot him....then he ran away into the weeds like a little mouse!

The bug with the guns is there because in the closed beta players complained that shots originated inside the turret so that two touching tanks with muzzles pointing into thin air could still hit each other.

What needs to happen is collision detection with the barrel!

One-shotting a low tier tank is brutal but fun.

Cheers!

You're right....collision detection on the barrels would change things significantly --- I'm not sure if the tradeoff is worth it though.....since every tank is controlled by one person whereas in reality there is a crew who could be "exposed" or at least their heads outside the hatches and thus creating more situational awareness (now simulated to a degree with the 3rd person perspective and gun running through walls and things as you move along those very same objects)

I've read somewhere that they are playing with a new version with more physics involved (driving off of cliffs allowed or rolling tanks when driving parallel with a steep incline). So they may have some fix for the barrel problem in the works. Right now it is a bug though that introduces some real silly ramming and death dances.....which can be amusing...or stupid depending upon if it is happening to you and you are not in a charitable mood

New patch! American TDs are in.