Thanks to Vlad for translating. His work is crucial for TAP.
– Good day
Sherman: What do you want from me? (annoyed, but was calm later on)
– After WoT 9.15.1 and the transition to AS (Seb: ActionScript) 3.0, did you encounter any problems?
S: No. Well, yes, but in a different way.
– Did you hear about WG’s steps against forbidden mods? Wargaming was searching for specialists and apparently found them. There was an opening for an Anti-Cheat Analyst.
S: Did you read “The Stainless Steel Rat”?
– No, but Wikipedia gave the following: a series of sci-fi, humorous books by Harry Harrison.
S: I’m talking about that instead of an opening, they could’ve just PM’ed me 🙂 The main idea of the story is built upon the theory that the best anti-thief would be a thief himself, hired because of some reason.
– Wargaming didn’t contact you since our last conversation?
S: Did they even have the desire to contact me?
WG seemed to have server-side problems. And they are searching for an analyst who can fill the holes in the server. My proposition – most likely they fired some key figure and are now trying to find spots which this figure now left unattended.
– Recently there was a rumor that WG will implement codes (access keys), thus completely freeing themselves of unwanted mods etc. What do you say?
S: Well, these are rumors, and they’re far away from ships. In ships, there was the “stopwatch” scandal, so it’s kinda likely that it will come.
– You watch ships more closely than tanks? 🙂
S: Not really. I know, that Zhivets was demoted.
– What was this scandal in ships about?
S: In the client, on aiming at the right spot where it would hit the enemy, the stopwatch next to the reticle would blink. Modmakers would do mods that did an acoustic signal when you were on point and other adaptions.
Not one of the WoWS mod makers recieved a ban, though they used an aim predictor which was in the client.
– Did you hear about the “mortar” aim mode which allowed for throwing shells behind houses and mountains and how fast it was shut down?
S: This technology was known to us, we implemented something similar but did not publish it. This is shut down easily on the server side: the shell, contrary to laws of physics, simply doesn’t return to the ground. Sometimes, IÂ get the impression that the devs themselves don’t know how the game should look like.
– Why are mods which could be developed and added to Warpack, for example the “mortar”, such an easy thing and were not done earlier?
S: In principle, a mortar strike is quite a realistic situation. But some mods don’t pass the collective colloqium.
– Do you have connections to foreign modmakers?
S: No. Well, there aren’t any good modmakers there, but good hackers. I think that’s why in ships, they started pursuing us and not our foreign colleagues. Mods are way easier to track than anything controlling the client from outside. My advice is the following – if you want to remove the “forbidden” from the game, invite the ones who make the “forbidden” things.
– If WG accomplished something regarding unwanted mods, will you search for exploits and use them?
S: We didn’t break or exploit anything in the past or not in regards to WG. To search exploits we first need obstacles 🙂 There are none in (World of) tanks. And we’re having less customers anyway. You can find everything on the internet for free…
