– Not many know this, but apparently you have a department called “Happiness of the player”. What is this and what do they do? – Yes, we do. This is quite a new department, they are monitoring how and why problems occur.
– On Supertest, the 100th premium tank got introduced. Where is the game going with this? There was the trade-in experiment, but no official results about this. What will follow: tank rental, or tank exchange program or something similar? – Trade-in was deemed quite successful and will be introduced as a core mechanism. We do have tank rental as well, but we use it mainly in Asia and China. No other plans for now.
– You have a good audio department. Can we expect audio updates for WoT, especially regarding soundtracks? – Yes, certainly. They are currently working on soundtracks, among other things.
– There was some talk once about interface 2.0 for the hangar and the same for chat. But I want to ask about the following: at Blizzard, they have a huge amount of emoji in chat. Can you at least expand the “default” ones? – Well, chat is a huge topic in itself. Its’ developing quite slowly, there are many problems. Interface is slowly being upgraded, the first part comes in 9.19. Emoji are not a priority.
– Rostelekom – anything similar for the inhabitants of Ukraine? – No plans for partnerships in the Ukraine right now, but if we find a good partner, we’ll do it.
– What were your conclusions about the New Year’s crates and what will happen further with this concept? It’s no secret that some games stay afloat on such microtransactions alone. – Regarding the crates, the results were quite positive. We’re not planning to implement them on a permanent basis, though. We’ll improve them and already have ideas regarding the next New Year’s event. A part of the crate functionality will reappear in Ranked Battles.
– Currently, the player numbers are lowering, what could cause this? – First of all, player numbers are seasonal, secondly, there is an early audience loss. We can’t say that everything went bad right after 9.18. Thus, we’re currently doing certain return activities. But our main activities are currently aimed at our target audience, the long-time players that know the game well.
– What about the mobile functionality, chat, authentication etc.? – Currently being tested.
– What about mods being implemented into the client? – Some interface ones are currently being worked on. Also, Battle Assistant has to be refined. We’re also thinking about session statistics.
– Did you analyze the account black market? Of course, this is a small percentage, but it does exist. Valve, for example, is neutral about account transfers. – We’re analyzing it to an extent, since we forbid account transfers.
– We now know what’s up with the “Defender”, what about the Skorpion G? – Everything normal about it, it will come back for sales.
– About new nations and branches. WG traditionally releases one nation per year, in 2015 it was Czechoslovakia, in 2016 it was Sweden. Will this tradition be continued and can we expect a new nation, or will WG fill up the existing nations? – You shouldn’t expect a new nation in 2017.
– Wouldn’t it be useful, regarding the new balancing, to classify Maus and the Type 5 as super-heavy, since with the current balance, one team might have 5 such vehicles, the other none, and these 5 super-heavies bulldoze the other team. – There are some thoughts in this direction.
– Limit for light tanks? – No.
– Will the be a voice-activation for platoon communication? It’s annoying to always press Q. – Voice activation has its’ up- and downsides, we might do it if we have time.
There were some bonuses promised for alpha- and beta-testers in 2016. Was this promise fulfilled by just converting the KV-220 to HD and giving it a log?) Is that all? – No, of course not. We currently have many other tasks, but it will come, though more likely as a reward for all “older players”.
– Anything about personal missions 2.0? – Far from completion.
– Do you know that there is currently a partial workaround for chat-ban? – Yes, will be fixed in 9.19.
– What about the next ban wave? – Soon.
– Any changes in physics recently? After the patch, my WZ-132 loses its’ tracks on each bump. – No, we didn’t change anything. Play some more, if it occurs again, send replays.
