Translated by senaya
A few weeks back one of the Russian WoT fan groups became nostalgic and members decided to read through the old official forum threads, one of them being an old ‘ask a dev’ thread.
Before we start, I’m going to note that you’re going to encounter the world ‘release’ a lot here. It was discovered, that the release of the game actually happened somewhere between 2010 and 2011 depending on the source.
These posts were mostly written by: Slava_Makarov, Tiger, Storm and SerB
- Crew specialization will be decided on the type of a gun first, then improved on more specific weapons. So using crew from a TD on a HT will be perfectly possible
- Tank modernization will include from zero to several types of additional armour plates of different thickness
- Additional spaced armour coming at release for all of the tanks which had it in real life
- People are concerned that arty is going to be a very weak class (compared to different stages of the game, arty was inarguably in its best shape back in 2010 —> heavy hitting and accurate at the same time)
- E-100 will not get a twin 88 mm gun, OP tanks don’t have any alternatives (E-100 has two guns atm)
- Near-total objects and houses destruction (some of it coming soon)
- Crew will be visible in tanks with open compartments, possible to take out with one HE shell hit
- Flamethrowers aren’t implemented because they don’t have an opponent to fight yet (later on, in 2010 they stated that flamethrowers won’t ever be implemented. I’m guessing that at this point they decided against implementing visible crew)
- Better radio station means heavier weight and bigger size, so expect to have less ammo in your storage
- Auctions: because selling your tank back to the shop is going to be way cheaper than buying it, we are going to allow players to trade between themselves which will allow them to buy and sell their tanks at a better price
- Trading system will allow players to trade tank shells and other items between themselves
- Smoke screens will be implemented at the release or right after the release
- There are plans to increase the number of players from 15×15 to 20×20 for the CBT
- Rain and other weather effects won’t hinder your internet connection, they will be implemented after the release (later on in 2010, they stated that weather effects are done but are very laggy, so devs are working on optimizing the performance)
- When night battles come, you will get flares and nightvision (later on, in early 2010 they stated that no night battles will be implemented)
- Sturmtiger will have a 40+ sec reload. It will be able to 1hit KO light and medium armoured targets by merely splashing them (glad we never got this released)
- IS-7 and Maus are going to be very hard to kill tanks, to take one of them down your team will require lots of cooperation and skill (it was true, at early stages of the game tier 10 tanks were gods on the battlefield)
- HEAT rounds for 100 mm guns were introduced only in 1961, it is way too far into the future for our game (and now we have tanks of late 70s+)
- Players will not get punished for damaging their teammates, you can only report them manually by opening support tickets (glad they changed their mind)
- Manipulations with your nickname (e.g. colour change) will be available via gold
- Historical battle reconstructions will come (later on, they expanded on this by adding that during certain time intervals, usually several days, historical battles are going to be always available in contrast to clan wars)
- Japanese tech tree is going to come accompanied with island maps
- Nashorn and Brummbär to come after release (still no Brummbär)
- KV-85 won’t be implemented because you can build it yourself from the parts of KV-1S. Simultaneously, SU-122 will not be implemented because you can build it yourself from the parts of SU-85.
- It will be possible to trade silver for gold and vice versa with other players
This is a short list of unimplemented things which were planned at some point during the time frame from June 2009 to July of 2010. Obviously this thread lost a lot of posts due to flooding and obviously it doesn’t have all the features ever planned, but it’s still a fun read looking back at the game’s early stages.
