This time I have something especially interesting – prototypes of the first 4 maps – Karelia, Malinovka, Himmelsdorf and Prokhorovka.
Starting from Malinovka, as the topic goes somewhat too deep to cover all four at once:
As for the first image, I found it in a strange way – when putting worldoftanks.ru into Wayback Machine, I found like 2009-10-11 pdf documents, being dev diaries. They touched on many topics, from in-game mechanics of WoT, how to play better to even the history of various things, including the maps. While there wasn’t anything particular said in text, four images (one for each original map) are way more valuable than any theoretical info could’ve been.
So, let’s start analyzing the image. It shows a pretty early rendition of Malinovka with few key differences:
- the central field is located more to the north it seems
- building and rocks arrangement near the bases is completely different + some random buildings near the right border
- central lake has completely different shape, lacking a cutout for creating shooting balconies, instead being completely smooth
- that weird half-isle at the river
- A0 hill is fundamentally different, lacking any cliff and being way more condensed near the corner
- A1 water tank is only a small puddle and doesn’t go anywhere near the map corner, as it does currently
- general arrangement of flora is completely different in some areas and still decently different in pretty much all of them
That’s all for analyzing. Why did I attach the screenshot from IS replay?
This is a picture from Wargaming’s official “Our Story” video from 2020 (https://youtu.be/x2qg9ccv9PM?si=ChHg100em7DaaNZ8) and while the map itself isn’t anything particularly special, the minimap shown in that clip shows some intermediate rendition of Malinovka (comparing the prototype sketch and release version) – still with half-isle, different shape of central lake and maybe hill too? It’s too hard to tell from that minimap alone.
Assuming from very old UI and IS having 1000 HP, as well as blue HE icon, I can only assume the actual version of IS replay is some very early alpha test or even internal version, but due to absolute lack of info, anything is only a speculation. For sure Karelia was the only map at launch of alpha test, but by its end at the end of January 2010 (alpha test started September 2009), there were already four maps, but as I said, I have zero way of confirming if this proto or normal Malinovka were in the game at all during any point of alpha test.
As I said earlier, there are still three more maps to go, so we’re not stopping with content
