5punk

If anyones interested in this gaem, you can apply at the WoT site ( http://game.worldoftanks.com/registration/cbt/ and usually get one within the week) or from shattered crystal (the eve time code people, requires registration and payment details unfortunatly)

Had a play last night, and its quite good. Dunno about long term, but its a laugh for a coupe of days anyway!

Currently playing:
Anhamgrimmar
P-nut
DogPants
Shot2Bits

Gonna give this a try, doubt I'd pay for it when it comes out properly though

You can get codes from shatteredcrystal.com

So whos got this then?

I don't, but I'd like to. Is it open beta time yet?

Im not sure mate. Had a few games with anham and its pretty good fun

Pnut quite rightly pointed out that Anham sent me a beta code ages ago, so I'm downloading it now. Yay!

whoop whoop!

You can't reconfigure the keys or mouse axis! Hope they sort that out for release.

I hadn't notice mate, they are fine for me. Oh I've added you on the friends thingy, doesn't work to great but hopefully it'll get us in the same game at somepoint

It's only an issue if you're used to non-standard configuration. I use reverse y axis, so not being able to change it means I spend half my time looking at the sky.

EDIT: Sorted it, found preferences.xml and edited the invert settings to TRUE.

First impressions aren't bad actually. Plays a bit like Counterstrike in that you get killed and then sit watching two teams camp their own flags for ages. The tank progression is nice though and combat feels like the right mix of action and tankiness. The maps are pretty decent, both in scenery and size with a few different approaches in most cases.

As it stands I'd play it as a free game and would consider making a few micropayments for the nice looking British tanks. It's probably not got enough variety for a subscription, but by the looks of it they're not going down that route anyway.

Dog Pants wrote:two teams camp their own flags for ages.

Im hoping that they will put in some more game modes. Im not saying that this mode is bad but it will prob get boring after a while.

Sadly only 2 brit tanks at the mo (churchill, which is ok, and the matilda which is supposedly quite good for lower tier play but they bost cost gold), althought there will be a couple more when the american tech tree gets released. including a WWI male tank!



They are putting new modes in...lemme see if i can find the linkies...


[edit]

http://www.freemmostation.com/2010/04/w ... rview.html

short on detail, but they do mention the risk type map, and clan/guild type activities

I was thinking about how to put people off camping. A stationary tank tracker that adds to a counter the enemy have that they can cash in on recon aircraft, off map artillery or close air support for example. The longer you stay still the more the enemy get. Problem with that is some classes are designed for lurking. SPGs are supposed to sit at the back lobbing shells, while Tank Destroyers benefit from lying in ambush.

As it happens, it's not as bad as I first though. Also, you can quit the game and your tank will sit on the battlefield wrecked until the game ends. In the meantime you can take another tank out for a spin. So the survivors can sit and camp as long as they like, you just go play another battle. And I have gone through all three of my tanks to find the first one still in battle. That must have been painful to watch.

Dog Pants wrote:I was thinking about how to put people off camping. A stationary tank tracker that adds to a counter the enemy have that they can cash in on recon aircraft, off map artillery or close air support for example. The longer you stay still the more the enemy get. Problem with that is some classes are designed for lurking. SPGs are supposed to sit at the back lobbing shells, while Tank Destroyers benefit from lying in ambush.

As it happens, it's not as bad as I first though. Also, you can quit the game and your tank will sit on the battlefield wrecked until the game ends. In the meantime you can take another tank out for a spin. So the survivors can sit and camp as long as they like, you just go play another battle. And I have gone through all three of my tanks to find the first one still in battle. That must have been painful to watch.

also, at the moment you get free gold (150 a day, after your first login of the day). save it up till you can afford premium, and that gets you +50% xp and +50% credits per round

Okay, I've been playing this all day. It's surprisingly compelling. MMO probably isn't the right term, more a persistent team based game like BEEF. You unlock and buy tanks, and then upgrades for them. There are loads of tanks, and maybe a dozen upgrades for each. The upgrades are pretty useful (bigger guns, faster engines, radio to pick up enemy positions from further away), and come at a reasonable pace. In fact progression seems to have been pretty well balanced. Point in case, for a good day's play today I went from the two starter tanks to a couple of tier 2 specialists (Tank Destroyer and Self Propelled Gun) and a better light tank. I've maxed out the trees on the starters and my destroyer.

The game proper is a bit limited at the moment with only one 24 player king of the hill game mode, but the variety of tanks and the half dozen or so decent quality maps are enough to keep it fairly fresh at this point. The roles of the tanks are nicely varied - AFVs push forward to spot and mix it with the other side, trying to outmanoeuvre the bigger guns with speed and rotating turrets. The tank-killers sit back and snipe, waiting in ambush at choke points, and the artillery sits back and lobs shells at what the other guys spot. The sides are pretty mixed up, and you're never completely useless - your noob tank might be fucked one-on-one even against better light tanks, but you can spot for the SPGs and run behind theirs to ping them in their unarmoured rears.

Winning or losing the game means more or less cash (to buy gear and tanks, repair and rearm) and XP (for upgrade unlocks). At first it's not a huge difference, and getting battered in a noob tank is no big deal. Higher up the food chain, though, and you'll need to win or get a few kills to break even if your tank gets shot up. Lose it and you need to repair it, and a few loses on the trot can see you taking a big hit to the wallet (I lost two games in a row with my T2 tanks and dropped from about 19k to about 11k). The noob tanks, however, repair for free so you're never completely boned.

A nice touch about how the game runs is that once you're dead you don't have to wait out the game if you don't want to. You can quit and your tank will sit on the battlefield waiting for the round to end. In the meantime you can take another one out. This has the massive advantage of circumnavigating the CSS-esque camperthons that can stretch out the end of rounds, and you can work on building up other tanks in the meantime. You'll find yourself rotating through your tanks while waiting for the wrecks to be recovered. It feels like it never punishes you for losing, which in a PvP game is nice.

Overall I'm feeling good about this. It's still the bare bones of the game but it's got the basics right. I can only see adding content making it better, although they will need to do just that to give it replayability of more than a few weeks.

Zah!
I now have a coedz for this so once Mrs Fab in law buggers off I will be able to give this a bash

This just in: A platoon of BT-2s are a terrible thing to behold. Simply hanging around with two similarly equipped randoms, we punched through the enemy flank and tore up their line from behind. Took out half their team between us while they were engaging our line, and most times they'd been hit by all three of us before they even realised we were there. I love my BT-2.