World of Tanks Beta

Soldato
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2 Jun 2007
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Click here for beta key!


Shattered Crystal are giving away closed beta keys for World of Tanks. 1.1Gb client download, will be done in around 20mins. Not sure how many there are, but there's a 'limited number' so grab them while they are going. They say its going to be free in the vid, profit through microtransactions which will 'make life a little easier'. Hopefully this isn't going to give people who pay a huge advantage over freebie players, time will tell. In the meantime, yay beta!

OcUK players names:
OcUK - IGN
Iviv - Iviv
SiriusB - Etzeitet
vincent1989 - vincen1989
TheMightyTen - HimmelsKrieg

Join the OcUK channel! Hit 'channels' in the bottom left corner, search for OCUK and its there! Started by Panzercommander.
 
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Its an interesting game, the aiming system reminds me a lot of Planetside's Cone of Fire system. Essentially there's a large aiming area in which the shell with fly in. Sit still and the cone shrinks, down to a minimum size dependant on your turret, cannon and so on. As you would expect, the large damage dealers are less accurate, so the CoF takes longer to shrink and doesn't get as small, but the powerful hits make it worthwhile.

Battles seem to be 15 a side, a mixture of both USSR and German tanks, though there seem to be more German tanks in most games, though you start off with both sides basic tanks. Battles take 5-10 mins (I think, I haven't actually timed yet but thats how long they seem to take). They are rather slow affairs, not just because tanks are inherently slow to accelerate and move, if you get too far ahead from friendly tanks you're a large target and will be quickly gunned down. Hide in trees, thats the best way to not be spotted while still being able to shoot out. Sighted enemies appear as red diamonds, as long as someone who can see them is in radio distance. While they are just a triangle, there's no point shooting as you can't physically see the tank, but once there's an outline of the tank below it, you can shoot and have a chance of hitting. Present as little armour as possible to them, because they will do the same to you, unless they haven't spotted you :)

After the battle you gain exp and credits. Exp is used for the tech tree, and unlocks new tanks and new parts for the current one. Essentially, each army has a tech tree, and each tank has its own small one as well, where you can research different engines, cannons, radios and all the other parts. Once researched, you can buy them with credits to fit to your tank. You also need to buy ammo, the starting cannon's basic ammo is free, once you upgrade you have to pay, so watch your ammo. The exp you gain from a battle can only be spent in the tech tree for that tank, though, so you need to keep buying tanks to move up the tree. That said, I've just completed the tech tree for the starter tank, and it seems once you do that, the exp is traded into 'free exp' which can be spent anywhere, but not at a 1:1 ratio. So you can start upgrading the next tank you're going to buy so its got upgrade options available from the moment you buy it. Or you can use the exp to train your crew. And... I'm still trying to work out what exactly crew do.

You gain enough credits from losing to get enough cash to rearm, as well as have a little left over, and I've not won a game yet to see how much you get for winning, but its going to take a while to afford a new tank.

And as for it being dark, I think he just has his brightness set too low, my game looks fine. Runs at a smooth 30fps on my system, 8xaa and everything on high.

Edit: Forgot about victory conditions! There's two, the obvious being to destroy all the enemy tanks, but the other option is to make it to the enemy base, there's a flag there, stay close to the flag and a large bar counts up to 100. Reach 100 and you capture the base and win. The more tanks you have there, the faster it captures.
 
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seems pretty crap to me...

just had 3 battles and one thing became obvious the net code is dire....

you only ever get kills if you camp because if you try to find anyone you die and then 10 seconds later the enemy tanks uncloak...

the netcode is obviously laggy of the games draw distance is fubar
 
seems pretty crap to me...

just had 3 battles and one thing became obvious the net code is dire....

you only ever get kills if you camp because if you try to find anyone you die and then 10 seconds later the enemy tanks uncloak...

the netcode is obviously laggy of the games draw distance is fubar

Never had that problem, I'd check your connection tbh.

Signed up tonight, just played it for a couple of hours & it's great fun. The starting tanks are pap tho, and soooo slow...
 
Never had that problem, I'd check your connection tbh.

Signed up tonight, just played it for a couple of hours & it's great fun. The starting tanks are pap tho, and soooo slow...

theres nothing wrong with my connection i had a 60ms ping and 50fps , two tanks spawned right infront of my dead tank on the road.

they obviously loaded me fine because shells were coming out of nowhere i thought it must have been random artillery at first but then they magicaly poped up.

i often wondered why a lot of the time i never saw whoever killed me
 
theres nothing wrong with my connection i had a 60ms ping and 50fps , two tanks spawned right infront of my dead tank on the road.

they obviously loaded me fine because shells were coming out of nowhere i thought it must have been random artillery at first but then they magicaly poped up.

i often wondered why a lot of the time i never saw whoever killed me

As I said, I never had that problem and I started playing tonight for a couple of hours.
 
I have noticed some extremely laggy players who seem to jump about the map, which may be what happened to you.

As for draw distance, that's based on your tank. You can only see so far out of it. For most it should be the turret which controls this, there's a 'view distance' stat. And as said several times, the starter tanks aren't so good. Just trying to afford a tank destroyer.

Couple of things to note. Every day, you get 150gold. Gold's the 'microtransaction' part of the game. You can use it to buy credits, to transfer exp from one tank where its not needed to one where it is, buy a premium account (+50% credits and exp from battles) and buy better ammo, though the better ammo isn't really worth it, at least not at the beginning.

Finally, a handy tip. If you're in a battle and you're destroyed right at the beginning, you don't need to sit around twiddling your fingers. Hit escape, select the second option down (exit battle, I think) and you can go back to the main menu. Your tank is still displayed as being in the battle, but you can go out in any other tanks you have and fight, so you're always doing something.

If people want to add their IGNs then I'll add them to the first post, so we can friend each other if you so desire. Apparently there's going to be a clan system, but not yet. I'm Iviv.
 
Finding it very hard to play at the moment, I keep on getting ridiculous lag spikes where the whole game will freeze and the ui disappear. Sometimes it won't even log in. It was fine last night, but there's probably a lot more people playing now. Has anyone else had similar problems?
 
Played about 10 matches, haven't got one kill yet haha. I think you can leave after you die and still get all the XP and credits, and I right?
 
Couple of things to note. Every day, you get 150gold. Gold's the 'microtransaction' part of the game. You can use it to buy credits, to transfer exp from one tank where its not needed to one where it is, buy a premium account (+50% credits and exp from battles) and buy better ammo, though the better ammo isn't really worth it, at least not at the beginning.
How do you get 150 a day? I logged in today after playing yesterday and haven't got anything.
 
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