Out of Pod Experience

Over the years my time on EVE has been a rather entertaining one, internet spaceships with pew pew guns somehow touched my appeal for a well-rounded and different MMO. The graphics are great, the scenery is an aspect of this game all its own. Ive had a few problems, a dilema here and there. A ship lost to a glitch, another to someone who wanted the digital missile launchers off of it. Nothing that couldnt be resolved.

Though over said years I had grown tired of the usual missioning, mining, occational war PVP, and general gameplay. I heard about the all-mighty world of tanks. Some of you may have heard of it, maybe even partook of the game, not knowing the sheer pain and agony to come.

So I tried it out about halfway through the closed beta test. Despite the daily wage for a 'premium account' my progress was slow. I worked my way up to the german panther. There were flaws, glitches, and an abundantly clear homeward bias to one nationality of vehicles. As the creators HQ is based in russia (wargaming) there seemed to be a strong favorance in balancing towards the USSR tree of vehicles, they all seemed to be faser, have larger guns, more physics-defying maneuverability than they should. Both the USA and GERM tree seemed outmatched. You know those armored shells of german tanks back in the second world war whose names could be muttered as sociological warfare the TV shows and your grandparents would tell you about? This game did them no justice what so ever. The bias was so unbelievably out of control historicly terrible soviet vehicles such as the T34 would have no problem at all single handedly taking on a tiger. So the end of beta came, and the game made its release. Alright, logic says the closed beta was to hammer out all the problems so the game could proceed. I was wrong.

The only change 6.3.1 brought to the players was a publicity wiki page and other irrelivent useless junk. So we continued with the glitches and worked my way up the trees once more. It was time for 6.4 and a new hope for much needed game changes.

If there is one problem with world of tanks that anyone and everyone can agree on that needs some serious tweeking its the 'camoflage' mechanics. You might think that tanks engaged eachother by sight, spotting one another before or after they had fired their main gun. Not with world of tanks, oh no, that would be too simple. Wargaming had the bright idea to make these vehicles LITERALLY invisible. All vehicles had a 'view range' of which would allow the vehicle to render all targets in that range to be visible unless they were behind an object such as terrain, a house, or god help you, in a bush. A vehicle could be right in front of you and if he stoped moving at the right distance, just dissappear. Working as intended. So 6.4 took this to new heights by showing wargaming thinks its just about perfect by claiming they tweeked it. And they did, by about .01% which was not even noticable. Better than that came another tactical nerf for all german tanks in the form of a rate of fire reduction. The only thing more annoying than this was tthose god-awful 'premium tanks' that allowed a player to literally buy his was up to a high tier vehicle with no gaming effort at all. We called them "wallet warriors" and with such a siuting name comes a self-explanitory description. For the most part, they had no skill and were a liability to the team. They would take up valuable space on your team and not even know how to use the tank properly as they did not earn their way up to it like everyone else. So there was need for fixes in 6.5

So 6.5 came along and wouldnt you know it, another two wallet wagons for the people to fork over cash to get their hands on digital tanks. Though they did add the U.S. Tank destroyer line (for anyone that doesnt know a tank destroyer is basicly a tank hull without a turret and a gun mounted on the forward plate, designed to sit and wait) and the tier 9 medium tradeoff. The previous tier 9 was under armored, under gunned, and under balanced. So they added a new one and bumped the previous tank down one tier.

Now it was time for 6.6 which traded off the german tier 9 medium as it too was not up to par with everything else. Then again a patch would not be a patch if they did not make the german line suffer in some way. They nerfed the german tier 10 heavy, the maus...

6.7 came around and it was time to replace those cumbersome light tanks that could never hold their own in a fight as their guns simply did not allow. So they added tier 5 lights to replace the smaller and softer hitting 'scouts' designed to run into the enemy and de-cloak them (per say). It was basicly scuicide. The new ones at leasr allowed for a fighting chance.

time for 6.8 right? Nope, we just jumped to 7.0 And would ya know it, more nerfs for the german line! And more than that, 2 more maps, only this time they were actually playable (they usually added one or 2 per patch but were complete flops for the most part.

Alright, then came 7.1. This is where things got interesting. They finally gave the german line a much needed buff but wargaming be their ignorant selves only improved the smaller lower tier vehicles. All the important higher tier germans got another nerf. Then came french tanks, the sheer terror. At low tiers they were extremely slow but well armored. Once you got to the high tiers though they got 'autoloaders', meaning there was no loader reloading shots after every shell. There was a 6 round magizine that was loaded and the vehicle could spend a shell from that magizine every 2.5 seconds. Basicly allowed them to wipe out anything before the target even got to fire a second shot.

Well, CCP, I am thoroughly greatfull for your services and EVE itself. It has proven to be nothing short of spectacular. Fanfest just proves the player is what matters. Didnt know what I had until I 'lost' it.

I thank you for my ongoing EVE experience