As you may have heard, game publisher Mail.Ru is pulling the plug on Armored Warfare (AW) game developer Obsidian Entertainment (OEI) and taking the development effort in-house.
This is rather unfortunate, as I had a positive impression of OEI and thought they were heading in the right direction with Balance 2.0, which was a major rework of many mechanics, including normalizing damage based on gun caliber and normalizing HP based on size/weight to prevent power creep across tiers, plus positive changes to create better balance among classes.
Mail.Ru doesn’t seem to understand the Western market (EU/NA), so I have no confidence Mail.Ru will meaningfully improve AW.
Beyond that, switching development teams always creates massive churn, partly because the new team doesn’t know the existing code base and architecture intimately, and partly because people always want to change something to fit their particular vision.
I wanted to share two things with you:
- My AW clan leader Gatortribe posting an in-depth writeup on what happened with AW. It’s a fascinating read
- I went back to World of Tanks (WoT) several weeks ago
The move back to WoT wasn’t based on prescience on my part – I was simply tired of waiting for Balance 2.0 to launch and the PVP and Global Operations queues were not popping in AW due to the pitiful NA population. I went back to WoT to see whether I’d enjoy it.
The short answer is that I’ve found WoT very enjoyable even after playing AW. I think WoT is rife with pay-for-advantage mechanics, but that’s not going to change, and I’ve grown to realize that the vast majority of the community doesn’t care either.
I’m adding to my WoT “Road to Unicum” series, here’s the latest episode:
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
Welcome back :)
Hey Taugrim, Offtopic. But do you think you will ever return to a MMO? anything got your attention?
Camelot Unchained and Crowfall.
Anything else look interesting to you?
I was playing Overwatch recently, and while it’s fun, my aim is extremely average.
I’m really glad to see you return after such a long absence. I have always found your content (going back to SWTOR and GW2 days) thoughtful, high minded yet approachable, and extraordinarily helpful. Looking forward to more!
Thanks Andrew, I appreciate the kind words.
Kinda sad I can’t play with you (EU here), would love to have some session with you. Hope you can enjoy your time back, don’t let the salty words get to you~ o7
Btw, if you by any chance every play Elite: Dangerous, feel free to get into contact with me.