Future Of WoT 2023

New/Returning Special Game Modes

Can’t say I personally care much about those, never did. But I know the general playerbase likes them for variety so I’m not complaining.

New Frontline Map

Same as above, I’m not a special mode player so this doesn’t really affect me but at least the visuals of this map seem really nice.

New Oyster Bay Map for random matches

They didn’t show much of this one but I’m guessing it’s one of the maps they’ve been testing previously so it’s probably easy to find some info on it.

Rebalancing of 8 existing maps

So we got Airfield, Studzianki, Mountain Pass, Steppes, Live Oaks, Cliff, Westfield, and Mines lined up for that.

• I think on Airfield it’s more difficult to defend the base on the West spawn, so hoping for some adjustments there.

• Studzianki seems fine overall to me, curious what they’ll change there.

• Mountain Pass feels a bit imbalanced on the South spawn, as in slightly easier to defend but difficult for TDs and arty to set up effectively compared to North spawn.

• On Steppes I notice that the battles always seem to happen very close to the North spawn, so maybe they’ll try to shift that more towards the middle.

• Live Oaks has very wonky balance (it feels all over the place and kinda unfair towards North spawn) so it would be neat to see improvements.

• On Cliff it feels like the big hill is more accessible to North spawn, so that is generally an advantage, and the valley down on the west side is where your team goes to die in the bottleneck... Hoping for fixes.

• Mines is.... well, Mines. I think South spawn is kinda fucked over because it’s very easy to spot the entire southern half if you have a scout on the hill and it seems easier for North spawn to take the hill. So I could imagine changes there.

New Prestige/Achievement system

This feature seems a bit like another e-dong comparison system. I don’t have strong feelings about it - on first glance it looks like XVM ratings are being added to the base game but with the added bonus of in-rewards and even players without mods being able to see them. The video hints at various stats being included in this rating. It seems to be individual to the vehicle, so sort of like XVM’s xTE stat? Either way, sure why not.

Crew Skills Rework

This seems less jarring than the last time they tried to completely rework the crew system. There’s some really noteworthy updates in there. Not sure if I understand the "improvement” of BiA, it seems identical to me. But it seems like they came up with good ideas how to finally make the “useless” skills more relevant, and the newly added skills are definitely looking interesting. I’m most surprised at the skills that will reduce RNG, since that is something players have been asking for but seemed unlikely to actually be introduced. Maybe the Arcade mode experiments were leading up to this.

Really surprised at the change to crew training. From what I understand all crews start at 100% training now, so skills are available immediately even if you don’t pay gold for a new crew member. Apparently the difference between the free, credits, and gold training is now just how much your first skill/perk will be trained right away. (Free - 0%, Credits - 50%, Gold - 100%) What I’m really curious about there is how this will affect already existing crews after the update. I‘m guessing the training levels for the skills will stay the same, but all crews below 100% major qualification will be raised to 100%. Slight bitter aftertaste here when I think about all the gold and credits I’ve spent in the past for crew training.

The crews will now be trained for 3 tanks, which I guess isn’t too bad cause let’s be honest, the being stuck to 1 tank limitation (minus premium tanks) has always been annoying.

Final Moment Camera (kill cam)

Another thing that has been a mod before and is now being added to the base game. No complaints here, I think it will help people be less likely to yell “HACKS!!!” when they can see where they were hit and what the circumstances were. It also seems to show a glimpse at whether you were spotted or not, which I think will also improve people’s understanding of why they died.

Vehicle Rebalance

There’s zero info shown here so we’ll wait until February for details I guess. Do I spy a Jagdtiger 8,8??

New Vehicles

I’ve seen it mentioned that the vehicles are being ported over from WoT Blitz, but I have to admit I don’t even care enough to look them up.

Gun Overheating Mechanic

With how little info is shown on the clip it’s hard to say how this will affect gameplay. Is it going to be retrofitted to existing vehicles or will it just be a new gimmick of newly introduced ones that WG then forgets about like so many before it? I can see that it could either severely hinder or improve the performance of existing auto-cannons (depending on how it compares to current magazines).

Edit: Seeing as there's a double barreled tank shown in the title card, I'm guessing it will be new tank gimmick.

Night Maps

That’s a neat thing! I know the community has wanted night maps since the beginning of WoT and I’m curious to see if there’s going to be specific mechanics implemented for it.

Dynamic Water & Map Objects

This is honestly the thing I’m most curious and tentatively excited about. I’ve been joking about how the hurricane on Highway should just travel across the map late in the match before. It seems like maybe not something this extreme will happen, but tides on the maps that contain (ocean) water and stuff like non-player vehicles crashing into the map with large-scale destructive effects could really spice up matches.

Of course it would add a giant RNG factor to the match if this happens randomly - but something like the zeppelin crashing into Himmelsdorf that we see in the video being a scripted event that happens every match could really add new strategic depth to the battles. I think it would be interesting if these big events had a sort of announcement or timer in the match HUD.

I’m not gonna get my hopes up, but in the clips it seems like environment being destructible might happen after all with this change, but who knows.