Now that Age of Rage is active in Armored Warfare, the countdown clock is already ticking away for when the event ends.
I am going to stick to my original plan of waiting it out and playing as usual (time permitting), despite the "cheap for Gold" price to buy into just starting the missions. However, I do see a decent deal for the more expensive package, once I factored in all the vehicles, Gold returned, crates and other goodies.
Even without buying into the event, I can still collect BattleCoins and bank them up, cashing in when the time is just right to do so.
Yup and so far, the plan is working out just fine.
Well, my first attempt at Chapter 2 in Moscow Calling for Armored Warfare ended in defeat.
I felt confident with picking my "tried and true" tier VII Challenger 1 Wolf British premium MBT, but I discovered it wasn't the most appropriate selection for this particular battle.
To be more precise, the end phase of this mission, called Castle.
The upside is I earned a few crates and BattleCoins for the new Age of Rage campaign.
The downside is I thought I had learned a few lessons from the initial encounter and applied that new found knowledge only to repeat the same result with my tier VIII BMPT Terminator Reaper....
It's not like I didn't know there was going to be another update, right after Moscow Calling was put out on the Live Armored Warfare Unified Server, but I still wasn't thrilled to go through the process.
Despite the lack of an enthusiastic tone in my voice as this video starts out, the course of the battle begins to win over my tiredness....
However, with having a long workday, being a rather large update (coming in at 6.6 gigs) and another addition being added tomorrow (download size: unknown), I will temporally hold off playing until all the components are installed and done.
I think there is one vehicle in Armored Warfare that players just don't click with.
For me, it's been the tier VI C13 TUA Italian tank destroyer. Despite being fully upgraded with an emphasis on a speedier reload, top missile configuration and other improvements, it has been a bit of a dud for me.
In fact, I was so confident I was going to have another "not-so-pleasant-time" in this Italian tin can, I started to roll the capture software....
The next campaign for Armored Warfare is called Moscow Calling and if you want a sneak peek into things to come (subject to final changes and further balancing of course), you can download the Public Test Server client by following the information here.
Now, you might be asking yourself about the French title for this article and here's my explanation.
One of the vehicles I knew was coming in Update 0.29 was to be the tier IX Leclerc T40 premium tank destroyer, built in real life by GIAT (now Nexter) of France. I have been waiting for this machine ever since it was announced over a year ago and following the developmental details since. Nevertheless, once I saw this vehicle was included on the PTS server (even with the visual issues you can see above), I wanted to test out the mechanics under battle conditions and not at lifeless, stationary targets at Alabino Polygon....
Now, I fully understand this isn't the final version of this particular vehicle and changes could occur in relation to firepower, armor and mobility, but I am not impressed with this first outing with it.
For those of you who are American, Happy Flag Day! To mark the occasion, Armored Warfare has a giveaway and a few special that might be worth looking at (actually started a few days ago, but real life has happened and I am only getting to this now). Check out those details here and there.
Coincidentally, President Donald Trump also turns 73 years old too (born on June 14, 1946)!
To tie all of this together (except the Trump part) before I drop Because 'MERICA!, Part 3 (should take place in early July, for obvious reasons), I take a battle spin in the M1A1 Abrams Storm premium tier VII American MBT....
Without some kind of record of metrics, it's hard gauge how much time somebody has spent on something, how good they could possible be or even how much of an investment has been made.
I am not sure why, but I clicked on my Armored Warfare dossier and realized that I had reached a personal milestone of 4,000 battles. I know there are quite a few other players out there who have surpassed this count a long time ago, but for me, it was a trigger on how much has changed since I first got here and all the break and return trips I have made to this game.
Like a lot of other players, I came over from both World of Tanks and WarThunder Ground Forces.
One of the earliest appealing things Armored Warfare brought to the table was Player versus Environment action, something the other two titles didn't offer (and from what I understand, they still don't). Some will stand by their incorrect assertion this mode of play killed the Player versus Player of the game. If PvE was introduced much later, after the game had launched, I might be more inclined to agree with those false statements over the years, but since it has been around since the beginning, I don't.
To put it in other terms, if you open an ice cream stand and offer chocolate and vanilla flavors, but people only buy chocolate and you blame those people for killing your vanilla sales....seriously.
I was burnt out from playing the "random players thrown together into opposing teams." Granted, I have played a few PvP battles in Armored Warfare, it's PvE for why I keep coming back. I want to play a game for my own enjoyment and pursue goals of my choosing or interest, not for the "prestige of community status" nor approval of others. I also don't need the "test of skill" PvP is supposed to bring either, real life supplies a surplus of that almost daily.
If I want a challenge from the game itself, I just load up an upper tiered battle (as you can see, I spend a lot of time in that area, based on my stats) and pray I have competent teammates. Like World of Tanks and WarThunder, players have the option of buying high tiered premium vehicles without having any previous gameplay experience, which runs the high potential of being the cause of frustrations for those playing with them.
One of the biggest changes to Armored Warfare over these past three and a half years was the server merger. Gone are the separate North America, European Union and Russia zones, now just one Global machine is our electronic playground. Throw in the time zones, which can dictate the ebb and flow of the international server population and combine that with the skill levels of the players themselves (seen by my own eyes in Hardcore Mode) and any technical problems....goodtimes.
Despite all of that and more (like the whole Obsidian fiasco a few years back, the shutting down of the NA/EU forums, the ongoing Discord disaster and many former players who continue to trash talk the game, month or even years after they had walked away from it, since it doesn't fit the vision of what they wanted it to be and many, many other issues), I still keep coming back and play.
I have long since uninstalled World of Tanks and WarThunder and only look back out of nostalgia I have recorded on my own blog. I have no need or desire to run down things about those titles that I don't like or agree with. They are down for me, I am done with them. Like an ice cream shop that doesn't offer bubblegum flavor, I will wonder around until I found one that does and perhaps, become a repeat customer....
With that little rant out of the way, here is an exhibition battle with the tier VII Leopard 2 on Cavalry....
In case you didn't already know, there is a limited time special on the remote possibility of parking a Type 99A2-140 tier X Premium Main Battle Tank in your Armored Warfare garage. Since I am not the gambling type, I am not even remotely tempted to spend a real world dime on something where the odds of winning are an unknown variable.
To be perfectly honest, I have yearned to own that particular vehicle for quite some time.
Instead, I went with a more certain purchase, one tier down and with using only banked up credits....
