Greetings, Commanders!
New Update will bring us new Port, Directives, and a lot of presents.
This episode is special as we're closing on our fourth birthday.
Let's ask developers how they spent this year.
The protagonist in the game about naval battles is a warship.
Let's ask Anton Andreev about upcoming plans and results of the year.
Anton, you have the honor of starting this festive episode.
Tell us, how was this year for you?
The year was intense, well, speaking on behalf of the entire Art Department.
We had a plethora of tasks—
we released around 70 ships, 40 camouflages, 60 skins…
A colossal amount of work done! Any highlights you can recall?
Definitely the work done on the British carriers over the past year.
Firstly, they are “living” ships— the majority of them existed in reality;
secondly, they are really huge—
we spend around 6–8 months on creating a single model.
It's very serious work, these are very complicated models,
only the most enduring artists can work on these models.
Tell me about your tasks for the future.
We're planning to refresh the content,
to update our old models because they don't meet modern requirements.
We'll be gradually updating them
and increasing their level of detail and quality.
In addition to that, we've acquired some new references,
so some models will become more realistic and historically accurate.
The technology our game employs now allows you to make more accurate models.
We've reworked Yamato, she now holds the record in the number of her polygons.
We spent around 350,000 triangles on that model,
and it wasn't in vain, the model is great!
While we’re talking about the visuals, tell me, how do you work in that area?
For such events as April 1st and Halloween, we designed new camouflages…
Let’s say that these visuals
allow us to take a break from being historically accurate.
Yes, indeed.
They were previously directly connected to the events,
but now they have entered everyday battles
and entertain our players on a daily basis.
To my mind, that's really cool stuff.
On one hand, we actually please the eyes of our players, and on the other hand,
it allows us to fully reveal the creative potential of our artists.
If anyone dislikes all these visuals,
they can disable them, not use them, or not buy them.
But when someone really likes them, we're very happy about that.
I have a space camouflage for Des Moines.
Congrats, we've done our best
to bring you that space camouflage for Des Moines now.
What would you tell our players?
The most important message, on behalf of the entire department.
I want to thank you all. Thank you for choosing World of Warships!
I want to wish you epic battles, a mountain of achievements,
and positive emotions from playing our game.
Come visit us, spend some time in our game,
and we'll do our best to make your stay comfortable, fun, and exciting.
Our game is not just the game about naval battles, but also a virtual museum.
Sergey Zhebrovsky will tell us how to keep the interest in history very high.
The game is four years old already.
Was the last year difficult for you?
Speaking of historical content, how much have we done?
We’ve done a great deal of work.
I hope players noticed the new historical content in the game
and appreciated it, maybe even some aspects have broadened their horizons
and informed them about what happened in the world
over the last 100 years of naval history and more.
We're trying not to limit ourselves to ships only,
but to tell a bigger story, about history in a broader sense.
Ships had their names, and they were named in someone's honor…
I think it's very interesting.
Speaking about the last year's collections,
"Belle Époque" and "Naval Aviation," what did we use for them?
I think that one of the most interesting elements is the figurines.
These are the flagmen for naval aviation
who signal the necessary instructions to pilots to land on deck and not crash.
We made the "photos" ourselves based on 3D models…
Simply put, is this our reconstruction?
Yes, it's our reconstruction of events,
so even if there were no survivors of a particular battle,
we have photos that can show how the battle would have looked.
We restore such data based on information
obtained from military and historical sources and documents.
We tried to use watercolors in the French collection,
to introduce a new artistic direction, and the artists took up something new,
something that's close to them, with great inspiration.
Any wishes for our players?
The game is 4 years old! That's our common celebration!
Keep being our players! People have a very good quality—
the drive to learn something new. In my opinion, that's great.
I hope for us and our players
to nurture this drive to learn something new for the next year.
Wonder how did the players meet the previous updates?
Philip Molodkovets knows the answers.
Hi Philip! Hello Egor. How was the last year for you?
The last year was probably the most eventful year in the history of our game.
We completely reworked the carriers,
and it was more complicated than we initially thought.
That was a decent challenge for everyone, and I think for players as well.
Now we're finalizing the adjustments for carriers and announcing submarines.
What else can I say? The most intense year ever.
A year of change! What awaits players in Update 0.8.8?
First of all, a special festive Port will greet our players.
This time, we've slightly parted
from our usual concept of naval bases and cities.
The Port is a room— a construction set—
where ships are presented as models and mockups on a table.
That will be interesting.
In addition to the Port, which is more of a visual gift,
there will be more useful gifts, such as bonuses for the first victory
that are so beloved by our players, or as some might recall—Snowflakes.
Players will be able to win a battle
and receive a very desirable prize with the majority of ships.
There will also be Directives,
the mechanics of which our players are already familiar with.
There will be Directives dedicated to the game's birthday.
Players will be able to obtain a ton of presents
in honor of the game's anniversary, simply by playing.
Superb! A personal question— what’s your favorite meme of the year?
A great number of memes surfaced over the year, some of them were just…
Well, they left their mark on my life.
I can't point out one specific meme, but I can say that
when we reworked the carriers, our video blogger Yuro "Eurobeat" returned,
and now he is continuing to make his fantastic video guides.
I highly recommend watching those.
What do you want to wish players for the next year?
I wish you great battles, good allies, worthy opponents…
I hope we have much to discuss in one year's time.
This year was very fruitful as we tested a lot of new game mechanics.
What is coming next? Let's ask Danila Pavlov.
Finish the sentence: “A player comes to a developer…”
And the developer is a player as well.
Not bad. That's a good start! How was the last year for you?
The year was very busy.
If we're talking about the year since the previous anniversary of the game,
then Halloween was the most memorable occasion,
because it had loads of stuff such as new PvP and PvE operations,
and Operations with submarines.
I think that everyone who played the game at that time remembers that.
Then we were working on the Arms Race mode.
That mode was closer to the standard World of Warships gameplay,
but it was a brand-new mode, it had new mechanics,
and was completely different from the original game.
We made ranks for the mode, the Ranked Season was quite…
Yes, unusual. It even utilized a different tier of ships,
Tier IX ships were used for the first time. That was interesting.
Then we had April 1st. We made a lot of new modes for April 1,
starting with the reworked Epicenter mode
and ending with the totally insane Torpedo Beat.
After that we developed the idea in Update 0.8.5,
in which we introduced the Savage Battle mode as part of the Rogue Wave event.
Map development continues. How many did we make?
We made numerous fixes to our maps,
and introduced two new ones in different updates this year.
Those were maps for high-tier battles and we tried to make them diverse.
In general, our players asked, and we provided.
The development blog recently announced convoys, tell us a little about them.
This is a prototype, we're always thinking about new PvP modes,
and as one of the alternatives we wanted to try
another PvP concept built around convoys.
It sets different goals for players,
but at the same time, it pits both parties against each other.
How do you see the project’s development
from the point of view of your modes and maps?
The general direction will most likely remain the same,
i.e. we will present some new PvP modes and new events.
We already have a more or less defined calendar—
specific dates of the year for which we are preparing new events.
We also have a backlog for maps,
where we develop the maps that are currently in the game.
How many maps are you going to rework,
and how many new ones are in development?
At the moment, we're thinking about reworking
and adding between two to three maps.
But there might be more? Yes, there might be.
What about Random Battles?
Because you drastically changed the Epicenter mode, and I like it a lot now.
What new modes can we expect?
In fact, we always take a personal approach to all the modes we make.
We want to add new modes close to the setting of our game,
but for now we haven’t progressed further
than making changes to the Epicenter mode.
We also had the Arms Race,
it's a good example of how a new mode can enter the game.
Until now it was used only in Ranked Battles,
but we'll see what happens with it. Cool.
What would you like to tell our players? It is our birthday, after all.
Yes, this birthday is a celebration both for us and our players.
Of course, I'd like to wish our players to have fun in the game,
first of all— it's the most important thing.
It gives us great pleasure to work on this game, and we're going to continue.
I hope that the coming year will be even cooler than this one.
The game engine is constantly changing.
Will there be any graphical or interface updates, Vladislav Gordienko knows.
Hello! Hi Egor!
Let's talk about your job. What's the client core?
Simply put, we work on the game engine.
(To make it quick.) Yes, to make it quick and capable of many things…
I know for sure that two big improvements are coming—
in the way the ships and islands look.
Tell us about the work you do in this area.
We recently integrated an improved texture format,
it gets rid of many shortcomings of the previous compression types.
Thanks to that, it makes the ground look more rough, more realistic…
Yes, it will be more realistic.
Concerning the sky— in Update 0.8.8,
we’ve integrated improved technology for the display of the sky dome.
This will already be noticeable on some maps.
What will happen to the water?
The main thing is that we’re adding another harmonic
to the wave synthesis process.
And what about FPS? We never stop implementing optimization in this area.
The new technology of asynchronous rendering
allows us to simultaneously draw a frame and calculate it.
Every game event or update is supported by videos.
Tutorial, entertainment, historical ones.
Sergey will tell us more about their production.
You are the Head of the Video Department,
you control all these mysterious creative processes.
What do you need and how many people work and contribute
to publishing a single video on our channel?
Around 30–40 people. The Department consists of five teams,
a project might involve two, three, sometimes four teams simultaneously,
such as the CG group, Motion Design, Video Production, and Gameplay Video.
The final stages are editing, dubbing, translations into different languages,
and preparing subtitles—so making a video is a very long process.
The videos that we make within the shortest timeframes
are the Updates with Dasha. These videos require a week.
Other videos may require two or three weeks,
the Developer Diaries that we're shooting right now require a month.
Tell me, what’s the starting point for making a Naval Legends video?
It starts with the preparation of the locations
where we're going to shoot the video.
As a rule, we visit 4–5 locations that are relatively close to each other.
An expedition takes around two, sometimes three weeks.
Depending on the outcome of that,
we prepare a plan, a spot sheet for an expedition…
Has it happened that you planned to film something,
but actually filmed something different upon your arrival?
Sure, we arrive at locations to work with people.
People who are fond of what they are doing
can tell us much more than any book or open source.
We had the following story during our work trip to the USA:
we'd been told that a veteran, around 85–90 years old, was going to arrive.
He had served as a radio operator on a ship,
so we planned to film him in the radio cabin.
When he got out of the car,
we immediately understood that it would be difficult for him
to get into the radio cabin because it was located on the third deck…
But then he underwent an incredible metamorphosis and said:
"In the radio cabin? Alright."
Like a young man, he clambered up to the third deck,
got into the radio cabin, and then returned to his old and crooked state.
His story was very fascinating.
Moments like these are the most valuable, when you find the people
who can actually tell you about the events first hand.
It's always very interesting.
What do you think about the fact that you simultaneously make game videos
and preserve a large part of history? How do you feel about that?
We try to make movies of a high quality, both in technical and art terms,
and these movies will persevere. While they will survive,
the ships and museums that the films are about may not.
Those people that we film, veterans of the war,
their stories will also survive in the videos,
so that even younger generations will be able to see these people
and learn the history of the war from those who were there.
That's really cool and exciting.
Wow! I've got goosebumps. That's the way it is.
By the way, I've checked, and we’ve made around 250 videos in the past year.
What does this number mean? It means two videos every three days.
We've talked about history, now let's talk about the future.
We'll continue to make more entertaining content.
We’ve recently launched the WoWs Show.
Players like it, and we'll continue making new episodes.
Of course, your involvement in this project is also highly important.
We're trying to look for and invent new formats.
It's no secret that we're slowly submerging…
Not bad. Any wishes for our players?
Play the game, and, most importantly, have a good time while playing it!
That's what’s most important. Be the one who carries the game.
Right, carry the game and enjoy the emotions that come from it—
enjoy it, enjoy our videos, enjoy making the comments you write under the videos.
It doesn't matter if they are good or bad, kind or evil—it doesn't matter.
The most important thing is to enjoy what you do, enjoy your life,
and everything will be alright.
So, that's it. We congratulate all our players.
Thank you for being with us this year.
Like this video and subscribe to our channel.