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History of the Game
There was a map named "Train Station," which was created in 2010 but was released before the New Year celebrations in 2012. After the release, a bug had been noticed; the prop of the tower could be shot through with Shaft. Two days later, the use of this bug became punishable and a week after that, the bug had been completely fixed.
In 2011, Developers decided to make a contest in which it was necessary to turn the turret constantly. A special map called Carousel was developed for this contest. It was assumed that players would not be able to use the supplies on that map (neither purchased, nor bonus boxes). The map was never released. It is worth noting that the main designer of this map was the legendary mapmaker Figishe, who created a lot of maps. Now the map is considered to be lost.
The project of Ricochet turret first appeared in 2009. The turret was planned to be called "Vulcan". Its shots originally did not bounce off surfaces and were blue. At that time, Vulcan / Ricochet was a machine gun, but then the idea of bouncing balls appeared, and that idea later grew into a full-fledged turret, now known as Ricochet.
When Hornet was just in the testing stage, it consisted of five parts: the central part and four side parts, each of which was below the level of the central unit, and on each side blocks there were tracks. Then Hornet changed to its present state because its design was deemed "too futuristic" and the complexities associated with gravity and traction.
Appearance of Shaft in June 2011 caused quite a furore among tankers. After the release, Shaft was bought at a rate of three pieces per second! Straight after that it was changed and paints with protection from Shaft were released. On the next day it was removed from players' Garages, the crystals were given back and the description was changed. Shaft was weak, so it was slightly improved and, before the release, there was an open testing in Test Server. On the first day of testing, the maximum damage of Shaft in aiming mode was 150 - 175 - 200 - 250 HP (for M0 - M1 - M2 - M3), on the second day was 200 - 225 - 275 - 300.
First Gold Box was worth 1 000 crystals. Initially, no one knew how, where and when this bonus would appear. First Gold Box fell on the map "Kungur" when the battle fund was 700 crystals, it was caught by player Noosya. Later, Gold Boxes began to fall almost on every map, but their value was cut to 100 crystals. Now, the drop zones of the Gold Box drop exist on all maps and the value has again been increased to 1000 crystals.
In February 2011, a special modification of Smoky was introduced. It was named Smoky XT. This modification costed about 4000 crystals. It was available for purchase only for one week. Smoky XT was better than Smoky M3 in all aspects.
In 2009, developers decided to create a turret that could deal damage to opponents and heal allies. So Isida appeared. The first concept of Isida could only heal and looked like it had three teeth, something that resembles a model from the Game «Half-Life». Isida was also able to heal itself (by firing into the void). This ability was too strong and was removed. Isida was last modified in February 2017, when the self-healing ability was removed.
During beta testing (May 2009) Tanki Online was awarded at Game Developers Conference in the category "Best Game without a publisher". This says that, while only in the test phase, Tanki Online had gained recognition and fame in the gaming industry.
In the Summer of 2012, there was a special event hosted to holding the European Football Championship. During this action Gold Boxes value was increased several times. After the action finished it was estimated that during the action players caught 90 million crystals in gold boxes - in the current economic system it is worth nearly one billion crystals!
On September 27, 2012, an extraordinary battle called «Kasim vs Sun» took place — the Community Manager of Russian community, Maksim Khusainov, and Tech Support specialist, Kseniya Ignatyeva, fought against each other on Wasp + Smoky combination. Maksim won with a score of 22:19. Tankers could support Maksim and Kseniya by acquiring a special paint in the Garage that costed 100 crystals. 47 341 paints for Kasim were bought, 18 004 for Sun and 4 844 for both players — all those who bought the paint for Maksim received 59 crystals.
Every year on October 31 Tanki celebrates Halloween. In 2012, during the action a special map was created 59 597 times, and a special gold box fell 12,008 times. There were some interesting coincidences: October 30, 2012 the 16666666th tanker registered, and the Tweet made about the special video blog was 666th. In 2014, there were 45 ghosts on a special Halloween map. On October 31st 2015, tankers spent in the game a total of 196 years, and caught 440 000 Gold boxes. The winner of the competition for the best gold catchers was the player Ti-To, who caught 195 boxes and received Viking XT and Thunder XT as an award.
The creation of the first test version of Tanki took four and a half months. First registered player who is not a developer was GlebNikitin. And the first registered account was arts80 which belongs to server programmer Alex Kviring. The first map in the game was the prototype of Tribute.
By mid-2010, there were about 200 000 players registered. On December 19, 2010 the millionth registration was achieved. 6 June 2011 - registration number 3 000 000 (the player with the nickname katyana). January 4, 2012 - seven millionth registration (the player with the nickname stepan1234567891). March 25, 2012 - the barrier of 10 million registrations was overcome (player with the nickname lYonsl). On Tanker Day 2012 there was a registration #15 000 000 (a player with the nickname adilov.amir). February 5, 2013 - twenty millionth registration (the player with the nickname tolik755). End of July of 2013 - thirty millionth registration (the player with the nickname nadja8201).
Tanki Online is most popular in Russia. This is followed by Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Moldova, Georgia, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The most popular paint in the game is "Green", then "Holiday" and "Forester". Three of the most popular turrets are Railgun, Ricochet and Twins. Three of the most popular hulls are Hornet, Viking and Wasp.
On New Year's holiday and Tanki's birthday which is celebrated on June 4, the developer team arranges a quest called "The GAME". Winners receive a "dream tank" - a fully micro-upgraded hull, turret and paint. The winner of the event on BD TO 2014 was player KomZorg, who chose Hunter M3 Ricochet M3 and Picasso. Player SteelShark, who was winner of "The GAME" on NY 2014-2015, received Hornet M3 Hammer M3 and Picasso. Player alex7668-rak, who was the winner of the event on BD TO 2015, received Hunter M3, Smoky M3 and Nano. Player DisappearedStar, who was the winner of the event on NY 2015-2016, chose three paints instead of a "dream tank": Taiga, Raccoon and Jade.
The official VKontakte group of Tanki Online appeared in January 2011. Russian community manager Maksim Khusainov promised to take a dip in the hole if the number of subscribers in the group will be over 500 000. September 27, 2014, this mark has been passed, and on New Year Maksim fulfilled his promise - in the first v-log in 2015 he began speaking from the hole.
The game has a total of six maps with an even number of points in Control Points mode - Courage, Deck 9, Magadan, Siege, Factory and Fort Knox.
There are four maps - Canyon, Duel, Ping Pong and Hill - which do not contain a Control Points mode at all.
In addition, Duel is the only map that is not available to be played in both Capture The Flag and Control Points modes.
The most capacious map is Dusseldorf, holding a massive 40 players, Berlin goes next with 36 players max, while Lost Temple and Madness have 32 players max. In turn, Lost Temple is the largest map, Berlin is just a little bit behind, and Dusseldorf closes the top three. The smallest maps are Island, Duel and Ping Pong.
In the summer of 2014 the Football World Cup was held in Brazil, and Tanki could not stay away from the event. In the action called "Football Frenzy" players could purchase one of the 32 paints, symbolizing the participants of the World Cup. Those who bought the paint for winner of the championship were given back a 50% of the crystals spent on purchases during the promotion. Total number of paints bought is 555,502, including for Russia - 111 000 (the most popular paint), for Germany (the winner) - 38 007, for Argentina - 17 641, for the Netherlands - 15 465. The least bought paint was the paint for Côte d'Ivoire - only about 1,000. About 887 million crystals were returned to tankers.
In 'The GAME' of May 2013, the prize for those who successfully solved all of the puzzles was a temporary paint called "Storm" with 15% protection from all turrets. At the end of the quest, 9636 tankers got the paint.
A long time ago Railgun was called Fear Machine, Ricochet could've been called Vulcan, Hornet could've been called Raptor, Viking could've been called Centurion, and Hammer could've been called Magnum. As for the Vulcan, the game designer Semyon Strizhak (known as Hazel-Rah) jokingly promised that "the turret will never be named Vulcan, otherwise I grow two additional fingers on the hand."
Spectator mode wasn't in the game from the beginning. The first clan war broadcasted using spectator mode was the quarter-final of the upper bracket of TOF Dream Team III between the teams "International" and "Tyazhelo i Slozhno" (which means "Difficult and Complicated").
In the summer of 2015, the team of Tanki Online visited the gamescom game exhibition in Cologne, Germany. In honour of this event, a map named "Cologne" was introduced, on which Gold boxes worth 2000 crystals fell. During the event, 191 million crystals fell in Gold Boxes and the map was visited by about a million players.
In many maps you can find rusted skeletons of Titan + Firebird combination: It is a tribute to the players from pre-rebalance era, according to which Titan + Firebird combination was considered the most absurd and useless combination of turret and hull.
Tanki Online's birthday is considered to be June 4, 2009 - the date of the start of the open beta testing. The first player to have reached the highest rank (at the time it was Marshal) was the legendary T7000. In April 2010, a Chinese server was started. On 16 April 2014, Tanki Online was launched in Brazil. First Generalissimo in the Brazilian community was the player limadj2 — he reached 1 400 000 experience points on 2 September 2014, spending about four and a half months to get to the highest rank. As a reward for his speedy passage, limadj2 received a fully micro-upgraded Viking M3, Ricochet M3 and Zeus.
Sometimes in holidays and special celebrations, funds in the game are increased. The biggest funds in the game were five times the normal fund on August 2, 2015 in honour of the 50 000 viewers who tuned it to watch the eSports finals on Tanki Online's Twitch channel.
On May 9, 2015 there was a pass "Endless Supplies", which costed 70 and could be bought until a restart on May 10th. On that day it was almost impossible to find a player who was playing without three supplies activated at once - except for those who played in PRO-battles with supplies disabled.
During the Christmas holidays 2014-2015, an entrance from North Korea was registered in Tanki Online. It's known that access to the Internet is severely limited in North Korea. Who could it be?
During the Christmas holidays 2014-2015, there was a special promotion in which you could hire unique XT versions of Railgun and Hornet and a special paint, Frost - which had 20% protection from all turrets. Railgun XT and Hornet XT had a 50% boost over normal Railgun and Hornet. The special items were in the game for twelve days and you could hire these at any time during the twelve days. The price started at 150 000 crystals for Railgun XT M0 and an additional 50 000 for each modification, which gave you the item in your garage for the whole twelve days. Each day after, the prices were reduced by approximately 30%.
Deathmatch (DM) is the most popular game mode, amounting to 42% of all battles created. It is followed by Capture the Flag (CTF) with 33%, Team Deathmatch (TDM) with 14% and Control Points (CP) with 11%.
Forester is the most popular of all the paints. In December 2015, the paint was used in battles for a total of 1 258 208 hours. That is equal to 137 years!
Sandbox is the most popular map in Tanki Online. In 2015 alone, players created a whopping 7.7 Million Sandbox battles.
Not everybody knows about the special Moonwalker paint. It was added to the game during the Farewell to Moon Silence map event, and was available for purchase until its very end. The map doesn't exist in the game any more, but the paint does.
If two discounts are applied to an item, they don't add up. Here is how it works:
The first discount is applied to the item, and then the second discount is applied to the already discounted price. For example, a 20% personal discount and a 25% sale from a promotion would give you a total of 40% off, not 45%.
Active supply indicators on top of other players' tanks were only added into the game half a year after supplies were launched. Before that, you had to guess whether an enemy had Double Attack/Double Armor activated.
Nauru, Kiribati and Guinea-Bissau are the three countries with the smallest player population. In fact, there is only one tanker living in each of these three countries according to statistics.
Mammoth could have had a different name. While the heavy hull was still in development, the name "Goliath" was seriously being considered by the developers.
Not all Generalissimos were Field Marshals and Commanders before reaching their rank. Before the 17th of December 2012, the highest rank in the game was Marshal. When the new ranks were added, many Marshals had more than 1 400 000 experience points.
petraz was the first tanker who managed to get on top of Rio's skyscraper. He did it on the 1st of April 2014, during the event for the launch of Tanki Online in Brazil.
There are several phrases written in Persian in the map «Iran». The one on the blue flag in the center of the map says "We've been through a lot to reach the peak of the mountains". The small writing on the houses can be translated as "We live not for ourselves, but for the greater good", while the sign on the gate simply says "Welcome".
The Daily Mission that is completed most often in the game is "Finish First in Battle". It is followed by "Collect Repair Kits" and then by "Collect Speed Boosts".
The total amount of crystals earned as rank-up rewards from Recruit all the way to Legend is 354 010. Almost half of those are earned from the last 5 ranks.
On 4th of June 2016, "Tanki Online" celebrated its seventh birthday. Throughout these years, countless events have taken place in the game and a lot of progress has been made. Players have enjoyed the addition of new game modes and features, as the Flash game engine was gradually updated. An important event for the project was the appearance of the Tech Support. This brought the game to a new level. The project continues to develop and details of the stages it went through and how it got to the stage it is at now can be found in this article.
«Танки на двоих» («Tanks for two», late 90s)
Around sixteen years ago, the very first predecessor to Tanki Online was created — a game called "Tanks for Two". It was developed as an experiment by the young Anton Volkov (wolf) and Alexander Karpovich (karp) — the founders of Alternativa Games and its Tanki Online project. It featured a small selection of items, graphics similar to java-games for mobiles and gameplay for only two players — that was the whole of the primitive functionality of "Tanks for Two".
But thanks to this project, the idea of creating an arcade tank shooter was born.
The story of how the game was created can be found in the article by Alexander Karpovich in the official blog of Alternativa Games.
«Tanks» (late 2008 — beginning of 2009)
Two months prior to the start of major development of Tanki Online, Alternativa Games employees developed a demonstration of the server platform's capabilities. The code name was «Tanks».
The demo was developed with use of a graphic cursor: Alternativa3D 5.
«Tanks» also became a prototype of «Таnki Online».
The garage in «Tanks» had a wider range of hulls than «Tanks for two» . There were three types of hulls to choose from: light, medium and heavy. However, there was only one gun, resembling an early version of Smoky turret. Destroying a light hull required one hit, medium — two and heavy — four.
There was only one map, and it was created using integrated 3D-models (in «Tanki Online», maps consist of props). This map also supported water. It eventually became the prototype of a present-day map known as Tribute.
Archive video of «Tanks» gameplay:
As a result of this, Smoky turret and Hunter hull prototypes were created. The idea of a multiplayer tank shooter game was beginning to take its shape.
«Tanki Online»
The beginning (Year 2009)
- On the 8th of May 2009, the closed beta-testing of the new game "Tanki Online" had begun. To participate in the testing you had to send an application to «email@example.com».
It is worth noting that at that time the game received an award at the Game Developers' Conference in the category "Best game without a publisher". This shows that while only being at the testing stage, the game had already received positive feedback in the gaming industry.
- A month later, on the 4th of June, the open testing started.
This is an extract of a speech by Anton, in which he invites all interested users to take part in the open testing of the game:
The closed testing of our project lasted almost a month. Around 600 people took part, who uncovered over 200 bugs and greatly helped with their advice and remarks. Still, there is lots to do: there are bugs, a ton of ideas and improvements. All this will be attended as fast as possible in the coming months.
|— Anton Volkov
Before the release of "Tanki Online", the developers in AlternativePlatform gave an official interview to a popular gaming site GameStar.ru. An extract reads:
Open beta-testing of the new browser action-MMO "Tanki Online" started in the middle of June. The key speciality of the game is the fact that in its core lies a 3D engine, built in the Flash environment. During our recent interview with Gamestar, developers from AlternativaPlatform shared their views on the present and plans for the future. Gamestar: What is the target audience for Tanki Online?
|— gamestar.ru
- Beginning of Summer 2009 — the game is released on the main server.
The game audience has just started to form. Everybody knew each other. Developers were playing together with the first users. That was the period when the most dedicated "veterans" came to Tanki Online project.
In those times the prices in the garage were different, new bugs and various glitches were constantly found. It was basically a chaotic start of development.
For example, Firebird had a very interesting special effect: everlasting scorched surfaces. Those dark marks disappeared only when the server restarted. Of course, this bug was quickly fixed.
Other than a choice of hulls and paints, the tanks could have different engines. Besides these, all parts of the war machine gradually deteriorated over time. The hull — from each hit, turret — from each shot made, engine — from each meter covered. This made gameplay rather difficult for beginners, as everything would break, but there weren't enough funds for repairs. Because of this, the deterioration feature was soon scrapped.
There weren't any "second generation" hulls or turrets. (we will discuss their addition a bit later). Railgun turret was similar to the size of a Wasp hull. The weapon's power was enormous: the M0 modification dealt 100 damage with each shot, which was enough to destroy almost any tank apart from Titan M3 and Dictator M3.
There was an idea to add a race game mode. Mapmaker Avocado created the map "Monte-Carlo", which was supposed to become one of the arenas for racing. After a while that feature was abandoned, but the map remained. Nowadays it is quite popular among tankers.
In one of the versions of Monte Carlo, the skybox was made with blood-red tones. In addition, when falling into the void, it was possible to see that at the "bottom" there was an image of a city.
- On the 31st of July 2009 Capture The Flag (CTF) game mode was added.
Prior to that update the game only had two game modes: Deathmatch (DM) and Team Deathmatch (TDM). The new game mode quickly gained popularity on the servers and became the main format in the beginnings of eSports. It was mostly the CTF format that gave a big push for development of Clans, the first of which was the legendary «Kolhoz» Clan. On the same day, 4th of August 2009, another equally famous clan was created — "42nd Tank Division". They would later become winners of the Inter-clan Championship. The clan community was slowly but surely gaining in numbers, there were ideas for organising tournaments with prizes and a special paint for the winners — Champion. More about this topic in the article History of Cybersport.
Since then, "Tanki Online" has changed greatly and now there is little left to remind us of those times.
Age of Dictator / Railgun with Digital (end of 2009 — mid 2010)
By that time, the Game already had around 200 000 registered players.
That was when the supplies "Double Damage", "Double Armour" and "Nitro" were added. Mines were also among new additions, as well as indication of active supplies above the tanks.
Developers started organising various contests.
A company called "Multivitamin" (partner of Alternativa Games) combined "Tanki Online" and their interactive screen by organising multi-touch support on the basis of Adobe Flash Player 10.1. The following video clip featured a legend of the Game - Ksenia "Sun" Ignatieva.
In 2009, the Developers decided to create a gun that would be able to deal damage to enemies as well as heal players in the friendly team. Thus, Isida turret was created. The first concept design could only heal and looked like a three-fanged monster that resembled creatures from the game Half-Life. It was later changed into a two-connector turret. Also, Isida could heal itself simply by "shooting" into space without any enemies around. This made the gun overpowered and ruined the Game balance, so the self-healing ability was removed. Then, the ability to deal damage was added and, later, the "vampire" effect as well, which allowed Isida to heal itself while attacking enemies. These changes led to Isida's function becoming the way it is now.
On October 16th, 2009, the Game was finally translated into Russian. Until then, the whole user interface was 100% English, which can be seen in older screenshots.
Near the end of 2009, a new bonus box was added to the Game as an experiment and a way to celebrate the upcoming holidays - the "Golden Box of 1000 Crystals". After a while, the value of the box was reduced to 100 crystals, and remained the same until the major economy changes happened on the 13th of February 2013.
Tanki's physics still weren't perfect. The level geometry had various faults. For example, there was an effect referred to as the "UFO":
The cause of it was due to one of the props having an invisible element that stretched into the sky.
Dictator / Railgun cult was formed on Sandbox map. It has been the most popular eSports' format in "Tanki Online" for a long time.
A period of changes was coming close. An important event was the appearance of the first Marshal in the game (back then it was the maximum rank; Field Marshal, Commander and Generalissimo didn't exist in the game yet). His nickname - T7000.
In the end of 2009, alongside with the current project "Tanki Online", Alternativa Games began development of a new project called "Tanki Online 2.0". It was supposed to be a brand new product with more realistic graphics, a more convenient UI and a huge amount of convenient options and functions (social networks, mobile gaming, etc.). However, after one and a half years, it was decided to scrap that project and gradually transfer most new features from it into the existing version of "Tanki Online".
Second generation's era
The name of the period itself suggests that there were major changes in "Tanki Online". A new generation of equipments was added — the so-called "second tier" of equipments. Hulls: Viking, Hornet, Mammoth — Turrets: Thunder, Ricochet, Freeze. These were added to the Game between spring and summer 2010. Even with these new additions, all equipments and all paints were available for purchase as early as the rank of Third Lieutenant.
In 2010, a lot of new maps appeared in game and the game's appearance changed radically. In this period the number of new registered players increased rapidly: on the 24th of June there were 300,000 tankers registered, on the 15th of August, there were 400,000, on the 19th of September there were 500,000, and by the 19th of December the number of players hit 1 million. Around that time, a wave of hackers hit the game. A new type of sabotage called "multing" started to arise.
"First generation" equipment lost most of its popularity due to the new weapons being far superior in all aspects. There were also rumours of a mysterious item called "Shaft", but nobody knew of its appearance or features.
In the process of balancing new turrets, developers came to the conclusion that Freeze and Ricochet needed serious corrections. The issue was that Ricochet was too powerful compared to other turrets, while Freeze was only good for freezing tanks and not destroying them. That is why, in the autumn of 2010, Freeze and Ricochet were removed from garages and players got their crystals refunded to buy other and more balanced turrets.
A lot of new contests were held: Video contests, the first "Mr and Mrs Tanki Online", story-writing contest and many other different ones — more information about them can be found here: Contests.
Player Jeck_Aubrey started to make FFFUUU-comics based on "Tanki Online" and created one of the most popular Forum topics in the RU "Creativity" section.
In April 2010 a Chinese version of "Tanki Online" was launched. 3DTank Chinese servers were separated from our servers and had their own database (which still remains that way). This is what the art-director of Alternativa Games, Ivan Zikov, told us about it:
The process of preparing the game to be launched in China is almost over. All formalities, conventionalities and translation difficulties have passed. As Chinese partners said, the game will very popular in their country, easy and dynamic gameplay works for them.
|— Ivan Zikov
On 7th of May 2010, "Tanki Online" became "Web-Site of the Day" on "Favourite Website Awards". On July 7th, 2010 "Tanki Online" got their own newspaper, the enthusiastic players created it with the help of administration. The newspaper existed for a pretty long time, before it became a part of News portal. In the beginning of September 2010 "Tanki Online" users were celebrating the "Tanker's day". The gift for players was 25% discount for all items in the garage — first discount event in Tanki Game history. On 25th of November 2010 the "Runet Award" winners were chosen and "Tanki Online" took a place in the TOP10. To celebrate this occasion, there was a 25% discount for all goods in the garage. In the New Year celebrations for 2010-2011, "Tanki Online" pleased its players with another 25% discount off all items in the garage, along with a new "New Year" map and holiday decorations. Since then, not a single New Year went by without these freebies and discounts.
Year 2011-2012
«Tanki Online» entered the year 2011 with a strong commitment to increase its past successes. Work on «Tanki Online 2.0» continued and new events and contests were released. Then, on February 7th, news about a future «300 Tankers» competition was posted on the main page: a battle between players and developers. There were so many applicants that the name was changed to «3000 Tankers». The battle itself took place on February 15th. In the end, the randomly created team couldn't beat the developers with M3 weapons.
On February 12th, there was another special event, celebrating the 1,500,000th player to register in the game. For Valentine's Day, a special new turret called «Smoky XT» came out. It was more expensive and more powerful than the regular «Smoky» turret. For a week, every player ranked Warrant-Officer 1 or higher could buy this turret, and use it until February 22nd. On the next day, the damage from «Smoky XT» was increased and two more days were added to the event. This caused a huge rift between players (as there weren't any events like this before). On the forums and in-game, the «Smoky XT» became the most popular topic of discussion. On February 24, 2011, at 8:00am Moscow time, the turret was forever removed from players' garages.
On April 1st, the developers added another unusual contest. It was called «Head-spinner Races» and participants had to pass a special track challenging their speed. The only conditions were that your tank's turret had to be constantly spinning and your camera angle had to be low. The winner had an opportunity to get any item in the garage for free.
Also on April 1st, an unusual item appeared in the store — «Blue Sphere». The price was ridiculous: 100500 crystals! It was the equivalent of the price for a whole garage at that time, and in today's prices it is equivalent to 1005000 crystals. Of course, only a few players could afford to spend this much on an April Fool's joke. Some say that those who bought «Blue Sphere» got the ability to exploit the game and some rumours say that when the item was removed from garages these users got a double refund.
On June 2nd, a second battle between players and developers was held, it was called «1000 Tankers». This time, both teams used «Wasp / Smoky» combination on the battleground and the result was a draw.
June 6th was another date of celebration – the 3,000,000th player registered. The lucky player was a tanker nicknamed "katyana".
Introduction of Shaft
The release of a new turret, Shaft, on June 29, 2011, created a furore in the community. The statistics showed that in the first 10 minutes after the release the equivalent of 3 Shafts were bought every second!
It was a really large turret – if you placed it on a Wasp it would be twice its size. The first versions of Shaft had a number of flaws, the biggest one was that the charged shot could not be delayed (the gun fired immediately when the charge bar was full). However, Shaft was able to deal a great amount of damage – nearly 250 health points, which allowed it to destroy a Mammoth M3 in a single shot. Afterwards, it underwent rebalancing: slightly delayed shots and damage for its M3 modification reduced first to 200, then to 180 health points.
A special event started on the 19th of July. 1000 crystals Gold Boxes were dropped only on one of all the existing maps and only with a specific battle fund — players had one week to find out which map it was in.
- On October 14th, «Tanki Online» hit the milestone of 5 million signed-up players and, in about a month, the 6'000'000th tanker joined the Game.
- Following the tradition, Tanki Online participated in the Runet Prize award and ranked ninth in the "People's Ten" category.
The project had gained more achievements at the beginning of 2012. On January 4, "stepan1234567891" became the 7'000'000th player. The popularity of the Game was increasing really fast — less than a month has passed when the 8-millionth and 9-millionth users had signed up. On March 25, there were over 10 million players. The 10'000'000 user, representing a huge milestone for Tanki Online, was "lYonsl".
The Game's popularity had increased massively. In this video sent by player "Virtvirt", his two years old son Stas (BOECtankist) is showing off his good skills at handling a tank and destroying the opponents with his Shaft:
In addition, Stas also participated in Mr. Tanki Online 2012 contest and reached the third place.
March 28, 2012 — this date marked an important milestone in the development of «Tanki Online». On that day, it was announced that the work on version 2.0 was completed and that hardware acceleration support was added, which resulted in a much more comfortable gameplay experience.
Furthermore, the massive struggle against cheaters who were invading the game and sparking outrage among honest players started in the late March / early April. The new anti-cheat system had blocked tens of thousands of cheaters and plugged the existing security holes. After that, the cheating activity started to decrease.
On the fools' day, April 1, all the tankers discovered a strange item in their garages, the Green Triangle, which costed 20 crystals. There were different rumours about its origins and most players believed it was a part of some quest, so they even started the trend of creating maps named «Green Triangle». In the end, everyone who had bought the «Green Triangle» was given 10 repair kits.
On April 12, there was another battle between Developers and players dedicated to "Cosmonauts' Day" — it was named «1001 cosmonauts». The players managed to defeat the developers this time.
During the holidays in May, another contest with real prizes, called «The Best of May», was launched. There also was a new item named "Balloon" that costed 15 crystals and has appeared in every garage. It was expendable and could be bought unlimited amount of times. The player who had bought the highest amount of balloons was awarded with a new smartphone. The other users traded their balloons for supplies.
On June 4, the project celebrated its third birthday. In a few days, a massive event dedicated to the ongoing UEFA European Championship was launched. Players could collect Football Gold Boxes.
On June 28, there was another battle named «1000 football players», in which the players' team defeated the developers' team on the map Stadium.
During summer of 2012, many innovations were introduced, including:
- reworked maps
- testing of the new FTC mode (CTF with inverted base positions; however, it didn't go beyond tests)
- disabling ranks' limitations related to EXP points' gain (the rank used to affect the EXP gain – the higher the rank, the less EXP the player received for their actions, which slowed down the progress of reaching high-level ranks)
- buying EXP (1000 EXP points for 100 crystals)
- new visual effects
- displaying the maps «conquered» by clans in «Maps Takeover» tournament.
Update 1.100 (second half of 2012)
At the beginning of August, the players could participate in another "sporting" event – the «Tankiada». As you might guess, it was timed to coincide with London 2012 Olympics. In «Tankiada», players fought against the project's helpers.
By the end of the summer, «Tanki Online» had its own Wiki – the one you are reading right now. It has continued to accumulate the most relevant information about all aspects of the game – detailed descriptions of weapons, galleries of artworks, informative articles and guides on guns and hulls. You can suggest your ideas for the Wiki in the official ★ Tanki Online Wiki's Hub ★ topic on the Forum.
September 6, 2012, was a special day for the project. The long-awaited «1.100 Update» was released, bringing two of the biggest innovations to the Game:
- A new battle mode — "Control Points" (CP)
- New graphics.
While the first innovation was welcomed, the second one got mixed feedbacks
- Three days after the 1.100 release, the 15,000,000th account was registered. It's nickname was "adilov.amir". It's worth noting that this happened on Tanker's Day (9th of September)
- On September 27th, «Kasim vs Sun» battle was held, a fight between Maksim Khusainov and Kseniya Ignatieva. Players could decide to support Maksim or Kseniya by purchasing a special fan paint in the garage. In the end, those who had bought «For Kasim» paint, which turned out to be the winning fighter, divided up the prize money made from all the purchased paints. Afterwards, this system was used in other contests such as the "Battle of Consultants" in November.
Autumn of 2012 was rich in updates. In October, the Forum was updated: it was moved to a newer, faster engine, three different languages' versions were now supported and ranks' badges were added next to users' nicknames. The developers improved the usage of Flash Player and hardware acceleration even more, adding some new visual effects such as dynamic shadows. Furthermore, they implemented a new bonus in Team Death Match (TDM) mode: the EXP points for destroying an opponent together with other tankers were now divided between the players in proportion to the damage done. Finally, on October 24th, the long awaited feature of signing up through Facebook (and VKontakte) was added.
On December 17th, the Game underwent to one of its biggest and most important update ever — «Rebalance».
It included the resetting of accounts, changes in the characteristics and accessibility of weapons, a new paint called «Picasso» and three new ranks: Fieldmarshal, Commander and Generalissimo. It can be said that the game was reborn; the old-timers say that «Tanki Online» before and after the rebalance are completely different games.
This update was a painful one, but it was a necessary step to move further in the development of the game. However, some users did not understand it. Most players were displeased with the price increase due to the global rebalancing of weapons and elimination of the first and second tiers. To smooth things over, 30% discounts were offered on New Year's Day and there were players who had been waiting for them with huge amounts of crystals being returned after the rebalance — this was why, during the two weeks between the rebalance and New Year's Day many high-ranked players could be seen using the default green "Wasp & Smoky" combination.
Year 2013
This year turned out to be even more eventful and innovative than the previous years, though not all the innovations were welcomed by players.
The first big update came out on January 28 – the Game servers were successfully moved to a new platform, which drastically improved the game performance. The platform, on the one hand, reduced the load on the servers (allowing more players to play on a server without crashing it) and, on the other hand, reduced the lags on player's side.
On February 12th, Update 123 was released. All the parameters related to crystals were increased by ten times except the funds, which were growing slower than in the previous version.
The curtailed funds were offset by numerous discounts offered throughout the year, including those which were not timed to the big holidays.
The new servers' platform offered, among other things, easier updating to new versions. Over spring, summer and autumn a whole bunch of useful features and updates were released. It is worth mentioning that during all the time the Developers had been keeping in touch with players and creating discussions on the Forum to get feedback on the updates.
- March 12 – Battles Filter (at first, the selected filters were not highlighted in green);
- March 20 – Updated maps and dust from tanks' tracks;
- April 9 – Kick-vote. The update added the long awaited feature of removing inactive players and offenders via voting. However, votekick was a double-edged sword: decent and well-behaved players could join a battle and be kicked just because the others didn't like them. Eventually, kick-vote was removed from the game.
- April 9 – Deep shadows and the first Product kits. These new kits consisted of a turret, a hull, several types of paints, and a pack of supplies. Items in these kits usually were available at lower ranks than what was normally required to purchase them, granting players the upper hand in battle.
For Cosmonautics Day, April 12, the Developers prepared a contest named «1000 Cosmonauts». There was also a new map, «Moon Silence», created specifically for the contest which featured lesser gravity than on the default «Silence». The map became incredibly popular and had been played on until October 10 and, on the day the map was removed, a special event was held to give a final farewell to the map named «Farewell to Moon Silence».
There were still other updates in spring:
- On April 16th, the feature of buying experience was disabled, and kick-vote became fully functional (the Developers had been testing the system until then). Bonuses for purchasing a certain amount of in-game currency were also added.
- On April 17th, the fund growth speed was increased almost to the original value.
- On June 6, the first VLOG episode came out:
In this VLOG, the community manager of «Tanki Online» Semyon Kirov talked about many different aspects of the Game: development news, discounts and future updates. It was also the day when the "report a violation in battle" feature was introduced. From here on, the VLOG became the primary channel of communication between the players and the developers. As new episodes were published, new topics were introduced, such as "Interview with a Developer", "Hello" and so on. Nikolay Kolotov, the community manager who had joined the team in the summer of 2012, raised the VLOGs' quality to a new level — he now handles all of the technical aspects of the VLOGs, from shooting to publishing them on a video sharing website.
Since July 16, the players have been able to see the battles their friends were participating in and a menu was added to the interface where the players could receive / send friend invitations and spectate the battles of their friends. Later, players were allowed to see the servers their friends were on and to invite them into their battle.
In summer, a number of special new types of paint for PRO-Gamers and the groups of Administration's Helpers were added, as well as the three maps which won at the Map Designer contest: Future, Factory, and Platform. The third one was later removed at the author's request.
- On September 20th, a year after the Kasim vs.Sun duel, Maksim Khusainov (Kasim) and Ksenia Ignatieva (Sun) teamed together to play against a randomly selected pair of players. The tankers defeated Maksim and Ksenia in both rounds. In this event, the time-tested system of buying the "paint for…" was used to form the prize pool.
- On November 9th, the Game's first offline tournament, "Tanks in the City", was held in Perm. The players had the chance to meet the other tankers and developers, and to battle it out for the prize money.
- On November 21st, "Tanki Online" celebrated its win in the "Runet Prize" as well as "The Game of Runet" category.
- On December 11th, an important update was introduced – the new tanks' physics. The improved physics and some changes in hulls' behaviour gave each of them unique properties, movement style, and features. It made the gameplay more dynamic, fast and versatile. The characteristics of some turrets were also changed a bit, this update was the starting point in the weapon rebalancing.
- On December 19th, one of the most long-awaited updates was released – Micro-upgrades. It allowed players to improve the characteristics of turrets, hulls and paints without waiting for the next modification of the item. When one or several stats of a turret or a hull were fully upgraded, the player got a discount for the next modification. In their final release, Micro-upgrades underwent some changes. The first Micro-upgrades were not guaranteed to be successful. After running an upgrade, the player could get one of the following results:
- successful micro-upgrading
- failed micro-upgrading and partial refund of crystals
- failed micro-upgrading and refund in supplies equivalent
- completely failed micro-upgrading and loss of crystals
The chances of successful micro-upgrading decreased with every upgrade step. Fortunately, the Developers eventually pulled the plug on the risky upgrades.
Along with Micro-upgrades, new visual effects and crystal bonuses for ranking up were added. Players who were already ranked received crystals for all the ranks at once. For example, the total rank bonus for a Generalissimo was 314,000 crystals.
During the last three weeks before Christmas, the players were building up their funds for the New Year holidays by completing the missions in the "From Christmas to Christmas" campaign. This included reaching a certain amount of views for the New Year's video, sharing 2014 screenshots of the New Year gold boxes they had collected and reposting them in social networks. The developers were expecting a bit too much from players, perhaps, since no one in the community managed to double their funds. However, the holiday preparations went on and during the last week of the year, players were buying tree ornaments and decorating the Christmas tree. Those who collected all seven of them received some crystals off in addition to the existing discounts.
Year 2014
This year started with the traditional "GAME" — an interesting event based on in-game quests that tankers had to complete to obtain amazing prizes.
The Game Developers had been taking it easy for a while after having finished some new game mechanics and Micro-upgrades. They then decided to start working hard on new maps and, on the 31st of January, launched a new global update which updated almost all the maps of the game: some of them were changed radically from their previous versions. The main feature was the return of the most popular map to date — «Madness», which was rebuilt from scratch.
The next step the in game development became transferring the Game servers to Amsterdam. Locating servers in middle-Europe allow players from all over the world to easily and comfortably log in to the game, without any high ping discomfort.
In March a new feature was added to the game which allowed tankers to change equipment during battles. A long time ago, there was a bug which allowed tankers to switch servers during battles, change their equipments and return back in battle in less than 5 minutes without losing score and place. The bug was fixed, but the feature for changing equipment during battles was still necessary and it was finally added.
Almost at the same time, the feature of "kick-vote" was removed.
On the 10th of April, the Brazil version of «Tanki Online» was launched. It uses its own database (as well as the Chinese one) and works on a separated server, placed in Brazil, so players won't need to send game-data across the oceans. With the Brazilian's Community release came a new map — Rio, with a new unique design. The map is still popular thanks to its smart disposition of game elements and wide open spaces for tactical movement. The main feature of this map is an overbearing, unapproachable skyscraper. A special event was held to try and reach the top of the skyscraper. The first users to make it there were part of a German parkour team — «GTT».
In April, all communities were shocked by an official announcement made by Devs — «Tanki» signed a contract with StarLadder, one of the biggest CyberSports platforms in the world. That finished old events like Cross Clan championship and TOF. CyberSports became professional and real money prizes were added. The first season of StarLadder, the league for "Best Teams", started on the 10th of June.
In the summer, Developers not only pleased players with a lot of discounts and sales, but also added a few useful features to the game.
In June, the new battle mode "Control Points" was added, as well as a few more useful updates: battle fund distribution at the end of the game, ability to add a player to a block list through the chat menu and the ability to switch the chat off.
On the 4th of June, "Tanki Online" celebrated its 5th anniversary.
On the 24th of June, Tanki Online was added as a game application to the Russian social network «Vkontakte».
Soon after, close range turrets - Firebird, Freeze and Isida – got the ability to counter each others abilities (i.e. Spraying your teammate with Freeze would remove Firebird's burning effect).
In 2014, Tanki Online visited 3 game conventions - OGIC in St. Petersburg, Gamescom in Cologne (Germany) and Brasil Game Show in São Paulo (Brasil). In honour of the German convention, a new map was created called «Cologne», very similar to «Edinburgh». After the end of the Gamescom, the map was removed, but returned back some time later thanks to its popularity among the players.
In Autumn, the system of using supplies was completely reworked. Previously, all supplies could be activated at the same time, but on the 28th of September, "smart-cooldowns" for supplies were added. The main aim of this update was to limit the overwhelming advantage of a tank with many supplies and to wean players from mindlessly pressing «234» during battles. Before the launch of this new update, there was an announcement that all supplies owned in the players' garages would be doubled. A lot of players rushed to buy packs of «1000 supplies» to have supplies for months and years forward, after the launch of the update. The ability to turn all the consumables on at the same time remained as a feature for owners of a PRO-pass.
Not less significant changes were made in the items' drop system, especially for crystal boxes:
- On the 18th of November all zones where a drop is available were marked by a special symbol on the ground. At the same time, the special golden box mark was added as well — it appears only during the «goldbox siren». Different crystal boxes with different amount of crystals also appeared – holding from 1 crystal up to 100 crystal. The launching of those boxes caused massive changes in the gameplay — 50 and 100 crystals boxes were distracting players from playing the game. This caused a huge wave of negative responses towards the update up to a point that those boxes were forever removed from the game.
Some other valuable autumn-winter updates:
- 18th of September - The button for changing servers appeared in the lobby (before that, players could change server only by changing the URL field or by friends system). The rating indicator, which took its place in the right area of the experience bar, lost its meaning and was removed.
- 27th of November - The points distribution for collective tank destruction, which existed only in TDM, appeared in CTF and CP as well.
- 4th of December - New night modes for a few popular maps appeared, as well as laser targeting for Shaft.
- 23th of December – A great day for all lovers of XP / BP and Parkour modes: a full support of Format Battles with strict limitations appeared in the game. The XP format was born in 2012 and rapidly gained huge popularity, however, format players were not protected from those who accidentally or on purpose ruined their battles.
Unexpectedly and pleasantly, the news talked about the expansion of "Tanki" to the world of literature. In October, book stores featured a book by Aleksey Evtushenko — «Tankman» — in which the world of XXII century is mixed with the «Tanki Online» universe. Soon, a second book — «Iron Bastion» — by Andrey Aktanov came out.
Active development of «Tanki Online» was not unseen — the project got a «Golden Double» by receiving the award as best game of Runet for the second time.
On the 22nd of November, one of the most important CyberSports events in the history of this game took place — the first and only offline-final of the second season of Star Series. The event was mixed with another one, «Tanks in the city», which this time took place in Novosibirsk. The 4 Best Teams traveled a long way to Siberia to fight for the champion status.
Besides the «Star Series» finals and traditional competitions for ordinary players, in Novosibirsk it was announced that two new turrets were being prepared to be added to the game – the shotgun and the machine gun. A few tests followed and, on the 17th of December, the 10th turret appeared in the game — Hammer. The name was picked by players' votes in a poll on the Forum. The name that actually won in the poll was "Magnum" with a gap of 12% between it and "Hammer", but developers decided to name it on their own.
For 2015's New Year celebrations, Developers came up with something really unusual: Hornet XT and Railgun XT. These items had the same function as their original counterparts, but they sported unique designs and upgraded parameters. In addition, the «Frost» paint was introduded, having 15% defense versus all turrets and mines. From the 1st of January 2015, the prices of these items started to decrease day by day and, on the 12th of January, the items disappeared from the game and from the garages.
Year 2015
For the whole duration of January tankers were awaiting the addition of new paints with protection from Hammer – a recently added gun that caused a lot of trouble on the battlefield due to the complete absence of protective paints. The first set consisting of 7 paints became available for sale on the 29th of January and a week later the game saw an addition of yet another gun, Vulcan — the next turret in a collection of real life weapons' tank replicas (Shaft - sniper rifle, Hammer - shotgun, Vulcan - machine gun). Other than Vulcan, the garage was filled with 13 more paints with protection from various guns, but all these 20 new paints included protections from at least one of the two new guns, sometimes both. Such an expansion to the assortment of paints was the largest since 2010.
The first half of 2015 was full of constant tweaking of weapons parameters, since the appearance of two new turrets and twenty new paints caused major shifts in game balance. While trying to find the "golden middle" in equipment parameters, Developers experimented with numerous options. At the same time, major progress was made in other areas too: on the 12th of March the community acquired a separate site for two major help resources: a knowledge base with guides and a "Q&A" service, where players could ask and answer questions about the game. On the 9th of April, mouse controls were added, and players finally got the ability to control their tank in a more standard way that was similar to most downloadable computer games. The new controls received different feedback from players, but they did find their place in the game.
Summer was left behind with the release of the long-awaited Daily Missions, which came as a replacement for Daily Login Rewards. That way, simply logging into the game was not enough to collect the daily bonuses. The missions' original projections were to add more variety to gameplay, but they also used it to bring Hornet and Railgun XT back into the game by making them available as a very rare reward for completing special missions at the maximum game rank, Generalissimo. Later on, the number of unique XT items was expanded with Wasp XT, Viking XT, Mammoth XT, Firebird XT, Thunder XT and Vulcan XT — some of the most popular guns and hulls in the game.
On the first of September it became known that Tanki stopped its collaboration with StarLadder. During the year of activity four seasons passed, including championships for teams of various levels, as well as blitz tournaments. Judging by the amount of interest shown by the players in the new "StarLadder era", the old clan system was left in the dust.
In the fourth quarter of 2015, numerous additions were released — discounts on buying multiple items of the same type (Hulls, Turrets, Paints), purchasing the latest available modification of an item directly, and test drives were all a part of the "Personal Discounts system". Altogether, they give quite a hefty total savings potential for buying turrets and hulls. With a bit of luck during the holidays and celebrations' sales which, by the way, became much less generous (otherwise the game's economy would get completely destroyed, as stated by our CM Semyon Kirov), it became possible to buy items for only 30-40% of their initial price.
As usual, in the end of October «Tanki» celebrated Halloween. Not long before that, Premium Accounts were officially implemented — not the most awaited, but a very logical feature. On the 31st of October, Premium players could purchase a unique paint called «Eternity», with varying protections depending on the player's rank. Also, before Halloween the personal profile, statistics and Achievements were added — users got the ability to view their own and other players' basic gameplay statistics, a system which was long-lost after the removal of the «Hall of Fame». Although, not everybody was happy about the fact that the contents of their garage were available for anyone to view. Soon after this, some major changes in the Micro-Upgrades system came: on the 12th of November, the option to upgrade individual parameters separately was removed and changed to a much simpler system that let users upgrade all parameters at once — players lost the ability to upgrade the most needed parameters only.
A few more events worth noting:
- On the 23rd of October the VLOG announced an unusual contest, somewhat resembling "THE GAME" quest — the task was to find keywords hidden within the videos throughout a series of nine VLOGs. Ten players were the fastest to find the words and received their favourite combination of turret and hull.
- On the 2nd of December different categories' tabs appeared in the Garage interface. Before, the garage was divided into two parts: the garage itself, with all the items that the player already bought and the shop, which had items still available for sale. This update was removed due to the inconvenience of having to scroll through a long list of unnecessary items to get to the the useful ones, although it added the need to actually switch between tabs.
- On December 9, a new feature was added — paints will be listed based on their strength and usage and users are now able to preview them before actually buying them.
- On New Year, Developers released a new combination of XT items and a new map with a special battle mode — Mammoth XT & Vulcan XT and "New Year" map with "Assault (ASL)" mode. In addition to these, new items were added into the Game — "Gifts". By spending some crystals, you were able to send to your fellow tankers best wishes and messages. There were four Christmas' gifts: Christmas Tree, Snowman, Golden Wasp+Smoky and Christmas Toy.
Year 2016
At the end of January, another useful feature was introduced to the game – Private Messages in chat. The assortment of gifts were also updated. One of the new gifts was the legendary "Blue Sphere" (remember April 1, 2011) worth 100 500 crystals. The "old-school" players probably smiled when they saw it in their Garage and those not familiar with the game's history were probably puzzled by the big price for a seemingly ordinary gift.
The series of traditional TO holiday events for February 14th, 23rd and March 8th (special events, golds, thematic gifts, holiday decorations and others) ended on March 8th with the "Spring Showdown" in which the team of Russian girls' team fought the International girls' team (from English and German communities). The battle was interrupted in the middle for technical reasons and postponed until March 11th, but the organizers concealed the fact that the rematch actually took place on March 9th so that the match would not be disrupted due to lag. The viewers found out that the battle was pre-recorded during the streaming. The battle ended with the Russian team's victory.
The recording of "Spring Showdown"
Another event worth mentioning was "Redpool Event", timed to the premiere of the movie "Deadpool". Tankers could try on a superhero costume by buying Red Suit paint in their garages and a new gift, the "Chimichanga", was available during the event.
One of the most notable updates released in February was adding mission chains – additional rewards for accomplishing daily missions on a "regular and daily" basis. Other additions were the feature of disabling Gold Boxes in PRO Battles, final changes to the early battle termination's system, which became more transparent and consistent, and some other minor improvements.
To celebrate April Fools' day, the first few days of April had lots of crazy things happening in the game. Gold boxes were dropping five times more often and did not include only crystals (up to 50 000 crystals) and Premium days, but also extraordinary things such as temporary invulnerability or a "full minute" of activated supplies. Some Gold Boxes even turned into bombs that, when exploding, killed all the tanks in the area of their drop-area. All the different rewards that could be taken after picking up these holiday gold boxes are listed here: April Fools' Day Gold Boxes
On the 14th of April, a mechanism was launched which handled the job of deleting or removing unused nicknames. This worked by changing the original name to another by adding letters or numbers on the start and the end of the name. For example, the name Tanker could be changed to r_Tanker or simply r_Tanker0.
In June, just before Tanki Online's 7th Birthday, the developers announced that they will be giving the in-game Garage a new look. On the 4th - the actual day of the celebrations, people celebrated by enjoying the double battle funds and Gold Boxes, themed decorations and of course, the half prices! As promised, a new updated version of Garage was launched in the game with various changes to give the tankers a way of admiring their combat machines. THE GAME returned with winners receiving dream tanks and supplies. Football fans were cheered up with a new celebration called as «Football Frenzy» where tankers could buy the paint of the country they support in EURO CUP 2016. A chance for tankers to meet Kasim and Cedric was made by introducing «Welcome Tanki Selfie Giveaway» contest. Yerevan and Tbilisi's tankers were the winners who got to meet up with the CMs and have fun.
In July, Tankers experienced serious problems entering the game via servers RU1 and RU2 due to a bug called «Tankopocalypse». The bug itself formed in 2012 but surfaced in the game on July 11, 2016. It virtually destroyed several of tankers' PRO Passes, Double Crystal Cards, and Premium bonuses. After 13 hours of work, the developers finally managed to fry the bug and the tankers were compensated through Double Battle funds and Double Crystal Cards along with Premium for a few days. A major update took place in the game codenamed as «Disintegration». Due to this update, paints and protections were no longer combined. Paints were now a visual item whereas protections were reformed to protective modules. Tankers from then, could buy any paint and combine it with the protection they want. Looks of the Shop were also updated along with the addition of new paints.
Tankers were busy filming themselves in the month August since Mister and Miss Tanki Online contest was announced. Several tankers tried to film themselves in a cool way, trying to show their amount of dedication to the game. Many changes to the popular mini-game "Save the Gold" was also brought to notice as some players tried to abuse the system by powerleveling. This included several changes to parameters of map for the particular mode and several guidelines. In the ending days of August, tankers wondered as a new fun way to play Tanki arrived - Daily Community Events. These were implemented exclusively for the EN community and is managed by the Events team. Events are quite successfully held even now.
September started with the traditional Tankers' Day celebrations. Players could buy their desired items in the garage with half the original prices! Also, the new Downloadable Client for Tanki Online was finally launched as a part of Tankers' Day celebration. Tankers could now download the client on their desktop and play, without the need of opening their browsers! The link for the Downloadable client was added to the homepage so that tankers could download the client whenever they need.
Following Tankers' Day celebrations, the game's shop undertook new changes. Along with Crystal packs, Premium Time and Gold Boxes, tankers now could buy new paints and kits exclusively available only in the Shop. The game had another major change to its garage with the introduction of alterations. Tankers could now have their turret modified in terms of several parameters. You could have alterations by buying them permanently or by renting them for a small amount of time with few crystals. The month concluded with several tweaks such as changing the renting time for alterations, the introduction of two new paints and changing the rank bracket for daily missions.
CashU became a new way to pay that was available exclusively to few countries. October departed with the usual Halloween celebrations and events. A new contest was also held in terms of Halloween, where tankers should post scary pictures along with their nicknames in it. Prizes were given out to the winners soon after.
November greeted all the high ranked players with a brand new update that made them play even further, the introduction of Legend ranks. Players who made 1.6 million exp or more were given the new rank with 40,000 crystals as part of the update. For every 200,000 exp, players could rank further to the next level with 40,000 crystals as rank up gift everytime. Parkourists were also excited as Masters of Parkour 2016 contest was also being held this month. Apart from big contests and updates, the Shop had a Cyber Monday sale where products were discounted at a price between 20% to 50% for 24 hours. PRO Pass then became an exclusive feature to create battles as tankers wish. However, Non-PRO battles would then be played by using the "Quick Battles" feature that allowed the system to search the best battle suitable for the tanker's rank.
December brought in new changes to the game as everyone was waiting for the traditional Christmas day celebrations. As a surprise package, the developers launched the new turret in the game, Striker. Tankers were given a chance to grab the new turret in the form of giveaway to seven lucky tankers. New kits and bundles were added to the shop whereas Winter Tandem tournament made its mark on the EN community.
The Year ended on a special note where several Community Managers greeted the tankers in a form of special video. As always, tankers had a New Year sale as icing on the cake. The year ended on a happy note.
Year 2017
Let's start off, it is the first of January. It was going to be a good year, filled with every sorts of events, celebrations and the thing everybody loves: sales and discounts.
The New Year celebrations had just ended, and while wild Strikers were still proving to be over-powered due to the lack of protections, not everyone was feeling the Christmas vibe of the event. Most people didn't even knew how to control the new turret yet, and at the same time, it was being given out to a lucky few people in the special contest. I'm sure most of you still remember the looks of the special holiday map, right? The awesome festivities and decorations? What about discounts? Sales? Yep, those were quite wonderful - no one can regret having a nice fifty percent off to end a super long year.
The first update of the year focused on balance changes to Striker, which included the increase of grace period, angular velocity of its rockets and the mere reload speed. In addition, a new format was also added to the game, called XC or Hornet-Striker. If you're wondering how on Earth are the letters "X" and "C" related to the hull and the turret, well, they're simply named after the Russian translation of "Hornet" and "Striker", which is Хорнет-Страйкер. On the same day, January 11th, the Winter Tandem Tournament was announced. In it, you had to pair up with a teammate and take on other teams in Capture The Flag games. Prizes included hundreds of thousands of crystals, months of Premium Account and many Gold Boxes.
On January 26th, one of the most sought-after updates was finally released in the game, albeit being launched with limited functionality. It was the in-game clan system. Players could now finally create a clan inside the actual game, recruit their friends, give away roles and go into battles as a full team, recognized by a tag before their nicknames. Clan tags, despite being sold at a very expensive amount, would soon appear in each and every battle, next to everyone's names. It would be almost impossible to see a player without a clan in the future. With the release, Clan Licenses - which would be available to everyone afterwards - were given out to the top clans of the communities, those who were in Clan Championship IX.
Balancing was probably one of the major problems of the previous year, as on the same day, Ricochet and Smoky went changes and were slightly buffed and nerfed respectively. Another really useful update on this day was the change made to the "Garage" button in the battle. Now, you could visit the Garage in a battle without having to leave it, something that almost everyone wanted before.
Oh, almost forgot... THE GAME, which was to be honest, quite easy this time, ended on January 7th and the winners were announced on the 9th. The first place was secured by the soon-to-be two-timer killjet, winning a Dream Tank and lots of other prizes.
Count twenty-five more days and it was February 3rd, the day Clan Licenses finally became available for purchase in the Shop. For $35, you were given the following bonuses: the in-game clan, dedicated clan chat, roles, a clan tag, a description and finally, the ability to join PRO Battles without a PRO Pass. February 1st also had a major update, Patch Update #437. On this day, in an effort to eliminate critical errors from the game, drop zones were made to be visible from all over the map - unlike before, when only the zones who were close to your tank were visible and others were transparent. This meant that the Gold Box markers would now be visible from across the map, so you could have an easier time getting those thousand crystals. Player Ratings also made a return in this update after a whopping two years. Great, another thing to brag about... On February 10th, alterations for Twins and Ricochet were added, as if in a "second wave" to the alterations of other turrets. Most people saw this as the day Twins got heavily nerfed, as it now dealt splash damage. To remove this problem, you had to buy and equip an alteration.
On the 14th of February, you guessed it, love struck the air in Tanki. Chats were filled with romantic poems and shy tankers hinting their partners to go on a date and thousands of gifts were being to each other. It was Valentines Day. Celebrations included thematic decorations, sales ranging from 20% to 70% off and special offers in the Shop, it was quite an event. February 16th was quite an interesting day. It saw some balance changes to three important weapons - Isida, Hammer and Shaft. Isida lost its self healing but gained damage, Hammer was heavily nerfed with its pellet count being reduced and the reload being increased, while Shaft on the other hand was buffed, now being able to one shot medium tanks on the same upgrade level. These changes proved to be controversial in the community, especially the alterations made to Isida, but at the same time, greatly improved game balance. Just a few days later, on February 23rd, Tanki Online celebrated Iron Days with a bang - heavy sales, themed items, paints, you name it. There were also special Daily Missions with increased rewards and above all, increased drop rate for Gold Boxes. Two big events in one month? Good Tanki, good. 28th February marked the day when Tanki Online partnered with a payments service provider BoaCompra, in order to give more people around the day more and secure options to purchase in-game items. The next two months were filled with updates, news and events up to the brim - it was almost like having a balloon that's filled with so much air, it is going to burst any second. So let's continue with March.
March 3rd marked a big day for Tanki Online. It was the day when Tanki officially partnered with Steam - yes, the gaming giant. This partnership would soon prove to be very effective in increasing the game's audience. On March 7th, Women's Day came to Tanki Online. There were sales and discounts, themed items, special offers and a very exciting contest: the Postcard Contest. In it, you had to do make or design a postcard for Women's Day; and the best entries would win awesome prizes including crystals and Gold Boxes. The overall winner of the contest was the player with the nickname 289656, and here's their entry. March 16th saw another Patch Update, #449. It was quite a big update, as almost all modifications of turrets and hulls went balance and analytic changes, including but not limited to rank of availability, price, micro-upgrades, discount and probably the most joyful of them all, renting alterations no longer costed real money. Instead, they being sold for five thousand crystals for 24h. However, product kits also underwent some changes. The bonus supplies in them were removed, discounts no longer applied to them and the descriptions that described them in the garage were simplified.
Seven days later, probably one of the most hated turrets in the game right now was officially released. Magnum! Upon release, Magnum was able to one shot medium hulls and take out tens of people in the same shot, thanks to its huge splash radius. Magnum was also the first turret ever to be only rotatable in vertical degrees, not horizontal. This ability of Magnum would change Tanki's gameplay forever. A special contest was held to give away 7x Magnums to different lucky people, along with the Griffon T-F module and Gold Boxes. And... On 29th March, Patch Update #451 was released. Just saying the number of that update has sent chills down my spine, I must be careful with my words here. Nah, I'm just kidding... Thing is, on this dreaded day, Daily Missions were made to only be able to completed in, in... non-PRO battles. There, I said it, now let's see what more happened. There were changes to micro-upgrades, including the reduction of steps and unification of full-MU and next tier prices, increase of Daily Mission rewards, changes to auto-completion system - which, at this point, the notification to which had already changed color a billion times from green to orange to gold (yes, it gave some of the players heart attacks) and back to orange again. Oh, and critical errors were completely disabled from the game.
Sadly, April did not bring joy and laughter with it this time, due to the Kemerovo Tragedy. If you're unaware of what happened, or simply didn't know, you can learn more about it here, and watch Tanki Online's condolences here. May the victims rest in peace. Due to the incident, all events and news were postponed for a couple of days. April Fools day came to Tanki full of sales, laughs, discounts, special paints, holiday decorations and much more. What people didn't knew that just a few days later, a big event was on it's way...
Cosmonautics Day! On April 12th, the legendary Moon Silence map made a return, the one thing most old tankers remember from the beginning years from Tanki. As per usual, there were special paints, daily missions, sales and discounts, the lot. Again, the developers were still hiding a secret from us the entire time, read on to see what it was! Also, on April 7th, a small update was done, which changed some probabilities in daily missions, reduced prices of the kits in the Shop and some server optimizations.
Later that day, on April 12th, a surprise announcement was made in the News and Announcements section in the forum. Space mode would now stay in the game forever! The developers had finally managed to update the anti-cheat software, and so, the low gravity mode could no longer make a false-positive mistake. It was one of the best announcements ever made in the history of Tanki Online, as seen by the number of likes on the topic, which are relatively very high compared to other updates. On April 13th, the Communicator panel was added to the lobby - the interface was now much simpler, easy to use and extremely helpful than before. Players could now talk in dedicated chats, for example, one general chat, one for looking for games, one for eSports and so on. The News section would now store all recent news, unlike before. This update was also one of the most useful ones of all time. The next day, a giveaway was held in which you had to reach some specific kill tiers to receive items. Rewards included protection modules, crystals and Gold Boxes.
Finally, a big Patch Update was released on April 21st, #456. It included balancing changes to a lot of turrets, including Firebird, Magnum, Hammer, Smoky etc., addition of extra bonuses for Premium account users, new daily mission types, changes to the Communicator system and last but not least, new flags for Capture The Flag mode and bug fixes.
May started off with the usual May Holidays celebrations, with double Gold Box drop rates, themed decorations, sales and for the first time, two separate days for sales on micro-upgrades and speed-ups. There were special holidays paints, available both in the Shop and the Garage which you could purchase, and keep forever.
In 2017, one of the most interesting things Tanki started doing were weekend giveaways. As you already know, these require you to reach some specific kill goal in order to receive cool prizes, including crystals, Gold Boxes, Premium Account time, containers and sometimes even legendary paints! On May 12th, another one of these events was held in the game, with the shop paint "Liquid Metal" up for grabs for reaching a hefty 1200+ kills. Finally, on May 26th, something called Bonus and Discount Cards were released. These give you special deals and discounts in the Shop, provided that you are lucky enough to get one. On this day, the popularly known Double Crystal Card, or DCC, officially became Bonus Crystal Card, BCC. Some others include discount cards for kits, paints, Gold Boxes etc.
June began with an exciting opportunity for eSports fans, the launch of Domination Series Season II. Players from around the world in different clans participated in the tournament. In the final, it all came down to two teams, the powerful Synergy and the deadly All Kind, after which Synergy took the title. On June 4th, the community celebrated Tanki's 8th Birthday. Not only there were huge sales and promotions this time, but also the return of Overdrive in the game, which was then known as "Zero Supply". This feature was still new back then, holding mixed thoughts and critiques. Nevertheless, it was one of the best celebrations of the year, so people could care less to complain. Let's not forget THE GAME, in which, for the first time ever in Tanki history, the same player won two consecutive GAME's and become a two-time champion: killjet. On 20th June, it was announced that Tanki Online had partnered with a payment services provider knows as Trustly, to extend services in some European countries, including Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland and Poland. June ended with yet another Crazy Weekend, and this time, the prize was a chance to win a Dream Tank!
July was indeed an incredible month for Tanki Online - many new updates and features were added to the game with lots of contests. First up, promotional codes - an incredibly useful in-game system which allows you to receive rewards from the Administration (like contests, promotions etc.) and also players (giveaways, videos etc.). Promotional codes often drop in official livestreams, and now, thanks to the YouTuber TO program, also appear in videos of selected channels on YouTube. These were added to the game on July 6th, as part of Patch Update #467. Then, on July 7th, a special item was added to the game - the first ever animated paint, called Flow. Since it was the first time the developers had ever made a paint like that, it took a lot of players by surprise and so, the update received positive critique, with many hoping to buy it or obtain it through the special giveaway. Three days later, on the 10th, the Commentator Contest was launched again. Many players took part, each one with their own style of commentating, but in the end, only the best entries won and some of them were asked for further collaboration to eventually become official commentators. July 12th came and brought with it a returning mechanic, Overdrive! It was now finally in the game, permanently. Nobody disliked having full supplies for free, and along with that, also extending their effects to your teammates. The release was part of a very big patch update, which also included changes to supplies, sound cues for supply cooldown and activation, changes to protection in format battles and much more. On 14th July, another giveaway was held with the top prizes being Gold Boxes, Shark T-B module and a chance to win Dream Tanks or the legendary Flow paint.
July ended with the Wikimania Contest 2017 - a Wiki-based contest in which players had to write guides for certain maps in order to win big prizes. What was the grand prize? One chance to get your article featured in the Wiki in it's own, dedicated map guide page!
August was full of events of contests - a literal win for anyone with some crystals to spend. The month began with the "Goodbye Cedric" meme contest, in which players had to wish their goodbyes to Cedric using a meme. There were numerous entries, but prizes were sent to the most-liked and best ones only. The next day, on August 5th, the first Parkour Survival contest launched. Teams had to complete weekly challenges, and if a team failed to do so, it was eliminated from the contest. Around a hundred and twenty teams took part, but only seven made it through and got to keep the Sky paint forever. The popular "Mister and Miss Tanki Online" contest began on August 18th, and finally, the month ended with the "Goodbye Summer 2017" event, with 5x Gold Boxes, big discounts and special missions!
September was an interesting month for Tanki Online. Tanker's Day was imminent, but the month started off with quite a bang: a new Community Manager! Cedric Debono retired from the position with the meme contest, and Sergei Balabanov soon took hold of his new position. On September 1st, Crazy Weekend 4 was launched and and the main prize included Gold Boxes, Griffon T-G module and the Dream Tanks. People spent their two days blazing into battles and blasting off with victories. September 9th came soon after, and Tanker's Day was in full swing! This time, the celebrations were extremely enthusiastic, with five times the Gold drops, new holidays and premium paints, three new gifts, holiday missions, huge sales and brand new paints and gifts.
The Tanki Thinking Challenge was revived by Marc (with help from Ninja) on the 21st of September; and many people were quite happy to see the return of a great contest. It now had four major quiz categories and gave away tons of prizes to the people of the community every week. On 27th September, one of the most controversial ideas finally got implemented in the game: the Rename Pass! Two days later, the Deja Vu contest was announced. In it, you had to take a picture of a structure, building or anything that looked exactly like the one in the game. Being sponsored by Genesis, the prizes of the contest included awesome gaming keyboards and mouses. It was one hell of an event!
October, for once, remained quiet, with the exception of the massive Halloween event. It started off with the Unified Battle List update on October 12th. Essentially, all the server battles were merged into one big list so that finding a battle would be easier. The Communicator panel breathed into life as dedicated chat channels were now a thing. October 13th came, brought with it a Crazy Weekend and went by quick. On the same day, Masters of Parkour 2017 was announced and this time, the paint featured a pink theme with dashes of white across it.
In November, only three major events took place: a community event, Tankiball; Battle of the Social Networks and last but not least, Black Friday on the 16th, 15th and 23rd of the month respectively. Tankiball was an original event in which teams had to play football on the Stadium map in space gravity, it was both funny and interesting to watch since players were having a hard time coping with the extra impact from most weapons. Flips and spins were the least of their concerns, so to say. The OK vs. VK event, was more of a general in-game event in which players could buy either of the side's paints and maintain high kills with lower deaths. On Black Friday, the Spectrum paint was released along with Black Boxes, currently known as containers. On that day, due to a glitch, these were dropping every few seconds and people got hundreds in no time - these were removed soon after and the players were compensated with a day of Premium.
December was a great month, filled with every sort of events and contests you can imagine to the brim. Let's start off with the friends list and reporting changes on 7th December - now you could only have a maximum of three hundred friends and no more than fifty active incoming requests. This change intended to reduce load on the servers to improve battles. On this day, protection against jump hacking was also introduced into the game. On 8th December, yet another Crazy Weekend ran with the maximum prizes being the usual, two Dream Tanks. Three days later, on the 11th, the popular 15 Seconds to New Years contest was launched. In it, people had to make a fifteen second video related to both, the incoming celebration and Tanki Online for a chance to win great prizes! December 22nd was indeed a great day, for the annual New Years celebrations finally begun. I'm talking about a whole new map, new paints, new decorations and gifts, huge discounts and the overall festive vibe of the event in the game. Fun fact, this time around, the map was loosely based on the Forest map. Some say this could be asked in a random quiz in the future... On the same day, Frost Weekend, the same event with a modified name ran and this time, players who reached the maximum tier also won the Kodiak T-A module. On December 28th, three major changes were made in the game. One, the blue team in Assault mode could now gain points by simply killing enemy tanks, with each kill being one point. Two, rarity effects in containers - yep, the green, blue, purple etc. colors that pop up and get the suspense going. Three, mission chains now gave three times the rewards!
While all these events were happening, a VLOG Codes Contest was also underway, from VLOGs 154 to 157. Winners were rewarded with days of Premium time based on their positions in the contest.
Finally, the Tanki Awards were held for the first time in the community. Players could vote in many categories, including "Artist of the Year", "Videomaker of the Year" and even "Player of the Year". Clans and clubs which showed exceptional performances throughout the year were also praised, Synergy and Fight & Flight being the winners of the respective categories. Ghost_Animators, a videomaker from the EN Community, won in three of the four total categories, and that's impressive. Along with this, a group of tireless, exceptional and dedicated helpers were also announced and congratulated, and received the title of "Best Helper of the Year - 2017".
Tanki Online Throwback videos
History of Tanki Online - 2008 / 2009 (At 4:10 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2010 (At 2:16 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2011 (At 3:45 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2012 (At 6:40 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2013 (At 2:07 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2014 (At 3:41 minute)
History of Tanki Online - 2015 (At 3:10 minute)


text:
Well, I brought this on myself a little as my little Danish empire ballooned outward from its 2 provinces to a good chunk of the map. Unfortunately, I am at war with almost everyone excepting the Byz, the English, the Polish, and the new Pope. I probably decided to build too much as I have Citadels in several cities, most finished and a number of men. I have been staging a few wars to get plunder and let some soldiers take an early retirement.
Anything else I should think about doing?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Skeletal muscle mitochondrial volume and myozenin-1 protein differences exist between high versus low anabolic responders to resistance training
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Cell Biology, Kinesiology
- Keywords
- MYOZ1, muscle hypertrophy, citrate synthase
- Copyright
- © 2018 Roberts et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Skeletal muscle mitochondrial volume and myozenin-1 protein differences exist between high versus low anabolic responders to resistance training. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26933v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26933v1
Background. We sought to examine how 12 weeks of resistance exercise training (RET) affected skeletal muscle myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic protein levels along with markers of mitochondrial physiology in high versus low anabolic responders. Methods. Untrained college-aged males were classified as anabolic responders in the top 25th percentile [HI; n=13, dual x-ray absorptiometry total body muscle mass change (Δ) =+3.1±0.3 kg, Δ vastus lateralis (VL) thickness =+0.59±0.05 cm, Δ muscle fiber CSA =+1426±253 μm2) and bottom 25th percentile (LO; n=12, +1.1±0.2 kg, +0.24±0.07 cm, +5±209 μm2; p<0.001 for all Δ scores compared to HI]. VL muscle prior to (PRE) and following RET (POST) was assayed for myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic protein concentrations, myosin and actin protein content, and markers of mitochondrial volume. Myofibrillar protein levels of genes related to new myofibril formation as well as whole lysate PGC1-α protein levels were also assessed. Results. Main effects of cluster (HI>LO, p=0.018, Cohen's d=0.737) and time (PRE>POST, p=0.037, Cohen's d=-0.589) were observed for citrate synthase activity, although no significant interaction existed. POST myofibrillar myozenin-1 protein levels were up-regulated in the LO cluster (+25%, p=0.025, Cohen's d = 0.691). No interactions or main effects existed for other assayed markers. Our data suggest myofibrillar or sarcoplasmic protein concentrations do not differ between HI versus LO anabolic responders prior to or following a 12-week RET program. Discussion. Greater mitochondrial volume in HI responders may have facilitated greater anabolism, and myofibril myozenin-1 protein levels may represent a biomarker that differentiates anabolic responses to RET. However, mechanistic research validating these hypotheses is needed.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Raw data (EXL format)
Raw data in EXL format ready to be entered into data processing software (e.g., SPSS).
Raw Coomassie and Western blot images
Raw Coomassie and Western blot images


text:
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In a few short lines of poetry, Canadian physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae captured the futility of the Great War. We asked Canadians to recite the poem as an act of remembrance.
Montreal Gazette photographer Dave Sidaway uses the poem to narrate a slideshow of his most powerful photos from previous Remembrance Day ceremonies.
We encourage you to record your own version, post it online and share it with us using the hashtag #inflandersfields.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


text:
Language for ... pets
This lesson provides students with the key vocabulary associated with pets.
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