Halt the presses: tanks are "in" once more. Whether it's a whole World of Tanks or War Thunder's Ground Forces, across the globe, people seem to enjoy driving armored vehicles, and destroying them too. Previously, we'd announced that Obsidian, now in conjunction with My.com, was taking the armored battles to the modern era, involving Cold War tanks up until modern-day tanks, with the possibility for that to extend out to tanks even yet to be seen by the general public.
Now, we know a bit more about how the game is going to play out. Though it's still in closed beta testing at this point, with some hilarious side effects, we more or less now have a rough idea of how the progression and tank research is going to play out. Unlike WoT, where you collect research on a specific tank towards the next tank in that technology tree, or War Thunder, where you put all of your research gained in a battle towards a specific vehicle, in Armored Warfare, by spending reputation on vehicle modules and also completing various tasks in that vehicle, you unlock other trees and vehicles to buy.
Buying vehicles themselves is also different. Instead of just buying them from a faceless store with a limitless supply of military hardware, Armored Warfare has introduced "weapons dealers," where different characters specialize in various branches of armored vehicles, as in NATO member vehicles vs. Warsaw Pact vehicles, for example. Not all dealers will have vehicles for all tiers, and some dealers will indeed only be accessible once you get to higher tiers.
What about the gameplay though? With the development of modern warfare, the rise in use of explosive reactive armour, or "ERA," became commonplace to defeat the sharp increase in the use of HEAT/HESH shells. Through a pair of developer Q & A sessions, they have confirmed that certain vehicles will be nearly impervious to high explosive warheads, at least where they're armored. Shoot enough HE at the armor, however, and you're able to open up a weak spot in the tank. Of course, you could just get to the sides or rear of a vehicle, offering much softer armor.
Other points of interest include the fact that the developers will try to add as many vehicles as possible to the game, as they're not limiting themselves to nation-based technology trees, the implementation of wind and possibly other game-altering weather effects, and players will have a chance to earn special camouflage or tank markings if they perform well enough in-game.
If the idea of modern armor duking it out in an arcade setting excites you, then feel free to sign up for closed beta testing at this link, though there's no indication of how long the waiting period may be to get in.
