Popular World of Tanks NA player LemmingRush has put out a video showing a player from one of the wannabe top US clans openly using his illegal mods on a Twitch livestream
Popular North American World of Tanks player has posted some interesting footage from Twitch showing a player in the US WoT clan 11A_D openly using illegal mods to enhance his gameplay.
Wargaming
The footage - which makes for some ugly viewing if you're resolution sensitive alone - shows banned mods such as a "Red Laser" on opponents' guns showing where they are aiming, an enemy reload timer showing how long opponents have to reload, a paintball marker showing where opponents have been hit, an auto-aim mod enabling targets to be picked up when they are still behind cover and a "defoliage" mod removing trees and bushes from view.
Pretty much the full house then. It makes for one ugly screen too.
The single most shocking part of the whole episode is the fact that Twitch have actually banned this guy before for using cheats, but Wargaming - publishers of World of Tanks - don't seem to have done so. We await their public response at the time of writing.
World of Tanks: Bat.-Châtillon 25 t
The second part of the video is an analysis by LemmingRush of the suspect player's statistics and how they don't match up to his actual abilities, the implication being that he bought his account from someone better.
What is of wider interest to all gamers is the prevalence of cheating across so many games. Particularly PvP ones. We have seen figures from various publishers putting the incidence of cheaters in their games at between 10-20%. The truth may never be known, as commercial interests ultimately rule.
However any experienced and decent pvper will know that feeling when something doesn't feel quite right. That shot you know is a 10 per-center hitting you not once, but twice or three times in a row. And don't even get us started on movement hacks or map exploits.
Wargaming
So why do they do it? Speaking as a player who can usually reach the top 20% in any PvP game I study hard enough, I don't understand it. Reaching that 20% is fine by me, I don't simply don't have the reflexes, situational awareness or timing to go higher than that. And I'm fine with it. I'm still better than most. Usually. There's a satisfaction in getting that "enjoy yr ban" message from a salty shitter you've just whacked.
Yet when there is a route to gain peer envy and respect in a world of pixelated carnage, some people - a minority - will take it. In their hearts they know it's not right, maybe the justification is that "other people do it". Yet the gap between the appearance of being elite and the reality must chew away at them.
Wargaming
We'd like to see the banhammer used both more precisely and more frequently by publishers. But we're not holding our breath. Hey, maybe we could make a mod for that ...
