World of Warplanes surprise patch 0.5.2 review

Well, this week’s article wasn’t planned to be a patch review, especially since we had one just last week, and patches for WoWp tend to be announced several days earlier, sometimes even a week. But not this time, this time, we got an update that was announced right while the servers were stopped for it. And it ain’t a big one gameplay wise, in fact, the changes to the client are only 10MB large (compared to 1200 of patch 0.5.1) , but the importance of this patch is very high. So, without further ado, lets see what you need to know about this patch.

1. Account Unification
It finally happened, the long ago announced unification of WoT and WoWp accounts is now in effect. Over time, even more WG game accounts will be linked into one, and what this means for you right now is that buying premium account time in WoT will give you premium time in WoWp and WoT, and vice versa, buying premium account with WoWp tokens which you earn for free will give you premium time in WoT and WoWp. Soon after the game release, free xp from WoT and WoWp accounts will become shared too, and rumors say that you might even be able to share credits, but so far those have been denied by Wargaming.

2. Open Beta Stage II has begun – How to earn tokens now

After nearly 2 months of Stage I, in which all WoWp players had unlimited premium account and earned 300 tokens per day provided they had 5 victories. Stage II will not last that long, only for a bit less than a month, and during that time you’ll be able to earn 240 tokens per day, which are much more valuable than Stage I tokens due to the fact you couldn’t use those for anything but WoWp premium airplanes (which will get wiped off your account at release) and converting them to free xp/credits (also wiped at release, along with anything you buy with them). As previously mentioned, Stage II tokens will allow you to purchase premium time both for WoT and WoWp, and assuming you pick up all 240 tokens per day, you will be able to earn a bit over 2 months of premium time by release. And here is what you need to do in order to earn those tokens:

– For first victory of the day, first kill of the day, and first ground target kill of the day, you will earn 10 tokens each.
– For third victory of the day, third kill of the day, and third ground target kill of the day, you will earn 20 tokens each
– For tenth victory of the day, tenth kill of the day, and tenth ground target kill of the day, you will earn 50 tokens each

Note that any tokens you had at stage I, unused at the time stage II started will be converted into credits with the ratio 1 token = 800 credits.

3. Economy Changes

Economy has underwent several changes as well. First of all, all the premium goodies such as premium consumables, hangar slots, training pilots and demounting equipment has had its price halved.

All of the premium planes had their prices adjusted as well, and at the moment they seem to be at 50% of their price at release, though this is yet to be confirmed.

Several machineguns and autocannons had their ammo prices reduced. These guns are M2 machine gun, MG-53-2, М2-20, B-20, NS-23, MG-213C

Five planes had their earnings increased, four of them being premiums. These planes are XFL-1, P-40 M-105, HE-100, P-39q and the non premium, A7M

4. Gameplay and Balance changes

The gameplay stayed almost exactly the same, with the exception being the fact that now WoT style messages are used to display things such as damaged modules, fire, etc. Also, it seems that the change of notification system from patch 0.5.1 has been rolled back to the previous version, most likely due to lots of players complaining about it, so once again, all you have to remember is green event is good for your team, red is bad.

As for the balance changes, several planes were hit with the nerf bat, while much more were lucky to receive buffs.

The nerfed planes are:
F7U, F6U, Me 109TL, Me 609, P51H

The buffed planes are:
Bf.110E, J7W2, J7W3, La-15, F86A, Il-40P, Me. P. 1092, La-160, F5U, Me.209A, La-9, Bf.109G, P-40, I-16 late, A5M, Ar80

Exact details about their changes are available in the release notes.

5. Bug fixes
Two major bugs were fixed in this update. The freshly introduced in 0.5.1 update bug which made planes act like UFO’s while near other planes has been eliminated, once again allowing pilots to get near to their targets without having to worry about their planes doing insane stunts, usually followed by a crash or a collision.
The other bug that was fixed was the bug which made the lead indicator twitchy, effectively showing the wrong info to pilots about where to aim on their targets. Not as major bug as the previous one, but still annoying and good to know it’s gone.

6. Overall Impression on Update
Basically, all the changes to the game were relatively minor, the most important one being the bug fix which pretty much eliminated a gamebreaking bug that was making pilots unable to fight their targets from close range.
The most important change of this update is the fact it marks the start of open beta stage II, which means players can now grind actual game premium time both for WoT and WoWp just by playing WoWp each day. The successful implementation of the unified account system is the reason why this is possible as of now.
Overall, it’s a small but very good patch, which pretty much only contributed to the game and didn’t hinder it in any way. The only wrong thing about it was the lack of announcement about its release, which left lots of testers shocked and unable to spend their stage I tokens as they intended. However this is just a minor annoyance, and it doesn’t reduce the overall quality of this very welcome update.

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