Warthunder's History of Removed Features 

48 days after the release of this video gaijin are reimplementing Volokalamsk warthunder.com/en/news/7464/current Music into the intro: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lNRyL6ad9tE.html

The main thing that was removed is Fun. It was replaced by arbitrary "realistic" game mechanics.

When Normandy was added, destroying the balloons gave a decent amount of SL and XP. Many times people started with AA as first spawn

The feature I miss the most is... Fun at playing.

Gaijin: *Removes D Point* Also Gaijin: *Decides to leave the Attack The D Point And Defend The D Point Chat commands*

Remember when if your breech got damaged and you fired there was a good chance it would kill you? When did they remove that exactly

You didn't mention the "Historical" Events going on regularly, with pre selected vehicule choice for each team (similar to how Simulator works for tanks) as well as the X2 exp for the first victory and x4 for week-ends, as well as x5 for special holydays and special days.

A few other things that were removed The D point When over the course of the match, a huge load of crates would show up on the map and it'd be considered as the D point that needs to be captured The mechanic where pilots flew worse if they were injured Last man standing where any tank could still live with 1 crew member but it will take a while to switch positions Of course there was a time when warbonds werent a thing but there was another way toget free vehicles There was also a time when vehicles were empty and had no visible crew in them The ZSU 57 2* used to have its rear basket fill up with shells the more you fired edit: The removal of the swordfish given how awful it is and made with the rear gunner who cant see because of the gigantic metal plate (although put back if one plays naval) and of course RB used to have team killing enabled edit: last one, in AB or RB ground forces, albeit very rare but there used to be the Sands of Sinai map. You can still find it in the custom server map selection but it's the far left side of that map that is typically only available to ground sim battle players final one: Although this might be harder to find. There was a time when gaijin was figuring out the auto reloader mechanic. The 40t didn't have what it currently had so for a short while, it was able to shoot without ever reloading its drum.

I miss the 20 ranks for each nation, it was faster to progress the tree back then, there was also a 2x XP multiplier for the first victory of the day with each nation, that continued to exist atleast to the version 1.39 back when there was only US, GER, USSR, GB and JP and the F-86 and Mig-15 where the top tier jets

another thing removed was the daily 2X XP per nation. where your 1st game playing in any of the nations you'd get double XP for the 1st game you played. It was removed for the current RP and SL boosters

Damn, I remember playing that historical event years ago on small volo. I don't know why they completly removed it. It wasn't that bad and variety is also nice when playing the same gamemode over and over again. Same is true for break.

2014 player here. The three things I miss most about this game, in order, are: 1. Magz almost exclusively making EXCELLENT War Thunder videos and tutorials; 2. Armour being a viable playstyle in GF RB; and 3. Volokolamsk, both versions. It's legit my favourite map, I'm not kidding - slowly battling my IS-3 through those dense forests and engaging in long-range sniper duels with Tiger IIs are some of my fondest memories of this game. YES, THE SPEEDBUMPS IN THE FIELDS WERE OBNOXIOUS, BUT THE TERRAIN WAS REALLY FUN TO FIGHT IN AND THE WINTER MAPS ARE COOL, OKAY??

I have been playing since 2013 and remember all of these things. What I miss is the fun I used to have... and the epic hangar music. I could start WT just to listen to the music. I miss those days.

I would love the "Random nation" choice to return. It would encourage War Thunder players to learn to have fun and possibly decrease the queue times, as there would be a group of players who can me sltted into any Nation and BR. It could have set line-ups which you are just sent in with, or A random collection of vehicles you have crewed.

I remember the last man standing way back from when they first added tanks where if you had 1 crew member you still lived it just took him 5-10 seconds to man a different position

I think volokolamsk wasn't that bad. It really was only one or two versions of the map especially those with only one capture point that were awful. On tier 1-3 most versions were alright. I hope they will bring back a reworked version one day.

I played back in 2013. One thing you missed about how progress worked is player rank was a lot more important. Instead of br planes were separated into 20 ranks and players ranks also only went up to 20. Once you unlocked a new rank of planes, if your pilot rank wasn’t the same as the new planes rank you were unable to fly them. I remember unlocking the p51 in the US tech tree, but I couldn’t play it since my pilot rank was like 1 or 2 ranks below it so I started playing German air to raise my pilot level. Then the BR system update came and I didn’t have to worry about my pilots rank being to low. As for which one is better. That p51 example is really the most I remember about the old rank system so I couldn’t give you an answer one way or another.

There was a cap on experience back then. I think rewards were dropped to either 5% or 20%. It also meant that if a new plane was added to a tier that you already had, you didn't have to research it and could purchase it right away. Quite unsustainable if you ask me. You also forgot about the previous French reserve tanks.

AI tanks driving around old kuban that you could kill for extra RP/SL. AAA locations within range of tanks in ground battles too. AAA used to club any plane that came too close and tanks could shoot them again for extra rp/sl as well as helping friendly planes come in. There was a whole field of them on ash river where you could shoot like 15 of them. Karelia had them lining the top of the cliffs.

Am I the only player who really liked Volokalamsk? It was quite large and offered multiple combat ranges with its hilly terrain.

I miss the historical events they had on weekends for Air RB iwo Jim and guardian angel were awesome. Break wasn't that bad and with some balancing would do wonders to break up the repetitive aspects of GFRB.

I remember when started playing war thunder, and i saw the Maus, i fall in love with it and i wanted to get it, i needed to unlock two more tanks to get it, but it was removed. I wish it comes back this month like last time. :c

The P-47 for the Germans wasn't removed, it was actually just hidden, that could be an interesting "removed feature" to add next. I saw a very old German player with 2 P-47's in an arcade lineup and was very confused. Speaking of it, you could do another "almost useless warthunder info", as the Ersatz T-Bolt has its ammo visible from its damaged model's wings, whereas you can see the ground through the wings of American P-47s.

Wow I really wish they’d bring back the dedicated Heli gamemode. Helicopter EC is extremely broken at the moment, and bringing Helicopters into ground RB can be pretty painful depending on which heli you’re playing

Enemy vehicles used to blow up if they encroached into spawn zones and lingered too long. I would like to see that return as well as three spawn locations just to make it harder for enemy teams to effectively spawncamp/snipe people spawning in.

remember when they briefly tried that mechanic where so long as you had one crew member the tank wasn't dead, and you just had to manually switch his position from driver to gunner and back again?

Am i really the only one Who actually liked fields of volokolamsk in tank Sb? I used to play the Lorraine on that map and it was amazing

I miss the old menu music still, even though it's been like 4 years

One of the features I miss most as a player from 2015 is the music I hope they add a feature to change the music theme back to legacy. It was an amazing theme. It created a feeling that's hard to describe. But I remember my first time playing the long forgotten Bird of Steel the original War Thunder and that was when I first heard the theme and I still remember it in my head. Nowadays I don't even attempt to use hanger music I have it turned off cause I hate it.

As someone who’s played since 2013 off an on, I miss the old system in certain capacities. The much faster/less sweaty grind for aircraft was much more enjoyable, but there wasn’t much to do once you got everything for a nation because you kinda lost the drive to grind in it, and most people moved to customs. I think if the rp requirements were halved for tiers 3+ it would make the game much more enjoyable while still keeping its semi-slow pace and giving you something to work towards. Also as a side note I miss the old music and the old filters from back in the day, I think with the new graphics and the old filter it would make the game a lot more beautiful.

There used to be a feature that gave each nation a 500% booster for the first game you play that day. It was pretty nice as it pushes players to play all nations!

I remember getting my golden gladiator helmet for coming top 100 in the battle royal. Felt good. Really hope it comes back.

About the spaverios, there was a few bonus ones (two iirc) that were in the german tree but removed a long while before they rest went to the italian tree, same with some russian heavy bombers.

Been playing since the closed beta. This took me back to the times. Everyone playing Arcade and the 'Historical battles' were for the die hards. Remember the bombing reticle in tanks RB? Or when you could see player names in tank RB? There was an event where they would hide the names and give players spawn points. The event ended and players complained they want it back. Even I posted this on the forum and got a lot of likes & comments. This is the RB today. Or firing rockets was an insta-kill no matter where you shot. If you dislike CAS now. Should've seen it back then. And remember the D point. I don't upload anymore, but got some ancient WT videos on my channel.

The Battle mode in Naval still exists, I play it sometimes as a Naval Arcade player. It's just a bit rare.

Im still sad they removed volokolamsk from the matchmaker. Sure, the big one was awful for low tier, but i think it would be a nice map for top tier now, like 9.0 and above

I played at the start, I miss the way how the game was and unlocking multiple planes was fun, honestly I'm struggling with the Swedes and Italian lines atm, didn't matter anyway, I lost my original account

Played Birds of Steel(also from Gaijin and essentially the beginning of WT and no tanks) and it had the same economy system. I think it was pretty good because instead of spending all my time wanting that P-51D-5(literally the top plane there lol), I just played until I was a high enough tier, and not only got my P-51, but also a lot of other planes and was always happy, I was never broke, contrary to modern war thunder. I think the best part was that it was always fun not needed to stress about grinding

Po-2 and TB-3 were also ¨removed¨. TB-3 can still be obtained with warbond on rare occasions, and the Po-2 can be obtained on Halloween (or at least it could, idk if it's still like that) Those were removed because they were slow af and it would be a pain to have to play them as reserve vehicles The TB-3 is pretty good tho because it can carry a lot of payload for a plane with such low br Kingfishers were removed for a while too, because they're overall pretty bad. But they came back after naval was introduced because hydroplanes Beaufighter Mk X used to have 6 50 cals instead of 30 cals, which made it pretty more deadly The finnish KV-1B was also removed from the store, same as TB-3, can be obtained with warbond on rare occasions. It's also in the really loot of the lootboxes, I think, it's sold on the Gaijin market I know people who played from very early on. There was a historical gamemode or something like that, that were like, stuff like flying really far from your AF to the objective to bomb stuff IS-2 was given a shell with higher pen that had around 230mm of pen or something like that. They raised its BR to 6.7 (or 7, idk remember exactly, but it faced the Maus in matchmaking) at the time, then they lowered it back again and removed the shell. I think IS-3 still has that shell I'm not sure, but I think tanks could fire with a broken barrel, which gave the shot ludicrous dispersion and lower pen, but you could still kill people like that

Damn, surroundings of voinoidasoidaodjaio was my favourite map back when ground forces was added. I don't know why but I liked using the Zis-30 in the tree lines while player after player just whized by without checking

Their use to be a number of boats on the coastline of the Jungle map, as well as a number of landing craft on the north east side that you could kill for a some SL and XP. I would always call down an artillery strike on them at the start of a match. (I also remember when Jungle was first added to the closed beta. The Battle version of the map had the capture zones on the wrong side of the map, resulting in matches that only lasted a few moments as both sides capture rushed, and there was just not enough time to get to the other side of the map to stop the enemy team from capturing.) Similarly on the Kursk map, before the village was added, their use to be a large number of AI tanks, AAA and anti tank guns on the map that would battle with each other Some times players would take a Panzer IV or a T-34 and try and blend in with the AI tanks. The AI tanks and other guns would seemingly only fire HE, which was not that big of an issue to most tanks, but once they started shooting at you they would rarely stop making it easy for other players to find you.

When was the last time they did any gameplay improvements? We need new game modes. Helicopters need a better game mode so much to improve

I love how gaijin adda 300 nice and interesting premiums, and when we f2p have one, they remove it( maus, i know is almost impossible to balance, but for f sake is amazing. One tip for resolving, divide ww2 tanks and moderb tanks, heavy tanks have no reason to research when someone 20000km away can pen you in the front)

This is so nostalgic, i'm so happy that i remember most, if not all of these; But also sad considering like all of these lost features, i've lost the fun in the game

The XP system was pretty great, i hit the cap on the Hurricane in the british tree. Back when the only ammo belts available were stock , Omni-purpose & Stealth. Those mgs rips, as regards to the "Level system" it was pretty touch and go, the bf-109 g6 was rank 14 & would sometimes go up against level 19-20. Pretty rough when people were flying around in 262's and komets

there is more that got lost. You forgot all the special events for air RB like "flight of the swallows" or "ruhr". Also there were more large maps back then for ground forces. white rock fortress once was huuuge, the castle actually was just a part of the map. Also mozdok was full sized back then and not divided and many small map pieces that now can be played seperatetly

I want Realisitc EC for aviation back. Also 1.37 was THE GOLDEN ages of the game

One quality of life feature that gaijin removed a while back and that I'm still pissed about is the support for the play station controller track pad to controll the mouse cursor in the match. They at one point removed it completely and have now added it, although it only works in the hangar. It's a real shame since it allowed the console players too look around with a similar speed of what mouse and keyboard players are capable of.

I still have decal layouts on my hurricanes and early spits from when the 20-tier system existed. I get nostalgic just looking at them in the hangar. I also have all the SB2s in my Russian tree, and the SM.79s, MC202s, and premium CR.42 in my German tree. PO-2 and OS2U as well. Good times. The thing I miss the most is the x5 research multiplier on weekends.

Remember in groundforces when you randomly spawned sideways on slopes, and sometimes even rolling on your roof because of it? Or randomly getting stuck in flat ground? It is such a blessing the devs improoved on that.

One of my earliest memories from war thunder is when i played ground rb for the first time... I spawned in a Stug 3 F on Cuban, fired a "celebration round" which hit our Panzer 4 F2 in the back of the turret and oneshotted him... i left from the embarassment immediately. After that i deleted war thunder and returned back to world of tanks until about 2018

Hey, so I have played in 2014, and I really liked it, I mostly used the time to land every plane on the airfield, and somehow grinder most of the planes, but I quit the game after about 5 months, and I sadly forgot the login credentials, but the current game is a completely different game, grinding a nation takes soooo long, and I have about 700 hours in the game, which about 400 of them are premium time, and I still have no MBT’s or helis, or even jets 🤷🏻 the game is pretty boring in my eyes now and that’s why I don’t play it anymore 🤷🏻

There were no BRs in 2013. Neither were matchmaking. Instead of RB there was Historical battles, where Bufflos fought Tu-2 and Me-262. Everyone were thrown in 1 battle regardless.

The removed the Panther II, Tiger (h) 105 and Flakpanther 341 for historicak reasons, but they still added the M55E1, and the Tiger H1 for Japan (All premiums).

Memories 😍 Been playing since late 2012. Also love how they removed the airdrops which were the D point but you can still say attack/defend the D point Also love how they dont show T-4-8, "repairing x seconds"

I played the beta in 2012 and kept playing over the years, started in 2013 for real this time, it was fun back then, gaijin changed so much and became so greedy over the years, unlocking planes was faster and i do get why they changed to the xp thing, because you would have had all the planes in a few days/ month, and usually people stuck to higher tier but the historical battles was fun. When the tanks were added, and the mechanics were nice, shallow to today's standard but felt rewarding and gaijin started messing up with the game so much that it got out of control to this day and they haven't fixed vehicles and they always care to the wallet warriors or the cry babies "too op" argument. If the vehicle is op, leave as it is, let us use our brain on how to hunt em. One cool addition was the 1st of april jokes, they were actually fun, we we kept waiting for the " next year surprise" the one i liked so much was the fake inflatable tanks with potatoes/carrots as ammo. We had arguments with wot players on what game was the best and the trailers were incredible, they felt connected with the player base ( at least what i felt) the nations, the combat, the war theme of ww2, the art direction and music were top notch. From 2016 onwards gaijin became soo much greedy with money ( money is good but greed is bad), major changes to game modes, and BR compression was a problem, there was the .50 cal novel, each patch it was broken or too op ( it was like this since 2015 if i remember correctly, and i don't know what to expect of the 50cal.) its sad to see good maps or game modes removed and seeing gaijing frustrating people to force them to buy GE out of frustration. I had the pleasure to buy the modules and golden eagle and premium, wasn't that frequent but i liked helping to sustain a game i liked even with its flaws at a time where the other gaming companies were filling their triple A games with loot boxes and warthunder seemed to be away from this trend ( for a while) but they began with that too, and anti consumer practices. Heli cbt was fun but they removed most of the maps, and modes ( capture the base) and people used to have skill back then using tow vs tow, the flight model was messy and it was challenging, we had shilkas on our team/enemy team and was thrilling to kill them, and you could use it to highlight other helos as a "feature" even though i scanned for helos most of the time on visual ( there were no thermals, radars, nothing) every one thought that the hind would be op, and i bought the huey, people hated when i was doing n.o.e (nap of the earth) and engaging the hinds at a higher altitude not more than 200meters or over the ridge line or mountains with the 30mm or tow missiles, capturing the bases on helo cbt was fun, everyone wanted to unlock either the ah1z or the mi35 as soon as possible, stopped playing this game in 2021, too frustrated with helicopter EC, ka 50 should not have been added or at least they should have their own game mode.

IM WATCHING THIS VIDEO... AND I JUST GOT BACK INTO WAR THUNDER AFTER A FEW MONTHS AND I GOT PUT INTO VOLOKOLAMSK WHILST WATCHING THIS BAHAHAH.. I'm guessing it got put back in lmao

Started in late 2012, around 1.27 I think The only thing you had to grind was the ranks of each nations, there was no real "stock" grind either everything was unlocked from the get-go until little by little they started adding things such as ammo belts etc. Realistic Battles was Historical Battles back then and had nation rotations for each day or week. You could fight against biplanes and other props in your jet if you just had a biplane in your lineup with the jet

Omg once the old warthunder music came up so much memory came back, I still remember I was test driving the saber f35 and thaoght how good it was with the old warthunder aviation music and trying to calculate how long wouldn it take me to get the tech tree saber🥺🥺

I used to play with the old plane research system back in 2013, all remember is that it was infinitely more grindy and annoying

I loved Volokolamsk. I was wondering why I haven't seen it in so long. BTW I have been playing since patch 1.21. I hate the BR system too, I liked the old tier system and the modern vehicles have broken the game.

I originally downloaded War Thunder in 2013 just after it was released and seeing the footage of the old air maps with awful effects and bad plane models gives me an indescribable feeling of nostalgia.

The game was much more enjoyable before researching vehicles became a thing. Basically the research function just added more grind and that's the entire purpose of it. Also I think there are two SM.79s in the old German tech tree that are not in the Italian one so they are truly unique. I got them all but I stopped playing this game some months ago so I'm not gonna check which ones these are.

That old war thunder music was so nostalgic. I started back in October 2013. Had so much fun when it came out.

Playing since 1.27, I would say that my experience is that the BR system actually improved MM, despite the initial pushback. It's still plagued with many of the problems we had back then (big data skewing balancing changes, compression's still pretty bad), but it has technically allowed for decompression compared to the old 20 rank system, which I've personally bore witness to games in HB (old name for RB) between Yak-9ts and La-5s against 262s. In addition, fully spading a plane back then (yes that is what it was called as well) cut XP gain by 90%, not 100%. However, powergrinding was not "rank penalized", so a common and popular strategy was to buy the rank 1 Catalina for the USSR and just arcade bomb to rank 20. This strategy was especially popular in 1.27 and earlier - arcade rewards for XP and SL were much higher prior to 1.29, and prior to I believe 1.31, bombs could be dropped no matter the attitude of the aircraft, meaning you could drop bombs while pulling hard maneuvers, upside down, or dive bombing, and the reticle size would not change as well as phase through your plane to hit the target perfectly. Bombing back in the day really hit different.

2:40 the thing is they didnt remove it! Its still in rotation, i got it a few times over the last years, last time maybe 3-4 months ago, playing germany 6.3. Its super rare but it still exists

Early, pre-Br WT was way more fun for me. The bigger bomb explosion radius and the type of planes you fought made both AB and RB more fun in my opinion.

Old versions of the game and by that I mean the early ones were so cinematic in term of special effects, how camera worked and graphics, wished Gaijin would re add those as toggle in settings.

I miss how much easier it was to get lions. Now after I grind a tree I have to grind a long ass time just to afford it all. They should let you burn down a specific tree and not have to play completionism for aircraft you dont plan to use before reaching the next tier.

1:57 return if vola- volokolo- *checks notes* volokolamsk

Sorry fellas but I'm gonna miss the R3T20 being 3.7

Bro the map I absolutely HATE is maganot line Sorry I'm not very good at spelling

I actually loved Volokolamsk, really fun specially at the 3.7 mark

The thing I remember most vividly from the old Level system. Regularly fighting 262s in my P-39.

Remember those days where you had a bomb reticle on any aircraft that dropped bombs in RB

I like how they remove some tanks for ahistorical reasons when they have literal fake tanks in the Japanese tree (the Ho-Ri Prototype and Ho-Ri Production). I'm sure there's other examples of ahistorical vehicles they still left in but those are the prominent two.

I may be misremembering, but there was an IL2 game and later like "wings of steel" or something? for consoles and it had the original grind method. The maxing out XP gain on planes at least in those games was alarmingly low so it got very grindy very quickly. The "Hole in your left wing" "on course, on time, and on target, how are you" lines also date back that far, along with some of the original air-arcade markers that have since been replaced. It might be easier to find more footage from the older games that pre-date warthunder but I'm not 100% sure

I was one of those players that played wt on old progression system. You can think about it as leveling a country instead of single vehicle. You could just play with planes you liked and from time to time get a package of new ones. It was very good for new players as no one knew what was good and what was bad at the time. It also got many into trying out new vehicles that they would never grinded for otherwise. I also bealive that you had to chose which country you started with, but I might confiusing it with some other game.

This game was a lot better back in 2018. All of the worst bullshit was added after that. The pen calculator, the traction nerf, volumetric, the R3, the EBR, helicopters, naval, overpressure, the Chinese and Swedish tech trees etc etc.

My god I remember back in 2013 when I was just a kid playing on a laptop using the german plane with 2 huge canons on the wing, all I can remember from playing back then was every time I had shot the guns it made the plane flip back about 20-30 degrees, I was around 10 at the time so I was horrible at the game but it sure did make me laugh and I had some fun. Now I play the game on my desktop and am in top tier with tanks and aircraft

Okay video but you forgot one key feature that, imho, was the best thing for immersion The massive bots fight over the poor old kursk map, where we had a massive tank battle on A point with bot reinforcements coming from barely outside of the map, stuka/il-2 squadrons coming to attack them and even katyushas and hummels outside of the map (And let's not forget the stukas bombing Stalingrad or the tank battles on carpathians)

What I’m missing is maps. A lot of maps simply disappeared and now you get the same shitty maps all over again 😣 Hey I liked that most hated map. Why was it hated? It had everything you wanted in tank map 🤔 Except that it was somewhat too big for mid tier tanks. But fuck the small map. Why not have a middle ground? Big maps are too big, small maps too small. We hardly ever get a map that has the right size to be the least annoying.

Break appeared for me a year ago. It's quite annoying, but I only encountered it in Realistic Battles. It was only available very briefly during one of the 2019-2020 updates from a technical mix-up. It was quickly removed afterwards without patch notes.

Surrounding of Volokomansk is back. I now know why everyone hates it. Its like every 3rd Map I get. In RB.

Oooh yeah break i had forgotten about that to be honest.... Something i really miss is mitigated damage. Gives you a small SL bonus when you angle and don't get damage when you got hit

I miss realistic battles having a historical or alternate history matchmaker when maps would along with countries like Britain being uk vs Germany and Saipan being usa vs Japan

Historical match making is the big one that I miss. Even though I didn't like the map at the time, I really miss the one air rb map that was Brits v Americans.

I remeber Yak3p beeing the most OP plane

What about being able to play with only 1 crew member in realistic mode? I really liked it..

There used to be AI tanks *and anti aircraft guns* in most if not all ground maps when tanks were in open beta, but people kept getting killed by them and they took them away even if it was just free rp

I miss Volokolamsk. I had a lot of fond memories of it back when I first started playing the game.

2:15 Yesterday a friend and I played this map in Ground Realistic Battles twice in a row at 6.7BR playing the Germans. And I can see why players hated it, it's way too big especially for that br where tanks drive at a maximum of 25km/h through the thick snow

Surroundings of volokolamsk is so good map, i dont see why people hate it. Hundred times worser map is Vietnam

1:20 "people completely ignored the objectives" - modern online gaming in a nutshell

i liked surroundings of volokolamsk. it was super fun at like, 7.7 and up back in the day for me

I remember smolovo domination map it was great wish it was back in the game

I just started playing it last year on Easter Sunday and I already have the t95 and m4a3e2 jumbo

as an OG maus player, I kinda hate how gajian just re-adds it each year, ruins the rarity factor and the fun of it.

I remember a time where the soviet T-28 had a working rear machinegun ! I hated the fact that they removed it even tough it didn't have much use :'(

I remember getting Warthunder only for the Maus. I want it back in the game. I now play naval for the Regia Marina.