World of Tanks: Mercenaries Celebrates 17 Million Players with Explosive New Content in the Latest Update
Get new Mercenary vehicles, maps, changes, and more in Update 4.6
August 28, 2018 — As World of Tanks: Mercenaries celebrates reaching a landmark 17 million registered players, the latest major update will be rolling out globally on August 28 on PlayStation®4 and Xbox. Update 4.6 introduces new content features, including everything from a fresh perspective to play Artillery vehicles to new Mercenary vehicles, Crews and Maps, and a fulfilment of popular requests from our community.
The first major feature is a new Artillery camera: the ‘Trajectory’ view. Available along with the existing birds-eye Artillery view, this view brings the camera lower to the ground and rotates to follow the shell’s trajectory, with the tank as the central pivoting point. As well as giving more variety and options to playstyles for Artillery, this new view is immersive and will bring players closer to the action than ever before.
When developing new features for World of Tanks: Mercenaries, Wargaming West keeps its ear to the ground and prioritizes requests from the community. Following a high level of demand from players, health bar numbers have been added to enemy and ally vehicles! When switched on, this feature gives players an indication of the state of their own team, or how much health still needs to be knocked off opponents.
If you’re looking for new trials, more challengers are approaching! With Update 4.5, we introduced the Mercenaries Tech Tree for the first time. These powerful new vehicles, captained by fierce Mercenary Crews, can be earned for free through ‘Contract’ missions. Update 4.6 is expanding this roster of rogues, and there are several vehicles available to earn right away. Here’s a little taster of some of the Merc vehicles and Crews heading your way in the very near future.
- Thresher: a well-armoured Light Tank with an aggressive weapon. It’s operated by Dark Fox, a New Zealander who served under British command during World War II before going rogue and seeking revenge against Axis forces.
- Long Reach: a Heavy Tank that brings together the best of British, German, and Soviet engineering. It’s captained by Brutal Beast, a Swiss ex-spy who travels across Europe, liberating towns and their people from German rule.
- Sharpshooter: this Medium Tank combines machinery from Axis and Allied tanks, making for a nimble vehicle that packs a reliable shot. It’s under the command of Red Sentinel, an Italian soldier driven mad by the heat as he held his position against waves of Allied soldiers in a small Tunisian town.
And it’s not just the Mercenary Tech Tree that’s expanding! Players can look forward to working towards brand-new Tier X vehicles in the Chinese and British Tech Trees. The WZ-111 5A is a fearsome new Chinese Heavy Tank that has excellent armor and speed – enemy tanks will struggle to get the jump on it! It’s joined by the British Heavy Tank, the Super Conqueror. With all-round thick spaced armor giving it top protection from every angle, its great handling also makes it a menace to slower enemies.
Two new maps are also set to shake up Multiplayer battles! Caen – 1944 is inspired by a real town in north-western France, liberated from German control during the Battle of Normandy. It was originally used as the basis for the epic finale of the War Stories campaign Operation Sealion, where the story’s heroes finally drove the amphibious German invasion out of wartime Britain. With undulating hills, a large central ridge and a vast beach to the east, this map is primed for explosive showdowns. The peaceful Pearl River will also be joining the rotation. An idyllic valley bathed in golden sunlight, this map features rugged terrain that allows players to engage in ambushes and flanking manoeuvres. Stalk along the riverbed that cuts through the map to launch a direct attack on the enemy base!
World of Tanks: Mercenaries is a social game at heart, with teamwork and cohesive action providing the key to victory. To improve the quality of matches, teaming up with friends in Platoons with up to five participants will now be easier and fairer. Players are only able to select tanks from the same tier as their Platoon leader, with a maximum of three Artillery vehicle allowed per Platoon for a fairer matchmaking. The new Persistent Platoons also mean that friends and recent players you’ve fought alongside in battle will easily be able to join you or others by joining games through player profiles.
There are even more new features and additions to explore in Update 4.6, so update World of Tanks: Mercenaries to the latest version on August 28 to check out all the new content!
For more details on Update 4.6 of World of Tanks: Mercenaries, visit: https://console.worldoftanks.com/news/update-46/ (note link goes live tonight)
About World of Tanks: Mercenaries
World of Tanks: Mercenaries is a team-based massively multiplayer online action game dedicated to armoured combat, created by Wargaming West in Chicago, USA. Players immerse themselves in fierce 15-v-15 tank combat with opponents from around the world, and can fight it out on more than 90 different maps, and take command of their preferred vehicle out of over 690 different tanks from 10 nations.
For the first time in the history of the World of Tanks series, a new Mercenaries line allows players to forsake nationalities and take the wheel on a new range of powerful tanks, exclusive to the console experience.
World of Tanks: Mercenaries is played by more than 17 million players worldwide and is available on all generations of PlayStation®4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. World of Tanks: Mercenaries can be downloaded for free by all PlayStation Network and Xbox Live account holders, with stunning 4K resolution and HDR support on PlayStation®4 Pro and Xbox One X. The epic, story-driven campaign mode War Stories can also be played for free, with regular episodic stories giving players the chance to rewrite history in immersive single-player and co-operative battles.
With Kiryu being the best hope for potential peace, he is given a task through the fifth chairman’s dying wish to try and bring peace between these factions by forming a brotherhood with the leader of the Omi while also bringing a new chairman to lead the now failing Tojo Clan. Of course, things are never easy as Kiryu learns that there is now someone else calling themselves a “Dragon” in Japan’s yakuza and it just so happens to be someone that not only has a history with the potentially new chairman that Kiryu is sent to retrieve, but also one that is more than willing to let the East and the West go to war.
It is interesting to note that one of the first abilities that players have the ability to unlock as Kiryu is to mark all sub-story locations on the map. This is a major bonus as players previously had to stumbleupon most of these events and now they can easily seek these out. As per usual, these sub-stories range from endearing to outlandishly weird. A number of new sub-events have been added into Yakuza Kiwami 2 that weren’t in the original but returning players will also notice that a handful of other events have been removed entirely. It is also worth noting that a few locations found in the original PlayStation 2 version are also missing but players shouldn’t be too concerned in this regard as a number of new side areas and additional content has been included to make up for these lost locations.
Also worth noting is that the game has now added the ability to take weapons dropped by enemies and, instead of simply using them for the fight and losing them when it ends, and store it away for later use. This makes for a more interesting mechanic that allows players to build up an arsenal for a harder battle rather than only relying on their surroundings. Speaking of harder fights, Yakuza Kiwami 2 has made a few modifications to the boss battles in the game making them quite a challenge but not annoyingly so like in Yakuza Kiwami. That being said, most boss fights still end with a “Feel the Heat” style finishing move that sees Kiryu charge up a special attack to give the fight some cinematic flair.
These points can be spent on random side skills such as improving the amount of money earned in fights or unlocking the ability to see sub-story locations as mentioned earlier as well as used to increase Kiryu’s running speed, various stats, and even new special moves to expand his ever growing list of attacks and crazy Heat moves.
With this release of Yakuza Kiwami 2 Sega has made sure to go over the game with a fine tooth comb to make sure that they have handled all of the goofy and obscure translations necessary to give this game its charm. The only voice track available is the original Japanese which is absolutely what fans should come to expect at this point as these characters have become iconic in this series.
