ONE of the most player-requested tanks for the game World of Tanks will be making a special guest appearance in the title for a week as part of the game’s 10th anniversary celebrations.
The Sturmpanzer VI Sturmtiger was historically built in extremely limited numbers towards the end of WWII by the German military, based on the iconic Tiger I chassis but fitted with a 380mm rocket-propelled mortar.
Only 18 of the vehicles were built and only two survived the war (one is in Germany, the other in Russia) – and so World of Tanks publisher Wargaming also helped recreate the vehicle in a virtual sense at the Bovington Tank Museum in the UK a couple years ago, using state-of-the-art Augmented Reality tech.
Until now, the Sturmtiger has not been playable in the game because, according to the development team, it wasn’t a particularly well-rounded vehicle.
“The Sturmtiger is a wonderful piece of military vehicle history, but the real-life vehicle itself is rather unbalanced, which made it very hard to naturally fit in our game all those years ago,” World of Tanks game designer Dmitriy Trofimov said.
However, between June 17 and 24, players will be able to climb into a virtual Sturmtiger to battle it out in teams of 10 on five different maps (Ensk, Widepark, Tundra, Mines and Airfield) as part of a special “Crouching Sturmtiger” game mode.
According to the official press info:
“For the first time ever, players will be able to get their hands on this urban legend, and the Sturmpanzer VI Sturmtiger is unlike anything they’ll have ever seen before. This Tier X German artillery bucks some of the trends its real-life counterpart is known for: its incredible agility will leave tankers in disbelief. However, the Sturmtiger retains the devastating firepower that’s typical for top-tier vehicles and ramps it up to eleven.”
Wargaming have said that, despite the constant requests from players, there are no plans to add the behemoth into the game permanently – not only because it’s not especially well rounded, but because it doesn’t fit well into the game’s tech tree.
“Its armour would be comparable to Tier VII or VIII, but its gun caliber… well, it’s something special. At 38cm, it’s 14cm more than anything else in our game,” Mr Trofimov said.
In addition to the Sturmtiger battles, players can (using other vehicles) take on a new set of missions, which will bring them one step closer to unlocking the ultimate 10th Anniversary reward – a unique 3D style for the American T30 heavy tank.
