World of Tanks 1.7 comes with nickname anonymization, but no double-barreled tanks or better matchmaking

Last month, everyone was anxious — or angry — because WarGaming introduced a few new dual-barreled tanks on the test server. As usual, most vocal comments included "overpowered" and "Russian bias" or similar terms. Overpowered or not, now one thing is certain: World of Tanks 1.7 does not include the new Russian tanks (supposed to be branching out from the KV-3), although it has a setting for "salvo" fire.

The only noticeable change is the Anonymizer, described by WarGaming as "a tool that will make you feel more comfortable in World of Tanks by concealing your real username." While being able to use such a feature "to avoid toxicity in different game situations" sound good, the truth is that the matchmaking is still (almost) completely broken — or rigged, if you want to take it all one step further in the conspiracy theory realm — and fixing it to match similarly skilled players with similar vehicle/crew setups would do a whole lot more in lowering the toxicity.

In addition to the aforementioned feature, World of Tanks 1.7 doesn't bring anything that would actually improve the player's in-game experience. The other two highlights mentioned in the official release notes are the ability to buy Crew Directives only for credits (previously available for bonds) and "the long-awaited Holiday Ops 2020" which is, in fact, another way of milking money from the players. 

While the companies that develop exclusively free massively multiplayer online games must do something to remain profitable, many have been taking wrong turns recently and WarGaming is not an exception. On the other hand, World of Tanks remains a very popular title and it can still return to what should have become, at least partially (once upon a time, there was a plan to have tanks, planes, and ships in the same game, but WarGaming ended up with three different titles, unlike Gaijin's WarThunder, which provides solid slices of everything for everyone — including helicopters and contemporary military hardware, although it is still quite far from perfection).

If you happen to be one of the many players frustrated with the experience provided by World of Tanks when playing in randoms, I can only tell you one thing: join a clan and everything can get much better — or at least bearable, depending on how you consider the current state of the game.