Thank you anab, I will remember the eSports news team fondly, you ran it well and it's a shame you never made admin in your time. I'm sorry that I missed your goodbye message until after you'd left; it's sad to see another great leave and I wish you all the best in future ? Nice try, but I'm not @Venerable adios, but i'm still not changing the discord profile pic ? Yeah, hopefully it has been left in capable hands. Thanks for the comments guys, as I think I said in Lose's leaving topic, I remember both of you contributing well to the AWC, and looked forward to your works for a good read - I wish you both the best. I am indeed the last EN reporter left as a helper, but Sabry and Dynasty were both FR Reporters and now are GT/SM admins respectively. As for medal of merit, I'd like to think so, Marcus hasn't replied to my messages in a week now so who knows. Cheers man, I was going through some special battle pics and found an iconic one of you with rail M0 in an XP/BP, hope you enjoyed over the years, best of luck with everything! Yeah, I do miss events but sometimes I suppose you need to accept what is now gone ? Partly I didn't much enjoy matchmaking, partly it was fun being a unique rank in a game where everyone else is legend. Mainly it just became like a symbolic thing; Marshal was the highest rank when I started the game, it sort of felt fitting/a tribute to my history to close the chapter in my life that is Tanki by hitting that final rank. (I also think that since FederalBureauFBI was the first FB admin(?) and I was the last, it started and ended with a marshal rank hehe) Tbh neither did I, but I suppose life moves on and one must move with it. Hope you're doing ok now in your post-helper career and everything is going amazingly well. Oh my WORD does it look good - been a very long time waiting ? And it's pronounced "case-dfff" (and so kais/case for short)!

And then I suppose I have to ping a few people, but I'll leave it to the comments to keep the post clear To the amazing Newspaper team To eSports All the amazing Event Helpers, organisers (Poot @Pout, jutska @jutska, emra @emrakul, @Legendarni, as well as annoyingly named @chinufire & @chinufire1 - and most of all nat, my beautiful co admin @natrolite Obviously all of the many people who have in the SM team, far too many of you to @ all of you but NB to luci, sabry, hugo, niko, Edu, Zack (sorry it went down how it did man), and aqw, as well as all the Elves and everyone else. I will also be hosting my final rankup / community photoshoot this Friday, 14th March at 18:00 UTC - all welcome, tho priority will go to friends I'm afraid.

I started the game way back in 2011, off the playground recommendation of a school friend of mine - who has of course long since quit the game. I played for long enough to unlock Shaft at the mighty rank of WO4, and then quit because my Intel Celeron laptop could no longer handle the game. I popped in briefly over the years, watching Starladder and playing very occasionally, before a proper return in 2016. I joined my clan Happy Dragons in October 2016, and had a very happy/spammy few years with them, contributing to the third largest topic on the forum before getting our clan topic locked by SuperNick for being too active… Much love to the crest, it was an honour working under and alongside you, and thanks for the recs for my helper apps haha. As you can tell, I will probably mention a few names, apologies if you feel missed out, I’m writing this in one unhinged bout of word vomit and if I’ve forgotten you I swear it was unintentional - but I guess unhinged word vomit is unsurprising given my first ever position - Newspaper reporter. TTC wins and organising the AWC Tournament gave me the chance to join under the watchful eyes of Flex & Viksrall, alongside true legends of the forum like yis and twee, and I took the AWC under my wing, giving budding young writers a fresh place to start, fostering many people who would later become my colleagues. About a month later, I joined as a discord mod, back when it was still an unofficial position, spearheaded by Torben, Hex, Nives, and Optic (the unsung hero). - but more on that later. In 2019, I joined the eSports News team by accident - I thought I was just helping out with some proofreading, and then out of the blue Marcus announced that I had passed my candidacy (and immediately before he announced it I guessed the announcement was for someone else entirely!). I met so many amazing people there too; I created the public side of the server, ran the short-lived esports news show, and wrote/proofread hundreds of articles. I briefly tried out for Commentator, and somewhere out there is a 1v1 between Greg and someone else that Esmail & I commentated from back in 2019/20. I was one of the founding members of the proofreaders team, I sent the first message in the channel on 30/04/2020 - didn’t realise even that had been almost 5 years… There’s a very high chance that if you’re reading something in the game, I’ve contributed to it, especially the Katakana paint, which was originally planned to be called Hieroglyphics before it made it through me and that amazing team. I’ve been SM admin since Jan 2020, and have been honoured to take the mantle of the server over that time. So many people I’ve seen come and go, and I hope that you’ve all made friends or at least enjoyed your time under my tyrannical rule - but see #discord-news in the server for a proper goodbye there. Perhaps my favourite time of all was the year or so that I was an Event Helper. I loved every member of that team so much, and I will always remember all the calls we had, yapping constantly with each other, while knowing that we were bringing so much joy to the community as well. I worked my way up to admin, and even briefly ran the team solo, and fighting for my life in STG or Save the Princess (and later the joys of sitting in spec watching my colleagues struggling to do the same) was easily the peak of my long career. In what I’ve now been told is the sunset of my career, I’ve spent 18 months as a wiki editor, contributing my TTC-winning game knowledge to hit 469 edits, and leading the GT team - for which my greatest contribution was allowing Sabry to flourish to his full potential.

Happy Christmas all! - Santa kais ?

All I'm gonna say is that I remember both of you being extremely capable authors, and I'm surprised to find out you were both so young doing it - I hope life has treated you both well since the closure of the Newspaper/AWS, and continues to do so xx

Happy holidays all! Here's to another great year ? Best wishes, Fran xoxo

On behalf of the Social Media team, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas all, and a happy new year!

spooky

Good luck!

People who bought multiple bundles received multiple prizes - this wasn't meant to happen. 209 people had already opened the extra containers, their accounts have been blocked to prevent them from spending anything extra, and they will be unblocked once support has gone through and removed the extra prizes. People who received extra rewards but hadn't opened them yet have already had them removed and will be unaffected.

Dub. Crusader and paladin XTs from skin conts ?

I know I'm uh... a bit late to this, but hey ig that's how I roll. I remember you first appearing in the AWS, dropping occasional masterpieces to break up the monotony of other typo-filled, broken-story pieces submitted. I always looked forward to yours. I know you were young when you started, but I had always hoped to see you in the reporter team at some point - pity that isn't even the case for us anymore lol. Good luck with everything, you're a smart kid so I'm sure it'll all work out.

Makes no difference to me... I guess the best reply is ?

Merry Chrimmas and a happy new yr P.S. come to events pls

Congrats to @Heavenly_Demon, @Legendarni, @rubi_GTO, and @Hugoslav on becoming official events candies ?

"They hate me cuz they ain't me" - if people want to waste their time being jealous and trying to bring you down to their level, rather than work their way up to yours, that's on them ?

If you want amazing picture-perfect screenshots like the pros but don't have Spectator, then why not try Rent-a-Spec? Person_Random presents several convincing reasons to book the service at your earliest convenience!

Congratulations to @StealthMasterX and @XxOufaGoldxX for passing their LATAM Discord Mod Candidacies, and to @Edu_Gamer for starting his SM Candidacy ?

Noo my record ? Guess my bribe of making the TO Admin role colour red in exchange for that record no longer stands... Ready to be fluorescent pink now @Maf ?

Congratulations to @Person_Random on his promotion to Newspaper co-administrator ?

TNK00-00000-04DJA-X2DRT-J?PIU

A 'short' Foreword Another year, another Christmas issue, and what a weird year it has been. As I'm writing this, today marks the one-year anniversary of my appointment to Newspaper admin, followed by a mad crunch to create and complete a Christmas issue in the span of about two days. Luckily for me, this year, things are different. I am now joined by an amazing team of reporters who are more active than ever, and we have come together to bring you this wonderful Christmas issue! What can I say about 2020 that hasn't already been said? Seeing the streets of London completely empty in April and May was eerie to say the least. 3 lane roads, normally bustling with traffic, left empty as far as the eye could see - it was so empty that I fell out of the habit of even looking for cars before strolling across roads.... The canals of Venice ran clear for the first time in living memory, a huge reduction in global air pollution, and an opportunity for people to just slow down and enjoy life, spending time with family that had previously been swamped with work or school. As for the year in Tanki? Well it's literally all change. From the introduction of the Mk system back in January (11 months ago now?!), to special missions, to hovering hulls - some of the more established forum users might remember the original "Triton" topic in the I&S suggesting a hover hull from way back in 2014... We are in the process of saying goodbye to Adobe Flash, but that has provided the springboard to launch solidly into the now well-established HTML client, which should allow for far more technical efficiency and prowess from the developers, but I'm sure there will be far more of that to come in 2021. Another year down, another year begins, and I think the best thing to do is to wish all our lovely readers a very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year! Season's greetings! As was done last year, I have asked the Newspaper to provide a short message of goodwill, and as was done last year, some followed instructions, but most replied with mini text walls - guess I've trained them a little too well ? @Person_Random - It's been a hell of a year, and... if I finish this sentence, I'll be sent to the infernal dungeon by kais. Anyway, 2020 wasn't the year we had all expected, but I hope we all were able to make the most of it. I mostly made it through by writing, so of course, I'd like to say thanks for sticking around and supporting us for a successful year at the newspaper. Happy holidays to all and best of wishes in a better 2021! *coughs* And don't forget to wear a mask! @Dynasty - Bonjour! I know 2020 hasn't been the best year and if anyone says it's the worst I will totally agree with them. Covid has ruined almost everything since its emergence and it has forced us to stay confined. But why not take the opportunity to read our beautiful weekly articles? It might help you speed up the time until Covid is gone, who knows. Anyway, stay safe in this difficult time and hopefully the Covid goes away in 2021. Although Xmas is not the same as previous years, enjoy it as much as possible with your friends and family and I wish you all a lot of success and happiness for the new year! @Tidebreaker - This sure hasn't been the best of years. Let's hope that somehow, somewhere, we all find happiness in 2021. Happy Christmas. @Hippin_in_Hawaii - Everybody likes to take stock of their lives this time of year. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone. Happy Holi-daze! @Pythor - While 2020 hasn’t been the most enjoyable of years, many relationships have been restored, many new friendships forged, and many memories made. No, this year won’t be forgotten, and it’s up to you to decide why. Everyone have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. @Sabrytoun_Superman - Greetings everyone! As you probably know, I am a FR Reporter & Proofreader candidate that joined the team at the end of the year. While we're talking about this year, I think we can all agree that 2020 wasn't the best year due to this nasty Covid-19. Hopefully you all made it and I'm sure everything will soon be over. I'm sure in 2021, Covid will just be a bad memory. I wish you the best to everyone and may all of your wishes come true. Best of luck to everyone, merry Christmas and happy New Year! @Sacrifice - Happy holiday celebrations to everyone reading! Through thick and thin, you guys have shown your unconditional love and support for the newspaper and we can never thank you enough. One more great year comes to an end and here is a toast to an awesome community! Cheers! ? @Magenta - Go spend these nice days with fam n frens, whether you're lucky enough to have someone physically near you or you have to go into Zoom. Maybe take a break from all the screen time you've been getting this year. Enjoy your holidays :) ? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ And so I can say from all of us here at the Newspaper - happy holidays! We'll be back to a regular upload schedule on Friday, 1 January; see you then for more! TNK00-00000-04DJA-VKXDK-?NDRV

You say you added the legacy emotes but I don't see :tank: Fake news ?

To play devil's advocate - taking stats from May when we were mid quarantine, when many people were hopping into PC gaming to pass the time; hopping into TO for nostalgia in that free time; etc. is somewhat unfair, given that numbers may well have been artificially high then. Now, as many countries are seeing restrictions lifted, those people have less time, and so the peak is lower.