Other [Issue 8] Predictions for 2013 - Part Two!

[skitee 555]

What will happen this year? Nobody knows yet, but what's for sure is that there will be surprises! Here are more of my light-hearted predictions for the end of this year!

July

The horse invasion of Tanki picks up, and very soon complaints arrive from all over the world about the sudden decline in the ability of the average player as it appears that around half of all tankmen "hold down at least three keys all of the time”. After a detailed study, the source of the problems lies at the amount of horses that play Tanki. (Their hooves, being too big for an ordinary keyboard, can only press three keys at once) The administration responds by implementing a new rule whereby all members who have registered accounts in Tanki must be human. All horse accounts are blocked from the game permanently.

Also, this month, is a very sad event. One of the most famous and popular players, Valletta, dies. He is killed when he was run over by a car outside his house whilst on his way to college. The car that ran him over is a '94 Ford Mondeo, although rumours that the driver was latvian_killer seem to be unfounded. In his memory, his closest Tanki friends arrange a time and date when they can lay mines in Stadium in the symbol of the letters "RIP" in his memory. Unfortunately, the time and date is leaked all over the forum and as a result the funeral is the subject of a terrorist attack. by88, the main instigator of the terrorism, is banned for a year by kilaz's newly formed “Respecting the deceased” team.

This month, the new owners continue their series of changes to the game. In an attempt to change Tanki to what they intend the game to be, they remove all m levels of weapons and hulls. They also remove all paints from the garage, and every weapon and hull except for Twins and Wasp. This is because of their intention towards “equality” among all players. Supplies, Battle Passes, Paints, Crystals and Ranks are all removed, in favour of a “system that treats everybody the same”. Outrage reigns, and a number of the technicians at Perm, including Bruce Lunga, secede from Tanki Online to create a rival game, which they set up and call “Tankee Online”. Most of the playerbase follows them. In fact, the only remaining member is Reiki12345, who is still fiercely loyal to “Tanki Online” and proceeds to create threads all over the Tanki forum about how stupid a name “Tankee Online” is. Skitee is one of the members who joins the rebellion over to Tankee Online, and from this month onwards his predictions will be about “Tankee Online” rather than “Tanki”.

Other news: When the latest pair of shoes in the Tanki store is a pair dedicated to “Twins”, the Russian Mafia announces that “This time Alternativa has gone too far” and raids the store room containing the seized children. However, some pairs of the shoes were managed to be shipped before the raid, and CooperO, having bought two pairs, including one for her boyfriend, finds herself the mother of four; “Capture the map: Fort Knox” is created by BarKode. Unfortunately, the map Fort Knox no longer exists, and the capture the map contest, originally planned to be a cybersport challenge, is as a result changed to a “War of Words”. The winner is HichigoShiro's clan, “Assassins”, who, producing their main weapon, splitterpoint, proceed to blow all the other clans' arguments out of the water with splitterpoint's explanations about how he and his family moved to the Dutch countryside from the big city when he was seven.

August

In a sudden twist in the “Horse invasion” story, a horse, going by the name of “Stallion112” sues Tanki for implementing their new rule, accusing Tanki of going against his “Mammalia rights”. It appears that, from the lobby chat in Tanki and the team chat in games, Stallion112 has learned how to speak English to a moderate level. The court case takes a few weeks to be scheduled, but eventually it is arranged to take place in New Orleans. It is highly anticipated as the first ever court case involving a horse. The actual case, however, turned out to be a massive let down. Unfortunately, Stallion112';s only knowledge of English comes from the average Tanki conversation and the court is adjourned when he tells the judge to “go out mult”. He is later diagnosed as clinically insane.

The rival organisation, Tankee Online, is also the subject of a huge court case in this month, as the existing Tanki Online sues Tankee (which is owned by a consortium including Ksenia, Bruce and Tyler Deaton) for copyright. It looks bleak for the new organisation, as more and more evidence of copying old Tanki Online files and bringing them into Tankee Online is brought forwards. With the hearing on the 14^th of the month, by the 12^th players are resigned to defeat in the court case and try to use their ricochet and smoky whilst they still can. A team of experts, however, are commissioned to find any evidence or way that Tankee Online can prove themselves legal. Suddenly, at 21:43 GMT, exactly two hours before the court case is due, one of the experts, koolwalky, points out a loophole: the files which Tankee Online have copied are not owned by Alternativa Platform themselves but by Ivan Zykov. With that news, the Tankee administration bursts into life, trying to convince Ivan Zykov to change sides. After almost two days of toe-kissing from the Tankee Online administration, Ivan changes his mind at the final hour, bringing a death-knoll to Tanki but new life into Tankee. The court case falls through.

Despite that victory, Tankee Online comes up against a number of difficult challenges at the beginning of its creation. One such is the ascent of a new problem which is popularly dubbed as “lag”. It perplexes most tankmen, most of whom have not experienced this problem before in their internet lives. Apparently it is due to slow “ping speed” to the Tankee servers. Understandably, tankmen all over the world are confused by spinning tanks and staggered twins shots hitting them and some take it into themselves to join Reiki12345 in Tanki Online, which does not have this strange problem of “lag”. The administration tells the players that it is only a "temporary problem" and that it will be sorted out "soon".

Other news this month: A new contest, called, “Best tank impression” is the new creativity contest for the end of the year. Entries fly in, with impressions ranging from someone strapping on a jet pack and “flying like a hornet” to crawling along the ground and looking through a telescope “like a shaft”. The winner ends up being hogree for his “amazingly realistic sound effects”, which causes controversy as the consensus among the community is that he taped ordinary battle sounds and played it in the background as he did his impression. His entry is, however, deemed legal and defined as being "extremely good beat boxing".

September

Freed from the “oppressive influence of the old administration”, the Tankee Online administration bring out some new changes through. One such is "tank stickers", a long-rumoured innovation, including the popular “brony stickers”. Pictures of Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle appear on tanks all around Tankee. Other popular stickers include a picture of Bruce wearing a tiara, and the number “1337”. Despite this, not everyone is happy. Tommy60 complains about the lack of "Apple Pie, NBA and Stars and Stripes" stickers, but when accused of being overly patriotic to America, he responds by saying that "I haven't even been to that country".

Tankee Online also make a series of other changes, including the restoration of the old skyboxes and map names. They also bring in a string of new maps, and restore the feature to buy crystals. They do, however, remove the feature, implemented just the previous month back in Tanki Online, whereby Russians could get crystals for serving their community, with 10,000 for every mayorial letter which the Tanki Online administration would have received. This removal causes large contention among Russian players and 341 of them move back to Tanki Online. 322 of those players were secondary accounts of the 19. All 19 were members of the clan “Fathers”, one of the few clans which was treated favourably under the old administration.

Also, “Trolling” becomes a bannable offence on the Tankee forum, and the moderators all of a sudden become extremely harsh towards anyone who so much as insults anyone or takes a thread off-topic. Even joking is punished in certain cases. Counter-trolling is also a newly instituted bannable offence. Despite all this, no definition of what "trolling" is exists, and as a result moderators end up banning anything which they dislike under the guise of it being "trolling". The implementation of these rules and punishments means that such famous forum faces such as spartan343, datie9, and SwagBoy11 end up getting banned for months upon end. Trolling also becomes a bannable offence on the Tanki forum but nobody cares.

Other news this month: “Fly Test” and “Carousel” return to the game, which ignites the rebirth of Shaft. Having not been played with by 99.56% of tankmen for eight months, maps which finally support shaft come out in the shape of these two. However, the restoration of shaft to its position as a popular gun leads to the death of both of those two maps and the annoyance of the large amount of players who bought shaft; The Second Tanki Online World Cup begins.

October

The World Cup causes large controversy when it is announced that players have to prove their nationality for the country that they register for. This causes lots of time delays before the Cup can start, not to mention the obvious problems for the previous year's joint-winners, India. With just a three man team (Beerme, Afghani and sunilthegreat004), they fall at the first hurdle to eventual winners Canada, suffering a humiliating defeat with the final score being 421,324 flags to 2. As a whole, though, the World Cup fails to incite any kind of excitement among the community, with accusations from the players of it being “a massive flop” and “500,000 crystals given out to the best bunch of nobodies”. Koolwalky, the organiser of the championships, accepts the failure, and announces that “next year';s world cup will take place between clans”. He also says that all members of any clan have to be from the same country. Nobody takes him seriously. He begins to implement the rules, but suddenly reverses his decisions after a completely unrelated incident where a terrorist, hired by Lhamster, broke into his house and threatened to kill him.

This month, Tankee Online also brings in the update which everyone has been waiting for: user profiles and, clan customisation. People complain about how long it took to happen, but complaints get far more serious when they realise that a Tankee administrator with a strange sense of humour (rumours are that it was Bruce) has updated everyone's profile and also made each one impossible to edit. Some are realistic, such as “18-year-old male street beggar from Karachi”, koolwalky and “13-year-old male lawyer from Nashville, cheap_plastic_flower”, “16 year-old male florist from London, skitee” and “17-year-old female binge drinker from Amsterdam, CooperO”, but some are inaccurate and cause wide outbreaks of laughing across the world. Examples of this include "27 year-old personal assistant from Nairobi, Afghani", "29-year-old logger from Regina, Contaminated", and "7 year-old politician from Indonesia, PistolenPaultje".

On the other hand, the clan system works very well, and clan tournaments are re-started with real earnest. The first official clan tournament is a “twins-only championship”, won by “Dutch Warriors”. The leader, datie9, in an exclusive interview with kilaz, talks about his victory with his emotion uncontrollable, “I believe that we acquitted ourselves respectably, we applied ourselves reasonably and performed impressively. And by the way, I do apologise for my English – I hail from Holland and Dutch is my mother tongue.”

Other news this month: The ban on trolling is rescinded, much to the dismay of Dihos; For Halloween, all the maps are darkened. Unfortunately, in some maps, when combined with the now compulsory dynamic shadows, in leads to areas where visibility is non-existent – the clan contest over the Halloween period has some rather hilarifying commentary; also for Halloween, all the weapons fire projectiles either pink or purple – nobody is certain why

November

As the year draws to a close, Tankee do not bother to slow down with the innovations. Four new weapons are released this month. These are Rocket, which fires grenade projectiles in the direction where the turret is pointing; Pulsar, which fires out a beam of waves around the tank, damaging all tanks within a twenty metre vicinity, also being able to fire through objects; Isinium, which is an Isida-style weapon with unlimited range but moderate damage; and Gatling, which fires machine gun bullets with minimal damage (but the potential for critical hits) yet has extreme knockback. Very few of the new weapons gain popularity. Rocket and Pulsar are accused of being overpowered, Gatling and Isinium of being underpowered. A explicit ridden tweet on the Tankee Online twitter page clearly shows the administration's frustration with the seemingly relentless thirst for perfection from the community, but the tweet is later removed and apologised for. A pressure group “Nerf Pals Rock”, asking for the nerfing of Pulsar and Rocket, is created, and a spokesperson for the group, nuclearbom, says “We want this to change because right now everyone is using Pulsar and Rocket and we can't afford it and our Thunders and Ricochets are nothing”. The weapons are eventually balanced out.

Another large announcement this month is the declaration that there will be a Tankee Online film released as a full-length feature film in a few months' time. Auditions start now, and the amount of applications that come in are plenty. The auditions, run by kilaz' audition-operating team, take place over the course of a few weeks, and a few of the more entertaining auditions are leaked by an unknown member of the team (although thought to be GeneralVeers) to the general public. The sight of hogree attempting seven times to do the jump in Monte Carlo, CooperO trying to be flirty with “In Love” paint, and Joostcool turtling himself and calling it “stylish” put a laugh on the face of everyone for three minutes flat. Then they go back to playing.

Eventually, the cast is decided, somewhat controversially, as big prospects are overlooked. The role of chief director goes to BarKode; script writer is Tommy60; Filmers are ShadowVisions and dingus; soundtrack is written by hogree. All of those were widely predicted to be the likely scenario, so no surprises are there. The actors themselves, however, are surprise choices. The starring actor in the main female role is BLASTOISE-T12, with the male actor vilmos32 (narrowly pipping Specky in the decision. Specky claimed that Blastoise influenced the decision). There were also background roles were given to a number of people, most notably skitee, splitterpoint, and MadDog21.

Other news: Along with the balancing of Pulsar, Rocket, Gatling and Isinium, Twins is also re-balanced, infuriating datie9, who claimed that “this is a conspiracy against my clan, they're just trying to make us weak. The administration are jealous of our power!” hogree's “best tank impression” victory is rescinded after a court case in the Russian court – he was sued by PARD, who believed that his beatbox of a Tank's engine sound was better, and his claim was upheld by the court. Hogree's lawyer, cheap_plastic_flower, accuses the court of being "BIASED because my client cannot speak RUSSIAN. Of course he cannot speak RUSSIAN he has never been to your country before TODAY."

December

The Tankee Online film, called “An odyssey of Firebird” is filmed way ahead of schedule, and is released on the thirteenth of this month – which so happens to be a Friday. Despite the apparent bad luck from that, the decision proves masterful as the film receives worldwide critical acclaim, including being named by the New York Times a “masterpiece of the age” and by the Daily Telegraph as “the best film released in the past ten years”. According to the Huffington Post, “this film shows how similar the virtual world is to the real one”, although The Post fails to point out that when you die in the real world you do not respawn. This is contrary to a belief popular for the two weeks after the film is released, which ends up taking the life of seven children and gives the film a "15" age rating.

The film is nominated for twenty-two Academy Awards, and sweeps the lot. In fact, the only categories it was not nominated for and won are “Best Live Action Short Film” and “Best Animated Short Film”. There is a large amount of controversy over some of the awards which it was given, including how it won “Best Special Effects” over Iron Man 3. BarKode, however, doesn't care, and neither do the cast, finding themselves thrust into super-stardom. “Best actor in a supporting role”, skitee, announces that “in the history of the Oscars, no unfair choice has ever been made and it certainly has not happened here, look at the way in which I effortlessly smiled for proof of my brilliance.” TheIceGirl, “Best actress in a supporting role”, claims “this is the second-best thing that's ever happened in my life”. “Best Make Up and Hairstyling”, CooperO claims that “I never knew I had a talent in this”. However, despite these controversial decisions, the biggest controversy of all is the way in which the film is dubbed to be a “Live Action”, “Documentary” and “Animated” film all at the same time, but BarKode refutes those claims as “the cries of jealous wannabes”.

As a result of the roaring success of the movie, the amount of Tankee players quadruples, as does the number of Tanki players (from 30 to 120). Suddenly, the servers being overloaded becomes a common problem and forty-two new ones are created. Complaints about the influx of new members fly into the HQ in Kungur. The pick of the lot, a well-worded piece from Dihos, says “New members suck. Ban them.”.

Other news this month: Tankee give out Christmas presents of 50,000 crystals to all who are willing to enter in their new competition, a “Put up the most posters in your neighbourhood” competition, which gains even more new members for the game; New Year on Tanki is greeted by 200 crystal boxes falling in every battle at midnight Moscow time, which is decided by a popular opinion poll to be “the best innovation Tanki have brought in, ever.” Tanki 2.0 is finally announced to be “in development".

Happy New Year Everyone!
~skitee

Edited September 26, 2017 by Hexed

[hogree 4,179]

My Monte Carlo jump failures may have made people laugh for 3 minutes, but this made me laugh for longer :) Awesome article, some LOL bits in there :lol:

[Meliora 1,652]

Last year's were more realistic, I think you took advantage of how out of control that one was. Good anyway.

[GoldRock 6,165]

- “next year';s

- “18-year-old male street beggar from Karachi”, koolwalky

 

Those were the only typos I could find, which is pretty good for such a long article :P Hilarious, and well-written :D Though I thought Selena12121 did the proof reading; shame on you, Selena, letting these lapses of grammar be published... :D

[Raphael2 3,263]

aawesoome ! even if you forgot me.. :P

 

i'm not active at the moment..

[skitee 555]

Last year's were more realistic, I think you took advantage of how out of control that one was. Good anyway.

I didn't really want them to be too realistic.

- “next year';s

- “18-year-old male street beggar from Karachi”, koolwalky

 

Those were the only typos I could find, which is pretty good for such a long article :P Hilarious, and well-written :D Though I thought Selena12121 did the proof reading; shame on you, Selena, letting these lapses of grammar be published... :D

"Next year's" was in account of a complete coding hashup I had once, where all my code broke down, and apostrophes turned into a strange string of nothingness, I used "find and replace" but there were some abnormalities. What is wrong with the other section? And conanthedestroyer and Tommy60 did my proofreading. (as well as myself)

[Lhamster 4,081]

As funny as the first part, brilliant!

[Beerme 106]

Epic article :P

[GoldRock 6,165]

I didn't really want them to be too realistic.

 

"Next year's" was in account of a complete coding hashup I had once, where all my code broke down, and apostrophes turned into a strange string of nothingness, I used "find and replace" but there were some abnormalities. What is wrong with the other section? And conanthedestroyer and Tommy60 did my proofreading. (as well as myself)

"18-year-old male street beggar from Karachi”, koolwalky should have been "18-year-old male street beggar from Karachi, koolwalky" in that situation. Though to be fair, I was being pedantic on purpose in that case :P

Well proofread, for so few mistakes in such a long and fascinating article. I was just joking about the 'lapses of grammar'; don't worry, I'm not that concerned about grammar... yet :ph34r: :D

[skitee 555]

I didn't even notice that, nice work to find that! :)

[r_Masoon0 1]

You are worried about grammer while playing a video game!?!?

[skitee 555]

You are worried about grammer while playing a video game!?!?

*grammar; Yes, I am. Why shouldn't I be? :P

[FederalBureauFBI 2,881]

Also, this month, is a very sad event. One of the most famous and popular players, Valletta, dies. He is killed when he was run over by a car outside his house whilst on his way to college.

Oh no! :o

[GoldRock 6,165]

You are worried about grammer while playing a video game!?!?

*grammar; Yes, I am. Why shouldn't I be? :P

+1920392821 :D

[skitee 555]

FBI, I treated him that way because he asked to be mentioned. :P Guess who was the other person who asked to be mentioned?

[Meliora 1,652]

Oh no! :o

Well it was bound to happen some day, if I didn't do it first.

[hhgb 2,655]

in the first paragraph of august theres an uneeded semi-colin

[r_Masoon0 1]

*grammar; Yes, I am. Why shouldn't I be? :P

Oh well -_- , your opinions are yours and mine are mine

[mmmoossaa 0]

Thanks you

[r_Goldbox_hunter0 1]

Lol.

[cryptor 589]

2018