World of Tanks is getting a massive visual overhaul in 2018

2018 is going to be a great year for World of Tanks, and Wargaming is already revealing its big plans for the coming months. It's exciting stuff.

World of Tanks is one of the biggest free-to-play games available, but it's clearly showing its age in some departments, particularly in its engine, BigWorld. That's why the team is going to launch the update 1.0 in March 2018, after four years in the making. The highlight of this revamp is the new CORE engine, which took three years to develop, with an additional year going into overhauling the game's maps and rebuilding all in-game content from scratch.

Over 25 maps are getting overhauled, with things such as “terrain textures, a water rendering system, skyboxes, a lighting system, shadows” and more. World of Tanks is finally seeing the introduction of Havok destruction technology, as well as volumetric flora – say goodbye to trees that look flat.

You can test the performance of World of Tanks on your platform with the World of Tanks enCORE demo and see if you're ready for battle when the time comes.

Finally, audio is also getting quite an overhaul, with 40 composers and musicians from all around the globe recording over 15 TB of rough audio data to be used in-game, immersing players in a more realistic battlefield.

There is more to this World of Tanks update 1.0, including optimization and a revision of the Soviet tech tree, so I definitely recommend you to take a look at the announcement. It also mentions things that are on the horizon, including new modes, new nations (tech trees from two European countries), and a more sophisticated customization system. 2018 is going to be grand for World of Tanks.