Balthazars

Great series. I love how the protagonist is an absolutely cynical, black-humoured and with a mean streak. As for the OP, depends on taste, but some series I am still enjoying currently: Goblin Slayer - DnD style low-fantasy setting with awesome cast of characters, and with surprising depth. Quite graphic though so mature readers only. Grand Blue - hilarious romantic comedy. Seriously, funniest series I have read in years. Temple - by the artist (not the writer) of Grand Blue. Also very funny. UQ Holder - always been a fan of Ken Akamatsu, this is a continuation of his transition to shonen from romantic comedy that he started with Negima. To his credit, he draws awesome fight scenes. Arslan Senkei - manga adaptation drawn by the artist/author of Fullmetal Alchemist. Pretty deep action/political thriller. Kwloon Generic Romance - romantic comedy, but with a sci-fi/mystery bent. Has a nice wistful and melancholy style which I quite enjoy. EDIT: probably the only other Isekai genre series that I'm reading that I actually like is Shinju no Nectar - has a steampunk/industrial revolution setting which is not that common, with a magic v science (old v new) which is quite cool. Plenty of fanservice too if you like that sort of thing.

Only the bottom 5? Players like Kolni are probably assumed to be some kind of super-AI bot developed by WG deliberately to rig games against one team and to advertise their pay-to-win hacks to those desperate to boost their stats.

It's the relying on stupid pubbies. Because the bots are so inane they have to heavily stack the numbers against you to make it even remotely a challenge if your team is semi-competent, so the moment your team contains one passenger it feels pretty much over if you get unlucky and take too much damage in early rounds. FFS I've had teams with x3 heavies sitting at the back and not able to spot targets with 30 seconds on the round timer left as early as the second stage, meaning I have to throw away health and/or my tank to even light targets and not fail. It's worse than randoms.

Well, it doesn't really matter given the game-mode is, once again, utterly un-fun and thus the willingness to submit oneself to the grind for it is minimal to begin with.

It's my first, and so far, only 3-marked tank. For obvious reasons I really loved the tank as a result. It was super-strong, best tier 6 medium in my opinion. Utterly ruined now.

Oh for sure. When I started out in 2013 I went full free-to-play for over the first year. I felt for those willing to spend their time (I spent a lot of time playing tier 5 and tier 6 to grind credits and try and learn mechanics) it was entirely possible to get established in the game before pushing on and spending money. The lack of 'clutter' back then made that an easy focus because you weren't constantly grinding to complete daily missions and the like for every little carrot.

Eh, rewards do seem pretty lackluster, basically grind for special credits and then exchange them in the store for what may or may not be things you are interested in, including premium tanks. At the moment it looks like buying gold will be the best option. I don't mind the skins/custom camo as well, I think the cosmetic stuff is nice (I've found myself being more attracted to those items, although not really enough to pay real money for them) and a good way to spice up the visual look of the game or your favourite tanks, but I would have expected something a bit more than that. Otherwise, as is usually the case, rose-tinted glasses will tend to mean the best part of the game is usually the bit near to where you started or were at your 'peak' in terms of time spent in the game. I joined in 2013, so I think 2014-16 was probably the most enjoyable for me as that's when I started to get the mechanics and establish myself in the game. I do feel that tank balance back then was generally a lot better too. WG's main issue apart from balance getting all wonky has been always attempting to do too many major changes all at once, getting muddled results and the inability to properly track how each individual change impacts on the game.

Yeah, this is the biggest issue with trying to track this thing globally at the moment, because every country and its dogs are counting deaths and cases, and are even testing differently. Some countries are taking the same approach as Belgium, anyone who has fever or respiratory problems, or have a positive test (even if complications) are counted as dying from Covid-19. Others are taking a stricter approach. Some countries are barely testing or have very strict testing criteria (so the ones they test are almost certainly positive, but they are missing a lot of mild symptom positive tests). And some, like China, are just outright fudging their figures. I understand why some countries/jurisdictions are taking different approaches, but as a result one really, really has to be careful comparing data or just lumping everything together to get some kind of global statistics on this thing, because they are not all comparable.

Recently just finished the grind, early in 2020. It's not a bad tank, per say, but boy do I suck in it. On paper, it is an upgrade on the tier 8. You get some usable armour, the gun is upgraded and keep most of the same general benefits with the suspension allowing great ridge-line work etc. However, as others have noted, while the gun is upgraded, it doesn't feel like a particularly great upgrade. You go from having potentially the best medium gun in the tier to one that is probably below average, with an average gold round and only marginally better penetration, and much, much worse gun-handling. The gun handling in particular I think is what breaks the tank for me, hard to snipe into weak-points from range, but lacks the raw penetration to punch through, and with the funky suspension quirks, it can take a long time to zero in the shot. The armour is definitely a plus, especially when going against same and lower-tier mediums and lights which you can entice a lot of funky bounces. Low HP means if you screw up you can be killed very quickly. It's okay, but feels like a downgrade from the tier 8. Not a keeper. 105 games, abysmal 45.71% win rate (worst of all my tier 9 tanks, even worse than my cursed Standard B, and almost worst even among my tier 8 tanks too) and only 1,610 average damage with 589 average assist. Worst of my tier 9 tanks by some margin, and worse than some of my tier 8 tanks too. Just does not click for me. I might hang onto it and try to improve the stats, but it doesn't feel much fun.

Whoo hoo! I get to be a unicum now (at least in terms of recents)! Wait, does this mean I'll get even more arty focus now? Booo! Undo, undo!

Rrawr! Claws in pussy-cat. I know not everything done in lab conditions translate to clinical practice, but just because he's a lab scientist doesn't mean he should be dismissed out of hand either (although I will agree that he's almost certainly wrong to say that Covid-19 itself will not be capable of being attributed as the cause of death in any cases). Let's be real - some people are going to be dying because Covid-19 sufficiently weakens their immune and other systems so that something else ends up finishing them off and being the actual 'cause of death'. Some people are going to die because Covid-19 does the typical respiratory tract illness thing, and kill people as their lungs stop working properly. As we're in the middle of this crap right now and people likely aren't being especially careful about recording the cause of death (particularly in places like Italy or China), I doubt we will get a good handle on this until well after the fact. For the record before you get too tetchy: my sister is a medical practitioner and a clinician (what you'd call 'front line' in this current crisis). My dad is a microbiologist specialist in virology (background is all lab work) who heads up a pathogen safety division for a large multinational biotech firm. They talk about this kind of crap, including lab v clinical all the time.

Yes, which is completely in line with the old naming convention. To name the virus typically after the location where it is first identified (which is usually the place where it first makes the jump to humans). There are actually 4 known strains of the ebola virus. All of them are named after their areas of first outbreak - Bundibugyo (a town in Uganda where it was first discovered), Sudan, Tai Forest (a national park in Ivory Coast where again, first discovered) and Zaire Ebola virus (Zaire is now Congo, where Ebola was discovered for the first time). As Florb noted, Ebola is a river in the country that was in the region where it was first discovered. Ebola itself is closely related to the Marburg Virus. Guess what that is named after. They are both hemorrhagic fevers. It's not rocket science. People have been naming viruses like this for a very long time before the WHO decided to get all politically correct. Yes, people are going to politicise the naming of viruses in this day and age, but let's not assume everyone using these older style naming conventions (and "Wuhan Virus" is what people called it, including in scientific communities, before the WHO gave it it's official scientific name) is being political about it.

Just to clarify, the standard practice used to typically be to identify the virus in respects to the location in which it was first identified as a specific, unique strain (typically where it makes the jump to humans for the first time). Or of course sometimes the person that identified it. This is of course useful in some contexts because it easily identifies particular strains of a virus in a very specific context as opposed to relying on its scientific name, given those can be very similar for some types of viruses, and let's face it, a lot of people get confused by those complex-sounding (and often long-winded) scientific names. However, for political correctness reasons, the WHO has been trying to move away from that type of naming conventions for some time now, hence things like H1N1 instead of 'bird flu' and SARS instead of 'Guandong virus' (which is where it was first identified).

Basically nothing has changed. Light tanks, wheeled bastards and Progetto dominate. After that, it's TDs and Heavies which can do at least 35-40kph, which means things like the 53TP, E75TS, IS3 (not IS3A because it's too damned slow), Defender, Skorp, WZ and SU130PM. Everything else is because you are grinding it or just sick of being meta. Engineering is still the best consumable, although I note they made it worse on defence as it seems you can't just yolo the cap and block it for a few seconds and then get defence points (now it seems damage reducing the cap needs to happen while you block it to get defence points?). The 'new and improved' airstrike sucks massively for paper tanks (enjoy that 800-damage hits in your Skorp). Still the same two maps, except they seemed to make them even better for attackers, continuing to pile the misery if you are stuck on defence because of the greater ability of attackers to swarm a particular lane. I had limited time to play this week so didn't quite manage to finish all 15 levels (I'm basically just short of level 14), but got bored after the 3rd day. I still continue to play it mostly because it is just such a good forum for grinding credits - 250k profit for a 15-minute game is just too good to ignore. I only use Prog, Skorp, 53TP and Blackdog, although have taken my WZ-132 on occasion to grind it if I derped in the Blackdog but needed another light.