Warpack has been around since at least 2012, and has been the subject of rumor, speculation, and outright denial. Any mention of it on the official forum will get you a permanent ban. Any posting of images of it in use will do the same. Any suggestion that it is real and actually in use will bring down upon you an endless barrage of trolls that will ridicule you non-stop until you either never visit the forums or game again or you lose your cool and say something that will get you banned.

So why all the cover-up? Why all the denial? Well, it’s simple really: this single resource gives anybody not just a massive advantage over others, but completely changes the game entirely.

Now, there are a great many people (yours truly here included) that will tell you that many parts of the Warpack mod are essentially useless. That’s true. One can’t help but wonder why they’re in there to begin with especially given that they’re available in most other free mod packs.

But therein lies the beauty of it all: If you point to one part being useless, one can then argue the entire thing is useless; and that is EXACTLY what they do.

They will use one or two of the essentially worthless mods included in this pack in a vain effort to try to discredit its power, while at the very same time completely ignoring any mention of the actual powerful mods within the pack.

It’s selective memory at best. At worst, well…it is what it is: A complete coverup.

That said, we’ll start as usual with the link to it. You can find it here: WarPack

Now, at first glance it appears to be some half-assed site made up by people with a very small grasp of the English language that are out to somehow scam you. You would be only partially correct; that is to say their grasp of English isn’t very good.

But that is all down to the fact that they are Russian programmers. They are in fact some of the same Russian programmers that actually worked in part on the game from the very beginning. What’s more, they’re not out to scam you; they’re simply out to make a buck. And folks, they are doing just that. This thing sells like hotcakes, and we’re going to show you why.

We’ll take the mods of the pack one by one and describe in slightly improved English exactly what each one does. So grab another drink, sit down, and read on:

TUNDRA

Tundra, simply put, removes all the foliage from the game. All of it. At first thought, you wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference. Well, have you ever tried to hit the gun port of a KV1 that was hiding behind a bush and all you can see is the outline of the tank? It’s guesswork at best. But you fire up this mod, and VOILA! Instant clear view. No leaves, no shrubs, nothing obstructs your view of the target so you can take perfect aim and hit (RNG permitting) anywhere you want.

These two mods are versions of the aimbot widely used today. See our story here for full description. They are both singularly game breaking in every way.

AUTO REPAIR & FIRE EXTINGUISHER

Now, this part of the mod is one of those that don’t really give anybody an unfair advantage. In all honesty, this mod only screws Wargaming, so we’re not concerned with it. All it does is make a standard manual repair or manual fire extinguisher consumable work exactly like the gold automatic consumables. You can even program a very, ever so slight delay so as to not be detected as fully automatic.

THE LASER POINTER

This is another game breaking mod. What it does is make a laser pointer from your enemies gun barrel so that you can see exactly where he’s aiming. It essentially removes intuition completely from the game.

Say you’re hiding behind a building and your enemy is in the open about 200 meters away. He knows you’re there and he’s just waiting for you to poke your nose out so he can blow it off. With this mod running, you’ll see exactly where he’s aiming, so you know which way to move or not to move at all. Then, of course, if he should turn to look away for a second to see if he can get a shot on somebody else, you’ll know it by seeing the laser move. Then you can bounce out, shoot him and get back before he knows what hit him.

And he’ll always be wondering how you knew he had looked the other way…after all, nobody’s that lucky, right?

FALLEN TREES / DESTROYED OBJECTS

This mod is pretty straight forward: it simply puts a mark on your mini-map any time somebody knocks over a tree or destroys any object (runs over a box, small house, etc.) Although on its face it may not sound like much of an advantage, it does give the person using it full knowledge of where you are, where you’ve been and in many cases where you’re going. It’s not rocket science to literally ‘connect the dots’ to see where you were going.

RED BALLS

No, this is not a mod to mimic the soreness one gets from an all day long outing on back a quarter horse. What this mod does is mark the mini-map with a red ball anywhere a shot is fired. So even if you’re not spotted and you fire a shot, the person using this mod will know exactly where you are. This mod is especially handy in the hands of artillery players. After all, all the aiming in the world isn’t going to help them, so firing at a general spot is just as good.

Ever been camped out, fired one or two shots, know full well you were never spotted and suddenly you get nuked by an arty shot? Well folks, this is how they do it.

ARTILLERY MARKER

Now, this mod we consider to be redundant. The Red Balls mod will mark any location from which a shot is fired. What this mod attempts to do is triangulate the exact possition of any arty unit by marking it’s position when fired (like Red Balls does) but taking that a step further by reverse measuring the shot it fired when it lands near any allied target.

Frankly, we’re of the opinion this is window dressing and no more effective than the base line Red Balls mod.

RELOAD TIMER

There are two types of reload timer: the legal one and the illegal one. In truth, there is very little difference between the two.

The “legal” one simply takes the tank and gun into account and calculates the reload speed based on a regular 100% crew.

This one takes EVERYTHING into account: the tank, gun, crew skills, modules, consumables used, all of it. When this reload timer says the enemy is reloaded, you can rest assured he’s reloaded. This gives just an unbelievable advantage as you can pull out to shoot the enemy knowing full well he can’t shoot back.

In the end though, how much difference is there between the illegal and legal mod? Well, that depends on a lot of variables, but the biggest difference we’ve heard of is about a second. Although that may not sound like much, when you get down to it in a peek-a-boom situation it can literally be the difference between winning and losing.

STRENGTH REMAINING

We feel that this one is another window dressing mod. It’s supposed to calculate the strength of the enemy based on which tanks it has remaining. Well, XVM does that for you automatically by displaying the players full stats for you, so that sort of renders this mod more than a bit moot.

PSEUDO SIXTH SENSE

This one is very similar to the laser pointers mod in that anytime someone is spotted around you, you will know their location. The mod displays a direction arrow for which way they are and how far away they are and updates real time. They’re even color coded so you know instantly who’s closer without having to read the markers.

Now, there are those who say that this mod isn’t that big a deal. They’re wrong. It is. Why? Well, sure – once an enemy is spotted he’s marked on the mini-map. That is true. But you would have to look over at your mini-map, see where he was in relation to you, then turn your field of view over to look at him to find his exact location and range.

This mod removes all of that. It’s right there in your face instantly. It’s completely unfair vs. those not using it.

GHOST MARKERS

This is one of those filler mods. It leaves a marker either on the mini-map or the actual battle field of where an enemy was last spotted. We don’t really see this one as a big deal as one with a piece of clear acetate taped to the screen and a sharpie could do the same thing each game if they wanted.

BLACK SKY

This mod isn’t a cheat of any kind. It’s actually used to help people on weak computers run the game. By removing the clouds and sky you free up a lot of resources which enables the game to run a bit smoother on slower machines.

UNDETECTED PENETRATION MARKER

This is a rather slick mod. What it does is mark a tank you just hit and penetrated. Now, should that tank disappear from your view (become un-spotted) this marker will let you know if he is in fact still there. The example is say you shoot a guy on a hill that’s far away. The teammate that was spotting him gets killed, so he vanishes from your view. With this mod, if the enemy is still there, you’ll see the marker from where you last hit him. You aim for that marker and you nail him again.

Ever wonder how people keep on hammering you after you’re no longer spotted? This is how they do it.

Come on now. You didn’t really ever believe somebody blindly firing into the area they last saw you in was THAT lucky, did you?

SHAKE DISABLE

This one’s cut and dry: it simply removes the shaking you get after firing your gun from all modes. Not something we’d call game breaking, but it does rob a bit from it.

SNIPER ZOOM

This one is available everywhere, and not only for zooming in but zooming out as well. This is another one of those gray area mods where on the one hand they don’t break the game per se, but they do give an advantage.

We do feel however that the zoom out mod is a bigger advantage than the zoom in. Zoom out can allow you to get an entire field of view look at things that your enemy not using it can’t. They can see exactly how you’re set up on the other side of that building while you can’t do the same to them.

It’s yet another very simple thing that could be fixed by being made part of the game. Why it hasn’t been by now is simply mind boggling.

WHITE CORPSES

This simply makes the hulls of dead tanks white. Is that an advantage? Well, yes. It makes it much easier to aim around it as it stands out starkly in contrast. The burned out hulls can sometimes be quite difficult to tell from the enemy hiding behind them. Making them bright white removes any would-be guesswork from the equation.

LINE OF ATTACK

This is a nifty mod that draws a blue line from where you were hit back to where the enemy fired from. It takes the guesswork completely out of where the shot came from that you didn’t see coming.

THE 15 METER CIRCLE

This mod simply draws a circle at 15 meters radius from your tank. So what’s the big deal? Well, to get maximum camouflage benefit from trees and shrubs you need to be 15 meters behind them. Normally, one has to guess and hope they’re right. This circle removes all doubt.

ARTILLERY SNIPER MODE

This is moot at this stage as it was actually made legal by Wargaming and is now known as Battle Assistant. It doesn’t stop the arty haters from raging on and on about it though. It’s still a hot topic to this day.

COLORED TRACERS

This is more window dressing. It simply makes a multiple tracer round shot appear. It has no real benefit, but it does look cool.

AUTO EXPERT

This is actually a free crew skill when you come right down to it. It gives you the Eagle Eye Captain’s skill for free. It allows you to see the damaged modules of all enemy tanks so you can target them for further damage.

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Now, taken individually one could pick this list apart and say it’s worthless. But when you really get right down to it, all of this combined is simply mind boggling. It eliminates at least half the skill required to play the game by simply giving you information in your face that you no longer have to actually figure out for yourself.

All of this combined can elevate an average player to quite good, and a good player to a very good player very, very quickly.

So the next time a lot of unexplained things start happening to you, the next time you’re one shot by arty without ever getting spotted, the next time that guy just always seems to know exactly when you’re reloaded or not, the next time that guy seems to have ESP and knows EXACTLY where you’re aiming and how to avoid you, remember this list.

Because you can bet your sweet ass this is how they’re doing it.

UPDATE 10/3/16:

Thanks to Kahduu_Tanker for this video showing a good many of these illegal mods in action.