Armored Warfare gets a bunch of new features, maps and ferocious tanks

Armored Warfare lets you take command of a number of modern Main Battle Tanks and duke it out amongst your friends. The newest update puts in a number of great new features, a new intricate close-quarters map and new Chinese tanks, like the feared Type-98.

To sell you the new tanks there's a new Arms Dealer known as Zhang Feng who has some of the best deals on Chinese tanks around. His inventory is available to everyone who wishes to try out something new. A new Tier 5 premium tank has also been added, the WZ-1224, a 44-ton masterpiece with a 120mm smoothbore main gun.

The new Coastal Threat Map is a 1.2K square map with a mixture of open-spaces that allow for huge arcs of fire and a small city with its tight quarters to test your skills appropriately. For those that prefer PvE, the reward system has been modified so that it's almost as lucrative as playing strictly PvP. That way you'll be able to get some of the better loot while you practice and improve.

A new event is being hosted starting now until March 6th, the Mercenary Showdown, which lets you pick a side of a growing conflict between the White Lancers and the Hellhound mercenary groups. They promise some great prizes and profit for participating. In fact, even the losers get something out of it.

The event will be split into three rounds (lasting roughly a week each) in a best-of-three playoff format. During each round, both teams will accumulate reputation, the sum of which will be displayed on the Armored Warfare website. Please note that only raw reputation counts, Premium Time does not affect the results. At the end of Round 1 and Round 2, the winner for the round will be announced and the overall score will be tracked, but the reputation gained will be reset for the following round. The mercenary team that manages to first win two full rounds will be declared the overall winners.

The prizes are:

• Members of the winning team who registered as participants will receive 7 days of Premium
• Members of the losing team who registered as participants will receive 3 days of Premium
• At the end of the campaign the top 100 contributors from each team will gain 1500 gold for themselves