You can find the article here. I watched this video earlier in the day after booting up World of Warships. I normally watch these videos on youtube, but this time I got to listen to Wargaming justify themselves while enduring a pretty laggy in-game interface. I do agree with some of their points. I agree with most of them, actually. The problem is, it’s easy enough to agree with what someone says when they’re just explaining themselves. WG explains their process in a way anyone would agree with taken by itself, but when you have an impression of them formed over months or years of playing the actual game, you’re not going to have such a charitable interpretation of what they’re saying. A lot of people probably just rolled their eyes throughout the video, if they even made it that far.

Even if these videos don’t convince as many people as Wargaming would probably like, it’s good that they’re doing it. The players, myself included, were sick and tired of having random incidents come up and Wargaming putting out one of their scheduled promotional videos instead of addressing it first. It always looked really bad when those videos came out at the wrong time. Videos made in response to what the community is saying and not just promotional materials are just as important as the dev blog and other announcements formats. Any time a game company goes on the record with something, it’s a good thing. The more they say they do and say they will do, the more the players and their shareholders can hold them to that. The more vague and nebulous they are, the harder it is to pin them down on any one issue. In those cases it really does just come down to each side’s interpretation.

On that note, they also released this on the dev blog. They haven’t forgotten about their commitments, thank goodness.

Also, I’ve been thinking about the Black Friday sales coming up. I really, really want Yoshino B, not even a quarter as much as I wanted an Enterprise B, but as a coal ship, it would save me a very long grind to get the ship. I’m still leaning heavily against this Black Friday list of ships even though my personal beef with Wargaming is over, but that ship in particular really bothers me. I’d be having the same problem if the tier 10 ship was another coal ship like Immelmann or Marceau. I haven’t made a decision yet, frankly because that’s pointless before the sale actually goes up, but I’m still leaning no right now. I’m taking my thoughts down here just to be on the record as time goes on. It’s helpful to be able to look back and objectively see how things have changed.

I’m still pretty disappointed with the event though. Saipan B instead of Enterprise B? I can’t quite parse that one yet. Saipan isn’t a bad ship by any means, I just don’t understand. Enterprise B seemed like such an obvious move this year. Oh well.