Verblonde

I suspect there may be a time lag in the awarding of these things, plus event ships count (I think I got my 'ha ha - let's laugh at the whale' badge when the last event was on, but I don't think it happened the first moment the rental ships arrived in my port, to push me over 350 (or whatever the number is)...

I've been almost entirely playing premiums when I need to play cruisers (which generally means doing missions in Coop), so the vast majority of my cruiser captains remain zeroed. I imagine it'll stay that way until the mythical re-rework for cruiser captains that WG have alluded to comes to pass, as I trust them as far as I could comfortably spit a rat vis-a-vis doing the decent thing re: free respecs.

Does it come with a radioactive monster of some description...?

I wouldn't wait to long; from memory, she's being removed from sale soon, although I don't recall exactly when...

FWIW: (From the shop entry for the containers; no idea if it's mentioned elsewhere too.)

Yup - it got me a couple of times this evening...

WG: hire this person!

I - for abundantly obvious reasons* - haven't played Z-31 a great deal, but I suspect that this ship is undoubtedly the one in the line that they deliberately make so painful that there is a decent likelihood that players will cave and just free xp the thing (hopefully spending money in the process). I probably should make more of an effort with the T8 and T9, but at the moment, my - under informed - view is that the new Germans are probably the worst DD line in the game. They struggle to do a real DD's job, and what they gain for giving up the ability to be 'proper' DDs is an enhanced ability to make holes in cruisers that are silly enough to give broadside (and there's hardly a plague of cruisers around as it is)... * You know those big hammer machine things they used to make wrought iron with in the industrial revolution? The big things which dropped big lumps of metal weighing several tons onto big lumps of red-hot iron? Looked a bit like this: I suspect that inserting one's happy sacks into the gap between hammer and ingot and letting the machine go might be marginally more desirable than playing the Z-31. 'Not keen' covers it more succinctly.

I got to Maerker (I had a bit of a whale, mainly to get Dragon flags), and got some permaflage too; besides speeding up obtaining Vampire II marginally, this whole exercise does have the valuable bonus of avoiding me having to play Z-31. I call that a result!

If your problem with Kami is the spotting range, you'll be just as dead against the silver equivalents (FWIW my WR is higher in the equivalent silver IJN DDs than in Kami, I believe, although I don't play the latter that frequently); I won't go into this in detail though, as we did it to death in a recent thread whining about the Kami sisters specifically. Kirov is a full premium *but* as far as I recall, you've not been able to directly buy her for real money before. I think it's obvious that WG are trying to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to players in terms of nerfing premiums (as opposed to positive changes - I doubt anyone cares about buffs!); all the new ones released have the 'may be nerfed' label but that doesn't help with the older ones. Kirov is the first step in seeing what they can get away with - PR-wise - as no-one cares too much about her, and no-one parted with money directly to get her. I also suggest that Flint is another part of this experiment: another full premium, and she's about to get a (sort-of) buff at the same time as getting a nerf. Same logic: no-one directly paid for her (except maybe Satan boxes; I can't recall if she was on the list?), so WG probably feel she falls in the 'grey area' too. Just to be clear: this isn't about what WG *can* do (EULA and all that), it's about what they can get away with from a public-relations perspective. If everyone objects, they'll probably back off; if the reaction is split, then not so much...

As a general rule whichever one you can do the most relative damage in, but if you have suitable premiums, it's T9...

It's a bit more complex than that: as I hope is obvious, I think that having nerfable premiums (few will object to their premiums being buffed) is probably a good thing, for game health, provided WG still sell enough to keep the lights on. The issue isn't whether or not premiums can be nerfed, but whether the status of an older premium that was sold under the 'no nerfs' policy should be liable to change such that it can later be nerfed after people paid real money for it. Like I said earlier, I have no problem with such a change *provided full cash refunds are offered* to existing purchasers; personally, I would probably keep all mine, but that's the overall solution. Of course, WG hates refunds, so it'll never happen. If I were WG, and assuming they aren't really changing existing premiums' statuses, I would just put out a statement explaining why Kirov is being set to nerfable (presumably, because no-one paid real money directly for her, assuming that's true), and assure people that the status of existing premiums won't be change retrospectively. If they are changing the status of existing for-money premiums without real money refunds offered, then good luck with managing that PR disaster...!

This is at the heart of the matter: I don't know how EULAs interact with consumer law (a lot of waivers aren't worth the paper they're written on), but the customer satisfaction thing is crucial here - retrospectively making older premiums nerfable will annoy a lot of people, regardless of whether or not it's legal. Regarding legality, it's a bit moot anyway - is anyone really going to spend a lot of money on lawyers over a few pixels? In terms of real consequences, such a retrospective change would probably have a couple of consequences: for a start, the existing customers would probably start spending less; as a result of that, to keep their income flowing WG would need to compensate for any loss with sales to new customers. It's generally more expensive to acquire new customers than retain old ones (I was in a conference talk on exactly this general subject a couple of days ago), so WG will have to work a lot harder just to stand still, in financial terms. TL;DR just because WG can do this, it doesn't mean they should. I'm not talking about squishy feel-good stuff here, but hard commercial reality - my personal view is that making old premiums nerfable would be foolish from a pure money perspective.

I smell Google translate, so I may not be reading your original intent, however: Balancing premium ships is good for the game overall; I don't think there is much doubt about that (provided it's done well, of course). The problems arise when dealing with the matter of content that people paid real money for; there is quite a lot of consumer law that forbids changing the nature of a purchase after money has changed hands. This previous issue would be entirely irrelevant - beyond optics - if WG offered cash refunds (not doubloons, nor any other in-game token - cash) for nerfed premiums, but we know how they feel about that. My personal view is that there is nothing wrong with all new premiums carrying the 'nerfable' label (quite the reverse, although as I've said elsewhere it does make them less desirable purchases), but there is a lot wrong with retrospectively making older premiums (that were not sold with the 'nerfable' label) newly nerfable *unless* full cash refunds are offered. Offer cash refunds and there is no problem: every existing owner then makes the choice - money back, or have premiums liable to nerfs. Personally, I think I'd probably keep hold of all my premiums regardless - Kami is notorious, for instance, but my WR is higher in the ostensibly weaker silver equivalent...

I think WG should be very careful here; I'm probably one of the worst whales active on the forum at the moment, and if WG got into the cycle of releasing OP ships, then nerfing them, then repeating, I would probably stop spending entirely/almost entirely. I don't know how typical I am, but my thought process is along the following lines: If my ship is going to be nerfed, I should play it a lot to get value from it before that happens, so I would feel pressured to play the game regardless of whether I want to at a given moment; that feels like work, and I dislike that idea. Less selfishly, I feel such an approach isn't ethical, so my conscience would give me s**t if I actively supported it. Crucially though, I would rather win because I managed to suck less than usual, rather than because I threw money at the screen (where's the fun/challenge in that?). Wins become meaningless if you get them in blatantly OP ships. I'm probably pearl-clutching here, and enough people will happily buy into the OP-nerf-OP-nerf cycle to make it viable, but I still think it's potentially dangerous from a commercial standpoint...

This. I do wonder if WG are actively trying to muddy the waters here, to deliberately confuse the customers. When Hyuga was released, one incidence of the ship (Armoury or shop; I don't recall) carried the 'may be nerfed' label, and the other didn't; at the time, I put it down to WG being incompetent, but I now wonder if it's deliberate. If we get a situation where no-one is entirely sure which things are nerfable and which aren't, then perhaps WG are hoping that they'll be able to get away with messing with ostensibly 'non-nerfable' ships with minimal outcry? If WG are retrospectively applying the nerf label to old ships, they aren't breaking their EULA, but they are breaking their word (although, really, does that actually surprise anyone?); they also are making the older premiums less of a viable commercial proposition - as with the newer ones, you now have less time to get your money's worth from a premium ship, so making a purchase perhaps less likely.

Well, it's not a proper encounter with a fellow forumite unless I make what the French might refer to as le grand coq-eurpe! I do remember the occasion though: it was one of my better recent copper-bottomed muck-ups...

I usually have all music off; I struggle to concentrate properly otherwise...

FWIW I think it was about 1 in 10 (any ship) for the middle crates, and about double that for the biggest...

Remember, kids: drugs are bad, m'kay...

FWIW I usually don't worry about it too much, *but* I do always play DDs in Ranked that - one way or another - can cope less badly than most with CVs. For instance, I've just finished regrinding the Shima line, and did none of it in Ranked, because of CVs. Now, I must take issue with this. It is unkind, nay, unfair! A vile slander!! As I trust we all know, recent(ish) research has shown that goldfish have far superior powers of cognition compared to typical CV players...!

I suppose there is the possibility that if anyone doesn't get sufficient tokens to gain Z-31, then they may be awarded TWO Z-31s...?

Depends rather on what you get on with, and which modes you want to use them in. FWIW I rather like the following: T-61 (T6 DD) - tier-for-tier one of the best DDs in the game; about to be removed. Haida (T7 DD) - ditto. You need to be comfortable with crawling smoke and single fire torps though. Z-39 (T7 DD) ditto. Basically, a bigger gunned T-61 a tier higher and/or what Z-31 would be if it didn't suck. Shinonome (T6 DD) is good too, and she's 'free' (if you complete a rather grindy campaign). The optional 'National' permaflage boosts her silver earnings dramatically. Anything that you can get for coal, so things like Aigle and Blysk; not necessarily because they're actively good, but because they don't cost real money. Scharn (T7 BB) is great for Narai, but less so against real people; if you want to rinse Narai, Ashitaka is pretty decent too. Perth (T6 CL with crawling smoke) is worthwhile, but hard work if you aren't good at cruisers (I struggle in her). Warspite and/or AGS are both useful for Ops (AGS is about to be removed), and both have access to silver-boosting National permaflage too. Boise/NdJ (T7 CL, with zombie heal) are good picks for Narai; can't comment on PvP as I avoid such modes in most cruisers. There are plenty of others that are worthwhile too, but a note of caution: the newest premium releases are liable to nerfs; that's not to say you should never buy a 'nerfable' premium, but rather that you should be aware that you perhaps have less time to get your money's worth than you might with an older one that's only vulnerable to global changes (although they can still be pretty devastating e.g. Atlanta/Flint). Also, it looks like submarine are - unfortunately - very imminent now (initial release probably into Ranked, if the Dev Blog is to be believed); given WG's previous form there is a substantial risk that this may harm the game significantly. If that comes to pass, it reduces your window to get your money's worth still further...

Dev Blog ( submarines are coming closer): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/147

I'm sure not: the name is clearly a wholesome reference to a saintly donkey with an enthusiasm for ground nuts...?