Verblonde

With regard to the multiple CVs - that's always a risk when you play at weird hours; if people have been waiting 'too long' in the queue, then the cap on CV numbers can be waived. It sucks, but that's the way of things at the moment. BTW you might want to make the names in your screen-shot illegible; it could be construed as 'naming and shaming' otherwise...

Anything that refers to 'Jean Bart B' is talking about the black ship; anything that refers to 'Jean Bart' (no 'B') means the original vanilla version. The same thing applies to all the other black/vanilla ship pairs. As various people have said in various threads, the mission is an incentive for people to buy both ships; it turns the two of them into a BOGO effectively. If you have both, you - de facto - get the doubloons; if you have only one, you don't. The mechanics of this whole thing are fairly straightforward and logical; the problem is that WG did an appalling job explaining them in the context of typical consumer behaviour. If I type 6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666669666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666 then an awful lot of people will miss the odd one out, at least until they actually look for it (and now I've told them that there even is one to find); not spotting the difference between Jean Bart and Jean Bart B is a similar sort of phenomenon, and illustrates what's wrong with WG's copy. So: mechanic, fine, copy, not fine.

As someone with a lot of premiums, this is the main plus point of the whole sorry business (for me). I don't think it works on silver ships, alas - as far as I know, they haven't said anything about being apply to apply multiple silver specialisations to the same captain at the same time.

So, they've decided to go with the 'epic emulators of Onan' approach? That's more toss than an entire year of highland games (at least from a technical standpoint)!

I read the dev blog as being a general statement of how things will run (if implemented as is), rather than as a statement of how the one-off transition from the current system to the new will be handled; this may be a mistake on my part. Besides the lack of information on this (i.e. will all our existing 19 point captains need re-grinding, to get them to 21 points?), any note on whether a maximum point captain will earn elite xp as presently has been conspicuous by its absence. There are clearly new/changed elements to captains (elite xp being earned as a proportion of a <21 pointer's earnings, presumably a la elite xp for ships, for one), but nothing - that I've seen - unambiguously addressing this.

It is also extremely manly. The volcano gods smile on manliness; empirical theological study has shown that a well-executed ram has the same effect on the gods' influence on your RNG as chucking 3.72 virgins into your nearest volcano. Trust me - I'm your spiritual advisor.

As is often the case, the wiki is your friend here: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Base_Earnings You may also find the more general article apropos the economy of interest too: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy#Experience To get a quick sense of your base xp earnings in a battle, you can see it against your entry in the 'team' tab of the battle results screen.

We have already seen - I tried last year, and it didn't seem to make a blind bit of difference. I've noticed that a large chunk of this year's complainants tend to have low (or even non-existent) forum post counts; this is perhaps suggestive that they wouldn't have seen forum warnings before making the purchase that they are complaining about...

Well, yes. My explanations apropos how the whole thing works are just that - explanations - and mainly intended for anyone who hasn't grasped how this thing works yet. WG's promotion, when you understand the detail, is entirely logical and reasonable (offer of a cheap ship, plus an extra bonus if you buy two/the one you're missing - classic BOGO). If you read the rest of what I wrote though, you'll note that I think WG have been either spectacularly stupid, or deliberately unscrupulous with the associated marketing: they have to realise that the way their copy is presented is going to cause misunderstandings, when combined with how typical consumers interact with online content of this sort. This doesn't require any particular foresight either, as the same thing happened for the last two Black Fridays when they did essentially exactly the same thing. BTW if you want to '@' someone, you need to type the @ itself then the name (or its opening characters) immediately afterwards, without a space, or it won't work properly.

No. WG's fault is knowing how people tend to interact with online content like this, and taking advantage of that knowledge in an unscrupulous way. I've personally known about the Black Friday mechanics for a couple of years (I think this is the third year, isn't it?), but I'm a pedant and pay too much attention to detail; that is not the typical customer profile for WOWS, and they should write their copy accordingly.

In the detail, I believe the missions all state that they require <ship name> to complete them; for example, the one in the entry for Atlanta B says the mission is for Atlanta - the crucial information that one needs to know (assuming one spotted the different between Atlanta and Atlanta B) is that there are two Atlantas in the game, and they are as different as Yamato is from Akizuki (say), as far as mission requirements go. So, if you buy a black ship you do indeed get the doubloons mission; it's just that the doubloons missions are for a ship other than the one that you purchased (as an incentive to buy the black ship if you had its vanilla counterpart already). If you read the entries end-to-end and in conjunction with a full understanding of how the game works down to the 'individual rivet' level, the game is doing what was stated in the sales blurb. The crucial problem is that this approach takes zero account of how people actually behave and - as such - is flat-out misleading (if not disingenuous); not because of the words - which are accurate - but because the way that typical people will interact with those words (and whoever wrote this blurb knows that, unless they're an unutterable incompetent).

I tried doing this last year, but it wasn't - as far as I know - much use: the bulk of people on the forum already tend to know about the Black Friday doubloon mission issue, and the bulk of the complaint threads are posted by newbies, so they don't generally visit the forum until after falling into WG's trap. It confounds me that WG don't seem to care about this, as I imagine it's pi$$ing off a lot of people who never make it to the forum; the extra spend can't make up for the ill-will that has to be generated. It would be so easy to prevent too; it's incredible (in the sense of 'stretches credence')...

Apologies for slow response - was tutoring people in English, mildly ironically..! I don't believe the issue here is reading/comprehension; in those respects, you're absolutely correct and WG's copy is hardly difficult to read, if you take the time and care (and understand how ships and their clones work in the game). The problem is rather to do with human behaviour, and more specifically average human behaviour. In a past life, I wrote copy for products being sold online, and became familiar with how people shop, and some of the potential pitfalls that can catch you out - not because people can't read, but rather because of the way they tend to interact with this sort of content. As I said elsewhere, if the 'headline' text describing the doubloon missions said something like 'Doubloon [or whatever] mission for regular <ship> (available separately)', the number of complaints would probably drop by 3/4 (and possibly more if there was more expansive text in the blurb below the fold). People tend to interact quickly, not thoroughly and/or carefully, when reading sales blurb, and the sale blurb should be written according to that. I once had a product (it was an optional extra shelf for a weights rack, fwiw) that I had to edit something like half a dozen times in the end; although the copy clearly stated it was a shelf, and not the whole rack, our customer service people had to field all manner of queries from people who interacted with the entry in a typical way and expected to get an entire rack, and it kept happening (I really hated the final version, as it was deeply inellegant from a marketing perspective, but - eventually - people understood). As infuriating as this sort of thing is for a seller, you still have to keep tweaking your copy until the number of misunderstandings drops, and this is where the problem is - WG haven't, at least not enough, and not consistently across the whole promotion.

The doubloon combat versions can only be done with the corresponding vanilla version of the ship in question. This means that one is faced with the possibility of - in your case - buying a shiny spank-me new Atlanta B, and having to play the musty old respectable vanilla Atlanta at least five times to get the doubloons. The quickest way to do this is to rattle off the requisite games in Coop mode, which you'll struggle to lose unless you're playing at weird hours with very few real people online.

They didn't make it clear enough; it's not about 'special' people, but our 'average' punter - you don't get this many people confused over this many years (this is the third, I think?) if you've made your copy clear enough. Trust me on this - it's what I used to do for a living! I'd be curious to know why WG have still not fixed their copy after all the trouble; they have to know they're on thin ice according to at least one country's consumer law, yet they persist. They must believe that the extra sales gained from the current approach outweigh the ill-will that has clearly been demonstrated, and potential visits from Trading Standards. For we old lags, how this all works is glaringly obvious, but we are not 'average' customers...

I'm afraid you are incorrect - for the functional purposes of the game, all the 'B' ships are as different from their vanilla counterparts as a CV is from a BB. This is incontrovertible fact (and also applies to all the other clones in the game e.g. all manner of Myokos, Atagos, and the recent Yamato, to name a few). The problem with the current promotion is that an 'average' customer doesn't understand that necessarily, and the distinction isn't made clear enough in WG's copy to pass muster under (at least) UK consumer law. For the copy to be acceptable, it should be written in such a way as to make the above distinction obvious to that average customer, without them needing to know about it in advance.

I may be wrong, but I suspect this may be an extension of the lack of sympathy sometimes exhibited when someone complains about something that happened to them in game because they haven't learned the relevant mechanics yet. If one has studied the way WG operate, this whole Black Friday thing makes perfect sense and may - technically - be legal (I haven't found anything that is technically inaccurate, if you know that 'Cossack', say, and 'Cossack B' are entirely different ships). BUT. As a recovering retailer, I don't agree with this point of view; partly because I'm not (as far as I know) a sociopath, but mainly because I recall a bit of consumer law (from the UK). The fundamental principle that needs to be applied when designing and advertising a promotion (which is what this is) is that it should be easily understood by an average customer with an average amount of 'study' (for want of a better expression). Clearly, on the basis of the number of complaints, the current Black Friday promotion fails according to this metric. Basically, a promotion shouldn't need a high level of study/intelligence to comprehend correctly, whilst - equally - the seller should also be protected from customers being being willfully obtuse. In this case, neither of those apply because WG failed to make their promotion clear for our 'average' customer.

Alaska, for the unimaginative reason that the cruiser meisters almost all seem to think she's one of the best cruisers in the game, and she's being pulled from sale in a couple of months (+/-). Friesland is fun and interesting (pure dakka; no torps), but I would view her as non-essential, and she isn't about to be removed. I don't have Aegir yet, but - again - she's not being removed any time soon, as far as we know, so less pressing than Alaska.

Of course that works; the thing about cooldown avoidance is just to do with not having to spend the 75K - that can be meaningful if one is a bit time-poor and have a need to maximise silver gain with time.

I might perhaps think in terms of what would you do if the doubloons mission didn't exist i.e. would you make sufficient use of a second Alaska to make having both versions worthwhile? If I haven't lost track of time, the next tranche of ship removals should be in a little over two months' time (it was about three months when it was first announced), which gives you one time-frame to be aware of; on the other hand, I don't know how long you have to pick up vanilla Alaska and still get the doubloons mission for having the black one, but I assume it's a much shorter time-frame. The other question is what would you do with the free xp otherwise? As others have pointed out, Smaland is being removed at the same time as Alaska, and she is very good indeed (if wildly over-priced); can you get together another million free xp and get her instead? The final factor is perhaps snowflakes etc. Alaska will (this year) get you an extra dollop of steel, whereas Smaland, say, will get you a small Santa crate (WiP, of course); it's a small thing, but mounts up over the course of a year or more (assuming the snowflake model persists). If it were me, and assuming I could only do one thing, I would probably get Smaland; Alaska B gives you all the gameplay benefits of Alaska, and you already have those, whereas Smaland is very good, and provides new and unique gameplay options (even if you already have Halland). Beyond the doubloons, getting Alaska only provides the usual (and - to some - inconsequential) 'duplicate' benefits. But that assumes you can get the second million free xp in time to matter.

This 'problem' arises every year, due to people not reading WG's copy in microscopic detail, and WG being utterly incompetent at making said copy easier to understand; personally, I think it's a deliberate (albeit stupid) policy. Anyway: For the purposes of the game (or at least its behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts), a vanilla ship and its black counterpart are as different as - say - a cruiser and an aircraft carrier; they just happen to have the same performance stats and physical model. Outside of Black Friday, what you buy is the regular vanilla 'Cossack' (say), and during Black Friday you buy one, or other, or both of 'Cossack' and/or 'Cossack B' - the 'B' is important; its presence or absence distinguishes the two versions of each ship (and is very easy to miss). As has been pointed out, for the purposes of most players, there aren't a huge number of reasons to buy a black variant of a ship if you already have the regular one (or vice versa); for this reason, WG introduced the doubloons mission, which - effectively - gives you doubloons back as a modest bribe for vanilla owners who buy the black version as well, not to mention anyone who gets hold of a black one first and feels the urge to have both. What the black versions of ships aren't is a new skin; if you look in the camouflage section of a black ship, you will only see the black permaflage, and if you have both, the vanilla one will not show the black skin in the same section (and you can't move permaflage between the two). So, there is logic behind all of this, but WG have failed spectacularly to write clear enough marketing copy so customers can make a properly informed decision as to whether or not to buy in to the offer. Presumably, WG think they'll make more money this way, at the expense of the loss of the goodwill of everyone who misses the fine print (and they are not unusual, as a quick glance at the gameplay section of this forum will illustrate).

B*llocks! I wanted two Cossacks, and I bought two Cossacks; no duping involved. Suggest you resist presuming to try and tell other people how their decision-making process works. I gave some of the reasons one might want more than one copy of the same ship; it's then an individual decision whether or not those reasons are good enough for that individual to make the purchase.

This is why consumer law (in the UK anyway) calls for offers that can easily be understood by an average customer; if it requires careful thought and/or detailed reading to understand, it's against the law and the seller should come up with clearer wording (or mechanics).

No error: i.e. there are currently no T6 clones that I can think of, but the same principles would apply if WG ever did produce any.

You're being unfair: when you open the offer page you get something like this: That's cropped to include pretty much everything I can see without scrolling etc. Any seller with the slightest knowledge of human behaviour will know that a substantial chunk of readers will think that the 'bonus' part refers to the ship that the offer is talking about. Those of us who have been around for a while know this is not the case, but a newcomer won't, and - according to retail law - neither should they. One (of many I can easily think of) fix would be to phrase the 'bonus' text to read something like 'for regular Atlanta (sold separately)'; the 'regular' bit differentiating the thing from the 'black' version, and the 'sold separately' to make it clearer for those who tend to glance read. Whilst people generally don't scroll, WG could cover their posteriors by putting more detail (that marketers might view as unattractive) further down the page. What they have included is this: Again, insufficient differentiation between black and regular Atlanta. TL;DR it's the seller's responsibility to make sure this sort of thing is crystal clear to an average customer, not the responsibility of the customer to break out the magnifying glass.