NobleRipper

Thanks for the response. I did indeed, as I had initially assumed that pausing the download would let me play, and only looked for help when I noticed the problem. By then of course it was too late. The entire process did not take around thirty minutes, more like five or six times that long. As you say though, at least it's now finished. After it was done I played a couple of T3/4 games (so I wouldn't need to mess around with captain skills), enough to get the first daily crate, then logged off. Fingers crossed that when the new patch finally releases on the EU server, I might have cause to play more.

Nice to see WG embracing an authentic bit of militaria here: the concept of 'one size fits none'...

So when will it be rolled back to the old system, allowing us to still play during the update we've already downloaded and then waiting for the next update to actually be playable before committing to a lengthy download? I've set WGC not to download updates in advance, have cancelled automatic updates and looked around for any and all other related settings, but the update is still insisting it be done before I can play again. Do you mean that because I started the update (was forced to in fact) before disabling the pre-update option, I am still unable to play until the existing update process has finished?

I used the Big Button to reset my whole roster fairly early on, then started putting skills on to commanders as I played their ships (which has been a tiny handful of times during the current rather disappointing event). I'm now going to go through and zero those few. There are a few reasons for that: first of all it's free to do so, so I'm not losing anything but a few minutes' worth of time; second, given that staff on the forums here have already admitted that this month was basically just a test run for the new skills I don't trust them to stay the same for long and so want the freedom to change things when they're in a more finalised form; and as has already been said/hinted at above, I just can't be bothered to play the game much right now in this whole mess and don't know if the skill system is going to be in the same state if/when I get back. The only problem is, I'm now being forced to do a 3-gig download of the new update (without being allowed to just play the game instead), and given my rather sluggish net connection I'm not sure if I'll have the patience to hang around until that's done to then go through things...

I'm going to go against the trend here, and say that the British light cruiser line is excellent for learning the game on: the lack of ammunition switching makes things easier in battle and the fact that they are so fragile teaches you to play more carefully (if you can get away from any engagement intact, for example by using their smoke, the heal helps a lot to bring you back into the fight). Also, if and when you learn how to use torpedoes, you'll likely learn that a narrower spread is better; the British ships have single-fire torpedoes which is the narrowest spread of all ;) If you're looking to pick up the Devonshire, you'll need to work through the Hawkins first at tier 5; she can be a bit of a pain to play as she's not very good compared to some other same-tier ships, but she'll give you some idea of what to expect with Devonshire (good level of hitpoints, powerful guns albeit not too many, the heal again). I recently picked up the permanent camouflage for my Hawkins from the holiday Santa event, so I'm playing her a bit more at the moment (especially since she's had her reload buffed from something like 14 seconds when introduced into the game to the 11.7 seconds or so it is now), and she seems to benefit from the Heavy AP Shells and/or Adrenaline Rush skills, anything that boost her broadside power really.

I find that a lot of the text on the wiki isn't updated very often, which can lead to inaccuracies. A lot of the British carrier stuff was for quite some time after the German carrier release (and in some places still is) written as if there are only three factions with carriers in the game, for example. I tend to use https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/210980-mouses-catalog-of-ship-reviews/ myself, it only applies to premiums and the figures can go out of date if it's a much older ship, but I find LWM's reviews to be a lot more informative about ship characteristics than the wiki.

If we're talking container screen wishlist items, how about a list of all the crates we have that we can access without opening anything? Currently we can only see the top one, and that's if the animation loads properly. Secondly, how about making the animations load properly so that every time we go to the container screen it shows a container if one is available, rather than a closed hatch or a container stuck halfway up?

Not sure, I imagine those things take quite a while to write. If you keep an eye on the General Discussion forum or even just look at the NA forum you should find (someone posting about) it as soon as it's up!

Only if there's a version of the camo where the snake has the body of an AL captain from the collarbones down

Wait, sorry, did I weeb wrong? (Also, y'know, not like we want another carrier in the game...)

Will haikus be allowed? How about saucy limericks? Love takes many literary forms.

It's a shame the game doesn't do much based on the earlier part of the period, when South American countries (and others) were ordering so many more ships.

And now we can truly say, our snake is long and hard and full of seamen...

A permaflage reward that can be *ahem* mounted on your favourite ship would be a nice touch. Could even have a cap of nothing higher than T5/6 if WG want to be a bit stingy. I've personally not been all that interested in playing for the last week or so, and as far as the stuff listed in the article goes, with the exception of maybe logging on to win a battle for the three WG containers (it might be useful to have the premium time stored up for later) it doesn't look like there's going to be much to tempt me back any time soon. I know they can't all be winners, but the Lunar New Year event this month has just seemed more lacklustre than average.

Unfortunately all the rentals are for Premium ships (so they can try and persuade you to buy them), unfortunately there's no direct mechanism to do the same with tech tree ships that I'm aware of but as @Salentine mentioned you could always try having a go on the PTS (don't worry, they don't use it for actual testing anymore!). If there's a particular ship or line that you're thinking about, though, if you ask here you'll probably get some interesting information about them (among all the other posts ;))...

@TheWarJaC I have a quick question: as the T4-6s will be available with F2P tokens, will there be permaflages for each of them available likewise; or would they be for doubloons or other cost; or are there no permaflages for those ships at all? It would seem a little pointless having EA ships without at least the option of something exclusive, otherwise there wouldn't be any incentive beyond the port slot to try for them during the event instead of just waiting for full release.

I assumed from the off that I'd be ignoring the recommendations. So far I seem to have ended up taking a skill which happens to be recommended, about 50% of the time. It certainly seems like a pretty haphazard attempt with not much deep thought gone into it; was it a clumsy attempt at reinforcing the features of different lines, maybe?

The bots have been shockingly poor with torpedoes recently. I assumed they were somehow blind to the islands in the way as well (like they are when manoeuvring more often than not), but this makes sense. Also, I just noticed in the last day or two that my torpedo launcher arc indication is vanishing seemingly whenever it wants, which makes for some frustrating moments when I can't see how much further I'll need to turn to get on the right bearing. Saw the same bug before, but this is the first time it's lasted longer than the first part of one match.

At the same time, they're not likely going to make ships available for coal/FXP that they expect to sell a lot of for cash/doubloons, so the two would seem to dovetail nicely.

Personally, I got nothing of particular note overall except for the very last Santa's a Big Git container I received (from the Hizen dockyard I think) which curiously enough dropped my regulation-issue Makarov. In fact, I think it was the last container I could receive F2P (apart from the one for completing the Shipbuilding collection, which just seems like a waste of coal at this point). For next year, it would be easier if they just decided to give us a bunch of miscellaneous flags and camos and then randomly picked a different day for each player to receive the obligatory xmas ship...

I'd like to see some mid-tier stuff personally, T6s and T7s would be useful for Ops. As a KuKK fan I'd be pretty happy to see Viribus Unitus available for coal, given that I wouldn't want to spend real money on her in any way...

I've pretty much been ignoring free failcrates for a while now myself, I have plenty of camos and flags already so they're not much of an incentive to complete missions for (even before the Christmas Crackerov incident). It's enough to discourage me from buying the premium versions, frankly, for concern that I'll find them similarly stingy and unrewarding. As @The_Chiv said, I'd probably feel differently if there was less of a culture of aggressive monetisation in the game and more of an effort to make it attractive on its own merits...

I've not played my Bayern since the skreeework. If and when I do again it'll likely be for either secondary battery hits missions and/or Ops, so will probably still end up speccing for secondaries and possibly some tanking. Is disappointing to know it won't be especially effective though...

From the timing, seems like this could be a case of the organisers finally deciding to move on after seeing the Commander Skill rework and its immediate aftermath. I wonder if we'll see any spiritual successors crop up independent of WG within the community?

Don't worry, I can confidently state that none of the primary combatant ships at Dogger Bank have been negatively portrayed in the game so far... Kolberg was there though...