Hey there, captains!
So, me, Phil, you may know me as Philigula,
and the other Phil, Sub Octavian,
we had an idea for a new series, and… what should we call it?
I guess we should call it Waterline.
I like your idea!
Thank you.
And also you’re the boss, so that’s gonna be the name.
We’re gonna talk about some news from the development team,
what we’re gonna do in the next month, maybe in the next year,
plus some news from the coming patch—it's going to be Update 0.7.4.
What do we have there, Phil?
Yeah, before we dive deeper into fun and engaging details of our development plans,
let us just recommend you: watch 0.7.4 Developers Diaries
and be sure to find out 0.7.4 Development bulletin,
because it contains lots of information about balance changes,
matchmaker improvements, new Ranked season,
and other cool stuff we’re adding into the game.
Small disclaimer: everything you hear here (heh, not a pun),
everything that we’re gonna speak about is not necessarily final
and can be used against us in… no, that’s the wrong one…
It can change, you should understand that,
so please do not take this as a final word
but just as a look into the future of World of Warships.
Let’s start with some general news.
So, we’re changing our development cycle,
and the reason is that lately we’ve been experiencing some technical problems
with our updates, and we found out the reason.
The reason is that we actually published one major update every three weeks.
Three weeks!
We did this for you guys,
so after the release of the game we can fill it up with features
and react more quickly to your feedback and concerns.
But now we’ve come to the point where it actually prevents us
from publishing updates with very high quality.
Because at the same time we have one update in stabilization—
which means looking for bugs and fixing them;
and another update is going through integration—
which means combining different branches of development into one update.
So the effort of the development team is actually split between two updates.
We want to avoid this, so we’re changing the cycle to…
I think it’s going to be four weeks now.
So, to maximize the quality and not let content hurt,
we are actually spreading out the development to four-week cycle.
This way the focus of development is not spread too thin between the content and quality,
and the extra week is made exclusively for the quality control.
Therefore, the updates are gonna hit a little less often,
but they should work as intended.
So, Phil, let’s start with something I think all players are interested in:
new content. What’s up?
So you let me be the good cop?
Yes, sure.
As a good cop, I will inform you that we’re gonna have some new ships,
we’re gonna have new events, not dissimilar to the Vive la France arch.
So, over the course of several updates
we’re gonna have the so-called American arch,
and the main theme of it will be the split of the cruiser line.
We’ll have heavy cruisers and light cruisers.
If you could elaborate on that? Cos I’m kinda bad with names.
So, from Tier VI, guys, the US cruiser line
is split into heavy cruisers and light cruisers.
Heavy cruisers will be from Tier VI: Pensacola, New Orleans,
then comes Baltimore, then a new ship Buffalo, and your old friend Des Moines.
As for the light cruisers, Phil, from Tier VI there will be Dallas, Helena,
then there will be Cleveland, your old friend…
Do you have Cleveland, by the way?
It’s on the way.
It’s on the way, and it will be two tiers higher, guys.
Then there will be Seattle and a new ship, Worcester, new Tier X light cruiser.
So, I think many of you wonder how we will handle this split actually,
and I think Phil will tell you how.
In a word, you’re not losing anything and you’re just gaining,
you’re gaining gains everywhere, massive gains.
No matter whether you have those ships researched,
or you have them in your Port. If you have a ship in your Port,
you will keep the ship, you will get its replacement,
you will get an extra commander with skill points.
If you don’t, if you just have it researched,
you’ll have the new ship researched, and so on and so forth.
For complete system of how it’s gonna be,
just refer to Soviet destroyers split, it’s going to be pretty much the same,
and you’re just gaining and gaining and gaining.
But wait, there’s more! If you call right now…
I’m sorry, that’s my other job.
But the ships are just the tip of an iceberg.
Speaking of tips, a tip for you guys.
So if you want to maximize your profit from this split,
just be sure to research and keep in Port
the ships from Cleveland to Baltimore— this way you’ll get most of freebies.
All of the stuff basically.
But this is only the beginning, we have collection.
The collection. If I remember correctly, it’s 48 items,
and for collecting particular sub-collections
you will get permanent camos for, well, Cleveland…
I’m not gonna tease the other ones, but you may be able to figure them out.
The collection is going to be a lot like the Yamamoto Isoroku one,
with some sub-collections,
maybe a possibility to open up different colors for the American camos,
but I didn’t tell you that.
Other than that, maybe a new campaign,
I mean not maybe, for sure a new campaign.
After you finish it, you’ll get… Who will we get, Phil?
Guys, you’ll get unique American commander William Halsey.
And the coolest thing is that, of course, like Yamamoto,
he will have his own perks and modified talents.
So the good news also is that both collection and campaign are permanent,
they will stay in the client forever and you can take your time to complete them.
But there’s more.
Wait, there’s more?
Do you like operations, Phil?
You mean like surgery?
No, like player-versus- environment operations.
Sure, I hate environment (I didn’t say it). Of course, yeah.
And just like in Vive la France arch, where we had Hermes,
here I cannot tell you the name yet,
but the players will be transported amid the Solomon Islands,
and these particular operations will introduce a new mechanic into the game—
we’ll have different time of the day.
You will start in the dead of the night,
you will fight through it using signal rockets to improve your vision,
and as a reward, the finishing chord will be the dawn.
You will finish the operation at dawn.
So if you’re successful, you’ll get some cool swag…
There is more! There is always more.
So guys, maybe you remember the event that was called Clash of Elements.
We decided to elaborate on this idea,
and we’ve got a new type of event especially for the American arch.
Yeah you guys may remember some of the hottest rivalries
in your particular sports, like in baseball and American football.
I will not name the teams here, but you catch our drift…
Basically, at the beginning of the event you will pick a team
and you will score loyalty points for being productive with the said team.
You will be able to get some cool rewards,
some cool rewards for just filling up your XP bar during the day.
And if you should want for some reason to actually betray your team,
or, I mean, maybe you like the other one more,
maybe you like the other color more, who knows.
It’s a big and vast world.
But basically, if you want to switch teams, you can do it pretty easily.
You will get invitations sent to you every couple of days
and you will not lose any standing,
and at worst you will lose, I think, one container a day
if your team is the losing one.
But if you want to boast your achievement,
just be the best player for your team and you’ll be included in leaderboards.
Right?
Exactly.
Everyday.
Show your skills.
Do it.
Come on!
So, Phil, you’re one of my oldest friends, you know I’m an introvert,
and that’s why I usually find reasons not to participate in Clan Wars.
And I just wanted to know what your whole deal with that thing is.
Well, to be honest, I really enjoy Clan Wars
and I really enjoy playing Tier X ships.
But the problem is probably my skill set is not good enough for competitive clans,
and the guys I play with in the clan, they are very competitive.
So usually I feel like I’m dragging the whole team.
So, yeah guys, I think that this issue is not just mine and Phil’s,
and we actually are working on giving the clan an option to have second rating.
Second rating means that you can have a clan
with both competitive players and more casual players,
and you can have two independent ratings.
So your competitive team will play and affect only one rating,
and those guys who just want to casually play sometimes,
they can play with second rating.
And these ratings don’t actually interfere with each other.
Right, so basically, a reserve team, just for us. Very cool.
And I also heard that there are some plans
to improve clan matchmaking and make it global.
Do you know something about this?
You heard right. I think the initial message
was from you a couple of months ago, but maybe you forgot about it…
So basically, what we want to do is make Clan Wars global.
There are some issues with time zones for some of our players,
we want to combat that.
You’ll be able to play with any other realm
at a time that’s more comfortable for you.
We’ll have more prime times,
and the coolest thing in my opinion is that you’ll have the global clan rating.
We will now know who’s the best for sure.
Usually it was someone in Asia, someone in North America,
and they do not necessarily fight each other,
and we never know, and the metagame’s a little different.
Now we will know.
And there are also plans to change format.
So now, when the Clan Battles are running properly
and we’re sure that this is a successful mode,
we can allow ourselves to experiment a bit.
And our first experiment probably will be
to change format to 8 vs 8 instead of 7 vs 7,
and actually allow players to take two battleships per team.
Yes!
I think that will actually allow you to have a more diverse meta,
try different tactics, and overall we’ll see how it plays out.
But I think it will be a cool season when we introduce that.
I’m very excited, I have to be honest.
So Phil, what about aircraft carriers in Clan Battles?
That’s a good question, Phil…
To be continued…
So, my esteemed comrade Philip…
And all your perks, I think they will be quite viable on new ships.
Optimization is my middle name, actually.
Phil “Optimization” Glushakov.
But now you will be able to actually pump it up.
Nice.
So the question is, what are we going to do for hardcore high-tier players?
Yeah, that’s a good question too…