From community manager NyxWGA:
I want to answer this, so that folks can see what the decision making process was here. That doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to agree with the answer, but I’ll give it to you anyway. Many folks are concerned because EU is selling ships that we are not yet (notably the Mikasa). EU has a large marketing campaign tied to gamescom right now, and are expecting to gain a large influx of customers to their servers – more customers = more folks to sell shiny toys to. NA’s marketing campaign is not set to kick off for several more weeks – we have no large event occurring to promote so it doesn’t make sense to throw advertising dollars around with no concrete reason or goal just yet. We have an extensive campaign slated to begin a few weeks from now and ramp up throughout the month of September. This is when we expect to see that same large influx of customers. We want to generate the most revenue possible from our promotions, because after all we are a business. We could sell ships now, but it would only be to the smaller group of existing customers.
I know that sucks for you as an existing customer. You see ships that are available elsewhere, and you want them RIGHT NOW, and I totally get that. I’m telling you all of this to set your expectations that we won’t be selling these ships immediately – not because we wish to withhold them from you out of some sort of malice or spite, but because it makes the most business sense to wait and sell them to the largest possible audience once our marketing and advertising campaign has a chance to fully ramp up. These decisions were made strategically based on extensive market data, not willy nilly. Some guy in an office somewhere doesn’t just sit up one day and say, hey I think I’ll sell the Mikasa tomorrow. These things are planned months in advance, and tied to what we know about customer behavior in a given time period, and expected growth of customers based on advertising dollars spent. To set correct expectations, it is HIGHLY LIKELY that EU will sell other ships before us as well, based on their planned advertising dollars spent. We will ALSO have times when we sell things before they do, again based on concrete data and planned marketing campaigns.
As a note, we will be doing giveaways during PAX, just as EU is doing during gamescom. The Tirpitz will be included in that. We also have a ship specific to PAX that will be given away, both at the convention and here on the forums to those who participate in that week’s forum contests.
