We hope the holiday season was enjoyable for you and we sincerely apologise for the lack of proper communication on why we did not release the Christmas Convoy for our European Server yet.
Let me give this another try as I think it is important that we own up to our mistakes and listen to you at the same time. First and foremost we felt that time-gating access to this new and exciting ship (releasing packages in intervals of time, from most expensive to least expensive) would be against our players’ interest and we wanted to ensure that each player had access to Graf Spee while retaining the choice between having additional discounts on content bundles or purchasing just the ship.
This unfortunately was incompatible with the mission format of the Christmas Convoy, which led us to believe that it was better to not participate than to make the missions only available over Christmas to those who are spending a lot of money. We do understand that it felt like we withheld content from you and I do personally feel sorry for that. Since this content was time and money gated we felt it was the right thing to do, but we should have better communicated our reasons and for that we only have ourselves to blame.
We did negotiate with our global team and the other regions to adjust their original plan and can now happily say that Europe is ready to join the Convoy on 2 January. The change to the other regions primarily means that they will catch up with Europe and also offer Graf Spee unbundled and bundled earlier than planned, so the missions will become available to all owners of Graf Spee.
The Convoy Campaign will start in Europe on 2 January (00:01 UTC) and will last until 18 January (23:59 UTC) synchronous with the other regions. This means that all the content of the in-game missions will become available on Monday for everyone, regardless of which package they purchased. Those of you working hard on the “Hunt for Graf Spee” campaign mission chain – you will have access to all of the mission content upon completion of the 4th mission of said campaign.
Special information for everyone who purchased camouflages (in-game or through the Premium Shop) that are available as mission rewards in this Christmas Convoy Campaign:
If you complete the mission granting you the respective reward camouflage before 18 January (23:59 UTC) and bought any or all of the Campaign Camouflages, you will receive an equivalent compensation in Doubloons after the end of the Campaign (on or before 21 January). This affects the Campaign Camouflages for the following vessels: Fuso, Leander, Admiral Graf Spee, Budyonny, Bayern, Farragut and Tirpitz.
Since the other regions did have a head start on the missions, if the players there spent $100 or $75 respectively, we wanted to make sure we compensated the European players who also invested a comparable amount into getting the new ship. Therefore, all players who purchased the Admiral Graf Spee Supreme offer before this article was published will receive the last 4 mission rewards (Fuso + distinct camouflage + port slot, Bayern + distinct camouflage + port slot, distinct camouflage for Admiral Graf Spee, distinct Camouflage for Tirpitz) regardless of their completion after the end of the campaign (on or before 21 January). Attention – purchasing the Supreme Bundle after this message is published will not unlock this benefit!
We understand that the communication around this has been terrible and I apologise for all the unrest during this festive season. I wish you all the best for 2017 and am looking forward to seeing you on the seas!
With kind regards,
Markus Schill
General Manager Wargaming Europe
