[2020] In Case You're Wondering What Your Managers Look Like.

How you gonna screenshot me while I am cheezin' like that!?!?! T_T

I introduced myself to the NA Forums a month and a half ago here, but I am mainly active on the SEA English-Speaking forums :) You'll see Hapa a lot more on the NA Forums, but I am still keeping an eye on y'all over here. I hope you guys were able to catch the stream and see a better face than this XD. Although, it's probably accurate to how much I smile on the regular hahaha. I had a lot of fun playing WoWs with Hapa and our community, and I can't wait until it's my turn to stream again! You guys are great.
-Sail

Aloha,

So firstly, I never said that I was Hawaiian, I have always said I was stationed in Hawaii for some time and they used to call me Hapa because I am half Japanese.

Secondly, unlike our EU counterparts we are streaming from homes, so I would say the quality is just fine, especially since we do this content for our community on our own computers with our own hardware. We don't make money off our streams, we literally do these streams so that, exactly what you just said can occur, you have a face with a name.

Thirdly, @Mademoisail is my NA counterpart, but what many of you do not know is that the NA community covers ALL of Canada, the USA, Latin America, South America and we are now supporting all of our English speaking friends across the Pacific in Australia and New Zealand as well as, anyone that wishes to engage with us in English on the Asia forums. She does an AMAZING job with so many programs.

Along with @Maredraco who is our Brazilian CM helping to communicate with that awesome community!

-Hapa

Aloha,

We are currently on the look out for a Spanish Speaking CM actually!

SoonTM?

-Hapa

Watching the VoD of the stream and every stream going further back (as I do for quality control and feedback to improve our streams) I don't see any of the stuff you're talking about. The audio on the side of the person that I am streaming with could be better, but it is what it is due to the limitations of streaming from two separate computers in two separate houses miles apart.

And again, we are streaming from our homes on our own equipment, not in a studio.

I stream on my own too and have never seen any issues.

-Hapa

Our application is open if you're interested in applying here is a link: https://wargaming.com/en/careers/vacancy_1204423/

Also, just saying, @Hapa_Fodder, @Maredraco, and @Mademoisail are doing an amazing job. We do have a lot of work ahead of us, but that is half the fun of it.

Also, 10/10 screenshot from the stream.

@AJTP89 this is so painful to read knowing how different things are from these perceptions. I've worked on NA team since July 2015, when we started OBT, so I know what I'm talking about.

First of all, let's establish some context. Like it or not, but the game is developed by Lesta Studio, which is a great success for the team, considering how much creative autonomy they had from the developers of Tanks, our big brother. Now World of Warships is a truly global and thriving product with 38M+ registered players across all servers only on PC, not even counting our console and mobile versions. Meanwhile there are many global gaming products out there that don't even bother working on the ground and building regional operations. In contrast, Wargaming has established regional publishing teams in 4 offices: Prague (EU), Singapore (SEA), Tokyo (SEA) and Austin (NA) to actually do things for players, like organizing Anchors Away events, running Customer Support, running Social Media channels, coordinating different volunteer programs, reporting your feedback and suggestions from various channels and to help game designers in Lesta with our inputs for better decisions. While this is true that the final decisions on general direction and critical game design choices are made in Lesta, the regional teams are consulted and we are being listened. Which doesn't mean we as regional team always agree with every opinion we hear, even if it is very loud. We make sure to collect opinions from various sources, including structured surveys and do our best effort to represent you guys objectively.

Some examples of game features that were conceptualized and requested by NA team with or without inputs from NA community: containers system, system of patches, in-game news, historical commanders, released warships: USS Enterprise, HMCS Haida, USS Massachusetts, USS Alaska. And there are more cool features coming, which are still not announced. Just a few examples of in-game events that were produced by NA team:

https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/sales-and-events/canada-day-2020/


https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/sales-and-events/anzac-day/


https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/general-news/partnership-to-support-us-veterans/


https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/sales-and-events/pearl-harbor-remembered/

I see you have USS Texas photo on avatar. Do you know that it was entirely our local initiative to partner with that museum in 2017 and help raise over $400K in donations to help the ship in critical financial need after Hurricane Harvey? Well, it's surely different from balancing AP bombs or AA mechanics, but I'm super proud of our team for making this happen. And that success story was inspired by you guys, who actively cheered for the museum and helped us to recognize the opportunity to do something together. This was not the only case, we organized a fundraiser to help USS Batfish in Oklahoma last year. By the way, check out the upcoming Naval Legends video about this submarine. It's coming live on our Youtube channel this Saturday. NA publishing was directly involved in production process of this and many other videos with one goal - to bring more players to the game via organic interest in Naval History.

Are you a vet? Did you know, you can verify your military status via id.me service and get some perks, including the exclusive Commemorative flag and USS Albany with exclusive camo? https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/general-news/world-of-warships-salute/ We recently added support for the veterans of Canadian armed forces and looking into further steps to recognize our vets or address some of the less talked about issues like mental health with our recent campaign in partnership with Stack Up.

Having said all this, we have enough ownership over publishing operations, PR, marketing and direct line of daily communication with all guys in Lesta, who sometimes stay until 1am in the office to deal with time-zone differences. As for the turnover - this work in such pace is hard. Some people get burned out due specifics of working with 24/7 operations. Some are getting poached by other gaming companies with deep pockets. Some people leave because they want to want to work directly with developers in same office and realize that pure publishing is not for them. There are all kinds of stories.

@Navalpride33 could you clarify what are you referring to? At no point we wanted our Spanish speaking players to go to EU forums.

@AJTP89

This is flattering to hear, but I respectfully disagree. Simply because we collect your feedback and acknowledge some of your pains doesn't mean we are more capable at solving these pains than the guys in Lesta.

That's not how it works here. Our heads of global marketing and development for World of Warships are both based in Lesta studio and operate as a single team.

We do acknowledge mistakes, especially at the rollout of the rework, but we've also introduced multiple changes both to CV's and AA. We did not allow CV's to Clan Battles for a long time, until we had confidence. Now, after Clan Battles Season 9, we are going to work on improvements announced here: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/40. Introducing entirely new class on a live server is a huge challenge, which actually doesn't have many precedents in video games. And it would not be possible without the constructive feedback that we received throughout all these stages.

Dude, save this point for now. Wait until Friday and tune in for NA livestream on Twitch. ;)

World of Warships is a global product and even NA server is not 100% US players. We did discuss this particular issue, but eventually agreed that with the current tight schedule of events there are no good alternative to please everyone. We'll make up for this hopefully with some other super cool activity that I can't announce at the moment.

World of Warships is actually pretty healthy, especially in 2020. Not only it doesn't decline, it grows and these trends are very reassuring together with the lineup of upcoming content that we have for you.

Maybe you're right, but we don't see a good way to give you guys transparency on these internal processes and dynamics. Because if we do, should we also give you transparency on debates different teams and different designers in Lesta having about various topics? I'm sure it would be cool to have such reality show with all internal conversations observed by players, but trust me, sometimes you don't want to know how the sausage is made.

No worries, I enjoyed this conversation and thanks for raising this. Rest assured, we do pass feedback to decision makers and we know it's always reviewed. We actually receive replies on all critical concerns or suggestions explaining why something can or can't be addressed or alternative options to discuss. And we internally work hard on improving these cross-regional communications.

The Kidd was one of the last tour stops we made

But it was also one of the most amazing stops I've been to!

I definitely cannot wait to get back onto it!

-Hapa