Dear ANet, Please extend Wintersday

Who says I will still be playing then????
I hear all this talk and nonsense about next year and wonder if you guys have gone mad or something. Next year???!!!!!! Who cares!!!!
This year is when I am playing and by the looks of it will be my last.

STORY TIME!!

Theo leaves the forum with the Searing Flames of rage surrounding him, and the Pun Police chasing him, but that is not the current issue.

After long minutes of wandering endlessly though the Shiverpicks he finally wondered across a boss with an interesting Elite Skill.

I just Captured Ward Against Harm and after extensive minutes of research I have come to the conclusion that with careful weaving of Water the Ward can be expanded to cancel all flames within a given area, yes forums included, as long as they are less than 20 pages, anyway...

I am using Ward Against Harm [Amplified Version]!

Farewell flames of hate/rage/stupidity.

The End

ZOMG, was that kid in the video for real??? I like the part where he sounds suprised his keyboard is broke.... absolutely mindblowing...

I finally have the video working, at the end chest I finally got the mini polar bear. It took 143 Times, but I got one, here's the video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO

Rickrolled......I'm gonna have nightmares....oh the hair....

No dont extend. The lag is bad enough as it is.

/notsigned

sadly, the kitty speaks truth...

All this fuss for a minipet, well understandable, the ideas was bad imo, can't wait for this Grindersday event to end, i'm sick of it with all the people crying over some cool pixels.

- Ganni

Forgive me. I've read just four pages, but I can't stomach any more. I will try to provide a few answers or a bit of information in response to your comments.
No, the actual core event ended about 12:45 AM Pacific on the 2nd, after the final Grenth vs. Dwayna battle. What you have now are the festival decorations, but the event has actually concluded.

I think you're recalling the Dragon Festival, yes.

I will pass along that we should consider an "NPC Departure Warning System" for the future. I'm sorry that this took people by surprise. In fact, the NPCs didn't disappear at the end of the event (as mentioned above) but lingered for 36 hours. (I recall the first event, they disappeared instantly.) Again, I will suggest that we have a declared NPC departure time and day for the next Wintersday.

The NPCs would have disappeared no matter what build you were in. They were timed to go away at Noon Pacific today. The fact we had a build to add something -- the special offer for those who needed the hats -- was coincidental.

And to the question "Who cares about hats?" I'd like to say "Apparently quite a lot of people!" We had numerous support tickets, emails, forum posts and PMs about the lag issues, and the fact that a few players had their hats disappear from their inventory! (It was a function of the LA Data Center provider's problems, I think.) Anyway, we are extending the availability of the hats to those who were affected by the lag, and even to those who were not. I think it's nice, and even if it doesn't benefit you, I hope you'll see it as a kind thing to do.

I am in your boat, precisely. Farming the mini got me a load of goodies, but I forgot the NPCs were going away! Oh well, there's always next year.

And I will say something about the Miniature Polar Bear. This was intended as a surprise, a bonus, a gift from the design team, if you will. No, we did not tell you chapter and verse on the new pet, any more than we tell you a walk-through on every mission in the game. I was not told about it, and the designer wrote an apology about that. I would not have sad straight out "There are no minis" if I had known, of course! On the other hand, even if I had been told, I would have waited until the mini was claimed by someone to confirm its existence. Please understand: We share a lot of information, as much or more than any other company. But this sort of thing does not involve information to which you have some sort of entitlement. If the designers want to add a special treat, they will. We did not talk about the Zaishen Chest in advance; we don't talk about all the gifts it endows even now. We didn't forecast reconnects, in detail, until they were unveiled. We slipped in the DAW Weapons from the first contest without fanfare. We may do that same with the 2007 items. And we are working on another few treats that we're just not talking about yet.

While some will complain, "I want to know everything, you owe me that information," the fact is, the designer want to add surprises, and spelling out every nuance in a product page, or giving the details in an events page totally takes away the mystery, the excitement, and the joy of discovery.

Some people like to look at, shake, rattle, even peek under the wrapping page of every gift under the Christmas tree. Most of us like to wait, knowing there could be cool surprises inside of the packages. I think the PB is an entirely cool addition to the game, and I encourage you to consider it in that light.

Words to make this post longer.

Polar bear is cool, but only a macroscopic bit of the population can enjoy her coolness. Overall = not too cool for 99.99999999999% of the people

But it did do a great job of pissing off a large percentage of the fan base! If that was their goal .. job well done is in order!

This pet should be put in the chest of wintersday past. Or was their goal to create another mini that 99.99999999999999999999% of their player base will never have access to?

HINT: Anet dont drive off too many people with gw2 this far out .. they may not come back.

Surprises are good...

But when you say there is no mini, it turns out there is, and theres a very limited time (and drop rate) to get it, you can understand why folks are annoyed.

You might want to check your sources more, and not flatly deny things. Could have answered with a "wait and see".

2 WORDS "READ WIKI"

I guess it's somewhat cool, like an unannounced lottery for a handful of people... but on the other hand there was nothing for the 100,000 losers so it's kind of in poor taste as a Christmas mini...

I had been told there were no plans to add a mini. My sources were not reachable during the holiday break. Please don't judge us harshly; it was a communications mix-up for which the designer has already sent a very heartfelt and gracious apology. I, too, am sorry for the miscommunication.

What's "nothing?" An event that ran 12 days? Drops, and quests, and rewards, and more? A finale that extended more than 24 hours, and offered two hats and, again, a lot of holiday-oriented gifts?

If the be-all and end-all is the mini, we could have made another Miniature Pig. But I don't see anyone suggesting that.

Why is there candy cane shards dropping with no collector?

I have +2000 candy cane shards and I'd like to be able to do something with them this year.

Instead of dragging out the chance to get fugly hats bring back the collector for candy cane shards.

Horrible server rollback-inducing lag in the finales, festival hats so unattractive that my mom lol'ed, a cruel joke that was the PB that's only further alienated you from your dwindling fanbase, suddenly disappearing NPC's leaving people with stacks of cc shards, and otherwise recycled content is something akin to "nothing."

And if the PB situation was known or hinted about like the Mini Pig, then yes, it would have been heartily suggested.

I dont blame ANet (or you personally, Gaile)
Just pointing out that it was an unfortunate turn of events that left folks dissapointed.

Minis are very popular items, and you are our link to the devs so we take what you say as truth.

No doubt this particular event will be forgotten by the time we get to the Canthan New Year, and everyone who wants one can get a Rat mini (chinese zodiac animal for 2008).

Minimouse.

Where exactly is this heartfelt apology anyway?

Not the best attitude to get people to keep handing over their money for new products. Understandable reaction .. yet still counterproductive.

Putting minis in the game that 99.999999999999999% of your player base will NEVER be able to have is brilliant! What kind of reaction did you really expect? People are sick of not even being able to get a panda now the polar bear is launched for 10 people or less.

You guys go OUT of your way to make weapon skins common to the point they are worthless. Then put minis in the game in such absurdly low numbers that they inspire Ebay purchases. Sorry my IQ of 142 is having a difficult time grasping the sense in that.

GJ Serenity Silverstar. You can so much see Jonathan Malfoy in this thread and a few others on the same topic. Poor guy, I wish him to get better soon.

It's one of these moment when you stop, listen to the silent internet (well there's my laptop fan and bin collection atm) and ponder on the beauties of the world. The real one. Not the virtual one made of bits and pixels.

If only people would take a really very deep breath and look at the situation from a safe distance, they may realise how surreal some of the comments are. One wanders if insteand of helping people, the net is not making more problems for them.

Well, at least 4 days after the new year began, we're not homeless and dying of malnutrition, neither tortured or flooded. I wish people would remember last year as if it was yesterday, and thousands of people dead after the Tsunami and tens of thousands without a home.

Well I guess these people need to see a doctor, or more exactly a psychology doctor. May be a good day out in the wild, trekking or kayaking would do the trick too? It could make you realise that it's not the virtual panda that make the man, and that you can get out of the Matrix at any time. It's normal to get emotions because some people get a very rare thing you'd love to have, but the mature behaviour is not to get sick over it. I'm sure you have things I don't have, be it in-game or in real-life (if that makes you feel better).

Make another miniture pig - this and the mini moa have been the best ones minitures so far if for no other reason than thier method of aquisition.

Agree with cellardweller. Not everyone loves minipets because of their rarity. My favorite minipets are the devourer, siege turtle, and unfortunately, the panda. Now guess which one of those I don't have...

I'm not really bent out of shape over this mainly because I don't really like Usula, or any other polar bears for that matter. So yeah, no big loss for me. Still, I think it was a very poor way to acquire said uber rare mini. I don't mind the rarity itself, but honestly, a solo quest (easy as hell one at that - don't even need to fight anything) that is only available during a once-a-year event?

Ah well, grats to those handful that actually got one. You can now afford just about any other mini.

I actually had to laugh out loud over that one - the mini-pig thing was one of the more amusing events in GW history. I can clearly remember paying 15k for the thing and then waking up the next day after AFK'ing my hat to find like five or six of the things in my inventory. I knew when I payed 15k they probably were not worth it but I *really* wanted one to go with my ranger pet. I made a decision that the chances of the cost skyrocketing outweighed the relative worth of 15k. In the end I couldn't find it more amusing (or sad?) to read the complaints about how rare it was followed by the same exact people complaining about common it was. A classic example of many people unhappy because they wanted really rare stuff to drop for nobody but themselves and for themselves only to drop all the time. Like now, there was no real way to make most of these people happy outside of simply giving all of them rare pets and no one else.

Ah well (after mostly supporting you guys I suppose I have to go negative), since you guys caved on the BMP whining and now caved on the hat whining (even though lag and/or not around for the event has never been an excuse in the past) what did you particularly expect here? We now know that if we whine enough and can figure out a way to rationalize around what you strongly implied (and in this case flat out stated) we will get our way - what did you think will happen? Whine whine whine until you cave - after all we can no longer point back to you guys never giving in as the whiners can show the last two times they whined enough they got their way. Expect more whining in the future with these two event used as an example.

If you do not intend these things to be "exclusive" or "time limited" then pretty much tell us. When you (at the least) strongly imply they are and then if there is enough whining you cave then expect people to do as they wish and expect enough complaints to fix anything they had trouble with. If you are upfront then few will get angry - though as long as "We will decide later" is the answer then highly expect page after page of complaining and whining until you cave in.

I don't really care either way it goes (more than likely I would have done just as I did), just don't be surprised that when complaining works you get, well, lots of complaints.

For that matter I don't understand the fixation with the pig. It's.. well, ugly. :x

Oh polarbear I know you want Mommy but Mommy will get you next year.. -hugs-

As someone alredy said, NOTHING, Gaile. All consumables are available elsewere (alcohol, sweets etc), hats are... of debatable aesthetic value. All fun quests were seen already, and the new ones were solo quests - in an online game! how was I supposed to do that with my friends actually? over ts i suppose...- that were mostly done by people farming ccs. Only new unique thing that would be usable after the Wintersday is the PB. As you wrote yourself, it was ment as a gift: thank you very much, but I'd appreciate the gift way more if a bit more than 10 people in players database recieved this gift! Because as it is now, all your gift has caused is frustration, the feeling of "wasted time" spent on farming, jealousity towards those lucky and such; I guess Grenth won after all because tahts defenetly not Dwaynas idea of Holiday Spirit!

And what's wrong with Piggy anyways?
The only people who I see regreting it to be so common are those who'd like to speculate with it's price (no offence). I myself love my Piggy because it's a cute mini (nothing to do with the market price) I had to work for. Same goes for my Moa - as I wrote in annother thread, Moa is my fav mini as it has a story of its own and it would remain my fav even if it cost 1k.

Oh and about the NPC...
You're saying that the event has ended and thats why NPCs dissapeared? Well...
Primo: than why were the cc still dropping?
Secundo: what's wrong with leaving the collector for a few days to please your players just a bit and save some of their storage?

Some people let themselves be like this. As said before, it's almost an academic case of "nerd rage". Are people so impatient and immature? Aren't people able to calm down and ponder over the situation and how they reacted?

I'm 100% sure people are able to do that, but they're not willing. People want the game to be THEIR game, to work THEIR way. To satisfy a few people, Anet has to dissatisfy others. People will not be reasonable on this, they will get greedy, angry, selfish or jealous. Do people even want a refund?

Can't agree more with you here!

Use a mule character if your storage is full.

I sympathize, I'm rather fond of Mini Vizu

Just add the CCS Collector in for a week after any event i'm sure that what happend
on a few events before ? or my memory is shot from new years. lol

Hm. I feel bad about using that as one of my arguments multiple times now. Sorry for the mixup.

I'd still like to find some way (as most people do when they don't want to accept defeat) to rationalize it so that we can get the collector back in for a little while longer. Perhaps I can say something like "there was too much confusion with the dates because of last year's event". I don't know. I'll read the rest of the thread now to find out if there have been any important developments since this and come up with something.

EDIT: Mmk. Caught up. There are quite a few people making points I agree with and I've found a few new favorite GWG posters from this thread alone. The fact of the matter is, much of this event was very poorly planned.

And of course there's still the ray of hope "If the event's over, why are candy cane shards still dropping?" business.

Or a new argument:

"I was so busy during Christmas, who with a life has time to cash in their CCs?!"

Yeah. There's no reason at all not to do that.

There's certainly no reason to remove the collectors BEFORE the candy canes have stopped dropping, like they did this year.

As for the hats and polar bear, I frankly don't really care - I'd have preferred a yuletide cap, but the wreath looks good on my mesmer; and being a european PvE player who don't enjoy farming I'm already quite accustomed to not being able to access "elite" content.

I would also greatly appreciate knowing whom had won the duel between grenth and dwayna? One wonders if they, arena net, didn't even tally the votes. I, for one, would like the "competition" between the two to count in the ending or continuation of Wintersday event related activities.

So /signed
A precedent had been set, keep with it.

Well, it could have been worse. Wintersday collectors appeared with the same inventory as last year and ANet didn't bump up requirements further than what they did from 2005 to 2006, which meant that my prefarmed gargoyle skulls were converted to enough spiked eggnog to max the respective title. I actually liked the St. Lucia wreath, the icy crown on the other hand turned out an abomination as I had feared.

I lost one round of finale because of server crash, no big deal, there were plenty of others to collect some gifts.

I never took the continued existence of shard collectors as granted and kept converting shards as they came. Thus, when ANet pulled them out I was left with just a handful from the latest dungeon run and it was easy to trash them out of littering my limited storage space.

Now about the bear thing, I don't really follow the logic behind the approach ANet has taken here. An ultra-rare minipet as a random gift from a totally mundane no-skill-whatsoever-required solo quest? That's like if one random player out of million got ten stacks of ecto by completing 'War Preparations' (the first quest in pre-searing if you don't recognize), it's just plain silly. The minimoa was a great idea that caused a lot of excitement, co-operation and happiness across the player base, the way this polar bear was handled leaves me wondering WTF the devs were thinking (or drinking). Mind you, I already have my favorite mini and had I been the single recipient of such a token I would have publicly deleted it just to make a statement.

yep there are minis I would like to get cause of the cute factor (and I collect pandas.....)....some I dont give a rats-ass (bad pun) about....koss, rurik, ghostly hero, zhed....see a pattern here? I really like my aaxtle and the wind rider my hubby gave me (he hates minis, except the turtle)..I even think the wallow is fun just cause of its size, I like the destroyer and the ceratadon, not impressed with the asuran or varesh.

Many of the minis I like the best are totally not obtainable by me the casual pve-er....I cant do rollerball to save my life (the greased lighting is soo cool ) I will never have enough plat for a panda--unless someone dupes it for me--so not in this life time.....and seeing as the newest cute mini is the ultra uber rarest (why only gold?) wont be seeing it any place but wiki and guru.

why do they make the best minis the most impossible to get??? I wouldnt care so much if it had been say a freezie or grentch mini...but oh well....I will just look at the screenies

A Freezie mini from the Wintersday Chest? That wouldn't have been just appropriate, it would have been way cool (at least with a sane drop rate like 1 in 100). Do want!

Hmm I think you guys forget the most important thing:
If ANet wasnt going to tell us about the Mini Polar Bear, just think what other things we dont know

read: where did ANet hide the Mini Bono or Mini Gaile ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by slydr68
Don't forget that you can salvage the cc shards - they generally turn into piles of glittering dust.../quote

and those piles of so called "glittering dust" you can sniff and really feel the spirit of Wintersday...who knows you may even have a vision of having a Mini Polar Bear

The candy canes are still droping because its a way of Anet saying:
"We are sorry...here - have a lolly, are we cool now ? ''

shove it up your A...Net XD

but seriously my general opinion <since I really wanted to get a Mini Polar Bear for my gf> :

there are two types of surprises : good ones and bad ones
I didnt do the The Strength of Snow quest because the reward for it wasnt appealing enough for me to invest time on it...
if there wasnt for Witchblade I wouldnt even know about the bear since wiki didnt have any info

Im one of the ppl that think it was a bad surprise

Of course this sentiment is understood, but the comparison seems a bit lacking in the sense that when all the players looked under the x-mas tree to open the packages only a couple of people world wide got it.
I cannot agree to Anet calling it a holiday gift to the players if there are only one or two available, especially something like this with its high cudliness, cuteness factor. And please be aware that this is an important point. Most people don't mind not being able to get a ghostly hero mini or a mini mallyx because they also score low on the cudliness factor. Look at the Gwen mini...that one is popular also cause it's a cute little girl, not some awesome hero or beast. Let's just say that when people think something is cute it's best not to limit it to a couple.

Now if you want to surprise a group of people who you sold over 4 million GW games to a mini with a drop rate of 1 or 2 (for as far as we are aware) in a 2 week period whereafter it may not drop again for another year can only ever lead to disappointment. Now, the interesting thing is, that I have a funny feeling something has not been told to us yet and is still being held back to surprise us. So I guess the surprise factor is worth all the initial disappointment to Anet.

I could even reason to say that since the dungeon itself has a chest of wintersday past and this wintersday is now past it could now logically drop the mini as well. Now to just say that it was a communication issue I can understand but let's be honest and acknowledge that most of life's problems tend to revolve around or involve communication issues. It's what we do all day.

Personally I would like for Anet to be clearer and exacter to you Gaile, cause you're the one stuck between a rock and a hard place as such. And with that I can only say that it's not fair to you nor to us. And though I am sure this thread is more than your stomach can handle (something for which I cannot remotely blame you) it is also true that you are the only person people can offer their grievance to and therefore you become the focus of all this grief.

So my apologies if I have been harsh towards you at any point Gaile. Just know that people are upset and have no one else to talk to. My only question is how did the devs come up with the idea that this would be well received because as it stands now this negative reaction is something that was something that could've been foreseen by lesser prophets and anyone applying a minimal amount of common sense.

Also I would like to say that an MMO is a live community in which Anet is automatically in a leadership position. Now it's different to do this to a few people in one country than hundreds of thousands or millions worldwide. Perhaps this has been underestimated.

I could go on but I'll leave it at this. Perhaps a different tactics can be used for 2008. I'm not sure that upsetting a lot of people and then sort of fixing it is a sustainable tactic. If something is supposed to be such a surprise then perhaps it is better to leave it at that and not discuss it at all. I fear that in this case your messages only added fuel to the fire. Half information is certainly worse than no information.