Guild Wars 2

I was one of the ones to quickly raise my pitch-fork over the lack of festive items in the BLCs.

I never expected to get all, if any of the skins. And I am the kind of player that really digs that. Historically I buy every costume, do every event to get every hat for every alt, and collect enough candy cane shards to make every weapon. Anet holiday events are a tradition now that is celebrated along with the actual holiday in my household.
So when I bought 20 Black Lion Keys, feeling good about supporting the company and excited to see the neat new Halloween items, I was pretty furious when the chests were stocked with all of the normal crap I never cared about, never wanted, and never would have spent money on.

The marketing led me, and many other people to believe the BLCs were modified to fit the Halloween theme. And they weren’t. I realized this after the first two or three opened; however, keys are account bound and worthless for anything else so if you have them then you might as well use them.

The issue was not that there was an item gamble. The issue was not feeling entitled to getting the rares. The issue was not the idea that Anet was only rewarding those that could buy hundreds of keys. The issue was that I felt swindled by a company I trust into buying something I had decided I didn’t want a long time ago on the merit of it being modified to coincide with an event I have always had fun with and was looking forward to.

Enter Mad King Chests. This is what I thought the BLCs were going to be. Halloween tonics replacing mystery tonics; Halloween crafting materials replacing limited use, non-stacking black lion harvesting junk; a chance to get Halloween gear, but things to play with if you don’t. If you could get ghosts in a box, then I would have been downright giddy.

It was a respectable solution on their part. To take all of the crap I was never interested in and would have never spent money on and let me trade it back for the chest I was expecting to begin with. Also, due to the nature of drops from the BLC, I bought 20 keys, out of those I may have gotten 5 more keys and opened about 25 chests, I also had some chest stuff from looted or story mode keys along the way. I created 50 Mad King Chests. So not only did I get what I initially thought I was paying for, I got double back what I bought.
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There was a problem, it was addressed, and I feel addressed in a fair manner to everyone that participated. Some people will still be upset that they misinterpreted the words “chance” in the ads for the rare skin in chests. Some people threw away all of their tonics and that is unfortunate. It was really a lose/lose situation for Anet and there was no way to make everyone happy. Even if the skins alone were posted for purchase, then the people that have paid 30g+ in TP, or twice that much buying mats for the recipes would be enraged.

It was a problem that could have been foreseen, and could have been avoided, but it happened. And I appreciate Anet’s decision makers recognizing that and getting out a solution, that most reasonable people will find as fair, as quick as can be expected in software.

This incident can also be seen as indicative of how other community issues are handled. The first response from Regina regarding the chests was, and I paraphrase: “Its a rare chance, there were other ways to get it, tough luck”. But either her, or somebody else looked over all of the feedback again and seen a legitimate problem. So we heard later that “a fix was on the way”, and then we had one. The conditions of it were unfortunate, but this is an example of our voices being heard on the forums, deliberated on, and influencing changes. Because we don’t see something happening doesn’t mean nothing is being done. I have more confidence now, after seeing BLC-gate unfold from start to finish, that all of the posts regarding free transfers, skill points, class bugs, and bots are not being ignored but require more finesse than adding a recipe to the mystic forge.

Some people may not like the solutions or decisions that come from player feedback. But at least there are solutions and decisions that come from it. Most developers could care less about the players. I worked for one where the boss would print comments from forums and read them to the team for everyone to get a good laugh over how petty or clueless the person was. When you have developers that respect player input, you have every right as a customer to not like it. But respectfully disagree with it. Developers are people too, and I’m sure they recognize a few names from the forums at this point. Employees don’t want to become jaded with their work because it’s met with vitriol from the players at every turn. And players don’t want low quality, junk content because the employees didn’t care about what we thought and what they were doing.

To Anet, thank you for listening and taking action. Even knowing it will never please everyone.

To us as a community: “Don’t bite the hand that feeds” is a phrase that can apply both ways when considering the player/developer relationship. Both groups want something the other has or can provide.

With all that…I’m cool with a mod just locking the thread.

I think the true test, in my eyes anyways, will be what Anet does for the Wintersday event. Will they learn from the mistakes and make the truly desirable skins/items available without RNG. I don’t care if they keep the RNG method in there, but as long as they allow a straight purchase for these things then I will see that they have taken the feedback from this event to heart.

It’s too late to change this event without making players mad one way or the other, but Wintersday can learn from these mistakes.

@ Grim

“It’s too late to change this event without making players mad one way or the other, but Wintersday can learn from these mistakes.”

Lets Hope So. I will keep playing until then.. otherwise there are other games that I can spend my “play to look cool” money on, like Planetside 2 where there is no gamble, and i can just feel safe spending my money.

Sigh, its just that this has been such a scandal, and it leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Anet would do better if they fired the lady from Nexon. GW has loyal fans. I don’t mind the BLCs, but the % chance for the skins was wrong.

People are now realizing that it’s better to buy gold from China rather than supporting Anet. What a shame.