This entire situation is an outrage. Both the creation and release, and the proposed solution are extremely unprofessional. By so blatantly re-skinning — there is no way this is an oversight — a unique item, Arena Net degraded the value of the item, and in turn devalued the time of original consumers of T3 Human armor. The consumers work and time for a unique item was now wasted, destroyed by Arena Net’s decision. Any opportunities they missed to acquire this armor are now forever gone.
Arena Net saw the harm this caused, and responded, but their offered solution is far from correct. They offer an unknown remake of the skin to the consumers, or a refund on the purchase. This solution takes no account of the work or time any consumer spent to integrate the skin to his/her character. Without knowing what the updated version will be, any consumer’s resources spent to obtain this form of the skin are devalued; as they can only act in concerns to what they know, their current skin. All time is valuable, in more than a monetary sense. The other opportunities that were bypassed to work for the skin/gems/items to go with the skin and the investments (whether intellectual/monetary/etc.) are lost with this solution. This especially affects the uninformed consumers, who are still out there working to acquire items to go with the Flamekissed skin. All of the time they spend becomes nothing with the update of the skin. The refund option does not credit consumers for any time that has been wasted, only crediting the sole purchase.
In short, Arena Net is rectifying devaluation of one party by devaluing another party. They created a devaluation of human T3 consumers by removing the unique aspect of the armor, thus the work and time of many T3 consumers is devalued and lost. The solution they present, to revalue T3 users, creates a devaluation of the Flamekissed consumer, in a very similar way to the T3 party’s devaluation. Any work or time the Flamekissed consumers invested is now lost.
No company should, in any form, devalue its consumers. To correct this wrong, Arena Net needs realize the value of both parties of consumers. First, the skin must be removed from sale, and be reworked, to prevent the continued devaluation of T3 users. This has been done, and was a correct decision. Next, any consumer who purchased the Flamekissed skin needs to be allowed the option to keep the current version. This takes into account the work and time they spent to acquire it and adapt to it, thus respecting their invested time.
For those who purchased the T3 Human skin, their armor will remain slightly devalued, an unfortunate outcome of a poor decision made by Arena Net. No solution will completely rectify this wrong, but the current proposed solution only harms the entirety of another party. Arena Net needs to take responsibility concerning this substandard decision and their devaluation of one party, and not in-turn devalue another.
