I agree with this sentiment. Except " to get a chance at that big chest" we didn’t even know one would be there, but we stuck it out anyway. If you got DC’d you could’ve gotten in again. The event didn’t end nor start at the same time on all the overflows.
I was playing with a party of guild mates. They were playing just fine, so I kept logging back in, then right clicking one of them and going to “Join In…”, then playing – for five minutes, before the game would crash.
After a couple of tries, I let it do its file check and repair, then logged back in and connected to the same overflow server again and crashed immediately. And again.
After about six tries, it stopped letting me connect to that overflow server. It put me on an overflow server with very few people, so the Ancient Karka was just kind of standing there.
Because I still wanted to experience the event, even though I couldn’t participate, I just set my character in a safe area and then went over to sit next to a my fiance while she finished the event. She didn’t have sound, so it was cheapened, but it was still something.
I could NOT have gotten in again. It did not work. Period. The event was completely broken. I spent just as much time and effort as you did on that event; the difference is that I didn’t get to enjoy it because I couldn’t stay logged in for more than ten minutes at a time, and I didn’t get any loot. In fact, I would say my experience was more like work than yours, since mine was a thoroughly boring and frustrating experience, while yours was one of fun.
I want that loot not because I’m butthurt about not getting the loot, but because I did everything I could to set aside at least some time for each of these events, and not a single one was playable, let alone enjoyable. I want the loot because at least then I feel like I’ve gotten a sincere apology for having my time wasted.
OP, if they were to go through with your suggestion: 1 time stamping/mapping every character log in/out would probs take a lot of time and resources. Then how do they know who opened the chest already? Do those of us who did open it get double rewarded?
You really have no idea how a program works, do you? All of that should be logged and queryable. Everything. It’s not even hard. Keep track of the actions of a character – store the position in a database every few seconds and store a note for any significant actions (killed x beast, raised y player, opened z chest).
It can take some disk space, but space is cheap these days. Large enterprise database systems (postgres or Oracle) can easily handle several million transactions per second, so even with many million players online, logging something every few seconds isn’t hard.
So there are simple ways to check whether or not someone was participating:
1) Were they in the event area?
2) Were they killing karka at some point during the event?
3) Do we ever see them lose connection, then log in again within (let’s be generous because of two factor authentication) five minutes?
4) Because an event like the Ancient Karka dying is also an event large enough to be logged, we can do an extra check:
a) Was the person killing karka, then disconnected, then reconnected, then killing karka, multiple times at any point during the event? (i.e. this person gave up because the event was causing massive instability for them)
b) Was the person in the area of the Ancient Karka before its death, disconnected during its death, and reconnected not long after its death? The lucky among these people will have looted the chest because they were in a party and could reconnect to the overflow server they were participating on. But looting the chest should also be logged.
All of the above can be incorporated into a simple query or script that would automate building the list. I’ve written similar scripts – it takes a couple of hours. Then you spend a day or two making sure that the data it pulls appears to be accurate (note that this doesn’t take much human interaction, so very few hours are wasted) and you’re done.
This event though, as a whole, had so many rewarding aspects you can’t exactly quantify.
Like not being able to participate in the first event during the two hours I had allocated on Friday night, not being able to participate in the second event during the four hours I had allocated on Saturday night, and not being able to participate in the final event during the twelve hours I had allocated on Sunday? I think I can quantify that.
It’s a shame people can’t enjoy a game (video or otherwise) without being handed a trophy.
It’s a shame people can’t take their rewards and be on their way without needing to cheat other players out of those same rewards because they like feeling special.