This isn’t circular reasoning.
We’re not saying we are going to do nothing because we said we would do nothing.
We’re saying we won’t change direction (from the previously stated plans) because it would put many players at a disadvantage, and on top of that these players would be hurt because they listened to us.
Keep in mind, more people used boosters than did not.
I would point out a parallel issue happening with the Living Story. Anet previously stated that Scarlet’s Lair would remain. And so it did – minus the chests that players actually cared about. When some people found that the chests were gone, they just deleted all their leftover ciphers. And then later, Anet said they would restore the chests. Presumably, Anet is not going to go back and restore the ciphers to all the people who deleted them because Anet misled them. Wouldn’t it be “fair” then, to also not restore the chests? Why the double standard?
We seriously considered many different options, and doing nothing seemed the most fair. Do you disagree?
I disagree with framing this as an issue of fairness, as it implies that Anet is interested in producing a fair outcome that can be had. I think the only fair solution would have been for Anet to set out with the intention of compensating players for what Anet intended to take away. The fact is that Anet did not do this, so everything that follows is unfair – not between different groups of players, but between all players and Anet. None of the players in this matter have done anything to provoke having their rewards taken away or being forced to use/waste their rewards under duress. Do you disagree with that? Anet has already unjustly inflicted one form of punishment on one group of players, and according to some seriously disturbed sense of equality, we are now hearing Anet say that the fairest solution is to now unjustly inflict an even greater punishment on the remaining players.
So the correct frame of questioning is not a matter of fairness, because Anet already messed that up. The question now is how many more players Anet intends to screw, and how hard Anet intends to screw them. Do you honestly believe that extending this policy to inflict as much damage on every player as possible is actually the best, fairest solution that can reasonably be implemented?
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back and ask why it is that Anet did not implement a fair solution in the first place. I can’t help but notice that Anet never consulted with the player community over what we’d like to happen with existing rewards that had to be removed. They didn’t have to ask, since it’s obvious that the players would have asked for some form of compensation. And yet there was none. So we can only assume that Anet didn’t ask because they didn’t want to give players a chance to voice those concerns. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” And further it’s probably safe to assume that Anet wanted to commit to this course of action because it’s much easier to simply delete our stuff than to come up with an exit strategy that is reasonably fair for everyone. I don’t think “doing nothing” is the fairest reasonable solution that can be made. This forum is already full of possible alternatives. However, I do think that “doing nothing” is the only solution you ever intended to use, for reasons of convenience, and everything else you’ve said is an attempt to rationalize the laziness of this approach. Have I said anything that is off-base? If so, please explain how deleting rewards with no compensation ever made it onto the table. As is, the best explanation we have is Grey’s Law.
I don’t actually expect anything to change for glory or for PvP items, though would be pleasantly surprised if Anet took responsibility for this debacle. I write this in the hopes that in the future Anet will not be so cavalier in deleting the rewards that players have worked hard to earn, nor so arrogant in expecting players to accept such consequences without challenge.
