The end of the event

Tomiko - Heavens Tear

So, how did you enjoy/hate x-mas event?

How many chips did you get from those cards and how many mirage/tickets/celestones have you ripped off from newbies? and how many Server disconnect, please log off errors did you get whenever going to W. archo. b:laugh

I enjoyed the chips, but after a while there, came up to my mind that it shouldn't be that easy to get.

Shano - Lost City

pfft.. xD i love the BLESSING it FEED MY MIDNIGHT
and love *cough*ks*
but hate nubs lving on snowman ... (CUZ OF THEM i can't FIND ANY FBS)

Frightmare - Sanctuary

well all in all it wasnt half bad for me, but i did give up on the chips after day 6

i have 3 toons who could collect chips and mailing them to myself became too tedious

all in all what did i garner from this adventure?

65 mirage celestones
22 dice tickets
still have 73 celestones of human
and 4 or 5 of the other 2 total (damn stockings kept givin me humans)
over 100 hsou mantouk or whatever it is which is **** as far as i can tell lol
over 1000 fireworks that took me 1 hour + to set all of them off non-stop
approx 3000 stones for my accelleration !!! THANK YOU !!! best part of the event for me lol

and when i went into archosaur, god help me, i wanted to shoot everyone shouting about their damn cards lol

but i was able to loot 2 card 21s and i sold 1 full set 1-21 for 1.1 mil and my extra card 21 for 525,000 so all in all it wasnt too bad...

sadly all of the money i made went to my main char to make me a TT sword and a full suit of 3 star 4 socket all +hp armor which will probably only be on my back for the next week or so rofl oh well but i look nice in the mean time

Mistree - Heavens Tear

I spent entirely too much time killing them-

104 Mirage
70ish Dice Tickets
3 Do all tickets
2 pets lv 40-66
1 3/4 (give or take) levels worth of xp
120+ perfect stones (after being crafted)
1 pet lv 60-66
a friends pet lv 40-50

ahh *begins to twitch* what am I gonna do now... b:shocked

Shano - Lost City

oh yea beside blessings i got tons of FUEL xD

Miugre - Heavens Tear

(Warning: Wall-o-text ahead. Bring some sammiches.)

Ok, these are just a few random thoughts I'd like to throw out... maybe the GMs/Devs/etc. will pick up on them, maybe not.

First thought: On the whole, I liked 'em. I'm not gonna sit here and nitpick on every little thing, and I'm not going to say "well, it was a good experiment" for lack of anything else better to say about it. This actually was, IMO, a good set of events. Not without flaws, of course, but good.

My personal favorite part was the (virtually) free bronze-charm-equivalent. My Lv26 Blademaster alt picked up the spirit charm and it's been a gigantic help since she can't use focus powder yet. The little "Christmas Card" quests are a nice touch, despite the "Christmas Stockings" being mostly useless (got one Mirage from them once).

Loved the color card thing, too. Chaos and Jade powders, and sometimes 50k for doing, well, not too much (avoiding discussion of those less-than-honest individuals trying to sell gold bars for more than 10k). I couldn't take part in the other set collecting, however, for lack of the proper level. I understand, of course, how this event was designed to be catered to all level tiers relatively equally, and in that matter I think the event was a success.

Well, mostly. Only one thing really got to me, and that's the snowmen dropping celestones left and right. Oh sure, it was fun for the first day or two, but for me the thought pattern was basically:
Day one: "Woo, free Mirage! 30k!" *kills more snowmen*
Day three: "Hey, the price of Mirages has gone down a notch."
Day five: "Ok, I don't think I'm going to get any reasonable return on these things until a month or so after the event ends... but eh, I can dig it..."
Day seven: "Buying for 12k? Wait, what?"
Day ten: "...okay, this is just sad."

I started the two-week period with somewhere around 30 Mirages on hand. That number has doubled in the last two weeks (not counting Dice Tickets and a nice armful of regular celestones), having put maybe seven or eight hours total into slaying snowmen. I used to sell them for 30k or more, of course, because that was the market price. On the rare occasion that I set up shop this week, I went down to 25k. That's the lowest I was going to go.

Apparently that wasn't low enough for some people, however. The most irritating example occurred last night - I'd set up a shop next to Santa in the south district of Arch to sell various things. I put about half of my stash of Mirages in the shop for 25k each, and left for awhile. I didn't expect any of the Mirages to get sold. When I came back an hour later, I noticed one PM and decided to reply to it. The individual replied, quite seriously, that he was hoping I'd lower my price on Mirages to 12k per stone. When I said I would not, he seemed a bit upset about it... upset that I wouldn't sell them for practically vendor price.

Basically my biggest suggestion, if PW were to do this again: take the celestones out of the snowmen's drop list... or at least don't make them as common. We've all seen the market price of Mirages drop drastically in the last two weeks. And what are they used for? Well, as far as I can tell, they're mostly for the richer (and usually high leveled) players to refine equipment or play the Cube of Fate. Therefore, selling Mirages is a key component of many lower-leveled players' game income. When will I get rid of my 60+ Mirages? Next week? Next month? Maybe by next Christmas?

And yeah, these two weeks have been a nice boost in (virtual) finances for everyone. That was kind of the point. But I can't help feeling the high-levels got away with murder on this one. Card 21, for instance... the hottest commodity this week... represented 10 Mysterious Chips. I had trouble finding a buyer for mine for a mere 350k. Had I been Level 75 or higher, I could've used it myself and made two or three molds, each of which I could resell for that much, and still have chips left. Had Card 21 been just a bit rarer, it might have sold for something like 10 Mysterious Chips are supposed to cost.

But, what can you expect when you introduce major changes into a market? It goes nuts. That's all part of the game, I guess. In theory, it's the admins/GMs/etc.'s job to look very, very, very carefully at whatever changes they want to make to their virtual marketplace. And again, I think this event did a good job at benefitting all players. Maybe the celestones were a bit of an oversight... I don't know. From my standpoint, the only inconvenience is it's going to take longer to sell them all and get the things I want next.

Anyway, a few other tidbits which have probably been echoed by everyone and their dog by now:
- The chocolate ingredients. Could we maybe have gotten them in addition to the mat we were mining, instead of in its place?
- Don't make the snowmen talk next time. Just... yeah. Don't, please. -_-
- I don't know if the Gold Bars were around before this event started, but could a description for them maybe be added? It seems to me it'd be a lot harder for one player to rip off another if the latter player saw "Gold Bar - Description: Sell it for 10,000 coins - Price: 50,000." in a player shop. :P

...that's all I have to say. Just thought I'd write something that had a little thought put into it.

(on a... "completely unrelated" matter: anyone want to sell a panther for mirages? XD)

EDIT: Well okay, I guess the mods want to pile everything into one thread. *shrug* This was originally its own thread, in case that confused anyone. :P

Sir_walter - Heavens Tear

Your mirages with go back up in value within 2-3 weeks, Higher levels will buy them up for Cube of fate runs and adding +'s to weapons/armor. I'm keeping mine to refine my own equipment at later levels.

Miugre - Heavens Tear

Yeah, I'm basically banking (read: hoping/praying) on all the high levels going on a Cube-playing spree. :P