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Year of the Rat… Sans Rat. Pretty Much.

I’ve been a Guild Wars gamer for going close to three years this coming May. At one point, I owned and kept up with two separate accounts (until expansions made it too costly for me to do so). And I have loved and been thankful for all of the events, masks, and special holidays that GWs has given to their community over the past years. Nothing got me more excited than in game events and the rewards that came from participating!

But something fell real flat with me this year’s Canthan New Years. Mostly because, it seems, A-Net is being far too stingy with celebrating and giving rewards.

Let me recap back to last year’s festival. It was the Year of the Pig. We were given the opportunity to quest for Lunar Fortunes. The Fortunes were like small presents we could open to earn random fun treats, fireworks or status effects. Sometimes we had the chance for a “prosperous year” which gifted the user with 1K in gold (quite an exciting random award!).

And finally, there was the prize we all wanted… the Gold Pig Mini-Pet. But it was very, very rare to find in one of the Lunar Tokens. I don’t know the odds… but some people opened over 1,000 and never found one. And it was no little amount of time or in game money that was spent to earn one from the Tokens.

The final event was celebrated on the last day of the festival. It was an event that called the community together to roam to the edges of the GWs earth in a scavenger hunt for various random drops off of high level monsters. There was quite a list — some items I don’t even know where they can be found without looking them up. To successfully complete the final quest and gather all the items to please the Celestial being was also no little task.

So imagine our joy when the reward for teamwork and gathering all the items was met with the gift of one of the much sought-after Pig Minis! Those who had been down on their luck with the Lunar Fortunes or didn’t have the time to quest-quest-quest had a chance to get one after all! I thought it was a really fitting reward for all the hard work people put into to gather all the needed items.

I guess the problem was… people were more successful in wining the scavenger hunt than A-Net anticipated (what can I say, we’re good gamers!) and there became a massive surplus of Mini Pigs throughout all of the land. In fact, there were so many of them, that this year, they allowed us the chance to exchange 5 of the regular pigs for an upgraded special pig. I had 6 in my inventory. So I gladly made the exchange and kept the extra one for good measure.

So enter the Year of the Rat. Well, I haven’t been playing GWs too much as of late due to many things. But the thought of a festival that would gift my characters with a cute Rat Mini-Pet sparked my interest instantly. Afterall, those that know me know that I’m a happy owner of my own pet Rat Pack in real life. How could I resist?

I logged on this morning to take part in the final event and found out, to my dismay, that there was NO Rat Mini-Pet given out at the event. No… you just got a box of fireworks that makes a 10 minute long firework display in your guild hall (consumable item — woo hoo… bleh). Oh, and a Lion festival mask… identical in every way to the one we got last year.

Not only that, but they nerfed the Prosperous Year fortunes from the thrilling 1,000 gold to 100 gold! Sure. It’s “free” money. But seriously! The economy is already borked… it’s not like this is going to hurt it that much more. I was completely uninspired.

And I was discouraged that the only way I could get a Rat Mini-Pet was either through grinding Tokens and blind luck… or shelling over whatever money it would take to buy one (which I wouldn’t do). Seeing that this would be the only chance ever to get one… I guess A-Net decided to make the Rat harder to get (more valuable) than they did the Pig. But what that meant was that the reason to complete the final event was really gone for a lot of people… who probably remembered earning a pet for all the hard work in gathering items from across the world last year.

Poor Syn had to listen to me whine a lot… but she offered to help me do quests to hope to earn the Rat. She knows how much I love my pets and what it would mean to have one in game. I wasn’t really too motivated to spend the day questing-questing-questing (add to it that I’m a tad sick today)… but I would have tried for a little while.

It was blind luck alone that I managed to get a Rat to drop out of my first batch of quest Tokens. I was at once thrilled — I got one! What were the odds? But I still felt a bit sour about the whole thing knowing that for the sake of keeping something rare, the fun of the majority of people who might have really wanted the pet was gone.

I’ve always expressed appreciation for the events in game. But the only thing that was new this year was one of the things that so few people would actually have a chance to get. I was pretty disappointed. It’s not like A-Net isn’t going to try to ship us over to GW2 in a little while anyhow. So why would it matter how many Rat Minis exist? Seriously.

Posted by Aywren

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