As I explained to you prior to your public post, and previously the last time you asked for codes for your private Discord-specific giveaway, we are not providing free codes for Discord-only events. We are happy to support player-run events that take place inside of the game. There was a time when I began offering small point codes to private Discords, but their main purpose became trying to out-compete other Discords for membership, and ultimately I received so many reach-outs for private Discord giveaways that it became something we no longer wished to get involved with. It also became a source of drama as people wondered why we were picking Discord winners and losers. This is the case for all Discords in both DDO and LOTRO. If your giveaways happen inside of the game rather than requiring membership of your Discord, we are happy as always to support it.
Yes, you did. While I understand and comprehend the reasons for that decision, I don't agree in this specific case ( I wrote Cordo the reasons in private already). But I have to accept it anyway, it is not my decision to make. But I am disappointed that SSG seems to see no way we can work together.
I would love to do something like this in the game, an MMO by label. But in short: the game doesn't offer the infrastructure or features needed for this or any other bigger event.
I went back to our first event in 2020 and with over 80 prize packages donated by 70+ donors we had over 4100 participations.
4100!
And this was before the server merge when Orien was a small, familiar server. Nowadays we are way bigger.
Key to this event and the biggest challenge we face is to effectively reach a wide audience within the game without causing disruptions or inundating the chat so that not only a few selected (in party or raid group) can participate.
The only way to do this is the lfm board, because
- there is no global general chat
- the userchats are globally but not easily accessible. No one knows they exist and it is not obvious how to set them up. Another disadvantage: you lose access every time you TR or the game decides to kick you inbetween.
- Furthermore the chat is still bugged and you lose contact for several minutes at a time. This is known and was discussed in length already.
- It is not possible to log the chat or any other interaction with a game feature except screenshots. This gets close to impossible, if you have a lot of chatter.
- not only the text chat is unreliable. The voice channel is useless, too because the voice quality fluctuates too much.
- Transparency and fairness are essential aspects we aim to uphold in our events. Thus there is a need of documentation. There isn't any except screenshots.
These points are no shortcomings of the game per se because it was not created for these kind of events. But neither the forum nor any other SSG platform allows to execute something like this.
The next best thing is discord. I would love to discuss alternatives or welcome SSG personnel into the discord to enhance transparency and support for events like these.
Cheers,
Titus.
Who could have guessed that a platform named Discord would foster anything but harmony and concord lol
I do like to apologize for all affected. The intention of this event is to bring us closer together not to drive us apart.