Lemme preface this whole thread by saying that I enjoy the Wintersday event every year. Aside from the "Mad King" and "Chinese New Year" events, this one lasts the longest, and, in my opinion, has the most to offer in the form of quests, random drops, rewards, gifts etc.
But there are some things that irk me just a little (and some solutions offered):
Irk #1 - The lag: Now, I did notice lag in LA as well, but nowhere near the severity of the lag in Kamadan. At one of the events in Kamadan (I believe the 6am event), while the presents were dropping the whole district I was in got lag spiked at over 136K ms ping (no I don't have a screenshot to back that up... probably would have taken me a few minutes to get it anyways). There was no lag during the "shard war" between Dwayna & Grenth, so, I'm assuming that the lag is due to the presents being dropped and the all the movement associated with picking them up.
Solution: If you're going to give out presents already assigned to a given player, why not have the gifts just appear in the players inventory like the hat already does. If you are insistant on dropping gifts, don't drop as many, make them unassigned (first come first serve basis) and have them drop at random locations around the city instead of a specific area. This allows for everyone to have equal opportunities to pick them up (even if they didn't play the 9 rings game).
Irk #2 - Presents dropping where they can't be reached: In Kamadan, they drop on the ledges on either side of where the 9 rings game is played. Being behind the scenery, players can't get access to their gifts.
Solution: Either drop them in players inventory (as stated as a solution to Irk #1), allow a passage through the "scenery" to be able to access that area, or don't allow them to drop up there at all.
Irk #3 - Snowman Summoners: Ok... I'm opening a present and get... a wonderful little top hat that causes a snowman to either pop out of the ground or fall from the sky... cute... funny... but gets old really quick (like after 1). They're just a wasted inventory slot in my opinion. Most of my guildies and I just blow them as we get them just to get rid of them.
Solution #1: Make them useful. If you're gonna give them out, make them do something. You could have them act as a "summoned creature" in explorable areas. They could be summoned and throw snowballs that do 5-10 damage. Or, when they're summoned they cause a 33-66% slowing for 10 seconds in the area where they're summoned. Nothing huge that's gonna change the tide of the battle, but at least give us a reason to want them.
Solution #2: You wanna make it interesting - make it so that they're only useable in town with the slowing feature (stated above) to combat those who are hyped on sugar to boost their speed. That would make running for random present drops somewhat of a PvP minigame.
Irk #4 - Yuletide Tonics: (You could lump transmorgifier tonics in here as well). I have over 20 in my inventory right now and what do they do... nothing of significance. Well, I could look like Bob Newhart from Elf for a while, but what does that do me... uh... nothing. Like the Snowman summoners, they're worthless.
Solution #1: Again... make them useful. You could add another title. Shorten the time that the tonic is active (down to about 5-10 minutes or so), and each minute "in costume" goes toward the title (similar to the way the drunkard title is gained). It could be another multi-level title with levels like: "I like costumes" for level 1 all the way up to "Master of Disguise" at level 5 or so.
Solution #2: Again, shorten the time down to about 5 minutes or so. While an elf, you get a speed boost (probably around 66%) to help combat the slowing effect of snowman summoners. Make people want to be an elf while running around picking up those random drop presents.
Again, all in all, I really like Wintersday (along with the other events like Chinese New Year and the Mad King events). But, I think that implementing some of these changes could go a LONG way to making things more fun.
T
