Thanks so much for the update. I only came to this board looking for something about the prizes and it saddens me to see people lashing out at each other. While I saw the event as mainly a sP sink, I had a lot of fun. And now I miss petting the goat. :)

Honestly the only cws I noticed were the bunny ears lol The Granny Smiths could have won even without the giveaways or whatever because it was a funny concept and had a lot of support otherwise. I'm just glad Chai Punk placed where they did lol LETS ALL LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

I think I would have personally been more bothered about CW's in BotB if the populace was in charge of having to narrow down the selections by voting on all bands (the way EPICon was structured). If that had been the case, I would have suggested (haha, demanded) CW versus non CW categories.

That said, since the finalists were decided by staff, it was obvious that theme was more important than CW - some of the bands in the finalists didn't have a CW to share amongst them. I get that it's easier to pinpoint a certain look with CW's, sure, but at least one of the genre winners was a nonCW band and won despite CW heavy bands in the genre, so I guess to me, I don't mind if bands had CW's and we were all smushed together because I don't know that the evidence fully supports "CW's helped bands win", if you know what I mean.

Not a fan of the giveaways in general, though. Thank you's to supporters are one thing, IMO, but felt more than a little a little gross to see bands essentially selling votes/participation. I don't know how much an effect it did or didn't have, but I'd rather be sure folks won on the merit of their band cleverness than wonder if the quality or quantity of giveaways had an effect. It just feels gross.

The most broken aspect of the event, to me, was that we had to rely on one game and one game only for support/points. Some people were amazingly excellent at that game, and most really weren't, and there was a lot of angst all over the boards about "only" being able to score a few hundred points (!!!). I feel it would have been fairer to have other ways to support the bands, to allow people to have fun in other support-y ways if they weren't good at that particular exact game.

I'm also biting my nails waiting for prizes. It's been so long. All this antici.........pation!

omg vinyl player and that statue with the head ;O; <3 omg omg

Anyway, just wanted to also chime in that my angst with botb was probably because everything seemed so promo related (giveaways, etc. combined with a flash game that was essentially about promos as well) when I thought it would be more ... band/music related (even with the flash game ;__; ). I agree with I would have loved to see more ways to earn points to drown out the promo stuff okay xD. I also agree with in that I'm more upset at staff for allowing this. Promo driven, no faq, vague incentive to support a band, lack of activities to support, etc. Hopefully next event, it'll be less rowdy.

That head looks incredibly cool! I really hope it's some kind of wearable =o

Ooh, we're getting some vinyl - and SOON, too. Superb!

Given that wearables (essentially official CWs, no less) were the majority of the special prizes, I think that leans towards this having been at least in part if not nearly whole an HA contest.

BUT I think most of the discussion has moved to the prize thread, and despite staff posts here there's been no direct reactions or answers, so I suppose it's moot.

One general piece of feedback I'd like to give (wish I had waited to do my survey, I was wayyyy too nice): Keith only retweeting/mentioning one band on his personal blogs was shitty. It's really immature and unprofessional. I get that Subeta wants to let staff play the site normally, but that's taking it too far imo.