Your thinking is more of a problem then the number of free beers on the site.

I fail to see WHY this all such an issue. People hoard all kinds of things. I originally had thousands, which were obtained legitimately (the majority from DC), but am down to a few hundred now which I save for Major Drills.

I don't know what the big issue is either. All the staff pushes to get us to delete them made me think the sheer number of them had a negative impact on the server or something. But if they don't, then fine.

If they do then yes, I would rather have them just deleted and the site going smoothly than having 5 million free beers laying around causing strain. Sorry for being so selfish? If 5 million free beers have no impact on the site one way or another, then carry on.

They should've given everyone a free beer so the whole site could drink one. Have a goal of like 1000 users drinking a free beer, and if it reaches that goal, all participants get a reward or something

I think free beer should have been back with a time limit this time if only because it's kind of shitty to expect new users to buy free beer from user shops just because they weren't around when free beer was available to participate in something (Angrybeard v. Gunther or that other achievement involving beer during Alegarten). Now the prices aren't that bad to get any of those achievements, but it just sends the wrong message, and just like said, encourages hoarding. I like 's idea of creating a small sink. Make it clear first that free beer will not be asked by the recycle beast ever again and remove it from Major Drills to discourage hoarding. Make that annual beer related achievement include all beer and bring back free beer annually with a time limit and then there really won't be any reason to hoard. And no, Major Drills will not break. Auctions (and something else I don't remember) was removed from Major Drills recently and the quest didn't explode. If anyone complains, well then, no one said hoarding HAD to pay off. No one made anyone use an auto-refresher or manually refresh to get thousands of free beers. No one prevented anyone from selling the free beer when it actually had more use. Also, that would be one mighty fine way to make a statement of "we're finally actually discouraging hoarding." Just saying.

Yeah, pretty much all of what said, if staff is really trying to discourage hoarding, then do something about it now and prove a point. You're going to hoard something when there's absolutely no value, then that's on you. Honestly, it seems like people were hoarding because of the Recycle Beast. That, to me, wasn't the brightest idea in the first place, but who am I and what do I know.

I think staff not giving out more beer to be hoarded, coupled with the features they are adding to use up the existing hordes counts as them doing something to discourage hoarding.

It's not discouraging the hoarding at all though, it just seems to be rewarding the hoarders.

Actually, all that does is raise prices, which frustrates the people who didn't hoard while delighting people who did hoard. That's the wrong message to send. It's obviously staff's fault for letting the free beer out, but now they can do something about it and they're choosing to reward those who hoarded over those who didn't. Imo if it was an oversight, they should have been deleted from the system right away. Those who refreshed wouldn't get frozen for technically abusing the system (and only those that manually refreshed wasted time as auto-refreshing err.. wasn't much of an effort anyway so really not much reason to complain unless you manually refreshed - and I would know because I was one of them but hey not getting banned would be a nice consolation). I think it's hard to argue with that outcome or logic. But now it's too late and they're choosing to reward hoarding instead.

This thread was originally made because someone was upset that more free beer wasn't given out.

To me, and this is just my own personal opinion, that's the best thing they could do at this time

Would the entire situation be better if staff had done something about the influx of free beer years ago? Yes. But they didn't. So short of deleting the items, which would be incredibly unfair of them, what are the best options? Make features like achievements and utilizing existing features to try to get some of these items out of circulation.

Are they rewarding the people that autorefreshed? Technically yes they are, however those people did not do anything wrong. They did not take advantage of a glitch. They did not violate any rule. They did not abuse the system. They do not deserve any sort of punishment.

Yes, I know. And I think not giving newer users access to any free beer (with a time limit) was a bad move. It's one thing to make Quentin ask for retired items, but another thing to make an event include a retired item in a quantity of 100, because I have a feeling that's not how free beer hoarding worked. Either people have thousands or they have nothing. I'm pretty sure most people who (auto or manually) refreshed didn't go oh let's just refresh 100 times and call it quits. They realized the situation and went for it.

I don't think it's unfair to delete items. As I said, hoarding doesn't have to pay off. Doesn't matter if you refreshed or bought items from others. It doesn't have to pay off.

The best option is not to alienate newer users and reward hoarding. Sorry, but that just isn't cool imo. So we'll have to disagree there.

Of course, they were taking advantage of the situation. Did they know it was an unintentional thing therefore a glitch? Of course not, so they shouldn't get frozen even though they very well could have. I'm not saying they should but they could if the site was more strict in defining abuse like some sites are.

lol what? ... Let's not extrapolate to analogies that make absolutely no sense. No wearable or weapon or item was released en masse like free beer.

it's truly one of its kind ;)

edit: I should have said "the" items, but really? That's the one thing you decide to quote me on? xD

I want to say that yes, if some user used shady means if obtaining twenty copies of an elder godly I would 100% expect staff to delete them and refund lost sP/csc.

Did they do anything wrong by buying a weapon they didn't know was dupped? No, but why would should they be allowed to keep it? The free beer is absolutely the same, it's breaking the system. And if it isn't, then why not release more?

I would be mad if I saved up a lot if sP to buy something from the MC only to have it deleted without refund. In the case of Free Beer it was FREE. Delete them, bring them back in a controlled means and move on.

Items are items are items. I don't understand why anyone would be ok with staff deleting the Free Beer that someone may have obtained freely by auto refreshing, but also may have paid other users for... because I KNOW those same users would be pissed if staff went on their account and deleted items they obtained fairly.

The only reasons I am seeing are that SOME people took advantage of a poorly designed site feature (which isn't against the rules) and therefore ALL people with the items, regardless of how they obtained them, should be punished... or that it's somehow unfair to new players, when the reality is that anyone that is new is going to have an entire plethora of items that were at one point cheap/free, and will not cost them thousands, even millions to buy.

So basically it's okay to have 5 million of one item on site causing a problem just because some users are going to complain? Way to hold a site hostage. It's free beer. It's not a rainbow vortex. It shouldn't be a big deal and yet we've allowed it to be because why exactly....? You said it better than I could. Basically everything you just said.

Not everyone sees this situation as the huge problem that some people seem to see it as. For me, I have no problem with 5 million free beers being on the site and staff having things like achievements and the RB ask for them, to get them out of the system.

They cost 4,000! Not a high price tag AT ALL. So if Major Drills asks for a couple to complete a quest, big deal. People should be able to spend 20k to complete a quest, if they can't, they can quit the quest. So if you need one to make a new sticker, again, big deal. There is another item needed for the sticker that costs far more than that. The only feature that is truly dependant on a large quantity of Free Beer is that one achievement. And there are other achievements that were at one point cheaper to do, but would now cost someone a lot more to get it.

Way to hold the a site hostage? More like way to blow this out of proportion.