Okay, I’m going to go through and answer a few things.

1. We didn’t award trophies to everyone after because it wasn’t what we said at first. On our first news post announcing the prizes and what not, it said only the winning team gets one. I appreciate the feedback here that in future events, you guys would all like one just to show off that hey you might not have won, but you put in the effort! This is something we’re going to keep in mind for the future. :)

2. The scores were averaged and multiplied by 1000, just to move the decimal point over. I like the idea that people have posted of just not showing scores until the end in future things. We sort of soft tested this by not showing scores the first day. We showed you guys the scores almost the entire time, we didn’t edit them at the end or do anything to them once we put them up on the second day. :) When people asked in the news or forums if we’d be using different numbers etc, I specifically say the scores you saw on the page were the numbers we were using for the final.

3. As far as how many were on teams, we wanted to try something new with a. not letting people join up during the event and b. not letting people know how many were on teams. I think it worked really well for during the event, because it was an issue last year with people joining mid-way to the team they thought had the best chance. For those curious for numbers on each team: 566 people had no team, 870 for Mischief, 623 for siblings, 566 for bffs, 1669 for nature, and 548 for stick together. We didn’t post this in the final because honestly, it’s not that important. We didn’t want people to get upset with WOW MY TEAM HAD SO MUCH DEADWEIGHT, WAY2GO. We just wanted people to join the NPCs they liked, make some friends, and have fun!

4. As far as “cheating”, every single team had people use the MB. Every single team had people use auto-refreshers. It was not just Stick Together that used the Mystery Box in the way people were afraid was a glitch. As Grace stated, we didn’t feel it was cheating/exploitation. I misspoke that night saying it wasn’t a glitch, when technically it was (sorry about that ! I know you were like TOTALLY A GLITCH THO). I want to reiterate that if you guys see something you feel is a glitch/cheating/etc, you need to make a P&B thread or ticket. I found out about it close to midnight and let Grace know, but you could see on the Mischief thread that people were discussing it for far longer than just 5 minutes. Some people from the team told me they didn’t feel comfortable doing a thread about it (because then everyone would start using it), which is when you should do a ticket.

5. We’ve learned a few things from this event just like we did from the snowball event (aka don't do a top 10% tier prize). We wanted people to make friends, really feel like they were actually doing things (example: every snowman was a user suggestion), and be working together as a team rather than individually try to be the best. I’m glad a lot of people made friends and are going to continue chatting with their teammates. That's really all I wanted from this event, was for people to have fun making friends and interacting with different NPCs. :)

the problem here is that you're assuming it gave one team an advantage and we have looked at the numbers and it did not.

and it's the responsibility of anyone who knows about a glitch to report it, whether they take advantage of it or not. we can't fix something we don't know about.

thought a lot of people would join Nature for the wearable (it was the easiest to use). I know people were pretty vocal on the poll thread and the news post about joining Mischief and Nature! Mischief just felt the biggest because their thread was by far the most active.

BFF put up a good fight! I was hoping a lot of people would go for my favorite nerds, ngl. And yeah, we're considering doing trophies and things in the future for further along than just first. :) I was team sibling and even though we were losing practically the whole time, we basically made our own goals to achieve rather than giving up. I think that was pretty great. I think the NPCs helped cheer some people on, too.

this is the last time i'm going to talk about this, but it seriously just baffles me how people just don't seem to understand that context matters. no team gained an advantage. no items were duped (because they were paid for). the items were all essentially immediately removed from the site. the people who did it literally got nothing out of it.

no one ever said abusing glitches in general is okay. we said that for this specific use case we weren't considering it an exploit. because CONTEXT. MATTERS.

For your community pile comment, those who didn’t join a team and did donate/cheer got participation prizes! They got a pet slot and skin. :)

Oh! I mean we stated it pretty clearly from the start that they wouldn’t get a chance at winning (because of no team). That’s part of the reason we included each team’s item in the MC after just so people who didn’t have a chance to join a team (because really 2 days isn’t a whole lot of time) had a chance to grab an item after it was over as well as everyone in general that wanted doubles/other teams items. I know a few people that joined one team because of the NPCs and wanted items from another. And some people just joined to get a pet slot. xD

I’m not meaning to come off as rude, and I’m sorry you’re seeing it that way!

In general, like I’ve stated a few times, every event/plot is a learning experience. and others have given some great feedback for the future. I don’t really agree on the don’t let people know the prizes idea, but the other stuff is pretty sound! I'd rather people know from the get-go what they're getting into so they know if they want to put that effort in or not.

We posted on the Mischief thread about it because that’s where it was being discussed, we made sure to make it an admin post (so it popped up in admin feed). Looking back, I agree that we could’ve done more as far as letting everyone know (like I posted so fast, I should’ve thought about pinging site update or something to get a lot of users). I’m still ugh’ing at myself for calling it not a glitch when it technically was.

Yeah, should've used the "RAGING NERDS" instead of bffs man. I think it worked well in that we closed signups so you couldn't join near the end on the team that was clearly winning. It's a step up from last year, I do believe. I like the idea of also not showing actual points but like "U SO CLOSE, YOU CAN DO IT" (and other silly like work harder messages or you are doing great blah blah). Again, you learn what things work and what don't by actually doing things. :) We learned that having a top 10% like tier is dumb. But individual little things in the future is something users will appreciate. This really was meant to be an all in this together sort of event, which is why we didn't have any individual achievements!

I think the quest-a-thon worked rather well as far as community based event! If we can figure out another site-wide thing that users can work together technically on (like cheer each other on, post about progress, etc). That was one of my favorite things about this event, was that a lot of people were posting on the forums helping people out (like some were giving money to their teammates if they weren't good at restocking). A lot of people you could tell almost never post on the forums (based on their forum count), but got really into posting for their team. I liked that aspect a lot!

And yeah, I'd like to get a little more battling involved into things (some small things for those that aren't exactly fans of battling and actual challenging things for long time battlers like you).

people love some pet slots, did you not see all the comments in the news post for the quest-a-thon and for this like PET SLOT?? LSKDFJLSKDJF YES

I do like the idea of doing another one and having tiers of like "if you guys get to x, this is the prize. If you guys get to y, bam that first prize and THIS OTHER AWESOME THING" etc. That way we can make a really crazy top tier for you guys to attempt and you won't feel to bad if you don't hit it because you've already got some great prizes (because in the case of quest-a-thon, the community made the goal with what? two days left just about?)

Replying to a few things rather quickly (the weather pressure changed which means my arthritis is having a field day ugh). Will hopefully be on tonight to reply to you guys some more!

That's the thing, I want to move away from just "randomly adding things at the end". The reason we told you guys the prizes at the start of this and the start of the snowball war last year was so people were aware what they were working for and they could decide just how much effort to put in. One user posted here that even though they saw what we said, they still went and donated 2k items just in case we snuck something in. I feel bad that that's a consideration at all like "oh, well I participated but I NEED TO MAKE SURE I GET WHAT THEY PROMISED ALSO JUST IN CASE THEY ADD ANYTHING".

I talked to Kbbob about this last night. I should've been more clear with my post on the Mischief thread when we first were aware of the issue. Yes, there were tickets but they came pretty much after everyone had been discussing it for a bit on the thread (and I think pretty close to when we posted). I just wanted to make sure that anyone that found a bug report it, not you guys specifically! Kbbob pointed it out that it sounded like we were specifically blamming you guys for not reporting it, which I can see now is because it was on your board rather than making a new thing. If Team Nature had been discussing it and I was directed to the thread the same way I was that night, I would've posted the same thing on theirs of "please report things when you first find out"!

that sounds like it could be fun!

For your second point, I talked with Speiro about it after and realized why you guys were really hesitant to make a thread (because if it was considered abusing a glitch, they didn’t want to draw even more attention to it). I think I posted on the board after that, or at least told him that if you guys don’t want to do a board at least ticket it or message me (because lbr I’m on all the time and can spam the proper channels if I can’t do anything).

This week (I’m hoping tomorrow!), I’m going to be going over the rules with the head of user support and update any out of date things (which a few users have pointed out things!) and make a news post about it. I’m going to use that news post to bring attention to the admin feed posts, which usually has important information, as well as clarify what to do in a situation like this. I think it’ll be a lot of help for everyone, especially with the feedback of “I didn’t want to make a board when it could’ve just caused more people to abuse this” that we got!

I just to make a note that if people don't feel a board should be made, they shouldn't worry about making a ticket because that's what I saw with this. People debated what they should do for a bit because they weren't quite sure, I just want to clear that up for future situations so people aren't in that position again!

I think it's safe to say we all want the holy grail that is the quest givers icon