User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Rants/Exclusive benefits

Qui bono

More perplexing to me is that festival hats aren't even a benefit.--Relyk 10:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

It's true that they don't provide any sort of in-game advantage, but some people use benefit to include bragging rights or the hats being fun to wear.

My tl;dr point is that it's especially hard to understand why the Live Team sees anything wrong with offering exclusive cosmetic options, since ANet actually offers many: town clothes in GW2 will only be available for gems (requiring RL cash or an in-game sacrifice of effort), GW1 vets in GW2 will get exclusive HoM skins, and GW1 sells costumes that (a) require RL cash (so are never available to low-income players) and (b) were only on sale for a limited period.

So while the lack of funding for the arts requires that the GW1 skeleton crew makes some hard choices about festival hats, this didn't require them to do away with exclusivity. But once they decided that this was the least-bad option available, I think it was wrong of them to dismiss the sentimental attachment to hats held by participants in festivals from 2005-2011. Tell us it's about wanting to maintain the hat/year tradition without any new hats, but don't say there's something bad about wanting to demonstrate one's participation in past events. It wasn't a very community-spirited message. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:39, 3 July 2012 (UTC)