User blog:ZeroTigress/These are the Special Times

On a whim, I decided to host a Christmas event this year for the community of iRO.

Secret Odin Gift Exchange (2013)

Making this thread, I thought to myself "Eh, the iRO community isn't that generous. I'll probably get maybe 20-30 people at most."

Secret Odin Gift Exchange (2013): Phase 2

Little did I expect over 150 players would sign up to participate in what I thought would be a small event. :o Even more unexpected was the amount of players generous enough to become Secret Odins and part with their hard-earned items to make someone's Christmas very special.

Well, the day finally came and it was time for me to become an event host for the very first time. I looked at the stack of Megaphones that CM Oda gave me and felt hesitant to use them. The amount of people that showed up was already overwhelming for me, do I really want random players showing up on top of that? Well, as long as I don't tell them where the event is, I suppose that's okay.

Right...?

With the first Megaphone, I announced that there was 1 hour left until the Secret Odin event starts. Almost immediately, random people began PMing me about the Secret Odin event and if I was a GM. I knew it, using the Megaphone was an insanely bad idea. D: But at the same time, I want to give people advance notice so they wouldn't be late. So I braced myself for the next wave of random PMs and used the next Megaphone to announce the 30-minute mark. Then the 5-minute mark...

Finally, it was time to start the event. /swt

With butterflies in my stomach, I begin recording the event and talking in the iRO RaidCall. Aside from the annoying trolls that kept spamming skills in the crowd and the numerous conversations going on, I remained focused and began calling out players' in-game names for them to receive their gifts from their Secret Odins. After the rocky beginning, which slowed down the event considerably, things began to quicken about an hour in. Apparently, a bunch of Secret Odins and/or registered players ended up being no-shows, which was pretty disheartening. Even though I tried hard to proxy for the Secret Odins that actually took the time to tell me they were unable to come, I still missed a registered player. (I'm so sorry, RedKing! D8 )

Initially, I had planned to call out the list of unclaimed players after the claimed players, but since the claimed players list took so long to finish, I decided to go ahead and spring the surprise finale on the remaining players and then traded off Gift Boxes to those who were left. I had a feeling most of the unclaimed players would have decided not to come anyhow if they weren't going to get what they asked for.

Secret Odin Gift Exchange (2013): Feedback

Despite all the difficulties and the trolling that went on, the community mostly enjoyed the event and would like it to return next year. I've learned a lot from planning and hosting this event and would be sure to make improvements. Although, if WarpPortal implements another Christmas quest in Lutie next year, I'm not sure if I'll hold the event in Lutie again. All those passersby were pretty annoying.