Crystal Faire 2015 Event Wrap Up

[Dio]

Hi everypony!

Thanks for participating in the Crystal Faire 2015! It's been a wild ride with all the caribou, WRAITH shenanigans, and Sombra's return! This event marks the addition of viking caribou, the continent of Whitescar, and an expansion of our world map to include regions oft mentioned but never before seen.

Of course, with any success there are always hiccups. I'd like to take the time to address some concerns brought up in the wake of the attack threads.

Violence/Dark themes: I have spoken with my staff about the issue of violence in the attack threads. Violence and darker themes were originally introduced to add to the sense of urgency of the attacks and the direness of the situation. The rating of the boards, after all, is PG-13/PEGI-12. However, in several situations, I do agree that it was over the top. We want to establish a sense of drama without completely erasing what makes pony pony. In the future, the team will work to ensure that it does not get out of hand.

Railroading/Player Agency: Another complaint was that it felt like characters were being forced down a specific path independent of their decisions. After reviewing feedback, we believe that this was the direct result of lack of communication between the threadrunners and the players. RP is a collaborative process and we want those participating to have a say in which way the story goes. Therefore, we are adding to standard procedure the rule to open an OOC thread for each staff-sponsored event roleplay thread. This will allow open communication between all participants in a sponsored thread and hopefully avoid such problems in the future.

I'd like to apologize if the way the event was handled adversely affected anyone's user experience. I think the biggest lesson we learned was that communication is everything. We'll strive to make sure that those lines of communication are open and remain open in the future.

Thank you for your participation and feedback, everypony, and happy RPing!

[Solaria]

For some reason it seems weird to hear "everypony" from you

[RainbowFoxxy]

As I am staff on other forums I know the effort and time that goes into running any event. I just want to say a quick THANK YOU for what you guys as a staff do! There will always be hiccups but finding staff who take the time to put together events and make things interesting for members is invaluable! It's also a great gesture for you guys to be so open to critique. I just want to make sure in the midst of critique (not that critique is a bad thing) that my gratitude is expressed. Again, thank you for your time and effort!

[Blueblood]

Will there be badges for this, by the way? It seems the sort of thing that deserves as much recognition.

[Dio]

Unfortunately, I do not have anything ready at the moment. When we finish the transition, we will apply participation badges retroactively. Again, I apologize for the oversight.

[PedestrianWolf]

So, when will the caribou become playable as a species? And will they be available only in CC, or can we have them as characters in WoE as well?

[Bellosh]

Caribou are playable right now, in both WoE and CC areas. Use the standard character guidelines for each area in determining what place is the best fit for your caribou OC.

[RarityDash]

Yes, in case people missed the updates made to the codexias, on the day the caribou invasion plot was launched in the event, we put out a bunch of new lore which can be found in our lore archive. Strictly speaking, as a variety of deer, caribou have always been playable in the RP. There is now lore for the viking caribou culture, however, as well as locations related to them which can be used.