Future Server Event Suggestion
FIRST THE PROBLEM:
One of the biggest problems with the EoTW event and this Anniversary Event is that you're having servers compete against each other for the "fastest/most" prize. This is usually never fair and a huge demoralizing problem. Had you guys gotten rid of that as the factor of this competition, you wouldn't have a problem as much. Just dangling the 100,150,200% carrot prize would have been enough really. People are going to donate anyways to get the prizes.
But right now, a lot of people are pissed because the servers aren't fair and you're dangling this 'fastest/most' prize crap. People are not happy, because of a number of factors in the way this event is handled. (starting time, late announcements, unbalanced server merges, some servers have more active players than others. etc. etc. Also- donations are a bit unbalanced and unfair as well, some people donate more than others and end up getting the same prize as the guy who donates less or nothing at all. and then you had the whole hoarding balloons in hopes to profit when its all over through the provision house coin conversion. Too many problems here. as you can see. ) Server against each other competition is a failure.
I understand that this event helps 'sink' the economy. People donating stuff to get rid of things in the economy for almost nothing in return. Your goal is probably to create an economy sink and a sense of server team work.
SOLUTIONS:
1. DO NOT offer "first/most" prizes forcing servers to compete against each other. Stop the server competition crap. Don't do it again.
2. Create an event that is GOAL driven.
3. Create an event that offers donations some sort of 'chance' to win something.
During this event, I noticed some players decided to create a Raffle contest to give away 100,000 coins. I want to say these guys came up with a brilliant idea. The problem is the participation is mostly handled outside of the game. No way to honestly track the donations of course. Not saying that anybody has been dishonest with their submissions. And also there are people who don't participate because its too much trouble to post screen shots etc.
My idea is for a server event is to have a "Carnival Fair" or something. Where if you submit balloons, you get 'raffle tickets'. The more you submit the more 'tickets' you get. Each day there can be some sort of raffle. That will 'consume' all the tickets you've earned that day for the 'miscellaneous prizes.
The event window can be modified to keep track of your daily tickets. So each day you can announce. Here are the prizes for today. This can be the same each day if you want. So people can have a 'chance' to earn prizes each day. X number of Y prizes are given out.
Now as for the goal driven prize, you have a big meter similar to the balloons donations for the server. This will be the final event prize. Its the grand prizes. Basically, you can say if everybody donates enough balloons to get to 100% the first milestone of grand prize. It will be the grand prize used at the end of the event. If the meter reaches 150% the grand prize pool goes up! etc. Its like a growing jackpot lottery. The more balloons the server donates the bigger the jackpot prize. This will encourage team work across the server as you want the jack pot prize to go up.
It could be also that if these goals are met, everybody will win something, but also a few lucky winners will win the jackpot prize.
So the prize can be mixed up to be server reaches the goal, everybody gets the goal prize, and the jackpot prize has increased (only a few lucky winners will get).
So how do you determine who gets the jack pot prize. It's the total tally of all your daily tickets of course. The more you donate the greater your chance of winning the jackpot prizes. (this can be X winners.) maybe you can have 10 winners if goal is 100%. or 100 winners if goal is 200%. just another idea for making the donations even more enticing.
As you can see this event I described can solve a lot of the problems for a server wide event.
1. Donations now become useful to the individual with raffle tickets.
2. Goal prizes increases based on donations. Team work.
3. The more you donate the greater your chance of winning.
4. The more you donate the greater the prize will be and more prizes given out.
Please consider this as the next Event, instead of trying to do Server to Server competitions.
Thanks for reading. Sorry it was long.