Anyone else get this mail?

https://imgur.com/gallery/skXw2QU

I can't for the life of me remember participating in an event that would have owed me 66 karma sips and this Golem Tonic thing...

You logged in sometime last Friday

It's the reward for our collective participation in the Extra Life charity event. Fund-raising generated over $66,000! :star:

I see that now.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Endless_Interface_Crafter_Golem_Tonic

Was just afraid to take anything out of mail with the recent RMT stuff.

@"Kylden Ar.3724" said:I see that now.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Endless_Interface_Crafter_Golem_Tonic

Was just afraid to take anything out of mail with the recent RMT stuff.

The mail clearly said it was from ANet. If it’s not from ANet it says so at the bottom. ANet isn’t going to send you something then punish you for taking it.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@"Kylden Ar.3724" said:I see that now.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Endless_Interface_Crafter_Golem_Tonic

Was just afraid to take anything out of mail with the recent RMT stuff.

I. Trust. Nothing. Anymore.

I’m glad for the 66K karma as that means after today I can stop my karma farming routine.

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:I see that now.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Endless_Interface_Crafter_Golem_Tonic

Was just afraid to take anything out of mail with the recent RMT stuff.

1) players can’t send you karma. That immediately disqualifies it as a player sent mail.2) players can’t send you account bound on acquire items, like that tonic.3) the RMT thing is about buying gold. Do you see gold in there?4) if i distrusted a company to the point where I thought they’ll send me account bound items out of the blue then discipline me for accepting it then I can’t imagine happily playing that game.

Some level of distrust is normal. Excessive levels where you can’t trust your own senses are corrosive.

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:I. Trust. Nothing. Anymore.

On the one hand, I can't blame you. I'm very sympathetic, as I see the same sorts of things that worry me.

On the other hand, you (and I) do log into the game, that we chose to install on our computers. At some level, we are trusting strangers, so this is a question of where to draw the line. As @Just a flesh wound.3589 says, this email has the special ANet logo and any player-sent mail specifically says who it's from. I think it's reasonable in this case to trust this aspect of GW2.

In other words, I recommend that you reconsider where you draw the line, if for no other reason than it's less exhausting.

Glad I found this post. I thought maybe a Dev accidentally sent me items that belonged to someone else.

Dear ANet,I'm so glad the event went well.It would've been great to receive items with boiler plate message at least somehow referring to the event instead of a confusing message.

@Silvercyclone.1462 said:Glad I found this post. I thought maybe a Dev accidentally sent me items that belonged to someone else.I thought the same thing !! Much of map chat is people asking about these items ..

These were not replacement items. Given the recent concerns about unsolicited mails. Receiving replacement stuff for that which you did not lose nor request is disturbing.

@keenedge.9675 said:Dear ANet,I'm so glad the event went well.It would've been great to receive items with boiler plate message at least somehow referring to the event instead of a confusing message.

@Silvercyclone.1462 said:Glad I found this post. I thought maybe a Dev accidentally sent me items that belonged to someone else.I thought the same thing !! Much of map chat is people asking about these items ..

This is what I meant!

What event? Is this someone else's and will I get screwed over for taking it?

@"Kylden Ar.3724" said:This is what I meant!

What event? Is this someone else's and will I get screwed over for taking it?

Yes you can safely take the items. They were given because Anet and the GW2 community raised over $65,000 for the Extra Life charity event. It was a 24 hour live stream from Anet staff where people donated toward the Children's Miracle Network. Everyone that logged in to the game at least once during the event got the rewards. Further reading:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/our-24-hour-extra-life-stream-begins-tomorrow/

It's the same message they use whenever they send out a mass mailing, or include an item. I would not expect it to change anytime soon, though one never knows.

You can always check the Wiki for the items included; for instance: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Interface_Crafter_Golem_Tonic#Acquisition

It really would help if they had a second message to use when mass-mailing items. It could still be something generic so they can use the same one all the time, but something which talks about promotional items instead of replacements.

@Danikat.8537 said:It really would help if they had a second message to use when mass-mailing items. It could still be something generic so they can use the same one all the time, but something which talks about promotional items instead of replacements.

So much this. The wording of that mail doesnt make any sense. I don't understand why they can't write a simple ingame mail saying just that. I thought this just would need translation and wouldn't need to be a localisation thing.

Some stuff just needs a practical to the point text, but somehow it's not that easy apparently. idk.

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:It really would help if they had a second message to use when mass-mailing items. It could still be something generic so they can use the same one all the time, but something which talks about promotional items instead of replacements.

I suspect at some point in the past someone built a 'mail merge' system into the game to make things like this really easy (so for example people in the Customer Support team can do it without needing developer access) - they just feed in data on who should receive the mail and the item/s to include and then it's generated automatically. And when that was done they thought it would only be used for replacing items lost through bugs and other problems so they wrote the mail to reflect that, and now because it's built into an automated system it's not easy to change, and because there's only one message they'd have to over-write it, or get a programmer to modify the system...and it's not considered high priority enough for that when it's very rarely used.

Every customer interaction is a chance to generate goodwill.

Instead of "Thanks for supporting our cause", we get "Here are the items you lost" -- NOT the same thing.

Programmers are the tool of the corporation. A programmer that says it's too hard, should be replaced. Executives should make the call with an estimate from the programmers.

-- veteran programmer (30 years)

I agree that the wording was overly cryptic for what was needed. Anet, please learn from this.

@"keenedge.9675" said:Every customer interaction is a chance to generate goodwill.

Instead of "Thanks for supporting our cause", we get "Here are the items you lost" -- NOT the same thing.

Programmers are the tool of the corporation. A programmer that says it's too hard, should be replaced. Executives should make the call with an estimate from the programmers.

-- veteran programmer (30 years)

Can't help but agree. I was aware of the Extra Life event, so wasn't too surprised to see that mail, but the title and wording are inaccurate, and could cause consternation to someone not aware of the event, and wondering why they got items they didn't know they lost.

As wonderful as it is that ANET handed out these rewards to everyone just for logging in, that isn't an excuse for not doing something "the right way".

@"keenedge.9675" said:Every customer interaction is a chance to generate goodwill.

Instead of "Thanks for supporting our cause", we get "Here are the items you lost" -- NOT the same thing.

Programmers are the tool of the corporation. A programmer that says it's too hard, should be replaced. Executives should make the call with an estimate from the programmers.

-- veteran programmer (30 years)

What if they're not saying it's too hard but "this will take me 1/2 a day to do, which of these 15 other things should I stop doing to make time for it?" and the answer, every time they ask is "all those things are more important, this is a low priority change because the system works it's just that the message is oddly worded, so do it after all that is done" and by the time those things are done 15 more things have come along, which are also more important?

In fact, we could probably answer this ourselves - out of all the changes you'd like to see made to the game which will involve a programmer which do you consider more or less important than this change?

@"Danikat.8537" said:What if they're not saying it's too hard but "this will take me 1/2 a day to do, which of these 15 other things should I stop doing to make time for it?" and the answer, every time they ask is "all those things are more important, this is a low priority change because the system works it's just that the message is oddly worded, so do it after all that is done" and by the time those things are done 15 more things have come along, which are also more important?

4 hours to change boiler plate means something else is broken. PR is ALWAYS important along with reducing customer confusion (which reduces help desk load). That's why programmers shouldn't make that call. Neither should we.

I suspect that in this case, they had the choice of sending out the mail this week using the generic message or sending it out in e.g. 5 weeks.

Crafting a new message sounds easy, but it requires more than just, well, crafting the message:

• The event organizer has to sign off on the wording.
• It has to be translated in four other languages (and the queue for message translation is probably a lot longer than we think, judging from various responses to the Localization forum chat.
• The message has to be set up so that it can go to the list of accounts identified earlier and so that it can be sent ad hoc as support finds examples of accounts that were missed.
• Someone has to decide: is it best to word this specifically for the Extra Life Celebration and get it done now? Or would it be better to spend more time to make it more generic, so that we have this system available again the next time we want to do a sudden promotion?

Left up to me, I would explain to my colleagues that speed in this case is more important than reusability or customization. (And I would also promise to work with the relevant teams to make it easier to do something like this before next year's Extra Life, something that could be used for other promotions that are designed at the last minute. Win-Win!)

@keenedge.9675 said:4 hours to change boiler plate means something else is broken.
Only if you think the only thing that needs to change is the English text and that anyone involved in making it happen doesn't have any other high-priority tasks. That is: the actual writing/editing and insertion of code is probably quick. That doesn't mean that there aren't other considerations, too.

This alarmed a number of people because the phrasing of the letter suggested that these were items we had previously possessed but had misplaced. Not having entered a ticket for anything lost, I for one worried that Anet might be responding to someone pretending to be me. I don't want my account barred because of some kind of suspicious behavior so my first impulse was to reject it. Better phrasing might have left people a lot less confused.