Kung Fu Tea Promotion [Merged]

[Danikat.8537]

I made this FAQ to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about the Kung-Fu Tea promotion, to hopefully make the info easier to find. Please note that unless otherwise stated the information comes from players and not directly from Anet and most of it was written before the promotion was "paused" so things may have changed. I'll try and keep this updated if things change or if anyone lets me know I've made mistakes.

What promotion? What is Kung Fu Tea and what does it have to do with GW2?

Kung-Fu Tea (KFT) is a US based chain of bubble tea shops who have partnered with Arenanet to sell a GW2 themed drink and give away several GW2 rewards through their Android/iPhone app.

The promotion ran into problems in the first few days and was "paused" until the 20th. It is now back up and is running until the 30th September 2018...barring any more problems. Codes will be valid until the 31st October 2018 but I recommend using them as soon as you're able to.

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What rewards can you get?

1. Heroic Edition: This code has 2 uses. Firstly it can be used to create a new account or upgrade a free account to the full version of the Core game. Secondly it gives you a choice of the Primeval (heavy), Krytan (medium) or Profane (light) armor, an 18 slot Mithril box and 4 Heroic Boosters. It's not listed but it also gave me a letter worth 4,000 Influence for the guild I was representing when I used it. Please note that if you've already received the Heroic Edition items you cannot get them again by using this code.
2. Dragon Emblem Clothing Outfit: An outfit with a GW2 logo t-shirt (which cannot be dyed) khaki shorts and racial town clothes boots.
3. Deluxe Edition: The chance to be entered into a daily prize draw to win a Deluxe copy of both HoT and PoF. This requires buying a drink from a KFT shop in the USA, and is therefore only open to people who can get there.

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So it's only open to US residents?

Unfortunately yes, since the promotion was re-started one of their "fixes" for the problems which occured is to restrict it to US residents. (Note: not US citizens - people who are in the USA at the moment. If you're a US citizen abroad you're excluded, if you're a tourist or foreign national living the USA you're included.)

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What exactly is the process to claim the rewards?

Note: You might have to try each step in this process several times due to heavy traffic causing the app to be unreliable, but you don't need to uninstall it or unlink your accounts, just keep trying until it works.

1. Download the KFT app from the Play Store (Android) or App Store (iPhone).
2. Open the app, click the 3 line menu icon at the top left and go to Social Rewards.
3. Click on Profile and select the option to Connect a Social Media Account.
4. Choose Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, put in your account details and push connect.
5. When it works the slider will be dark grey and stay over to the right and your profile picture from your social media account will appear on the profile page in the app.
6. Go back to Rewards and refresh until you see the GW2 promotions. Select the one for the in-game items (I can't remember what it's called).
7. When it's worked you'll have a message in the Profile section with the codes, which will also be emailed to you.
8. Go to the main GW2 site, click on Services > My Account, log in and click the big red 'Redeem a Code' button
9. Type in the code exactly as it appears, including the dashes. It will tell you if you got it right (or wrong).
10. Log into the game and you'll get your items in the mail.

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What if I don’t have a smart phone?

You can use Bluestacks or another Android emulator to run the app on your PC.

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What if I don't use social media?

It's free to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and you don't need anything except an email address which isn't already linked to an account. So you could set one up just to claim the promotion and then delete it later on. (Facebook accounts are notoriously hard to delete, so I recommend picking one of the other two if you want to do this.)

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What if I don’t want to give a strange app/company my social media information?

As above - create a secondary social media account just for the promotion. All you need is an email address which doesn't have an account linked to it already and if necessary you can create those for free too.

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I’ve got/can legitimately get extra codes, can I give them away?

Yes - find someone who hasn't/can't get a code and who you want to share it with and send it to them.

Here’s what Chris Cleary said about it:"Feel free to give the codes (heroic edition or outfit) out to whomever you want! We're only closing the new accounts being created by players who are trying to abuse the promotion to create a bunch of new heroic edition accounts."https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/9ce157/kung_fu_tea_promotion_is_banning_accounts/e5aiwss/

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I’ve heard of people being banned for using these codes, is it safe to use them?

Yes. Before the promotion was paused, and then restricted to 1 code per account, some people were using it to create hundreds of new GW2 accounts. That was stopped and those accounts were banned but it's safe to use new codes.

Here’s what Chris Cleary said about it (before the pause):https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/9ce157/kung_fu_tea_promotion_is_banning_accounts/e5ahhgh/

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Never mind all that, what on earth is bubble tea?

Bubble tea or Boba tea is sweet, milky black or green tea with tapioca balls on the bottom.

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So does that mean Bubbles is confirmed for the next expansion?

Anet have not confirmed or denied the introduced of Bubbles, or Steve as he's more formally known, at this time. (And no, Half-life 3 is not confirmed either.)

[Gaile Gray.6029]

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Willowsheart.7940 said:Still not working for me, just crashes and nothing in my email :( Yes, I'm in the US .............sigh.

Be sure to check your spam/junk folder. That's where mine was.

Good advice. One of my fellow team members had it go to that folder, too.

@JustTrogdor.7892 said:

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

With that in mind, if you have suggestions for partnerships, we’d love to hear them. Is there a local brand that you recommend? A major company that we should consider? It would be very helpful to get those suggestions, so please do feel free to share them as you think of them. Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

Strickland Propane in Arlen, Texas. Pairing GW2 with propane and propane accessories seems like a a match meant to be.

Ummm... ok, I see it. You use propane to charr-broil your steaks?

@Trise.2865 said:

Since you asked... Would absolutely love a GW2 LEGO Black Citadel, Charr Tank, Golem Suit, etc., etc... But that's a different thread entirely, no? ;)

I would be so incredibly, amazingly, thrillingly happy if this happened!!! Despite the horrors of stepping on teeny-tiny LEGO on a regular basis, I love them very much!

[Ykfox.3825]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@"Greener.6204" said:

A lot of marketing is done through word-of-mouth. If you approach "local bakery chain" and mention how there's this other company which has great artwork and expressive themes which could go well with cupcakes or pastries, you never know what might happen. If things click, then you've not only helped yourself, but two other companies

and

the gw community in your neighbourhood. That's like a quadruple win ;) .

To be clear, I'm not suggesting you act as though you're a representative of Anet!

Actually, that's a very helpful suggestion, and we would welcome the input from our community!

We look at partnership opportunities with an eye to reaching our players around the globe in a number of ways. Depending on the partner and a few other factors, we may run promotions broadly or in a specific territory, country, or small set of countries. We’re lucky that we’ve gotten to work with a number of great partners and we always are looking for more with whom we can work.

With that in mind, if you have suggestions for partnerships, we’d love to hear them. Is there a local brand that you recommend? A major company that we should consider? It would be very helpful to get those suggestions, so please do feel free to share them as you think of them. Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

You could maybe partner up with Tim Hortons if you wanted to do something similar in Canada. Get them to make some sort of dragon themed donuts or something? (Or Quaggan themed...)

Honestly, I will say it leaves a bad taste in the mouth that this promo is US only. I do hope ANet plans to eventually have similar promotions for the rest of the world. Even if you have to do it one country at a time.

[Willowsheart.7940]

Thanks, I did check spam folder..........nothing........Maybe tomorrow I guess. :( still sad though. I keep seeing players running around with the shirt. Although I am delighted for them, I find myself grumbling under my breath LOL

[Danikat.8537]

Is anyone else stalled on trying to connect a social media account?

There's a number of reasons it might not work for me, but I want to eliminate the obvious first. I've been trying to get it to connect to an Instagram account and it's just been stuck on the 'connecting' screen with the little circle spinning around for about 30 minutes now.

Edit: I restarted the app and it apparently had connected, it just didn't tell me. The GW2 promotion isn't showing but that's probably because I've not let it know my location.

[Zeivu.3615]

I just checked the app. The code can be claimed now

[Deimos.4263]

I'm sorry but this "solution" just plain isn't good enough.

I'm not in the USA. I have plenty of American friends that could get me a code, and have offered to do so. I'm quite tech savvy enough to spoof my location and you'd never know. But I'm not a liar, or a cheat. I wish this company could say the same.

But you know what? I no longer want the damn t-shirt with your logo on it. You've lost a customer today, because I won't be treated like a second-class person because of my location. You could have fixed this, easily, and you chose not to do so. So say goodbye to $150 USD in revenue I fork over each and every week. I'm not leaving the game but I'm done giving you my money.

[Gaile Gray.6029]

@Ykfox.3825 said:

You could maybe partner up with Tim Hortons if you wanted to do something similar in Canada. Get them to make some sort of dragon themed donuts or something? (Or Quaggan themed...)

Honestly, I will say it leaves a bad taste in the mouth that this promo is US only. I do hope ANet plans to eventually have similar promotions for the rest of the world. Even if you have to do it one country at a time.

This is a great idea. I love Tim Horton's, and it would be awesome to partner with them. Thank you for sharing that.

And yes, as I said above, we're always looking for more opportunities, which may be offered on a global, continental, countrywide, or region-specific basis. We have offered many partnership opportunities in the past, and hope to have many more in the future!

[Danikat.8537]

Hopefully future partnerships will run better than this one!

[Ashen.2907]

@"Deimos.4263" said:I'm sorry but this "solution" just plain isn't good enough.

I'm not in the USA. I have plenty of American friends that could get me a code, and have offered to do so. I'm quite tech savvy enough to spoof my location and you'd never know. But I'm not a liar, or a cheat. I wish this company could say the same.

But you know what? I no longer want the kitten t-shirt with your logo on it. You've lost a customer today, because I won't be treated like a second-class person because of my location. You could have fixed this, easily, and you chose not to do so. So say goodbye to $150 USD in revenue I fork over each and every week. I'm not leaving the game but I'm done giving you my money.

Its probably not because of your location, but rather the laws enacted by your (representative?) government.Even so, sorry this hit you (and others) so hard.

[Chaz.1857]

While I appreciate the suggestion to start promotions in other countries (And indeed if I can find a local place who'd be up for such promotions I'll get in touch with them!) I still feel cheated by the fact that the KFT promotion initially didn't stipulate anything about region-exclusivity for the app promotion, and only did so a short time afterwards, which is why I'm currently unhappy - Even if it was always intended to be a US-only promotion, they should have made that clear on day 1, instead of changing the terms of service day 5. If not the T-shirt, I'd still like some form of apology, acknowledgement or compensation for the frustration, time spent, and the fact that KFT got hold of my social media details under false pretense.

[lapaer.7581]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:The Kung Fu Tea promotion has been resumed. Please see the Kung Fu Tea blog for more information.

I usually don't post here, but this is very important to me. I've been playing GW2 for years now and it's the only game that I play. And really enjoy.I got incredibly excited when I heard about this campaign and checked every day to see if my code was there (after downloading the app and signing up via social media), because I thought it was available to EU as well. People reported seeing it in the game browser in their language (e. g. German). A lot of us feel that we were mislead to believe we could get something out of this. I don't believe that there is nothing you at Anet can do and I feel like our pleas are being completely ignored, which is kind of sad. Can you please make the codes available to non-US countries as well? Please. It's not fair to limit it so that however many players can't participate.

[Lowquality.3029]

Does the heroic edition upgrade FTP accounts with paid account status?

[Danikat.8537]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"Deimos.4263" said:I'm sorry but this "solution" just plain isn't good enough.

I'm not in the USA. I have plenty of American friends that could get me a code, and have offered to do so. I'm quite tech savvy enough to spoof my location and you'd never know. But I'm not a liar, or a cheat. I wish this company could say the same.

But you know what? I no longer want the kitten t-shirt with

your logo

on it. You've lost a customer today, because I won't be treated like a second-class person because of my location. You

could

have fixed this, easily, and you chose not to do so. So say goodbye to $150 USD in revenue I fork over each and every week. I'm not leaving the game but I'm done giving you my money.

Its probably not because of your location, but rather the laws enacted by your (representative?) government.Even so, sorry this hit you (and others) so hard.

In this case that seems unlikely. Firstly because when it was originally started it was available worldwide and it was only shut down and restricted because botters were using the promotion to generate hundreds of codes and between that and the sheer amount of people trying to get codes the app was overwhelmed. So it looks like KFT just took the easiest and most heavy handed way of restricting how many of Anet's customers can participate whilst ensuing all their own customers were still included.

But also it's a free give-away. It's not a contest and you don't have to pay anything to enter so it seems highly unlikely there would be anything legally preventing them from running it in other countries. I know there's nothing in EU or UK law to stop it happening. Yes, even GDPR - that means they cannot sell your data on without telling you they're going to do that, but it doesn't stop them running the promotion. It might not be worthwhile if the main purpose is to harvest data to sell to marketing companies...but unless the tea company is just a front that's unlikely to be an issue.

[Danikat.8537]

@"Lowquality.3029" said:Does the heroic edition upgrade FTP accounts with paid account status?

It did before the promotion was shut down. I can't find out if the new codes did or not because I'm not one of the privileged few permitted to get one.

 

In the interest of full disclosure I did get a code before the promotion was shut down, and used it. That doesn't mean I'm any less annoyed about the bait & switch where players in the rest of the world were suddenly excluded after the promotion was started and after many people had given access to their data because KFT "forgot" to include the minor detail that actually it was only US residents they were interested in.

 

[Linken.6345]

@Lowquality.3029 said:Does the heroic edition upgrade FTP accounts with paid account status?

Yes it do

[Lowquality.3029]

Is it against TOS to buy/sell codes for in-game currency?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

The forum seems to have swallowed up my post(s); I am disheartened to see so many have received their codes in an email, and I have received nothing. I thought, as the rules/information indicated, it would be 1 or 2 business days, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Sigh.I was considering giving the Heroic Edition code to my son for his birthday, which is tomorrow. :(

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

@Zeivu.3615 said:I just checked the app. The code can be claimed now

After several crashes, I got my codes...but the store won't accept the Dragon Emblem outfit code. (Have not tried the other.) Are you supposed to enter it in the Black Lion store were it says Redeem Code? There are no instructions in the e-mail.

Okay, solved--I had to click the 'item code button' before entering, otherwise it tried to redeem it as a gem code.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

The forum seems to have swallowed up my post(s); I am disheartened to see so many have received their codes in an email, and I have received nothing. I thought, as the rules/information indicated, it would be 1 or 2 business days, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Sigh.I was considering giving the Heroic Edition code to my son for his birthday, which is tomorrow. :(

I got mine in minutes. Did you check your spam filter? The email comes from info@popdeem.com, not KFT.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Those who did receive the codes via email, was it the email you used to create your KFT account? If so, was that email different from your social media email account? I don't remember what email account is associated with my social media account, as that social media account is quite old.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

I used the same e-mail for both.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"Deimos.4263" said:I'm sorry but this "solution" just plain isn't good enough.

I'm not in the USA. I have plenty of American friends that could get me a code, and have offered to do so. I'm quite tech savvy enough to spoof my location and you'd never know. But I'm not a liar, or a cheat. I wish this company could say the same.

But you know what? I no longer want the kitten t-shirt with

your logo

on it. You've lost a customer today, because I won't be treated like a second-class person because of my location. You

could

have fixed this, easily, and you chose not to do so. So say goodbye to $150 USD in revenue I fork over each and every week. I'm not leaving the game but I'm done giving you my money.

Its probably not because of your location, but rather the laws enacted by your (representative?) government.Even so, sorry this hit you (and others) so hard.

They're far more likely to break local laws by the bait-and-switch they've pulled on us than to just honor their part of the transaction after people did their part. Data theft is definitely a crime in many places.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Awesome, @Danikat.8537. Thanks for putting all the information we know into one place.

Bubble tea or Boba tea is sweet, milky black or green tea with tapioca balls on the bottom.Apparently, there's regional differences in what the term means.

When I first had it, it was strictly tea with tapioca pearls, aka boba aka bubbles. Green tea wasn't allowed milk, but black tea was. Since then, it's evolved well past any attempt to stick with any particular definition other than there's tea and (probably) toppings of some sort. Think of it as a smoothie without yogurt or a frappuchino without coffee: it can have just about anything.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

When I got the promotion to work (today), no codes were listed in the Profile/Message section of the KFT app. Just this message: "You've claimed your GW2 rewards." I've yet to receive an email.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:I used the same e-mail for both.

That is not helpful in determining which email the app uses to send the codes.