Corporate Christmas Party

Look, I appreciate the effort, but considering it turned into queue simulator for the majority of the event, it was a bit rough. First people waited in line to get on the shuttle to go to the place to begin with, then people waited in line to see the speech, then people waited in line to see the tour...

Speaking of the tour, while I appreciate getting to set foot on the NBT for the first time, but really only getting to see the chapel, part of the library, the bar, and med lobby wasn't worth the wait, even if I was in the second tour group. 

I am regrettably going to come off rather harshly here, but the longer the event dragged on, the worse and worse it appeared to be. To be very honest, the event didn't seem thought-out at all at worst, poorly thought-out at best. Here is the breakdown of the event for the average player:

Without exaggeration, the average person involved in this event spends most of their time waiting in cramped, undersized spaces. First you wait at Central Command to board the shuttle (eighteen people at a time). Then, you arrive at the away site. From there, you begin waiting for the speech. The speech itself was nothing particularly interesting - it was mostly an IC confirmation of the existence of the NBT, with no new information. From there, you begin waiting for the tour. The tours were originally being conducted four at a time - far too few, and with 90+ players on the server, it would have taken hours for everyone to see the ship. Even after this number was doubled to eight, people were stuck waiting for a long time (I think I saw a group still waiting at 1:45 into the round). And what do you get? An IC tour of a very small chunk of the NBT ship. The most frustrating thing about this is that we see nothing new: without exaggeration, every part of the ship that was shown had already been posted in teasers. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that this event was pushed as a major reveal for the NBT more than anything else.

At the end of the tour? If you're not command, you get kicked off the ship. That's what you get: you spent as much time waiting on lines on this round as you do in Disneyland, for things everyone has already seen before, before getting kicked off the ship unless you're command. I don't see the reason why the tour needed to be guided in the first place - and the preferential treatment given to command characters was utterly bizarre. Why is it that if I made a throwaway command character I would have been able to enjoy the NBT more than I did with an established character who isn't command? It isn't like they got to chill in the bridge, either. It was the bar and the kitchen.

Aside from how misleading the event seemed to be in terms of presentation, there's also other things. Viscerators, bluespace crystals, pickaxes, mass drivers, etc, all spawning from gifts. Event volunteers feeling that their experience was unengaging (One chef player told me that he got neglected completely). A mech combat arena being assembled for no clear reason (which was more entertaining than the event itself). The fact of the matter is that this event was not very good, and it most certainly was not fun. Again, I don't want to be a dick. Effort was clearly put into this event. The motivation for holding the event was good. But the execution was very poor: look at Aurora's two most recent major events. The casino event and the hotel event. They were both fantastic and well-executed. In comparison, this was very much lackluster.

Another very frustrating aspect of the event was the fact that it was held on an away site: this means that you could not observe. You were forced to play, and, indeed, forced to wait in the lines. If you decided that waiting in lines was not a good use of your time, you were sent to Central Command as a ghost without seeing the event unfold. If you were under the impression that something new was being shown, it is easy to assume that you were forced to miss it if you observed. It isn't like there was anything secret here - I was able to use the observe verb to watch the tours and there wasn't anything of the map there that wasn't shown, and hadn't been shown before (I recorded this and will be uploading it for people to see, if they too got frustrated and left.) 

Based off of the results of this vote, I think the sentiment that this was generally a disappointment was shared by other people, though that is an assumption and could absolutely be false:

I enjoyed the event. Staff involved were enjoyable, and it was fun to watch the work put into this. Event chars were nice to interact with as well. Fantastic hook for transitioning chars into the nbt! Lines were rough but player turnout shouldn't be a bad thing. Thanks for hosting and everyone involved in the planning!