17th September 2022.

It was a crazy rush to buy Riftwatchers presale pack 2 days ago. I was on my laptop an hour before it went live, waiting patiently like a hunter in the wild just in case something goes wrong.

I expected to have at least a good 5 minutes of buffer to input my desired pack amount. I couldn't be more wrong.

Riftwatchers presale sold out in an amazing 1 minute and 39 seconds.

Right now, we are sitting at ~650,000 packs sold, which is way more than the 500,000 allocated to presale.

Bittersweet success

Congratulations to the Splinterlands team for running a successful presale. They accomplished what they set out to do, pushing the game forward to its next phase and pumping up the prices of the tokens/assets players are using.

With a roaring success that is highly unexpected, a few major issues cropped up and the team is deadset on making things right for the players affected.

The team has humbled themselves and acknowledged these issues publicly, with solutions to resolve them proposed for the community to discuss on.

I'm proud of the team for doing this. How many triple A gaming companies have done this for their player base? (none that I know of)

You can read the full article here and get a good idea of how it went, what we the issues that sprung up, and the 3 proposals requested by the Splinterlands team.

3 Proposals by Splinterlands

Here are the 3 proposals penned by the Splinterlands team to resolve the Riftwatchers presale issues, accompanied by my response:

1. Anyone that purchased packs during the presale, but used less than the full amount of Vouchers be allowed to purchase the full amount of presale eligible packs by submitting the missing Vouchers. This will increase the total number of pre-sale packs eligible for rewards by what we estimate to be in the 2-3% range.
   Yes definitely, because they probably wanted to use their full vouchers anyway. I almost didn't include the bonus packs in my purchase as well.

2. Anyone requesting refunds will be refunded by the exact amount they purchased (in both SPS and VOUCHERs) by the Splinterlands company as opposed to the DAO. Splinterlands will then be considered the purchaser of those packs and will receive the presale bonuses like any other account, but unlike any other account we intend to use the majority of purchased packs and awarded cards as promotional giveaways.
   This is a pure positive bonus for players at the cost of the company. Yes to this since I'm a player, and I hope it does not incur too much cost for Splinterlands. Hopefully, Splinterlands will inform players who are NOT eligible for the promo card in advance first, so that players affected can make an informed decision.

3. We would like to increase the number of packs eligible for pre-sale rewards to allow anyone that purchased packs within the first 3 minutes (60 blocks). This would be a ~10% increase to the total pre-sale packs and resolve 60% of the transactions and 81% of the financial considerations of the presale refund requests. It would also give more time to people who physically can't complete the sale in less time.
   This is tricky because players bought into presale mainly for the benefits provided by the promo card. Increasing its print rate will reduce the benefit of joining the presale. Personally, I would still say yes to this since players who bought within 3 minutes should have the intention of joining the presale in the first place.
   

In summary...

Again, you can read the full proposal here and contribute to the conversation.

What are your thoughts on the Riftwatchers presale and the proposals from the team?

Regardless of how things turn out, there will always be unhappy people one way or another.

Hopefully, this gets resolved quickly and peacefully so that we can move forward with the other exciting stuff coming to Splinterlands.

Posted using Splintertalk