On Dec 16th, we greatly reduced the amount of xp required for a crafter to progress from level 96 to level 97, in each of the four crafting lines: Smithing, Woodcrafting, Tailoring, and Cooking. We believe this was a good change that was for the good of the game since the amount of work was just too much. It's part of a larger pass we are making on the Crux to improve it by fixing bugs and making some things easier and/or more player friencly (some of these changes have already been done, and there are still a few more things we're working on within the Crux -- but we won't go into those now-- this post is about crafting compensation package).
However, reducing the amount of crafting xp required to reach level 97 was unfair to those players who had already made progress toward 97. They had to work much harder than the players who came after them. This compensation package is being provided to those hard working players in recognition of their effort, and to keep the game fair.
The size of the compensation package is based on how much progress each character made from crafting level 96 toward 97, within each of the four crafting skills. The items being compensated are specific to the relevant crafting skill. For example, Smithers will receive many Koldcore Ingots, Woodcrafters will receive many Teak Timbers, etc.
Crafters who reached level 97 will receive the full compensation package. Those who got part of the way will get partial compensation. For example, a character who progressed 50% of the way from 96 to 97 will get 50% of the full compensation package. This is so that the amount of the compensation corresponds to the amount of effort.
The crafting skill level that was used to determine these amounts is the character's crafting skill level when the build on Dec 16 was pushed. Therefore, players will not be compensated for crafting skill level progress that occurred AFTER the crafting xp was reduced--it's only for the work that these players put in when the requirements were much harder.
In addition to the per crafting skill compensation, we will also be providing some compensation on a per character basis of various experience boosting potions.
Players who had multiple characters with progress toward crafting level 97 will receive compensation for each and every one of their characters with progress toward 97.
(Also, the way our system is set up, we cannot dispense gold via these commands -- so we have include gems as part of the compensation package, which can be sold for gold.)
We will be distributing the packages, server by server. Since we've not done rewards this way before, we want to make sure everything goes smoothly before we do all the servers.