I really love the concept of Christmas glow items - free gifts of real useable
gear that is made possible by the temporary and random nature of the gifts (so
presents wont make making those eqs irrelevant). The item pool is just really
small and the chance those is also quite slim. 1, maybe 2 or maybe nothing per
holiday season. Also, there isn't that big of a leap in player progress to the
point where pretty much only usable gift again is that gleaming reinc pendant.

What I would like to see is really widen the xmas glow pool and increase the
chance by scrapping off all the merchant-made generic crap from presents and
booze & xmas-hats made as rare present as any temporary item. What could be
really cool for the item pool would be to add in some rarely done higher end
content like most of the eqpool of for example tiamat, teasers from new
recently uptuned or added pools like Moonrind, Hamel, Zorn, some items from
Kharim vault etc. You know what I mean. More interesting temporary toys for
all and giving some of us grumpy seen-most-of-it something to roll for.

Is there any real harm? Stuff is temporary anyway only for the holidays and
keyword: random. Worst case would be that you might get addicted to that
pwn-eq and just have to get a permanent one or just have to reinc to get to
play around with that black grimoire, hc-exp with that invisible amulet or
test that devourer shield.

Holiday wishes for you all,
Zerks

I have to actually reply to this as +1 does not seem enough.

After the christmas glow items (with too small pool and too little chance), and
multiple uranium boots and whatever other old school item there was in the pool
that seemed actually useful long time ago, I just gave up on going to santa.
Cold turkey. I have few self-only reinc pendants squirreled away already, so
even those hold little appeal.

I think I have bothered to visit the old dude once per year for a hat or so,
but even that has not been worth the trouble any more.

So, my suggestion: Get rid of garbage presents (95% of them), get rid of
historic items (hello, amulet of truth), and _always_ offer time-limited
really, really random items (any 'eq' item in the game for example)? It would
be much more amusing. And still chances of getting a 'good' eq would not be
that great, but at least no booze / bat-armoury stuff, which are like 'sigh.
again?'

-Daerid

( Completely as a bystander, as I am not going to participate this year at any
rate as not going to be at home before the 24th, but hoping for changes for the
next year )