[Remedy]

However. We do have a few little exceptions this time around! It is a little holiday gift, right?

From what I understand, despite the fact that standard rules still apply, there are exceptions, such as buying for a friend.  
Also:

1. You can buy keys for FRIENDS! Even if you have bought keys for yourself! If you know your buddy can't make it on ANY of the above-mentioned times, you can post for them!

I believe you can also buy two pairs of keys if one goes to a friend, but I thought that was only if they could not have been able to post at all any of the times.  o 3o I may be wrong on that, though, since that also happened in a case where both users posted. P: So... I'm a little confused, too.  XD

[Shieba]

And here it is, Pickle:

1. You can buy keys for FRIENDS! Even if you have bought keys for yourself!

"have bought" is, in my opinion, past tense. If you were able to buy them at the same time, shouldn't it read "even if you buy keys for yourself"?

[Remedy]

Huh.  I didn't think that hard on it, but I guess that would make sense.  :o Sorry, I wasn't so clear on that before.  I'm curious to see what Shrewdberry says about it, but if I need to try to post again another time, that'd be alright.  X3

[Shieba]

Just in case posts get voided, I just shot another try at the Breeding Center Front Desk. If all is alright, I guess I'll just have to find people to help me with this as well. ^^; Guess I'm just a bit miffed because this was the only release time that really gave me a good timezone and an advantage because my internet is so slow that I have always problems to post on time if many others are here. And with people snatching keys in bulks, that advantage went out of the window. XD; And I also kinda raised hell here at the hospital just to be able to be here. XD; Sorry if I'm seriously reading too much into this. Bleh, English, bleh. I think of the two cases we have here, you are far more in the clear because Elektra didn't post. But yeah, let's wait for Shrewdie or another mod. Because...yeah, now some people got keys for themselves. Imagine I would ask every of these people to try for me now if it's legal. Then five people and me can try for myself. That...would kinda get out of hand, huh? So I don't think it was intended like that in the first place.

[Jessari]

Like Pickle said, if I have to try to snag my keys at a different time, I'll be alright with that. Kinda disappointed, but I'd roll with it.

1. You can buy keys for FRIENDS!

This is the part of the paragraph I focused most on. Yes, I realize Shrewdie went on to say that you could buy for a friend who was out of town, but I understood that to be a 'for instance', of why you might want to buy for a friend. I thought other scenarios would be acceptable as well (i.e. buying for a friend who was online, but didn't have any luck grabbing keys). At the time, I didn't see anything in the first post forbidding this kind of teamwork.

Yes, there was this following quote, but I cover that too. Keep reading. X3

If your buddy ended up being able to buy keys for themselves, you CANNOT buy two more keys under the excuse of buying them for a friend! The rule is one key of both types per person, period.

I read this as 'If your buddy snagged a key for himself/herself during a release, you cannot buy another set of keys for them'. If I would've read all the questions people posted after, yes, I could have read that differently, but I didn't until questions were raised after the release. I thoroughly read the first post, the official rules post, before the release, and I believed I understood it completely, hence why I didn't bother to read the questions or ask any of my own.

If the fault lies with the first post not being completely clear, should I lose my keys because of how I read it? Not trying to be mean here (really, I'm not), just trying to explain why I don't think my post should be voided.

Again, if you do decide to void my post, I'm not going to pitch a temper tantrum, but...try to see it from my point of view? I really did think what I was doing was allowed within the rules.

[MillietheWarrior]

Heck, if you buddy even wants to give you their KS for you to buy the keys with, you can! Sharing is caring! Just make sure to, of course, SPECIFY who the Keys are going to! If you don't specify, we will consider your post to be trying to buy more keys for yourself!

I assumed it meant we could give them the KS and they could post for keys for friends. I assumed it was fine, because there was no specifying as to whether that person HAD to be out of town or something. I know FOR SURE I won't be on for one of the other releases (Edit: And after texting my friend, I know for sure I'll miss the second one today as well), and may or may not be here for the other, depending on the whims of my friends. So wouldn't it be premature to say that I would be here for all of them? I dunno. Meh. ^^; And now I will finally hop off to bed and wait to see what happens. Sorry for posting here; just wanted to say my peace and defend Ere's post.

[Cookie]

Just popping in to say that if its true that you can buy keys for yourself and friends at the same time (not limited to one key of each type per release), I could have just got myself and four friends keys and no one would have got anything. Of course that would be abusing the rule if we can do the whole friend + us thing, but there's nothing stated against it. And before someone says its 'common curtsy' not to do that, we've thought that before about numerous things so I don't think its out of line to say someone will abuse this.

[Thunder]

Just popping in to say that if its true that you can buy keys for yourself and friends at the same time (not limited to one key of each type per release), I could have just got myself and four friends keys and no one would have got anything. Of course that would be abusing the rule if we can do the whole friend + us thing, but there's nothing stated against it. And before someone says its 'common curtsy' not to do that, we've thought that before about numerous things so I don't think its out of line to say someone will abuse this.

You could buy keys for 4 different friends, but based on my understanding of how this works, if one of those friends has already gotten keys from this sale (either on their own or from another user), then they cannot receive any more keys, even if you buy it for them. The opposite situation is true; if you buy keys for a friend and they haven't received keys from someone else or bought their own yet, there is no point in another user buying for them or them posting to buy for themselves later.

Basically, nobody can exceed getting 1 Paragon Key and 1 Lucain Key from the sale, which guards against the abuse that I think this is talking about (I'm assuming you mean people being able to get more than 1 of each key from the sale).

[Cookie]

No, I didn't mean that people could get more of one key type. I just meant that, the first person could control who got keys if they REALLY wanted.

[Thunder]

But the large number of releases and the 1 type per person rule are designed so that even if someone does do that, lots of different people would still be able to get keys o3o So it's really not much to abuse, IMO. If 5 of each type are going to be released each time, that's 20 different people who can get keys, regardless of how they get them.

[Shieba]

Thunder, that's not it. I think no one here abused the rules anyway, people just interpreted them differently. The problem is that, for example, Cookie could have bought keys for herself and four friends. Then five people would have gotten keys, just as if five separate people posting had gotten five keys. The result would have indeed been the same. The problem is - at least for me - that the different release times were meant especially for international users who would miss the other times. So if Cookie would, for example, buy keys for her four US friends who decided to sleep instead of being awake at ungodly US-hours, those of us from other timezones would have lost the advantage the release times were supposed to give us in the first place.

Also there is the abuse of chances (a bit). Let's say Millie, Jessari, Cookie and me would team up and all post that we would like four of each key, one going to each of us. Let's say there are three more users who want keys and who haven't formed a team to get keys. The chance that one of us from the "team" will get a post in early is rather high, given our numbers. And then only one other user would get a key. It's true that the same amount of different people would get keys and in this, it remains "fair", but it does have a weird feeling of unfairness to it, at least to me, that the chances are not equal for everyone but that people with more friends have bigger chances. Imagine I would ask Cookie now to try to buy me keys during the next release. She already got her own, so there's no harm for her and I would have doubled my chances.

[Thunder]

I can see where you're coming from, but if the results would be the same with or without abuse, then I just wouldn't worry about it so much. At any rate, I don't think the majority of users have the money to (or would want to) buy 10 keys since that's a whopping 950 KS, and no one in this first round thought of doing that, so I can't imagine that other people would do it either. In the end it's still keys for lots of different people, which is the point of this whole thing in the first place.

What people can do and what people want to do are two very, very different things xP

[Shieba]

I don't think the result are easily the same with or without abuse because without abuse, the keys would go to different people, as usual. With abuse, the keys will go to people with either a) the most money so that they can indeed set up teams (I, for example, could "hire" people and give them the money to try to snag keys for me and there are quite a few others who could as well) or b) have the most friends. And I dunno, I'd rather have the new user who doesn't know many people yet and who has only a few KS have the same chances as the super-rich user who is here since three years. =/

[Thunder]

Well if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But based on what I said above (everyone only gets 1 type of each key regardless of how, the fact that buying 10 keys is a LOT of KS, and that no one in this first round thought of teaming up or whatever), I really don't anticipate seeing people buying an ungodly number of keys at once. This system is already as fair as it an be, and honestly, 100% fairness doesn't exist anywhere in society. Fairness can be improved, but it can never be perfect. If you think this can be better, then you might as well help to try think of how that can happen instead of just mentioning the flaws =/

[Shieba]

Well, Millie and Jessari did it? o3o Which was a smart thing that paid off (don't get me wrong, I'm not judging them, I actually think it was smart and if this is allowed I'll try to find someone who can help little 56k-modem-users like me out as well). While I, too, can't see big teams forming, I can see pairs, maybe, and with it being announced that there will be 4-6 keys each time, that means that maybe only the first two people getting posts in get keys for themselves and their friends. I absolutely don't like that idea, especially since not everyone will be here for every release. =/ But maybe that's just me, I dunno. I do understand you perfectly and yes, it IS still fair and the event still serves its purpose but it just...has a strange taste for me when it works like that.