Harrowing
Even though I was never around for the harrowing map skin, I was thinking back to when I started playing and the first harrowing I ever experienced.
http://promo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/harrowing/
I found this just now and remembered thinking to myself, "The harrowing sounds exciting"
And what was even more fun to me: the 2013 snowdown.
http://promo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/snowdown-2013/
This was my favorite snowdown. I thought it was really creative with the couplets they had describing how to earn each icon. It was simple and probably not very time consuming to make, and it had a huge impact. Ex: For the poro gift icon: Is a Giftwrapped Poro icon your one Snowdown wish? Just queue up and win three on Howling Abyss Looking back at this I remember being so excited to queue up in ARAM for the icon and couldn't seem to win. I would sneak onto my computer at 1 AM trying to get just 3 wins in ARAM. After I finished that I needed the other icons and so i decided to spend a few dollars to get the other icons. But it felt like my decision. It didn't feel like riot was influencing me to gift a friend.
Now this snowdown:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/look-out-its-snowdown
Yes the bard and syndra skins are amazing. Way better than most of the other snowdown skins. But thats all I liked. The legendary snowball was a nice idea, but it feels like riot is just telling us to give them money.
"Here, spend 10 dollars on a legendary skin so you can get a mystery gift that MIGHT get you another! That's ok if you don't because you can pay another 10 to roll again!"
This year, as many of you know, the harrowing didn't really even come. They released skins, but that's it. Nothing special happened, all that came was a jinx skin or a nunu skin. Not to mention It didn't even come on Halloween. Then when they did finally release it after everyone was upset, they came out with these stickers to make up for it. [slayer-jinx-unamused]
Now I do like these stickers but that doesn't make up for the harrowing that you used the stickers to replace. I just want to ask anyone from riot why the harrowing was nonexistent last year? It really disappointed me and I really hope you set this as an example of what never to do again.
TLDR: Why does it feel like riot doesn't care about the harrowing and snowdown anymore? And what can we do as a community to change that?