you are correct and sites like pay pal have been cracking down on MMO's and Community Forums that take user donations in exchange for items ( gaiaonline.com comes to mind ) and have be suspending the accounts of such if the are found to be offering games of chance / gambling. As most MMO's nowadays don't use paypal anymore to handle they're micro-transactions it would be up to the credit cards companies to enforce things. which is a little harder someone would first have to complain to the credit card company and then it would most likely take a lot of complaints before anything happens

I'm going to buy a few of the packs for the same reason I bet a couple of bucks when I visit Vegas, to have a bit of fun and see what happens.

Cryptic isn't forcing anyone to buy them, I can't get what is causing such a tidal wave of nerd rage.

I'd be more inclined to pick up three or four if I had my stipend. I guess I could sell some Dil but eh.

they are if the person wants that new ship

and this whole 'its ok cause cryptic doesn't physically force you to do anything' bs doesn't fly either. thats circular logic that can be used to excuse any behavior of any kind by anybody

if its illegal the credit card needs one and only one complaint and then is required by law to act on it

the reason you don't see this kind of thing in western mmo\s is because in most countries that have such mmos it isn't legal to run lottery type (as in quite literally anything whatsoever that resembles a lottery of any kind) programs or sell lottery type items. thats why its limited to the asian market.

funny, I opened 5 of them and 3 of the things were exactly the same item 3 times in a row - 1hour xp boosters.... on a VA toon no less.

eh? if this is true I find the whole setup highly suspicious. if a person can't get the item in 150 shots of 100cp something is very seriously wrong with the whole setup. to say nothing of the fact they dumped a whole bunch of stuff you can't even use more than once on you, which looks like a pretty obvious scam to me

actually it exactly fits the legal definition of gambling because it is a game of chance wherein you pay money to get tokens to use in a game of random chance to get a particular reward

if I opened 400 of those things and still didn't get one i'd be having a serious talk with cryptic about exactly what process deals those things out. because they're charging money for something that people clearly aren't getting in the numbers they should be. rare is one thing, but if you spend that amount of points to open those things its absurd that 1 in 400 doesn't contain the item you're looking for. thats dangerously close to looking like a scam to extort money out of people with false statements about being able to obtain said item in a reasonable manner

and the fact that this thing hands out many duplicates of the same item you already got out of the last box is questionable in itself, especially considering most of those are one claim pets

people are buying 150+ and paying real money for them and not getting the ship,. if they aren't getting it from THAT they are certainly not going to get it from the Q race

so do I. I want to see proof there actually is a reasonable expectation to get it and that it isn't some kind of scam with no realistic chance of actually getting it

actually it IS fraud if there is not a reasonable chance of obtaining the item. 'very rare' is not an excuse. people are buying upwards of 150 of these things at a considerable cost to them and not getting it. that in itself implies there is no realistic chance to actually get what you are paying money to get.

100cp? yes but tell that to the people that bought over a hundred of them. thats alot of cstore points for something they have not recieved and at that rate may never recieve

actually what the law says is gambling for anything that has a monetary value is illegal, not money. given that you pay 100cp - which has a monetary value, the argument can be made that this isn't entirely legal

need I point out there are reasons that other companies don't do this?

I got 3 xp boosts in a row on my VA. giving out items that are literally useless is a ripoff to say the least. they should be disabling the possibility of winning those on VA characters

Its a tradeable item in game and because of that you can get it as low as Lieut 6. You can turn it in and get the ship but you wont be able to use the ship till you reach Rear Admiral or Vice Admiral. Its basically a Requisition Form for the ship. Just a piece of paper in your inventory till you turn it in for the ship.

Is this some sort of joke???

Is there any way we could please get picture of the scarves so we know which one we want to buy?

Oh honestly. I don't see why anyone is surprised by them releasing the gift pack, Champions Online was doing it for holidays already, and it works for them. The only difference is their players seem to be alot more thick skinned than some of the folks around here

I don't give a rats hat about the Jem Hadar and probably not about anything else yet to come that is left over from Season 4 until Cryptic calls Season 4.2 what it really is and helps get some of the bad taste of the recent rash of immersion destroying things out of my mouth.

But consider this:

All of the content we are seeing now that is related to this Jem hadar storyline was originally supposed to be part of Season 4. Look at the Season 4 banner still on the forums. Remind you of 'Federation and KDF fighting over these newly discovered ships"?

How could the ships appearance in the holiday event have been a compromise with CBS if X-Mas was 3 - 4 months away when the content with the ships was originally supposed to be released?

Sad to hear,
have a Fleetmember, that spent 250$ on the Store just to get the Ship, and he did not get it, and now he is quiting the Game.

For me now it looks like a BAD Idea to do this this way, get the Ship in the Store directly and save People from so much frustration.