Mr Wrong, I read through your post here, and part of me actually cried a bit. I'm very saddened to think that the users think we care so little. I've dedicated a very large potion of my life to the well being of the site, and every day, although the craziness in my life(everyone behind the scenes knows my situation, and I don't feel it necessary to disclose those issues here, I assure you my life is pretty much chaos right now) should have caused me to retire from here I simply can't bring myself to do it.
Why? Because I love you guys more then you know. I can personally attest to the hours and hours some people put into the site. I work full time(often 90+ hours) and go to school part time as well and yet I still devote time to here. And I'm not the only one. The entire staff is volunteers. We don't get paid for what we do. If we didn't care about you guys, we wouldn't do it.
I only speak for myself there, but I have personally seen some people pull way more then they should have to in order to keep this place running. We may be having our fair share of issues, but not caring isn't one of them. I would like to add to what maria has mentioned on some of your concerns here as well.
I would like to take responsibility for post four having not been up to date. I worked with the owner of Li Mei on this and I was supposed to be in charge of keeping this up to date. I spent hours comiling the old thread and then unfortunately life got away from me. I made this thread before a series of unfortunate events took hold of my life and I'll take full responsibility for having forgotten about the front page of this.
We try to mix in other items, but we throw in wings and swords because people ask for them....a lot. When I cataloged the old thread, which spanned a few hundred pages worth of suggestions, anything from a plushie of a particular user(yes, more then one person suggested a plushie of a user who isn't even here anymore >.>), to a watermelon cannon, to wings and swords. In the end after the tally's angel and devil wings came in an overwhelming popularity over the other things. When I talk overwhelming, I mean like 20 votes to 1 vote of something else. We made these items precisely because the users wanted them. One of these days I'll pull out screenshots of suggestions that people have made that we put into place, to hopefully give you guys peace of mine
This, all of this, comes down to resources. Pixel items take time and patience, because we don't want to release items that aren't up to the high standards we uphold to.
For the past few events the pixel staff was me and wishie, and wishie has a busy life too. Wishie's job is the CI's and cash shop items which are the life blood of the site. Meaning anything shop or event related was left to me. Maria's life had swallowed her and her computer went kaput. This isn't anyone's fault, this is just life. During the winter event I ended up in the hospital, life happens. When you are so limited on resources you work with what you have and hope for the best.
As Maria said, LONG pixels a lot. She has pulled my butt out of time crunches more then once for sure. And she's probably pixel-ed as many items as I have. We always meant to have her revisit those old cowboy items, which aren't quite shop ready at the moment, but the occasion never seemed to fit them. Xuvie, well, I cannot speak for her, but Maria said shes busy, so I'm inclined to agree with this. Our staff crosses our job descriptions and tries to hop in when one or the other side needs help. Long helps pixel and I help mod. Its just how things go. We're working on trying out Chexala and Nephila pixels for an upcoming event so watch out for that :O
I...do not know how to respond to this. I would never steal someones idea. I may take an idea and make it reality if I see someone suggest it. For example, people around the site asked for skins in the new color pallets we have and I pleaded with Wishie to make this a reality, then voila we had Pastel Body Paint! People wanted more interior(actually they still want furniture, I haven't been able to get that to work yet >.>) so I created the honeymooners retreat item. I'm not perfect and actually I'm just a novice pixelist, I've only been pixeling about a year or so. So part of the issue is simply some suggestions are too difficult for me T.T
Wishie would be very disheartened to think that you think that. She asks for suggestions almost every time a new CI is released. She can't do everything that is ever asked for, but she also can't possibly do things when this thread lay's mostly bare and unused. She wants you guys to keep suggesting things. Like really really wants people to keep suggesting things. She asks us almost every time to come up with ideas. (Not every time, sometimes, like the upcoming one, she gets a stroke of aha, but not all the items lay directly on her. We all work behind the scenes with decisions).
Captain Howdy and the rest of us, unfortunately, have to remain rather vague on this front. We are trying to give you guys as much information as we can and still keep people's personal lives out of it. The problem really is largely a problem with resources due to various problems in peoples personal lives which is not Howdy's nor any of our places to reveal anything more.
Between this thread and the other thread, we've heard you. Plans unfortunately can't be immediate, and will be a gradual change over time. But rest assured, there are already a number of things we've discussed maybe implementing to put you guys more at ease about our position in the back end. We are alive, we do care, and we are still working for the better of the site.