What happened to Genshins first anniversary

sorry this took so long, burnout been beating me up.

[caseygabriel]

A little bit of context for some of the points you covered (from someone that saw the downfall first hand):
1. The Google Play Store review bomb only happened AFTER Mihoyo started censoring their Reddit, Discord, Hoyolab etc. of topics pertaining to the Anniversary. They even censored the most innocent of posts that weren't even rage-induced but instead conversations that explained why everyone was suddenly blood thirsty for those that literally woke up the next morning and were wondering what the heck happened. The Google Play Store was literally the only place Mihoyo couldn't immediately censor.

2. The other apps were review bombed not because they were Genshin fans but because they were trolls and anti-fans that wanted to tarnish Genshin's name because I kid you not, hating on Genshin for no reason was all the rage back then. People in irl were literally breaking up with their partners and isolating family members because they played Genshin.

3. There was a serious debate going on whether or not Alloy was considered an Anniversary gift (which she wasn't, she came out due to a partnership with Sony way before Anniversary) and whether or not the event 7 week 10 pull was considered a gift. Due to still no communication from Mihoyo, we will never know if that original 10 pull was considered the Anniversary gift.

4. Literally everyone--no matter their spending status--got nothing on the day of. Which rightfully pissed off everybody. F2Ps would've understood if they got no reward if Mihoyo wanted to go the P2W route like 99% of mobile games and were planning to spend for the first time if that were the case; but not even those that spent thousands and I mean THOUSANDS of dollars got anything. And due to the fact we got no confirmation about that event 7 week 10 pull, it felt like the fans weren't even acknowledged. ESPECIALLY because there was no "Thank you" letter even acknowledging the Anniversary.

5. The streamer rewards was just extremely poorly timed. The message that accompanies the 1k Primos has been the same original text since the first time streamers got it. Literally nothing changed.

6. The Ella Musk/Elon Musk joke was just a poorly timed joke which was tainted by the speculations that were birthed from Hoyolab. I'll explain below.

Now some fun facts about what happened in Hoyolab (Mihoyo's own personal Social Media for all their games)
1. Hoyolab occasionally releases web events linked to their games that users can participate in and there are millions of players across the globe that use Hoyolab. Hoyolab posted 3 Anniversary Web Events for Genshin and when everyone saw it, they immediately knew it was a PR move. And since this PR move was officially Genshin's stance on the Anniversary EVERYONE was not happy. Keep in mind these 3 events were released weeks BEFORE the review bomb on Google Play.
A. For the Art and Cosplay contest they wanted high quality content to be submitted and only 100 people could win said contest. (Out of the millions that would no doubt participate. And no, the rewards were not region locked. Everyone would be competing with those across the globe.) The prize for said contest was a fraction of a Wish in Genshin and some electronics. And if you know anything on how expensive high quality Art and Cosplay can get, it was a direct slap to the face of their creative fans. They would've saved more money just buying their own game consoles and and Primogems or just outright farming 2 days worth of dailies.
That is why the Art and Cosplay submissions were mostly filled with stick figures and random meme posts.

B. They released a Social Media contest where the only way you could participate was via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and the post had to be positive feedback about the game. Again, low amount of winners, less than a single wish.

C. The web event that EVERYONE could participate in and what triggered the most amount of people. The event that made it so 1% of people could get a Welkin Moon and 99% would get 100k mora.
Now as to why this pissed everyone off? Because Mihoyo had proven on their New Year celebration event that they could do better. How did they prove this? They released a similar web event on Hoyolab during the New Year that rewarded everyone and I mean EVERYONE Primogems. The amount you got was random, but at the end of the day you still got primos.

2. Due to the fact that Genshin was obsessed with advertising at this time, the Web Events that were released on Hoyolab tainted The Ella Musk/Elon Musk joke in a bad light. When the joke was posted people was still seething and when people saw the requirements, they were immediately reminded of the 3 web events.

3. Also, fun fact, one of the official Genshin Posts on Hoyolab pertaining to the Anniversary was automatically deleted by a bot because people mass reported it for "Offensive Content". It was back up about 3 hour later.

[noahi.]

as a veteran player who watched it all go down, that anniversary basically sent half of the veterans into a LONG hiatus from the game...

[coolionoodles]

Last year anniversary was horrifying, the people giving negative reviews to genshin were even doing to other games (honkai impact, tears of themis, arknights) and google classroom, i stopped playing the game at that time, i didn’t think it was worth investing my time in anymore.

What made me hate the anniversary the most was that this was proof mihoyo/hyv could get away with literally anything in genshin and they could still maintain their playerbase. It’s scary how this game could exploit its own players and there would STILL be bootlickers

[RatLordOmega]

Honestly I dunno what Mihoyo expected after hooking people into an absurd amount of personal investment into the game.

[ErgeYT]

This was the most chaotic arc of Genshin Impact yet, but I feel like the 2nd year anniversary won't be as chaotic just because not a lot of people are expecting a lot, unlike last year x) This was a really well-made video! Keep it up :D

[ozmantiswine]

As someone who developed a gamblin-- i mean Genshin addiction after starting around November of 2021, I feel genuinely surprised that there is history related to the qiqi fallen meme becoming a symbol of rebellion. Qiqi is truly the archon we don't deserve.

[KrystalKlearrr]

Looking back, I understand why people were upset but I think everyone went just a BIT overkill with it, I really hope the 2nd anniversary goes well because I have so much love for this game, since it brings me comfort and enjoyment. Happy 2nd Anniversary Genshin Impact, let's hope this year's a bit better than the last.

[vfsberry]

They really should’ve just made the anniversary a week long and added stuff like 2x artifact domain rewards, Top up reset, More fragile resin, A ten pull, and a cool new cutscene where we’d see all of the character in future outfits. That would’ve kept the hype and appealed to the fans desires.

[lawishswiss]

...i just can't forget this one line i saw when that happened "our expectaitions were low, BUT GO DAMN"

[ScriptForever]

4:35

For those who haven’t played cookie run kingdom, lemme explains one things-

The diamonds are crystals, with 3000 of those, you can do a ten pull. It is rather easy to get those crystals in game.
The rainbow cubes are the currency for costumes, it is much harder to get than crystals, you need 1500 to do a 5-pull
The snowflakes were limited currency for an event that gave the player more chances to get a legendary character.

Those rewards were really good- and let’s not forget the game gives 3K gems every single tile an update rolls in :)

[garreonlefay]

About the Anniversary, there were some art contests that ended in raffles of a welkin moon or something like that(yeah, not only you had to do art good enough to end up in top 3-5 spots, the Prizes were in gacha too) And i remind you that any art submitted to Mihoyo passes to be theirs and the original author is not credited.
It was bad faith all around from Mihoyo to the fanbase and trolls that blew things out of proportion.
Not to mention the Concert. Seriously if they did the concert today, with the gigantic repertoire of songs they have now, not to mention the Chinese Opera Song from the last Lantern Rite, people would have loved it.
Heck the Standard Banner isnt getting any new 5 star characters, all new 5 stars are all limited when they debut which makes it impossible to get them except in rerun banners, so people would have liked to get a ticket or something that lets you get Jean, Diluc, Mona, Chichi or Keqing for Free. Its pocket change compared to the mountains of money they get for the limited characters. It would have been a nice present.

[yqisq]

4:03 yep imo the lack of a simple 'thank you' is the biggest downfall for the 1st anniversary. It's like your bf or gf forgetting your birthday.

[kohiVT]

For further context, not only did the fandom escalate because of the lack luster rewards, but there were several factors within the game/community itself that only added more fuel to the fire (IT'S LONG SORRY):
- KOKOMI'S BANNER RELEASE: Player's RAGED at this character. A cute mermaid priestess from Inazuma, Kokomi was said to have been the essential 5* healer character that would combat the newly introduced "corrosion" mechanic (gradual HP sapping), BUT. She had a VERY unfortunate passive debuff that decreased her crit rate by 100%--mind you, it is NOT easy to even raise any character's Crit Rate in the game above 60-70% so that resulted in--you guessed it--NEGATIVE crit rate Kokomi. That meant if you wanted to raise her as a DPS, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for her to Crit and her numbers as an attacker would suffer. Understandably a harsh passive debuff, especially when all it did in return was overcompensate her healing percentage, this made ppl FURIOUS that she could not become a versative character outside of her niche without spending money or excessively grinding to improve her stats.
Knowing all this, and in tune with the anniversary backlash, the players' reaction to this was to flame this character to hell and even go so far as to harass the VA over something that was not even under their control. (Note: A year later, and despite community backlash, Hoyoverse has not changed Kokomi's kit, but she is also now a very beloved and sought after character even if just for her aesthetic [big lol])
- ELLA MUSK & GENSHIN IMPACT x ELON MUSK CROSSOVER: This came a LITTLE bit after the anniversary passed, but a poorly timed "campaign" was pulled on Oct. 14th 2021 when the popular NPC "Ella Musk" (possibly a joke/nod to Elon) tweeted out the following:
If Ella Musk’s account hit 500, 000 followers, Genshin Impact would change its name back to PAIMON, the way it used to be.
If Ella Musk’s account hit 1 million followers, Ella Musk would follow Elon Musk on Twitter.
At 3 million followers, Genshin Impact would invite Elon Musk to stream the game.
At 5 million followers, Mihoyo’s CEO would invite Elon Musk to come to their headquarters.
As you can already tell, the fandom lost their MINDS and this was met with almost universal backlash on top of the lack of anniversary rewards. Again more fuel to the fire for already seething fans.
- MISCOMMUNICATIONS INTERALLY/INCONSISTENCIES ACROSS SOCMED: this one's not readily known by the public or easy to find cohesive information on without having some connections to employees, but if you were to contact and ask anyone who worked for the company behind the scenes, they can tell you honestly that there was a LOT of messy communication issues and lack of quality control when it came to the planning for the anniversary event and subsequent "rewards". No one was really on the same page and there were inconsistencies across the diff language Genshin accounts. Mind you, planning usually goes on for months in advance, and it just seems like with everything going on, it was just all poorly executed at the time of the controversies. (Also, the review bombing did nothing but make the technical support committee miserable btw.)
1st anniversary is infamous and these tidbits are also important to note as reasons why it got SO out of hand--small "mircoaggressions" built up into a frenzied backlash but hey... didn't stop ppl from continuing to play in the end so who truly won? LOL

[Screcy]

You forgot one big detail (unless I missed you mentioning it). Their present for the community was the shop bonus reset. People rly didn't like that their only present for the anniversary was an opportunity to spend more money.

[Midnightblonde-]

To be honest i laughed so much during that time because it just kept getting worse and me and my friends were shocked to say the least. The only thing thing that really disgusted me is the actors, streamers and other games treatment, like putting shitty rates, funny fanart memes and getting weirdly creative to insult genshin is legit and incredibly funny, but the actors streamers and other games have nothing to do with it 😑 some of them (if not all) received death treats, I'm pretty sure they were shocked too like literally everybody, even non-genshin player😭.
If this year's anniversary is also mediocre, I just hope the genshin impact community will leave those poor souls( by that I mean the actors, streamers and other games)alone they have nothing to do with the actual game decisions 👁👄👁

[darylewalker]

There were many contests, with 150 primos being the top prize. Not even 1 wish unless you won two contests. The contests with better prizes put said prizes behind gacha. Remember that cosplay can cost hundreds of dollars, getting less than $2 for a prize (1 wish is around $2).

[LadyOMyth]

I was around for it and, oh boy, were people as pissed as you claimed. I'd play the game, gladly take the rewards we were already given (because there was a login event too, if I'm not mistaken), and then go on YouTube to listen to creators read Twitter posts of people complaining and demanding better rewards. Honestly, at that point I had only been playing for a few months and Genshin was the first game like it that I started playing. Up until that point, I didn't play games with anniversary stuff (to my knowledge) or where you have to go through gacha gambling tactics to get the characters you want. I played console games like Pokemon and Legend of Zelda: BoTW. There weren't many special things like the glider from last year or the pet we're getting this year. I now play a few other games like it an kinda understand but at the same time, I'll still be happy with what we get. I'm looking forward to this year and seeing what we get in the next version overall!!! As a lore junkie, I'm REALLY looking forward to all the lore we're getting in the next version with the archon quest as well as the new Mondstadt festival with Razor and Grandmaster Varka lore!!!

[kapeecoffee]

Let's just say they will also get a surprise when the anniversary comes

[DarkuleFox]

For anyone who are new and came after the first anniversary. Yeah I been there and was a total chaos. I personally don’t really mind about the anniversary gift, but deeply I understand why others are upset because they felt cheated after a year of devotion (if I allowed to calling it that way). It was a war zone between fan and dev.

[DarkuleFox]

Let’s remember that last year how Mihoyo (now is Hoyoverse) spent their budget from players for Twitter icon #. Now it is seem they are moving forward to the right direction with the players’ budget “The Genshin Impact anime by ufoTable”