Obtaining special plants and decoration of previous years

I didn't quite get the point but I think what we have now is totally okay. I'm not sure if they decided to prolong the event (guessed it shouldn't last for this long, according to previous years') to leave us more time to obtain all variants. But if it's true, then I won't ask for more. Having longer time should work.

I think that might be a little hard for the owners/coders to do. Waiting a year to get something isn't all that bad. I was busy with RL last fall and on into Christmas, so I missed a lot that was going on around here at that time. I've had to wait and am still waiting until this fall and Christmas time to get a few things, so, even thought it's mostly the newbies, it's not just them. Anyone who has an account and then stops playing for a while would be in the same boat.

So... I think you just have to be patient.

I think that's pretty much how Dragon Cave does it -- the week before a new holiday release, the older holiday dragons can breed. The thing about that is that it's still impossible to get a caveborn version of the older releases, so people might not be able to get those dragons at all without the breeding lead-up week. It's not really as critical over here, because (1) most of the holiday plants (but, sadly, not all) are still available from the wild garden during their holiday and (2) they aren't actually any rarer than the new holiday plant -- something that actually makes it a lot easier to get an older holiday plant for free from other users who already have as many of them as they want. (At the moment, it's actually harder to get/trade for newer plants because everybody wants some of those.) I'm more impressed with our admins' current solution, which has been to allow the event to run for a longer period of time than we originally expected. That seems to be giving most people a fair shot at getting the colors they want.

I think Shelybear's point is that she'd like to decorate the gardens with the new holiday decorations BEFORE the holiday starts. There are a lot of people who like to do that. (It helps them get into the mood of the holiday.) I do that in real life, usually a couple of weeks before Christmas, for instance, but that's because my birthday is a week before Christmas and I like having the house decorated for it.

So I can see her point, but I think that for the most part, we have to view the items as "gifts" for the holiday; they are decorations, but as a gift from the admins, it's more appropriate for them to be given ON the holiday, not before.

Most of the items aren't really holiday-like anyway. The gifts for the midsummer event, for instance (lemon tree and fountain statue) are appropriate for all year round. And some people (like me) like to leave some of the decorations up all year, just because they're pretty.

Nah Mia, that should be dustpuppy's point. My point is: as long as events last for longer time (like what we have for the ongoing event), I'm totally okay.
But thank you Mia, I now know the difference between decorating it before and after. I put the decorations on into my gardens just because they looks nice there without considering about time.