January Events Preview

Desdichado, on Jan 02 2012 - 20:20, said: This reasoning seems a bit thin. All the gold awarded in every contest since release is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the gold that gets spit out in clan wars.
The lower gold purse is one thing, since they are having a ton of these contests this month, but the inability to tie really alters the value proposition of these contests. Before, you knew as long as you produced a stellar match you would probably at least tie for something. But now that's no longer possible. You could quite plausibly have a fantastic match and still end up with nothing. In my experience, it typically takes somewhere between 50-100 matches to produce a match with a shot at winning. Sometimes you get lucky and get a great match sooner than that, sometimes not so much. It's rather a lot of time to invest with what is now a far lower chance of return.
CptBlood does have a point. I've bought a few premiums only for use in contests. Now the reward has always paid for mine, but how many people bought them and didn't win? I would never have bought the Matilda for the All-Star if the top prize had been 2k with no ability to tie since the odds of paying for itself would have been much too low to be worth the risk.
I'll try a few of these low-ballers I happen to already have the tanks for to see how it goes and go from there. Maybe the low purse will push away all the good players .