Wow the follow ups from the presale have been crazy and are somewhat divisive I must say. I personally didn't have any issues and managed to buy what I wanted within the 99-second cutoff.
I do feel that the extension to 3 minutes is very debatable because this sets a very bad precedent that people will get their way if they make enough noise about stuff. And it brings along another set of issues.
The 3 minute mark was chosen randomly. People can easily argue why not 4 or 5 minutes? Or even the 1st hour? I wonder how the person who bought at 3 minute 1 second now feel.
There were discord messages after 2 minutes informing people that the presale was over. Potentially there could be one group of players who chose not to buy into the general sale, now found themselves at the shorter end of the stick because if they knew there was this extension, they might have bought in the 3rd minute. How would they feel?
The final issue is about voting. Obviously most people would vote along their own self interests, i.e. those who got the promo card would vote no, and those who didn't get the promo card would vote yes for the extension. (I am sure if they do a vote on whether to airdrop everyone 1 promo card for free, the majority result would be a yes too. Lol!)
It's not the first time there are these screw ups/issues and I seriously think they need to get their basics right before pushing out products after products.
It has been divisive, hasn't it?
And yeah, the 3m mark was chosen arbitrarily, but probably influenced by the slowdown in sales. But, that in itself was as you say, possibly influenced by the discord announcements at 2 minutes. So, people might not have bought at that point and are now going to miss out twice :D
And the voting will be interesting, as the ones who are most affected, are those who took part in the presale, but who don't necessarily have a lot of voting stake. For example, I am equally as affected by the change in airdrop as @azircon, as we both bought 2400 - but I have a fraction of his SPS stake to vote with.
In some ways it is, "them the breaks" and next time, the UI and cutoffs will be better designed.
Yeah we don't always get what we want in life and sometimes luck play a role. Interesting point that you brought up about the voting stake though.