We anticipate that even with this update, third parties will continue

[Havenchild]

So in other words:
Stormpeaks: "This negatively affects my experience when using this service."
SassyAssassin: "Well it doesn't affect MINE, so your bad experiences don't matter."

Pretty much says everything we need to know about you.

Except they aren't technically wrong. Your ability to "surprise" someone is in fact seperated from your ability to "gift" someone regardless of what you think it is. These two concepts do not run in tangent with each other. You can still gift someone something and you can still "surprise" them with a gift card. You can't surprise them specifically with a mount.

The entire conversation in this thread is being muddied by two seperate philosophies of people who are saying they can no longer buy someone a mount and others saying they can no longer gift friends period, which are both still technically untrue. You can provide a gift card and people can buy the item (or any item) if they want to.

So yes they are correct in stating that you can easily work around this. You can also say it can be an inconvenience to some. Both are equally right though. This isn't really that much of big deal and I highly doubt this will even be some super hot topic in the coming months. People will adjust to gift cards, for mount gifting specifically, its as simple as that.

[LianaThorne]

Except they aren't technically wrong. Your ability to "surprise" someone is in fact seperated from your ability to "gift" someone regardless of what you think it is. These two concepts do not run in tangent with each other. You can still gift someone something and you can still "surprise" them with a gift card. You can't surprise them specifically with a mount.

The entire conversation in this thread is being muddied by two seperate philosophies of people who are saying they can no longer buy someone a mount and others saying they can no longer gift friends period, which are both still technically untrue. You can provide a gift card and people can buy the item (or any item) if they want to.

So yes they are correct in stating that you can easily work around this. You can also say it can be an inconvenience to some. Both are equally right though. This isn't really that much of big deal and I highly doubt this will even be some super hot topic in the coming months. People will adjust to gift cards, for mount gifting specifically, its as simple as that.

It's not technically untrue, it's just false. You can gift someone a gift card and still have it be a surprise. In what world is someone not excited at being given something by a friend in general when they're not expecting it? They're still ultimately receiving the gift from you when they purchase it with the gift card you're giving. It's just one step longer in the process now than before.

It sounds more like an issue of ya'll don't trust your friends to actually spend the money on the thing rather than lack of gifting at all. I get that it's frustrating that they took away convenience and the ability to specifically pick out what you want to send but trying to say people won't be happy over getting *something* still is a stretch.

Side note: I'm aware it does make holiday related things like Secret Santa challenging and those people I do feel bad for. I hope new plans are able to be made to still enjoy the time with your FC.