Thanks all for your responses. We can't say enough that we appreciate you sharing your thoughts very much.
What we have been doing in the last days, is collecting your feedback and forwarding it. In the beginning of this thread we have given several statements of why we do what we do, and those haven't changed since. We are sorry for those who did not receive any boosts this time around. We had to make this new feature available to only a limited number of people this time, to see if everything works as expected. We do strive to make these offers available to everyone in the future. We are fully aware that you don't appreciate it much when we use these servers to test anything (we have Beta as a test server, of course), but due to the nature of the tests we had to do, we needed larger player numbers than Beta can offer. To be complete, we did test the technical functionality of the feature on Beta, and those tests were successful. This was done before we even
considered making the feature available on any of the non-Beta servers.
Then, some of you have asked for our replies on this matter. After our initial responses earlier this week, we have stayed relatively quiet on the subject, and I will tell you why. I personally believe it best to not 'intervene' in discussions too much, since I am aware that my presence in a discussion can have an effect on the discussion itself, and I prefer to get your honest and open feedback, without me steering the conversation in any particular direction. YOU are the community, and it is YOUR voice that should be heard, not mine. That is why I decided to take a step back, and 'just' listen to what you have to say, rather than forcing myself into the conversation.
Again, your feedback is invaluable to us, and we will always listen to what you have to say and take it into consideration. That is why we are always asking for your feedback, and take care of forwarding it. Mind you, that doesn't mean that we can always do what you tell us to do. We do strive to make well-informed decisions, weighing various factors, of which your feedback is an important, but not the only one.
Thanks again for your feedback, and please do keep it coming.