What happened with snowballs during the 2001 Christmas Event?

Question

When reading this old news post about the 2002 Christmas Update: https://www.tibia.com/news/?subtopic=newsarchive&id=173

The article says the following on the bottom:

Snowballs, however, have been left out as they have been heavily misused for powergaming last year.

What happened during Christmas 2001 that they decided to not give out snowballs anymore? How can a weapon with 0 atk and 0 defense be used for powergaming? Very curious to know if someone has the answer!

Answer 1

Christmas Update 2001 was when snowballs were first introduced to the game. It was possible to create them by using snow heaps on the ground (just like on the Percht Island from the Winterlight Solstice event) which were temporarily added as part of the christmas festivities:

As far as I know, back then the skill training system was slightly different. Nowadays you have to damage the monster every once in a while in order to progress; at that time there was no such requirement. Because of this, snowballs made the perfect tool for players to train their distance fighting skill - free, basically infinite and harmless to monsters. I think it is clear why they had to be left out.

Sources:
Snowball
Snow Heap

Comments

Awesome, thanks so much for the fast answer with screenshot too, wow!