My friends and I have come to notice that definitely not everybody is eagerly waiting for patch notes as soon we know it's patch day. We have found that it is actually surprisingly hard to get people to turn in your gifts, because they seem to either not know that there's stuff happening at Reaper's Hideout or don't know where to turn the gifts in.
I've filled the table with 15 gifts and stayed on the same server for about 2-3 hours afterward. Nobody ever turned in anything and when I was ready to log out, I went to the Hideout, intending to turn in my own stuff myself, but it all had gone. Either it despawned or somebody had taken it, thinking it had to be turned in to Jim and left it somewhere else. I was very peeved.
My suggestion: with every new update containing an event, add a one-time splash screen type banner or pop-up to the frontend menu briefly announcing what's new and where to find the patch notes. Players would have to press X or Esc to get rid of it before they can have access to Adventure, Arena, Emporium etc.
Examples of games that have this: Destiny 2, League of Legends (according to a friend?)
You might say that there is already a window in the frontend menu with "What's New", but I would argue that it is too small and too easily ignored.
We had to hold a sloop at gunpoint and extensively tell them what this event was about and force them to turn in our gifts. While that is one way of doing it, I also liked the idea of leaving many gifts behind on the table and people being delighted to see that! But people just don't seem to go to Reaper's Hideout :c
