they said they'll warn us in advance when it's coming. All the servers that have the change now had a news post posted in the Events forum a month before the change to let everyone know about the changes

*The Pass Change, how to live with it*
I mainly play on the Russian server, and by now it is the only _highly populated_ server with the new pass system. It was introduced to us on February, 6. Then modified slightly on February, 28.
Today, a player posted an answer to his letter to "Contact us", and they (the game staff) state clearly that this new change will not be revoked but will be spread to all game servers (just a matter of time). So I decided to share some information with the players from other versions to help them prepare. And my thoughts are mainly the same as those you could read in this forum thread earlier from players from other servers.

Important moments when the change comes:
1) Watch for your Greyfells! If you have dead ones, send them to heaven and revive before the change, or you're going to lose the diamonds they offer. There's still a problem though: we had the pass change in the middle of the day, but Greyfells die at the daily update in the morning. So those players who didn't manage to be in the game in the morning couldn't send their freshly dead Greyfells to heaven and didn't get diamonds from them when they logged in later after the pass change. They had to write to "Contact us" to get the compensation.
2) The pass meter: yes, its current value will be divided by 10. If you had 25/300 - it will become 3/30. But we also had several players reporting wrong values right after the change. I don't know, my meter was alright.

Now, regarding the new ponts.
First, I want everyone to understand that those new points are NOT the same as you have now. I easily got 10/day everyday with the old system. But not after the change.
After Feb.6 I managed to get 7-9 points a day, and some very active players reported they got 10 points. But it was also frequently something like 10-10-9 for them. And when you exceed the value of 30 the points are just lost. So, 1 pass per 4 days (7 passes per 30 days) became the most common situtation (for active players, not for the newbies, they couldn't achieve even that).

And because with the old system we had 10 passes for old horses + 1 pass for activity, we didn't like the new situation. We complained. On Feb.28 we got a new update saying "we slightly changed the points system, you should now get points more easily, we would like to hear your opinion". After this our points drastically declined. Yes, declined. Everyone reported they started to get appr. half of what was before. I, personally, am getting 4-6 points a day now. Many players are saying their scale doesn't change at all for several days (they get 0-2 points). Soon after that the phrase "you should now get points more easily" was removed from Ow's forum post. Yes, you've read right. They silently modified the post.

From Feb.6 to this day the number of players who highly dislikes the new system has only been growing. Some players even opted to start playing on the servers where this change is not in place (yet). Many decided to stop buying VIP/Pegasus account. And, of course, some simply stopped playing at all.
You can't get 10 passes per 30 days anymore. And you can't understand what you must do to get more points. Everyone has tried. That's the new reality.
Prepare yourself, stock up passes, rethink your game strategy beforehand. If you are an active player but not a donator, things will get worse.

I do not want to sound too pessimistic, but it is worse than we expected. Even optimistic players are not happy anymore.

--
I apologize for not being word-perfect in English.
If you have questions, I'll try to answer them (here or you can write me a private message so we could avoid flooding the forum).

We got this change on CZ too, however after the low points fail, Ow apologized and kept the topic open for our feedback,,
I'm wondering what's up with RU server at all, like you don't really have any space to tell your opinion there,,

Well but everybody already know, what does our "feedback" mean to Ubisoft,,
They'll 'take it into consideration' and after a while, they'll just sweep it away,,

I think once they make the change on all the servers and then realize that they are losing money because of it they will make the point system easier to achieve

Ubisoft may own Owlinet/Howrse, but the only thing they can say is "hey you need to bring in more money to keep that game going." Owlinet is the one who edits the game and decides with way is best to gain those extra money.

Its Owlinets minds we need to change not Ubisofts. I doubt Ubisoft even know how to properly blupp a horse on this game

Okay, so I wouldn't mind the new pass change if I could get 10 points a day in the same way I do now. I am actively playing, every day. I do so much on this game and dedicate most of my spare time to the game, if I won't get those 10 points a day I'm out and Ubisoft won't ever get another dollar from me on any kind of game, no matter how great it is, because treating their players and customers this is just straight up unfair.

the Czech, Russian and Bulgarian servers are the ones with the pass changes?

Yes, and Italy.

Does anyone have a strategy that they use to get the most prizes out of it for few to no passes? I'm not aiming for the divine and I've never done the maze event before, so I'm curious what the best way to approach it is.

Well, there is a forum thread on the Events forum and another one on the Game Play one. Players share their opinions everyday. Or should I say, cry out loud that they feel humiliated. Many contacted "Contact us" as well.
My personal opinion is that if Owlient allowed us to fairly get 10 passes per month, there would be almost no complaint. Even though 10 passes are less than what we could get with the old system, that would be acceptable.

You should use google and just find out what the way is to the end, because those are usually up in the first day or so, then, compare to your map that you have in the corner.

the maze event is that while the prize locations are the same, the actual gift in that location isn't always the same. You could find a saddle on F10 and I might find carrots for example. Check out my masterpost that bezo93 bumped up on the last page as the last spoiler has maps for all 4 mazes.

I haven't recorded which prizes I've found in which locations as I didn't hit all locations during testing, but most of the prizes I did run across find were the lower end ones. However, I didn't go to the far out locations (dead ends) and from previous maze experience the dead-ends often contain the good prizes.

I completed the last two maze events we had, but I don't plan on going for divine in this one. Since I'm not spending any passes, I'm either going to hit all the prize locations along the way, or go the quick route until I get to maze 3 and hit all the maze 3 locations I can as usually the better prizes are on mazes 3 and 4. I can't say that is the case this time though because I found lots of flax and carrots on maze 4

From the looks of this new pass change, players of all types are going to be hit with a blow. Horses with pass value are going to sky rocket or plummet. Teams and collecters will most likely be hit hardest, but I'm not sure. They better get that point system figured out before bringing it here.... because this server might explode otherwise.

Is there a risk of not finishing Maze 3 if you hit all of the prize locations on the earlier maps?

The pass estimates I've seen have said you can get through either half of maze 3 or all of maze 3 (can't remember which) buying treats if you follow the route marked out on the map (posted on the previous page). If you try taking detours then you won't finish all of maze 3 unless you buy treats/open TCs to find treats

Well this shouldn't be too bad, I don't even use pass horses that much because they're so expensive, and the way it's looking I might get around the same amount of passes with a bit less work! It might not be so bad. But if it's really that hard to get points, I think I will quit when this change comes here.

Just an example of what happened to our horse sales after the change: there is not a single horse with Golden Apple available for equus now. Well, some inexperienced player may place it in the sales once in awhile, but it will be bought right away. The lowest price is 1 pass. (Remark: our version is especially passionate towards GA, this may be not true here).
Also, the demand for old, skilled or high GP horses fell significantly. People opt to buy something else or just save their money.