D&D Minis...The Next Generation

Some of you may have heard (or read) about the changes WotC has planned for their Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures line. If not, real quick, the game is no longer collectible. It is essentially becoming an add-on for the 4th edition RPG. Wizards says this is what the fans want. Well yeah, fans of the RPG want pre-packaged, fixed rarity minis that they can use in their campaigns. Fans of the skirmish level tournament play want their game to stay the same. The only problem there is that nobody actually plays in tournaments (or when they do, it's only 4 guys every other week).
I can understand, from a business perspective, why WotC decided to make the change. They get to produce fewer minis of a better quality and make them available to a larger audience (namely the RPG guys). From the store front perspective, though, they are limiting the amount I can sell because of those same reasons. If each guy gets exactly what he needs out of one box, he buys fewer boxes (duh). The collectible part of the game forced people to buy more product to have a better chance of getting the good stuff.
On top of all this nonsense, and possibly the worst bit, is the fact that WotC made the announcement about the change two weeks prior to the new sets pre-release. Now why would they let people know they were cancelling their game just in time for them to decide not to participate in an event. Wizards keeps telling me how they want to push the brick & mortars with all kinds of awesome events and product, but they go and pull some horsecrap like that. They already got their money, what with the pre-orders that needed to be in a month ago. So, I guess, all these changes they have been making are just more of the same, they get paid and the rest of us get screwed.

sold out?!?
10/14/2008 12:05PM

I'm a little confused right now. It would appear that several game companies are following a similar, and quite baffling, business model. Namely, hype the crap out of your new game and then sell out of it before it ships to distributors. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't "selling out" imply that there was product to be purchased in the first place? If distributors don't have it and stores don't have it, then who is it being sold to?
All of this comes on the heels of Privateer Press announcing that they have sold through all available Monsterpocalypse product (here, there and everywhere). Yay for them and the handful of speculative retailers that thought to order it, like, 6 months in advance. See, if you didn't get those orders in ahead of time, well, you got a big old box of nothing. Evidently more will be available shortly, but c'mon, they should have anticipated the shortage about the same time the preorders came through.
I don't think I would mind as much if this type of over-hyping, under-producing method wasn't being used by so many companies. Fantasy Flight Games barely made enough copies of the Battlestar Galactica Boardgame to be able to sell them in advance at GenCon (and I guarantee those came out of some stores' preorders). Pathfinder has the stones to print up a $30 Beta RPG in advance of an actual release, only to sell out the entire print run. I expect this from indie publishers, what with being poor and all, but these companies rake in ridiculous money with $80 board games and $50 books littering every store shelf on the planet (you know, when they actually print enough to get them on the shelves).
I am concerned that the tabletop industry is heading down the same road as the video game industry. It appears companies are more interested in getting people excited about their products than actually getting people their products. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to not play my Nintendo Wii before I don't go to pick up my copy of Agricola.

Dear Wizards of the Coast,
10/01/2008 02:18AM

Thanks for letting me (a store owner) hold my very own pre-release. Giving the little guy the chance to get a bite of that big, shiny pre-release apple was mighty white of ya'. Too bad you couldn't take the time to figure out how to actually make it work. I mean, wow, could you guys have f-ed this up anymore than you did? Why make store owners jump through hoops to get in the all-new, all-failure WPN, just to limit how many promos and how much product we get. "Hey, sorry new player, you can't participate in my pre-release event, as the powers that be have decided to cap attendance at 24 players". "What's that you say, the big pre-release is able to run multiple flights with as many players as they want"? "Hmm, that doesn't seem fair". You know what else isn't fair, giving the same promo out for the pre-release and the release. What's the point in trying to convince players to do a $30 sealed event multiple times just to get the same craptastic card at each event? Oh, and open dueling, yeah, that's an awesome idea. Little Timmy is totally gonna be down with buying himself an awful precon with 10th edition cards in it so he can wait 50 minutes for the round to end and hope to god one of the players is willing to beat his face in with their totally awesome sealed pool. I thought the idea behind this WPN garbage was to get more people interested in your game, not to take the players you have and piss them off so much they don't want to give me their money (cause honestly, you guys already sold through the print run to distributors, so your money is made). So, thanks again for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I feel priviliged that I was deemed worthy of receiving product one whole week in advance (of course, I will lose my sanctioning, premiere store status and, possibly, my first born, if I try to sell any of it before the official release date). Yours truly, Jeffrey Chewning

P.S. - Way to go on monitoring those WPN accounts, because there is no way that average Joes are holding release events in their living rooms. We all know you would never stand for that, since you are all about the brick & mortars.

this could get ugly...
09/08/2008 01:47AM

Wizards just sent out an email to TOs (that's tournament organizers for those not hip to the lingo) laying down the framework for pre-releases under the new Wizards Play Network. The good news, yours truly gets to hold his very first pre-release (yay). The bad news, well, pretty much everything else. Normally, the big guys who host PRs (pre-release gets annoying to type) get tons of product to accommodate the hundreds of players that are expected to do sealed, after sealed, after draft, after draft over the two-day event. Since plenty of storefronts are going to also be doing PRs, Wizards anticipates more people to show up, but to be spread out over more places. So, what does this really mean? The same amount of product now has to be distributed to not only the big guys, but all the little guys, too. Fewer packs for, ostensibly, more people, well, you do the math (it equals less prize support, in case you couldn't do the math). There's a bunch of other annoying stuff (like no drafts, the same promo for the PR and the release, dealers not being able to purchase or sell new product at the shows), but the prize support thing is probably going to be the biggest gripe amongst the 'hardcore'. Will the 'big' PRs be full of the usual number of people, well, it's hard to say. Alot of guys still like the idea of making a day of it in the city, getting dinner and hanging with their friends. The flip-side of that coin is not having to wake up at ass-o'clock in the morning, not getting on a train with Ritalin fueled adolescents and not getting your butt handed to you by some kid who introduces himself by saying 'I have ADHD...play or draw?'