Well, to dean, I think LFL can probably litigate anyone using the name Star Wars for anything. I know i've heard mention of rewriting the contracts with LFL as a reason for no regionals. I'm no lawyer just my thoughts.

As for the if you can't beat them reference. If you can not do it better...Then by all means do it better. but honestly you will have to have the things i listed to do it "right" Tours, regionals, qualifiers, champs and international comps. You will also have to pre announce large prizes to entice folks to come to any of those not in their own back yard, so you can't guarantee players funded prize support structures will cover costs.

Playing the best is important, can't you already do that with Vassal? Do you need it sactioned with a name to have fun, dean you say no. But in reality it's all about the name championship or folks wouldn't be so upset.

Big tournaments are as much about prizes and recognition as true competition. Otherwise you'd be happy that you can play anyone you want on vassal and get in a good game.

I do wonder how much crow would have to be eaten if Pax garnered say more than 90 people? It probably will not due to the late notice. However ask yourself honestly what if it did? Would you be happy for the competetive community growing in size ? or would you all just discount it cause it's not in your backyard? Run by your friend? Played by the people you have known? Now will that happen, probably not, but i expect it will be less of a failure than folks seem to think.

MTG in it's early competetive years was a farce, tons of issues, from gameplay, to scheduling, to card bannings, to the point the game almost died completely. The players and the company stuck with it and tried to improve things, thats how they got where they are today.

-Slie

I'm game to hang out and whine with you guys.

Seriously though, I think the best option at this point is to show up to the Seminar and really talk to these people about this stuff. Chris Gallagher (?), the LFL rep last year, if he shows up again might be another good person to bug about this stuff.

Very enjoyable discussion.(something sorely missed aournd here lately) Couple of thoughts-

Isn't it entirely possible that WOTC isn't using GENCON 07 turnout at all?

Here's my thinking just using my state (Minnesota). Wizards sells thousands of cases every set in this state. Every Target (and that's a lot since we are the HQ) get's at least 6 cases and Borders books I have seen at least 10 at each store. Then you have the hobby stores and online purchases.(these are just that I can confirm may be more stores and amounts). Yet you go to DCI tourney locator and there have been like 6 total recordings since Legacy came out and half of those say delinquent or didn't occur and most of these are from one store. This means the stores that do play minis aren't using DCI to record the results. Now if I take that and go state to state around the country I can easily say overall that if Wizards looks at how much they sell and how much is recorded DCI I can without a doubt say Star Wars minis buyers are definately casual or collectors. This is probably reinforced if I then compare the DCI tournout to Magic and DDM. So, it is pretty tough to say that Wizards is wrong in focusing on casaul play. Can't mean it can't change over time, just means it isn't there yet.

NO thats not what i said, i'm not sure what part of a "?" after each makes you think they are declarative statements. They are questions. If the answers to those questions upset you then that is your own problem to deal with.

Having it in my backyard DOES matter to me. So do prizes. So does liking and knowing the people running it. Nothing wrong with any of that.

believe me if i wanted to call you a tool i would. I disagree with you , that is totally different from disliking you. OR insulting you. Let's not make the debate personal please.

LFL and Wizards can legally go after Vassal anytime it suits them. It is clearly infringing on their rights. I've seen wizards go after people for making online playable magic games. Happened to a close friend actually... Just cause they haven't yet doesn't mean they can't or wont'. I certainly hope they do not.

I'm upset with how things are being handled too, I want to see the competion scene to grow. I want to see more out of the game. believe me. I just disagree with the start our own alphabet soup league (ruined boxing) as the method to do it. I believe we need to increase our # of players, thus making it more viable for WoTC to do for us. believe me if this thread had 500 posters, sending WotC email, we'd have more of a voice.

To me that is the crux of the issue, we need a louder voice. More players = more voice. Pax is larger than GENCON in number of attendees. That is a good place to try to grow the brand.

Rather than bite the hand that admittedly feeds us poorly, lets try to get them to WANT to feed us better. Good dogs here's your treat

Dean I was certainly not attacking you. Same goes for you Bill. Personally i look up to both of you as players. I just think there is another side to every issue and am voiceing it.

-Slie

Well, I don't know. I am a casual player so all my needs are being met. Just kidding. Seriously though, I guess what I am saying is if we know that all WOTC cares about is DCI reports and we know the competitive gaming community is the minority in the SWM universe then doesn't it stand to reason that the way you get your voice heard is by increasing DCI reporting? If the majority of states had more DCI reports then wouldn't WOTC say the the majority of players are competitive and therefore move their focus to them? Just an idea.

The problem with this reasoning is that it is sorely flawed. SWM is unique in the aspect that there are a large number of COLLECTOR'S out there that buy the stuff for nothing more than to stick it on a shelf and look at it. They never intend to play any games with it. And that's a big part of the problem, that WOTC doesn't seem to be accounting for that segment of the market.

DDM and MTG are different frmo SWM in that way because they do not have a collector base boosting the sales and skewing the numbers.

Heck, the first 20 or so pieces I got for SWMs were from a collector friend who bought several cases at a time, but only wanted 1 of each piece for a set. So then he gave away Cs and UCs like candy to any of us in the local fan club group. He never played a single game that I am aware of. That was 3+ years ago when Clone Strike came out. I also know another guy where I live now who does the same thing. I think he's maybe played a game here or there, but he really is a 99% collector, and couldn't really care about the game itself.

And that's the kind of stuff that makes a differnce here. With a list of 4600 DCI ranked players, that means there are at least 4600+ individual people out there that at one point or another were interested in actually playing in a ranked, competitive style.

Well, I still don't see how a player playing and not reporting in DCI is any different than the collector. They are still all people not in DCI reports. You still have "X" cases sold/DCI player report that you can gauge in each game. You still have opportunities to "turn" the non reporting player or collector into the reporting kind.


Gonna have to disagree with you here. I personally have thousands of magic cards sitting on a shelf that say otherwise. I also purchase fatpacks from every set since I have stopped playing competively or casually. I can't tell you anything about DDM, but if it is so much larger than SWM the idea of as much people just collecting or using for RPG stuff seems to be at least equal here.




Again, I only see you as supporting my theory here. What's the repetition rate of the 4600? Seems like a lot of oppurtunity to increase the DCI reports per amount of boosters sold to me.

Maybe out own internal arguements as a community actually point the way here...

Dean, Have we stated clearly (to WoTC) we have approximately the same number of DCI registered players as DDM as a reasoning for why we should be considered a competetive game vs. a Casual game? That tact seems a good direction to take it.

Lobo(Aaron?, heh, me, you, and Shinja all with the cursed name...) Maybe the point that a large portion of the SWM market is collectors can be spun to help us. When there is a large competetive market for a product, as well as a large collectors market it only raises the over all value of the product. Former collectors become players former players become collectors. Both induce others to buy. WoTC makes more money.

As a community we need to try to sway them with ways to make more money, that also improve things for us.

Dean, I know you have been fighting the fight for a long time. I personally am glad we have a champion for our cause, if you give up on DCI/WoTC for sactioning then the cause no longer has it's champion.

Also to the point of multiple sactioning bodies hurting things. The "competition is always good" motto is true in business. But not in sports at least not in the manner we are discussing. If for instance , and for the sake of levity I'll call it Deans league, If the Deans league championships draws 50% of the player base for SWM away from DCI, and they continue on in their current manner. the community becomes split, you have 2 different champions. No concensus is had as to who the real champ is. In boxing having multiple sactioning bodies almost killed the sport, abc champ vs. WBC champ vs. xyz champ weakened the meaning of champ as much as a short notice championship Boxing went back to unifying the championships as much as it could, thats why undisputed champion of the world means something. It's a unified title.

We need a clear unified path or our small community will get split and have less voice. Also we may need to consider it a fact that SWM is a casual game, that doesn't mean there is a competetive element to the community, but what if those of us who are competetive are only 5% of the people buying the game. How do we plead our case considering that is a "fact". I'm not saying it is. but if it is we need to have a justification that counters it.

I've been a program manager for Microsoft, worked with major companies like ATT, Cingular, Nokia, LG, etc.... The best thing we can do is provide a unified voice, give them positive monetary motivation, and provide positive feedback to positive things. Minimize angry feedback, and always when giving negative feedback include alternatives that can work.

Slie

Or maybe we are not as competitive a community as is thought???

I am trying to get there though and have been actually spending time thinking of rules questions because I want to be a judge really bad. I don't have anything to judge lol, I just want the test to be a reality. So my submissions will be coming shortly. I also think it would be cool to be taking the test and see one of my questions there. Though with my luck, I would get that one wrong!

Well I know for a fact we need to support each and every tournament. Even if we are dissapointed for various reasons. Not supporting major competetive play will only hurt our cause.

If we could somehow show up en mass and show them that even with only a months notice, even 2 weeks after GENCON even with all those things working agaist us. We still had a ton of players show up to compete. That might help our cause.

So break out the credit cards kids and lets go into debt!

Slie

They care. Just sometimes not in the way we want or understand. The desires of any subset of players are almost always in some way at odds with the company that makes the game.

But you're right that it's our game to make of it what we will and pretty much always has been. That's why I don't really understand why people care so much about the faux Championship at PAX. If it gets the turnout we expect, it's not going to produce the player we consider the Champion. Gencon Masters will. Just like it did in 2005 and 2006 when it wasn't called the "Championship" at Gencon either. And the PAX winner will just be considered the Seattle champion. Since it's all for fun anyway who cares. Just like DCI rank. It's fun to look at, but it's been equal odds that the players at the top will be truly deserving through play skill or through playing a lot and beating up on newbs. And it doesn't really matter because we give it the attention it deserves, not the attention it may crave. We'll do the same with PAX I imagine.

And I think the WotC line about SWM being a more casual game is spot on. This is because they're looking at the big picture, where we're just looking at us, the absolute most hardcore competetive players in SWM. (I say this while thinking that I have not played a single truly highly competetive game of SWM since last Gencon but anyway....) The fact that SWM is more casual does not mean its most competetive players are any less competetive than DDM. There are just fewer of us comparatively. Competetive play is pretty much all DDM has going for it. If you play the game, that's what you play. They literally have hundreds of peoply vying for those Championship invitations, and a full last minute "grinder" tourney to get in at Gencon. That just won't happen with SWM even if they had the token support of free Gencon badges (or whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it ain't airfare, hotel, badge, entry fee) for DDM invitees. But SWM is much more varied despite having a group that is just has hardcore competetive. So I understand their comment.

I do think an actual relevent ranking system would be cool. It doesn't need to be an either or thing with DCI though. Just make it flexible enough that DCI results can be reported as well as non-DCI results. Make it inclusive rather than exclusive.

Dean, I think you have a false perception of how WotC treats DDM and Magic competitive players. (Magic - now there's a game that is strictly casual but still gets the high-money tournaments, but that is a discussion for another time).

They just overhauled DDM and cut one of their Pro Tour events for Magic without warning. The DDM community came *this* close to having four years or so worth of collections obsoleted. They have since reversed their decision.

Nickname - Please stop calling it a "faux" Championship. It is THE Championship. It's a copyrighted term in all but name (no pun intended) and WotC knows it. Otherwise, just any 'ol tournament could be called a Championship. Of course, it wouldn't mean anything.

Okay I am really shutting up now.

That's what they're doing. They're taking any old tournement and calling it the championship. (That's the whole reason you guys are upset isn't it?) And, you're right, it won't mean anything.

You want questions. I have few that I can add. I just haven't had a chance to put them on in Word and have them gramtically correct before submission. Of course, my idea for questions may be groaners to the more erudite player. And with the new set coming out, I want to wait until the new questions have been answered before I submit them. That, and I haven't played a DCI event since February. So, my knowledge for SW is slowly atrophying. But, you want questions. I can submit a few.

Give me a few days and I can post them in the Rule Judge post up the page.

When I first learned of the championship being moved from GenCon, I have to admit I was more than a little put off. After I cooled down, I thought "what the heck", we can call ours the Masters. We can always have it at GenCon and it will carry the most prestige of any tourney held in the US. WOTC can move the "Championship" around to where ever they like.

I do agree that we as a community can make efforts to promote and run events the way we want. As these events gain more prestige, WOTC may choose to get involved, maybe not.