No, you obviously do. Maybe you are using that energy in destructive ways...

I'm not trying to be flip when I ask this;

If most of you here think or know that Wizards treats SWMs poorly, and doesn't support it, etc., etc., then why the outrage at this short-notice venue change?

I have read all of the reasons that have been posted, and I don't understand the problem. In other posts it is clear that a dedicated few have made advances for the SWM community, while explicitly noting that Wizards has, won't, and/or continues to do nothing but try to submarine the game and its players.

You should be happy that they short-noticed the championship. It only proves your points, right?

If you dislike the Wizards business practices, do not support them. If pouring your time and effort into bettering your fellow gamers' experience is draining, stop. But you must know that (because we've all read the posts) Wizards changes slowly or not at all. That is the position we are all in. I dropped Heroclix about two years ago over some LE and prize distribution issues. It was a tough decision, as I liked the game a lot. But if it makes you miserable quit. Sometimes we cannot have our cake and eat it, too.

I realize this sounds very sarcastic, and I'll admit to a SMALL extent it is. But it is an honest question and summary. And asked without any malice or intentions of starting trouble.

You are correct. It's been a long 4-year history of goofs, gaffs, and frustrations as those of us who want to see the game EXCEL and WotC shine with what is still one of the best collectible games ever made. So no, at this point it is not surprise or shock that drives the outrage. IMO its just the ultimate example in disappointments about how little they care about the community, about the people that buy their product. More importantly, it demonstrates how little they care about making their time and energy and resources go the maximum distance with proper planning.

And really it's not WotC so much as it is a select few people working there, and the OP/DCI department. I know that if I worked there, I would go absolutely nuts thinking about all the trouble I went to in planning this event or that event, only to find out that hardly anyone who would want to play in the event I worked so hard on even had time to plan a trip to attend it.

Your points are well made, and the timing is impeccable.

Anyone want to bet they used the A&E booster surveys for this "experience". You know the ones where NO ONE on any SWM site said they got one back which means there were tons of people answering the survey they have no idea what SWM's even is!!!


On the up side, so far the "championship" has been at Gencon and now PAX, so it's like a roving championship so far, so here's hopin for one at the Minnesota Gaming Convention in 09 or 10!! ....yeah maybe if they even heard of SWM's that might happen.

Well, here's part of the response I got from Mr. Schmadeka. Helps explain a couple things, and gives us a firm answer on something we've wondered about....



So, obviously, 90 people was not their expectation. At least they've finally admitted it. I intend to respond to this, and ask a few more questions, probably tomorrow sometime. Most of what I said to him in my email had more to do with supporting the competitive side of the game, rather than the Championship itself. Seems clear that they are getting enough research data from somewhere to think that the majority of people who play the game are not competitive players. I wonder if that is skewed at all by the fact that a large majority of the sales go to collector's who rarely, if ever, play the game?

Well Aaron that statement jives with what I've been hearing since April, when I first learned that the Championship would probably NOT be at GenCon.

What bugs me the most about that is:

1. No one asked them to put up $5K for a Championship event at GenCon last year;

2. 90 people for an event in a game that up to that point had been attracting 30-50. It was double the number of normal participants, and yet they were disappointed;

3. 90 people wasn't enough for the "Championship" at GenCon so they move it without notice to a convention two weeks after GenCon in a remote part of the country (remote geographically I mean, not in terms of population). Surely to God they are not expecting that sort of decision making to yield a more successful event. There will not be more than 90 people at the "Championship" this year. There will probably not be more people at the "Championship" than there are at the Masters at GenCon (we're projecting 60-65).

I'd be surprised if they attract more than 25 people who already play the game.

110 people for D&D that was closed; who knows how many people participate nation or worldwide to come up with that number. I knew D&D minis were big, but that sounds like a hell of a lot of people.

I still don't get how they might have thought that just by putting up 5K that they were going to suddenly get....what 300 or so people? It sounds like they have a set disposition to the market base for SWM based on previous sets. Despite the fact that they're moving the stats of pieces to be more competitive they expect the player base to stay the same???? Why go through the effort of changing the feel of the game unless it's going to grow sales? What will be acceptable for a competitive acknowledgment? I'm confused

Hey Guys - I am an actual store (brick and mortar) owner whose business revolves around WOTC mostly. The are oblivious to what the players really want, after taking their (random) surveys that people call with from WOTC. Let me explain.

Last year Wizkids ran the Summer of Galactus event, in which players had a chance to win the Galactus for Free, yes a $200 dollar piece for free. Then they ran the Starro event, in which we packed them in for both selling an outragous amount of boosters in the process (why they aren't doing this again..is beyond me, but Wizkids has there own problems). So when Wizards called and asked how they could improve sales in SWM's, I explained to them that players need some incentive. I let them know about the current Wizkids events and they were inpressed, unfortunately they have NEVER acted on it. League kits are great, but reprints?? Come on..how about some pieces you can ONLY get for playing league or entering tournaments, that creates some buzz. The ladies answer was "maybe YOU could give away an At-At". I responded with "but anyone can buy one...how about something that no one can buy?". I was told "we will maybe plan something out". That got far...hasn't it? They are clueless, there biggest concern is Magic.

I love the SWM game, we run weekly events and we sell a great number of booster packs. SWM players have great loyality to the store they play. Magic does Ok for us but what we see is that Magic players buy elsewhere (online) while SWM players tnd to buy in store and support us. I would much rather focus attention to the products that help keep us open. I am always disappointed when WOTC does something like this, if they only saw the retailers point of view. They are blinded by Booster box sales that MTG does, it's a shame that most of them are bought on ebay for $78 instead of supporting the local gaming stores. The truth is some will say "then sell them for $78 in store". I'll make $6 dollars per box and shell out $72 upfront, great business planning. WOTC does not care about anyone but the bottom line.

Don't be surprised if they don't respond or give you some crappy answer, thy don't care. I am not bitter towards WOTC, just disappointed on how they look at the big picture. I see the picture a different way than many since my livlyhood relies on WOTC, as well as others, so I just wanted to let you guys know that you are not alone in the fight.

LE figs would be the worst thing to happen to SWM IMO and I know I'm not the only one here who feels that way. LE's cater to people who are lucky enough to have a game store or support network in their area. Many of us don't. Even as someone who could get the LE fig easily if WotC were to do that, I would still shudder at the sight of it.

The problem with league kit figs isn't that they're available pieces with alternate paint jobs, it's that they pick stupid-bad pieces that no one plays.

One time, and one time only, they did a repaint correctly - the gray Ugnaught Demolitionist. Try finding that little guy somewhere. I have exactly one.

Imagine if they had done a Jedi Weapon Master repaint or a Kel Dor Bounty Hunter. I agree that the league kits are not effective support but LEs are absolutely NOT the answer. Not IMO.

I've been rereading this post and I think it would be good if you could share the rest of it, because there are some things here that just don't add up for me, and I would like to be able to discuss them, but I think I need to see more of the information before I try.

What it boils down to for me is this excerpt from his e-mail to you, Aaron, makes it sound like he is trying to backtrack for the company. How do they possibly expect to "find the appropriate support level" with last-minute announcements like moving their main event of the year to a show they've never done anything at before. I wondered if he explained that in more detail in the unseen portion of his e-mail to you.

@shinja: Regarding your point that there were 2 events for SWM at PAX last year, WotC can announce its events at any tournament as it chooses. It shouldn't have to be called a "Championship" for them to want to promote. That is a flaw in their decision making and not our fault if they can't get excited about less prestigious events.

Ultimately it sounds like the brunt of the blame falls on SWM Brand Manager Sarah Haines and possibly her cohort Rachel Kirkwood. Why on God's earth are they making a push for SWM at an event like PAX when their core group of players with the most knowledge and best reputations (not always popular) are going to be at GenCon? I mean if they are trying to get new players into the game and think PAX is the place to do it, more power to them, but having a high-caliber event called a "Championship" accompany especially without notice is just stupid.

It's like saying that recruiters are going to be at my local country club to try to recruit people to play golf and then announce at the last minute that those people will get their first exposure to golf with a chance to play a Pro Tour. Meanwhile, the professional golfers are getting ready to tee off at the site where they thought the Pro Tour would have been, some 1,500 miles away. LOL this may be the dumbest thing WotC has ever done.

Send further complaints and concerns to this email address: Sarah.Haines@wizards.com.

I posted all but the very beginning of his response to me. Here was the rest:




Unfortunately, no. But I intend to address a few of those types of things in a response to him when I get the time. Kind of have a busy day today.

[/quote]

IMO, LEs are NOT a good thing. I personally have not played HeroClix or any other game system that used the LEs angle, but EVERY person I talk to that has played those games only has poor things to say about the LE system....unless they are a good enough, or lucky enough, player to have nabbed most or all of those LEs. Then they're like "Oh these are awesome!" I 100% agree with Boris though, the Repaints, maps, scenarios, and such that WOTC has used in the League kits are a great idea overall, they just need to be more intelligent about it. Things like...it's bad enough they reprinted the Nikto Soldier in the A&E set, since it was a worthless piece in Clone Strike, but then they issue a Repaint in the League Kit as well! Yay, now I have 3 variations of a worthless figure! Even the change to put in a scenario instead of the figures the last couple months was pretty cool, but then it was the exact same thing 2 months in a row! Especially when a lot of other times they've sent out promo repaints of pieces in the upcoming set a month or two out, but instead we get a repeat League Kit. Now, it depends on the size of the store, and the # of players there, but we get 2 kits at our store, so that's 12 scenarios. That pretty much covers all of the regular players at the store, so a 2nd month of 12 more of those things....total waste for us.

I know that drawing people into the stores in order to play in events is a key to both the game and the game store's survival, but I've heard of just as many people that get turned off from games because they can never win the uber prizes. I know that could be the case at my LGS, since there's 5 or 6 of us (out of about 15-18) that almost always end up at the top.

Games draw in new people through big events, sure. But more often than not, they draw in people by word of mouth.

Imagine if prize support were resculpts of miniatures... not upcoming ones, but what if they gave out Luke, Rebel holding his blaster in both hands out in front of him (when Obi was cut down). They could toss it into a print run and be done with it.

You know, I just thought of something regarding this....I know I've related the story that Rob told me at CIV about the type of SWM events going on there. Rob told me that 5 or 6 months prior, a meeting was held, and the question was asked "So what are we doing for CIV?" Nobody had an answer at the time, so the people who were supposed to organize stuff like that were told to go off and plan things. A couple months later, now only 3 months prior to CIV, same question asked again.....SAME ANSWER! So all the stuff that was planned for CIV was done fairly last minute. LFL made WOTC move their release date to coincide with the convention and the 25th anniversary, but then the ball was completely dropped on making anything actually happen. That's why there were all of about 3 cases of product available for sale that Friday morning, there were no A&E pieces available for the League, and the prize for the sealed tournament on Saturday (which was never confirmed to be A&E boosters until it was too late for me to buy a ticket!) was not announced until the day of the competition (and it was a full set of A&E!). The whole thing was so freakin' disjointed, it was ridiculous, and even Rob felt that way, and told me so.

Now, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps Sarah or Rachel had anything to do with those, and the fact that Rob and I were standing near the WOTC booth talking, and both Sarah and Rachel were there that weekend. Perhaps they overheard him telling me this story, and that's why he got muzzled? I don't know, but that just occurred to me today.

But it also ties into this current garbage going on, just that it seems everything they plan with SWM is so last minute and way behind schedule from events for any of the other major brands.

For anyone who's interested, I know they are long reads, but here is the first letter I sent to Mr. Schmadeka dn then the response that I sent to his email that I posted earlier in the thread.

[spoiler]Mr. Schmadeka,

I was given your email address by a friend within the Star Wars Miniatures online community as a person who may be open to hear some opinions regarding the SWM line and the Championship at PAX.

Before I dive into that, let me preface with a little about myself. I started playing SWM when the Champions of the Force set came out, so just over 2 years ago now. I am a naturally competitive person, and always loved things like Chess, Real Time Strategy games, etc., so I was naturally drawn to the competitive aspect of SWM. Being a huge Star Wars fan, it made a perfect match.

Fast forward 2 years to now....I am a member of play groups at two different local gaming stores that play SWM on a weekly basis. At one store, we play DCI format games every single week. At the other store, at least 2 times a month. In those two years, I have rose to the #1 rank in my state (Ohio), and to #10 on the global rankings for Star Wars Miniatures. I am quite proud of that accomplishment. We have the most active and competitive group of SWM players in the entire state of Ohio, and even have players come from up to 2 hours away to play with us because they know the prestige and skill level of our play group. At the same time, I have also become a very active member of the online community (screenname on various forums, including Gleemax, is 'LoboStele'), and even a 'super-moderator' of one of the most active fan-created sites for the SWM game.

Last year, I attended my very first GenCon (never lived close enough to attend before), and was very happy to participate in the SWM events there. Those were the only events that I participated in all weekend, and I came to GenCon and played nothing but SWM all weekend. It was fantastic. Throughout the various tournaments that weekend, I finished with a record of 22-4, and finished 3rd in the Championship that was held on Saturday. I missed out on playing in the final round of the Championship when I rolled a 6 on my D20, needing a 7 or higher. It was that close.

I say all this to illustrate, I am a competitive player, and I hang out and communicate with a lot of other competitive SWM players on a very regular basis. It is a game that supports a very good competitive base. The DCI website reports there are over 4500 players registered who have played at least one game in a DCI tournament. That is a pretty sizable number of people. Obviously, it's not as big as Magic: The Gathering, but it's pretty darn close to the number of DCI enrolled players for D&D Miniatures, according to http://www.thedci.com. So, there are obviously a large number of players that consider the SWM game to definitely be a competitive game, or else they wouldn't bother participating in DCI events.

So, when I hear from my friend that this was said: "We mean this open championship to appeal to the type of players we have for SWM, who are primarily casual", I hope you can see where many of us in the SWM players community might disagree, and more importantly, take offense. On a very basic level, the idea of a 'casual championship' sounds like a contradiction. The Championships for DDM or MTG are anything but 'casual'. The Championship at GenCon last year was not really casual either, and as a player in the final 8 can attest, the last several rounds were quite brutally competitive, with some games coming down to the razor thin wire. The types of players you have for SWM are becoming increasingly more competitive. On the site that I help moderate, we are always getting new players that are looking to push the envelope on squad building, tactics, understanding key character combinations, etc. So when someone who is supposed to be marketing this game says the players are 'primarily casual', it sounds like they aren't very in touch with the players of the game, at least from my perspective.

I am sure you're getting all sorts of opinions from people on this whole 'Championship at PAX' thing, but from those I talk to on a regular basis (which consist of probably at least 7 of the top 20 DCI ranked players in the world), the one thing that seems to bother them more than anything is the attitude that WOTC continues to have towards the SWM game: that it isn't a competitive game. Well, if it isn't a 'competitive' game, then what is the point of having DCI rankings for it, and holding a 'Championship'? We had 90+ players in the Championship event at GenCon last year. From the reports I've heard, the equivalent DDM event was not much more than 110. Now is that really different in terms of how competitive the games are? It makes us feel like WOTC is two-faced, saying they want to hold Championships, but then doing it such a way this year that it is almost destined to failure, when, the way it was done last year was quite a success in many people's eyes.

I think many of us would rather just see WOTC take a position and stick to it. Either fully support SWM from a competitive aspect, and stop treating it as something that is so inferior to your other brands (which isn't the case according to sales numbers either), or don't support a competitive aspect at all. At the moment, those of us who are really interested in the competitive stuff feel like we're just getting strung along. And then announcing a 'Championship' 31 days before the event makes it even worse. With full time jobs, other vacation time planned, overtime hours to be worked in order to have the money to make such a trip, and more, 31 days is no where near enough time to properly plan a trip for an event like this. On top of the fact that 90% of the competitive SWMs players were already planning to spend their hard earned vacation time and money to go to GenCon. Again, it feels like a slap in the face to those of us who are competitive players.

Obviously, nothing can be done about plans already set in motion for GenCon and PAX this year. Besides, I'm sure you've heard some of the other various complaints regarding those situations (don't have to look much further than the SWM General forum on Gleemax). I just hope that you will take some of these opinions from the community who actually plays this game regularly, and cares about the competitive aspect of it, because that's one of the main reasons we enjoy it. Thank you for your time reading this (as I know it is long). I hope both the GenCon and PAX events go well, and any future events you plan and that you consider some of these opinions in planning any future SWM events.

Sincerely,
Aaron Brueckman
DCI # 1205-783-118
Gleemax Account name 'LoboStele'[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Mr. Schmadeka,

First of all, let me say thank you for replying to me, and from what I have heard, to some of the other SWM players that have been in contact with you. We definitely appreciate you being open about all of this.

Secondly, let me say, that your comment about last year's Championship failing to meet your expectations...this is the first that ANYONE has heard this information. We (the online community, and in particular a few people whom I know are somewhat connected to WOTC) have asked repeatedly for that information, just as a gauge to see how things were viewed last year. To many of us, 90 players (which is how many we had for the '07 Championship) was a pretty large number of people. More than twice as many players as any other SWM event that has ever been held. To us, we thought it was a fairly good success, and when no word had been heard from WOTC about it for months and months, it would've been nice if someone had at least said "Well, it didn't quite meet our expectations, so we may pursue other avenues in the future."

I'm curious though, what was the expectation? The event listing for GenCon only allowed a total of 128 slots, so we filled 70% of that. To top it off, not a single person in that event had part or all of their trip paid for like the participants in the DDM Championship get. So of course you're going to have lower participation when people have to pay their own way, etc.

Speaking of DDM Championships and competitiveness of SWM...the local player who won the qualifiers for DDM this year (Doug Perry) plays SWM with us as well. He's a great player, and does his best to play competitively and win. Even with that, he still loses often enough to several of us other competitive types. So I'm just trying to illustrate that some of the SWM players are on the same level competitively as those that qualify for the DDM Championships.

Even with all that though, I would venture to say that the air of competition for the SWM Championship last year was anything but 'casual'. The top 30-40 players were running the best of the best cutthroat squads possible. Some of us spent several months leading up to the tournament practicing with those squads every single week, finding all the little tricks for success. My point is, it does not matter where or when you hold a Championship, just attaching that name to it is going to scare away newer or 'casual' players, because the word 'Championship' automatically attaches to it an air of being the best of the best.

You talk about having Championships for all your different games, and so I go to look at the GenCon events, and lo and behold, pretty much ALL of your brands which hold Championship events are occurring AT GenCon, including Heroscape! Is Heroscape a more competitive game than SWMs? There is even a Championship for Dreamblade again this year, a game which WOTC no longer makes! Now of course, I don't know if these are official WOTC-sanctioned events, but they obviously weren't instructed that they were not allowed to call their events a 'Championship' as the Pasttimes team for the SWM GenCon events were told.

So why are SWMs the ONLY event to announce a Championship being held at a different location? PAX has never been known to be a miniatures or table-top gaming convention. Are you going to hold the Championship at MegaCon in Orlando next year, or DragonCon in Atlanta instead? Both of those venues have had SWM events in the past as well. The point is, NONE of those are as well known, or well respected as GenCon when it comes to SWM-style games, and so to many of us it just makes no sense at all to hold the Championship anywhere else, even if you are only planning to attract 'casual' players. This has caused all sorts of rumors to go flying, even so far as to believe that this move has something to do with LFL's current lawsuit against GenCon. Which if that IS the reason, why not just say so? I think that's all many of the players want, is to know the reason WHY.

So yes, in a way, I am arguing for the competitive side of the game. At the same time though, I am just trying to point out the inconsistincies of WOTC as a company, and how they treat SWM in comparison to the other major brands. It's understandable that SWM will not garner the same amount of attention as MTG or DDM because it simply does not make as much money as those. But it is the opinion of quite a few people who actually play the game, that the decisions being made further hurt the competitive side of the game.

And perhaps that really is the base issue. Somewhere along the line, WOTC's market research has apparently determined that a majority of those who purchase SWMs are only interested in casual play. I wonder, does this take into account those Star Wars Collector's who only buy the pieces to collect, and never play the game at all? Does this account for those who do enjoy playing the game, but don't even have a DCI number, so they wouldn't likely participate in any Championship events anyway (not that it would stop them, just wouldn't be likely, per my sentiments above on the level of competition)? I know quite a few people who buy mulitple cases of SWM product but never do anything besides put the pieces on their shelf. Heck, the first pieces I recieved for the game were from a friend who had tons of extra Commons and Uncommons, and was only trying to collect 1 of each piece to display in his room. Again, I will point out, as in my prior email, there are almost as many DCI enrolled players for SWM as there are for DDM. Perhaps future market research needs to focus just on those SWM-buyers who actually play the game. Might give some better data on how the community feels.

Again, let me say thank you for listening to our opinions, and I hope that they might help this game overall as we press into the future.

Sincerely,
Aaron Brueckman[/spoiler]

Damn Aaron you nailed it. I don't see what the guy can say to those e-mails except, "Sarah, you're fired."

Cool, glad you feel that way. I usually have a decent knack for debating with people and pointing out the flaws or holes in their positions.

Now, all we need are more people who enjoy the competitive side of the game to message Reid and/or Sarah and express their feelings. I'm convinced from the various responses from Reid that they are simply out of touch with the actual player base and are putting too much weight on the sales to non-players. Things like the A&E Booster survey done through starwars.com and such can't help with that either. They really should do like at least a yearly or twice a year survey on the WOTC homepage like they've done before. It's simple, quick, and gives them a way to read the pulse of the player group, who are the main people who would regularly visit the website.

EDIT: One other thing, though - it was known that WotC was disappointed. It just wasn't highly publicized. I remember Guy Fullerton calling me a "pessimist" for pointing it out.

is that sarah's boss???

earlier someone said to email sarah, who do you think is the person to be emailing?

Well even if they are out of touch, and I agree that they probably are, the point about singling out the SWM "Championship" and moving it to PAX while other lesser known games are still hosting their marquee events at GenCon (also called Championships) is the best part of your e-mail. I just don't see how they can think a "casual" event called a "Championship" that's geared toward competitive players is going to draw a bigger crowd than GenCon will, especially with no warning about it being moved.

All the competitive players that thought they would compete in major WotC events signed up for GenCon. None of us had any reason to suspect it would be held somewhere else, and certainly not at a convention most of us aren't familiar with.

I think at this point we have talked this issue to death but I am glad to see you guys rallying to the cause. There for a while I was beginning to wonder if maybe it was just me over-reacting.

Well no, probably not. It was just a joke.

I'm sure that the guy will either ignore Aaron or reply with more defensive rhetoric that amounts to nothing more than double-speak.

LOL, I think Dean, and Bill, and some of the other high-ranked DCI players, and even those that aren't high ranked, but are highly competitive would agree with me on this:

We didn't work this hard, and practice this much and build new squads and such, and continually improve our DCI rank to sit by and watch WOTC treat us like it doesn't matter.

And if you do that, WotC wins. I for one no longer see the point of giving WotC or any company for that matter, money for a product (no matter how great of a product it is) when they treat the most active and most supportive customers the way WotC has treated us who like to PLAY SWM actively over the last 2-4 years.

Nothing they do surprises me anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't feel the sting every time they let us down.