C, D

I think will's response mirrors mine perfectly. So, B + D = C, and D.

Just keep buying those happy meals folks.

There might not be any food value, but the prizes are shiney!
{And Sploddy!}

B, B.

B and D.

D, D

D - In the long run set retirement will add more good than bad.

D - At this point, I don't think set retirement is going to cause many players to quite; those players that freaked out have already dropped out. The game balance and playability of AOD will determine if MW lives or dies. If the game is more of the same #### we are playing now then, MW will die out.

1. C, if it can be understood to mean "some good aspects, some bad"
2. D

Funny, I thought I gave a couple of examples in REALITY (as you put it) where retirement worked exactly as I stated... for me, personally, it worked with Mage Knight, and for WotC, retirement seems to have been a definite success.

A) Not everyone can buy on-line. I know, that's a real shocker, but it is true.
B) I can already go to venues that don't have one or more of the expansions on the shelves anymore. Your area may have them all, but that doesn't mean everywhere in the country does (much less the world). We know for certain that FFE and Counterassault are already sold out from WizKids to the distributors. In a year's time, will it necessarily still be so easy to find FFE? In some places it will be, in others...
C) They have to decide at some point how long to keep sets around for, and how many to keep around. They've made that decision. It seems like they are aiming for something on the order of roughly two years per set (roughly, I know DFA will retire a little early), and they have stated they'll only be doing retirement once a year (it's either in the chat transcript or the FAQ; it isn't difficult to find). If they waited longer to do retirement, they would only end up retiring even more sets. Or else defeating the point by keeping around sets for so long they may as well have not bothered.
D) If someone got given their set, they really have nothing to complain about - they got something for free. That doesn't entitle them to anything. Heck, I've spent more money than I'd like to think about on this game, and _I_ don't think I'm entitled to any more than I've already gotten from this game. It's already doing better than several other games I'd bought into that have now gone down the toilet (and in some cases, the entire company that made the games went under, too...)

Hm, can you point me to where he said that? I've always seen him say the exact opposite: that you weren't getting the full benefit of the game if you _were_ playing Faction Pure. That aside, AoD seems to be doing more for Faction Pure players than MW has ever before: Faction Pride cards, Mercenary Contract cards, heck, we'll even be able to recruit the Gunslingers into our factions, thus providing a nice pool of 14 'mechs and pilots for _any_ of the factions to be able to use in a Faction Pure way. Even the Situational Alliance cards cut down on "rainbow armies" by allowing no more than two factions in an army.

People have been doing that since the game came out. I fail to see how that has anything to do with set retirement.

Actually, that sort of proves my point. AoD was made with set retirement in mind. The units are made to be equal in power instead of introducing power creep. As I wrote before, set retirement allows them to _avoid_ power creep. Power creep happens when there is no retirement. This fails to prove your point as well.

Odd how you mention Magic and then proceed to immediately ignore it in your example there. In Magic, you have no idea what you're buying, at least, not any more than you do with MW. I notice that Magic is still going strong after more than 10 years, while so many other card games that didn't introduce any form of retirement have gone away.
I got into CCGs when Magic first came out. I remember all the card games that came out around the same time. I can name exactly three games that have survived from then, and one of them is really iffy to say it has "survived." One of those games is Magic itself. The second is Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, which spent a few years in hibernation before getting revived by another publisher and brought back (and since I don't play it anymore, I don't know if they have retirement now or not; I do know it only has a grand total of something like four or five sets of cards, though). The third is the Star Trek CCG. It only barely counts as having "survived" because Decipher ended up re-making the game all over, calling it 2.0, and only kind of making it backwards compatible with the original game. They then proceeded to effectively ban most of the pre-2.0 cards from their tournaments, so they effectively had retirement as well.
If WizKids hopes to have their games last a long time, and I hope they are planning for that, then retirement is ultimately going to become a necessity for getting new players to come in. Otherwise, what will happen is what happened to the Star Wars CCG that Decipher put out: they kept a fairly large customer base that loyally bought sets, but over time that customer base dwindled far faster than it attracted new players. At the time LucasFilm yanked the license out from under their feet, they admitted that they hadn't made any money off the Star Wars CCG in some time. Yeah, that sounds like a great way for Mechwarrior to go... sure...

Are you willing to buy $900 worth of individual units to put a faction army together, then? Because without the random blind booster aspect to drive up sales, the only way WizKids would make enough money to be able to stay in business would be to charge a very high price on a per unit basis. Of course then, the prices would be so high that people wouldn't pay them, and the company would go out of business anyways...

I'm not going to. I've said for a while that the game _will_ see a loss of customers for a while. It is up to WizKids to make the game compelling enough for people to stick around, and to attract new players. It is also up to the marketing team and the Envoys to work to bring new players into the game. I don't know about other envoys, but around here, the envoys just post the games on the WK site, and wait for people to show up. They don't do anything proactive, at all; not even a simple posting of flyers to announce that tournaments are held there. I don't blame them, they're busy people, but a good chunk to bringing in new players is going to have to involve some proactive work on the part of WizKids' marketing department, and on the part of Envoys.
(Note: I know there are envoys out there that are proactive; but the ones at the venues I go to simply aren't. I still like them as Battlemasters, though ;) ).

Well, that is a problem. Was this actually a WK rep, or was it an envoy? For our pre-release, it was run by an envoy and venue, no WK employees involved.

Either way, though, such behavior is unprofessional and should be reported to WizKids. That is not good for their marketing, and I suspect they'd be very displeased to learn that they weren't being represented well at a venue.

Have fun ;)

C, D

Marc

A & A -if it wasn't for retirement I might actually have tried AoD out.

How can anyone rip on WK, this is the only collectible game i have ever heard of that gives out free prizes to its players. Saying WK is doing all of these changes just to make money is crazy , its a company , companys are suppose to make money thats what there for , what is WK suppose to loose money so the game can die then we have no new sets, no prize support, no game . If you dont like the game dont play in fact I would rather have these whinners quite than still play and whine about the game. I like the game I will buy new units. I dont have a problem with sets being retired , i understand it is a neccesary evil of this style of game. Its gonna happen ,complaining about it wont change it , if its that big a deal to you then quit , sell your stuff and get out of it. And if you quit playing , dont come on here and post threads whinning, Grow up please its a game.

D, D

1.B - many of my pieces will become unusable, and undesirable for trading.

2.D - What? After investing this much? Are you nuts?

Raven

b and D