I got together with a friend at our local venue for a couple of rounds of MW, including something that I put together going home one night from a event, about 30 minutes time.

Jonboy, this sounds like the ideal solution. Most of us already play MW with a certain group of people, at a certain venue at a certain time already. What is to stop you from getting together with those same people, at the same time, at the same venue and playing a game of MW except you thumb your nose at WizKids, play whatever units you like and you don't get an official prize at the end of the day. It seems that there are a couple of things that could happen:

1) Everyone likes the idea. You get to play, you get to use whatever units you like. Maybe you even implement a ladder system or some sort of win-loss record so that the games "mean something". Best possible solution.

2) Everyone else still wants to play WizKids official tournaments (for the prizes or whatever other reason). Then you have a choice to make -- do you like playing the game more than you hate the retirement of your pieces?

3) Everyone else stops playing (for many possible reasons). Then you're sort of stuck unless you can find more players and/or another venue. Worst possible solution.

4) You really are too busy or you would rather spend your time doing something other than Mechwarrior. Ok, thats cool, but then it sounds like it was your busy life and not WizKids policy that caused you to stop playing.

Personally I like the organized events because its easy to look on the web and find out Jimmys Game Shak is running a game on Friday and Strategery Inc. 45 minutes down the road is running a game on Saturday afternoon. But if that died out I know there are probably 6ish people who play at my local store whom I could probably talk into just playing a game every now and then (after all they do it with various Warhammer games, Crimson Skies and all sorts of other games already).

Geoff

For people who claim to play for fun...

I do too but Im also a competitive player. Im one of those spend a lot for these games..my entire mageknight collection is reduced to worthless junk mind you.
Its easy for you guys to say casual play is possible right now because of your friends. But like kenjelly said, its the variety of people that come in tournaments that makes this game more challenging. Right now you can play all the games you want..but you stick only with your friends. But once the interest is gone, the game dies.
In Wizkids standpoint, the people they are trying to keep are the ones who buy the most and the ones who will keep the game alive. Keeping the game alive means buying a lot of boosters..not for the casual gamer who plays for "fun"..
Prizes are what brings players to the venues to play and buy..casual play requires space and you need your venue for that as much. Friend's house? Can you always do that? Perhaps..but let me remind you all that we are not like you which rely on friends houses as the place to meet up and play a game. The venue will only support your games if they see you patronize their store..hence buying boosters.
The game is fun..yes. But it involves financial issues too. And Im sure someone amongst you will be saying "well quit the game if you dont like it"...my answer is no. I will play my current pieces and stay away from buying any more boosters. It pretty much is worthless knowing they are just overgrown and glorified paperweights. Someone will ask "oh but give it to me"..I will give it you when its thrashed. I dont intend to propagate the game anymore and have told all my friends not to get into this game.
Im not sour about this..Im just being practical. No point in spending money or supporting a company which wont really give me any benefit.

unlike with a lot of rpgs, this game should be one of the easiest to play fun pick up games (CCG are even easier). All you need is one other person and your figures. If you have a 3X3 area to play, great. If not, work around what you can and use the obstacles as terrain. We don't need a hex map or squared map like HC or CBT. Games are about having fun. I get to play in maybe one tourney a month. I BM 6 times a month. I play fun games every chance I can.

Its been a very long time since I have walked into my primary venue and not seen someone playing a game. Either MW, HC, Magic, etc. They seem to be enjoying themselves all the same. Its not even too uncommon to have the venue give a discount to the players that day simply because other people have come in and either asked about the game being played or actually bought stuff. What better advertising.

Something else to consider: how many players are active participants on MWRealms? How many from WK forums? There are a lot of players out there who do not participate in either groups. From my experience with 3 venues, less than half participate on either forums. So can we really take what we find here to be truely indicative of what the players want?

Lets face it, Realmers are a very vocal group. They are also a small percentage of the players out there. Making them essentially a minority. Now they may agree with the majority, they may not. Just because 75% of Realmers agree with something does not mean that 75% of all of the players agree with the same thing.

And one last parting thought: What is the purpose of organized play. It is a marketting tool to benefit venues (and wizkids). While WK may lose a little when they have a hard core player who always bought 1 case when a set came out but the the venue is not really losing as much. That case was either bought discounted from the venue or online. If that player is replaced by a group of players that come and leave the game over time that buy collectively a case over the same time between sets, the venue has made more and wizkids has still seen the same case sold. If venues don't make money off of MW/MK/HC, why should they not only stock it but support the tourneys?

Note: I started this post when kenjelly was the last poster back on page 2. I got interupted so forgive me for treading over already covered ground.

Mostly all of the playing done at my venue is for fun, is it odd this includes tourney play as well?.

still, fun games serve a purpose, besides fun they also serve as practice for competitive play.

all this talk about fun being a distant second to competition play is WK own fault in my opinion. when they created the game they created the uber LE figures to go with it. people (at least in my venue) try to get the LE's in order to get the good pieces for their faction (getting LE's gives them trade leverage for other LE's or Un's). I'll say it again (just to be certain someone eventually reads my comments) Wk could do better not retiring the sets (which they apparently will do anyways if only just to prove a point) and just making better expasions with more playable pieces and counter pieces for the so called " Older more powerful units".

I think they actually are a little fistful in my opinion and they already have many counters, powerful figures are actually less than bad game mechanics, and the changes done to charge point in a good direction, why would they risk so much in this retiring thing is anyones guss but mine. I personally feel squeezed by WK and i dont know when i will run out of juice (cash) Keep in mind that MWDA costs almost three times as much in my country, so it is a rather expensive hobby, and even so we kept at it becsue of the fun and the units.

rambled on. sorry.

keep up the protesting thou!

At one of the 2 venues I go to we play MW for fun. We are a long running gaming club (been around for 15 years) and we have got a 12 player MW map based campaign going on. No WK prize support- just playing for the fun of rolling dice and drinking coffee.

However we all have enough MW figures to play faction pure armies- we don't need to buy any more WK product. The proposed change will just make most players look at the huge amount of plastic they have bought already and make them think- do I NEED another booster?

Before this week my money would have been on the addictive qualities of this plastic crack-cocaine known as MW/HC/MK and that everyone would have kept on buying boosters. However once you know that units have a finite short-lived shelf life, then there is not the same urge.....

Before it was an obsessive-complusive need to have every piece from my chosen factions.

Now my thoughts have changed to that it would be nice to have some new units from next MW/HC/MK expansion.... maybe....

James

I guess I'm really lucky. I never play non-venue games. But I do play many non-supported games.
We get just as many people for Demos as for supported events. Our players just like getting together and playing the game.
We run a ton of unsupported events and generally get a good turnout.
Our venue has an additional store-front in the shopping center where MW & 40K & Pokemon & Magic is played.
So I guess that because I play at a venue that rocks, have a Battlemaster who takes initiative, and have made many new friends who share the love of the game, I too should be crucified for not complaining.
Some people can complain in a civilized manner. This thread has few of these people. Gotta love the annonymity of message boards.

DBlizzard closed the thread where I posted this, saying I should have posted it in one of the other threads. Well, so be it!

-----

You really want to make an impact with Topps about this?

Everyone knows that snail-mail always gets more serious consideration than e-mail.

$10 (the cost of 1 booster) is postage for 30 letters.

Write to Topps expressing your dissatisfaction. Make sure to point out that you'd rather give money to the Post Office (the government) than give WizKids (Topps) money for their product as long as this continues.

Every time you would have bought a booster, use that $10 to mail 30 copies of that letter (in individual envelopes, natch) to Topps.

Bury 'em under a PHYSICAL expression of dissatisfaction! :)

I have to ask, because I keep hearing people complain that 90 to 100% of their collection will be gone with this change - have you bought any of the more recent expansions at all? Has your collection been essentially the same for several years?

If that's the case - haven't you already stopped supporting the game?

If the newer stuff is worthless junk, and the out-of-production pieces are what players are using to win tournaments - then isn't that exactly the problem?

Would you prefer the solution that killed MLB Showdown? Every year the 'quality' of the cards ramped up. Sure, you could play older cards, but they weren't competitive at all. I don't know about the other lines, but it seems like WizKids has been resisting this system. If all expansions are generally on the same level, then that means you have to reach a saturation point - where vet players decide that they can compete with what they already have.

At that point WizKids is throwing away their money. That's right. Supported events are, first and foremost, intended to promote their games. Why should WizKids send free prizes to someone that has hit 'saturation' with what they already have, and won't buy any newer product?

So what is their solution? The intent of supported events is to bring in new players. New players need to be able to compete. While they have to learn the skills, they also have to have the pieces. If a new player gives up because they simply can't get an inventory to compete with veteran players, that is very bad for WizKids.

One way or another WizKids has to implement 'retirement'. Now they could do it the MLB Showdown way - ramping up the units in each set, or they can try to keep all the pieces on a leveller playing field and 'retire'/ban older, out of production pieces from specific events.

The MLB Showdown way, you don't get to use your old units with any games, supported or casual, because they simply can't compete with the newer product.

The 'retirement' way keeps the playability of the old product, but still creates an incentive to keep up with newer product.

i guess i dont understand this whole competitive play only thing. Now every now and then i go to a venue in boise and play, but for the most time all i do is play with friends. Everyweekend we all get together at one guys house and play for up to six hours. with huge games, im talking 1000 to 1500 point games on two 3x6 tables put together. now sure we dont get tournament prizes but its not about who gets what LE for a game. its all about fun,hanging out, drinking soda, eatin mcdonalds, and junkfood. I think that is why this game gets so broken because you all ##### about fixing something just so it doesnt beat you at the next tournament. so yall should just go out and have fun.

sincerly
dfspider

i guess i dont understand this whole competitive play only thing. Now every now and then i go to a venue in boise and play, but for the most time all i do is play with friends. Everyweekend we all get together at one guys house and play for up to six hours. with huge games, im talking 1000 to 1500 point games on two 3x6 tables put together. now sure we dont get tournament prizes but its not about who gets what LE for a game. its all about fun,hanging out, drinking soda, eatin mcdonalds, and junkfood. I think that is why this game gets so broken because you all ##### about fixing something just so it doesnt beat you at the next tournament. so yall should just go out and have fun.

sincerely
dfspider

I think the 2 types of play go together:
use one to prepare for the other (hey, that rhymes).
In any case, there should be room for both.

This is partly due to the double-edged sword that is material prize support. And partly to the difficulty of organizing casual-play nights when people are already showing up for one formal event each week, or every two weeks.