Oh man, does that mean we have to get ready for s'mores and kuum by ya? you agreed with someone!!! LOL

The realms is yanking Daves posts??!!

Well now I know that I'm not going to renew my donation come December.

That said I think everything has at some level or other been planned. They WANTED to pair back their envoys (but then they might have had too many anyway) so they removed the company store AND free LEs, replacing it with just LEs. Out went many envoys.
Then they contracted the events down and lost several more envoys, venues AND players.

My personal guess is that WK was planning losing on a good portion of there players with the risky decisions (Less events/2.0/Set retirement) they just thought they could easily replace them and rebuild.
They underestimated the power of negative advertising, as many shops now have a contigent of explayers more than happy to warn people away.

Heck I have a friend whos also an exMWplayer. If it wasnt for his MW and CS experience he would have gone nuts over pirates. As it is he can resist the lure. (Heck Im the same way, if it wasnt for my disapointment in MW and WK, I would have jumped into pirates too)

Yeah, I looked at Pirates. It looks like a (potentially) fun, beer-n-pretzels style game. I'm have a fair amount of interest in naval warfare in the age of sail (I have 3 or 4 different rule sets for historicals), and thought about it, especially with some of the things I have heard about it (though the lack of wind rules is regrettable.)

But, WK lost all my business last June, at least for the forseeable future. It's a pity - I had been purchasing full cases, and running events at my FLGS, convincing the kids to buy a couple boosters per month. Now all that energy is being directed elsewhere.