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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:06PM
#11
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Wow people are bitching about FREE stuff??? What is wrong with you people. I like my helavault schwag please don't listen to these malcontents wotc.
The problem is that whoever decided on this promotion demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of psychology.
If you give one person a free $10 bill, he's happy. If he then sees you give another person a free $100 bill, he's suddenly unhappy because he feels that he had a chance at that $100 bill and missed out. Even though the first person is strictly better off than he was before, the fact that he got less than someone else leaves him less happy than he'd have been if neither of them had gotten anything.
What they should have done here is two-fold:
1. Lessen the obscene gap in value between the premium Helvaults and the ordinary ones.
2. Announce ahead of time that some Helvaults would contain better prizes than others.
This second even adds a sense of anticipation to the event, same as a lottery or gambling does, and would be positive marketing. Instead, they create a large gap between the haves and the have-nots (something to the tune of a $100 difference in value per person) and people only find out afterwards that other people got better prizes.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:08PM
#12
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Wow people are bitching about FREE stuff??? What is wrong with you people. I like my helavault schwag please don't listen to these malcontents wotc.
FREE!?! F R E E ! ? !
If you believe this stuff was FREE you have poor understanding of Economics 101. Oppertunity costs aside, we pay for this stuff every time we open a pack of Magic and pay to participate in one of their events. Every single bit of die resin, every fiber of cardboard, and every ounce of foil is paid for by US - The Consumer. We CONSUME these products at a premium price that we are "willing" to pay. There isn't a single aspect of this game that we do not pay for. Right down to the dork sweat from the MTG judges, we pay for everything. Companies exist to turn a profit. The entire point of this "prerelease exercise" was to produce a higher profit, because some guy in front of a computer and calculator decided that if they take XYZ actions for A cost it will turn a profit of D dollars. Do not for one second believe that this is some favor of a benevolent company who wishes nothing more than for you to have fun.
Naturally, these people are not out to have a nefarious agenda of making dollars and cents. These are good people, and they want us to have fun, but they also (and primarily so) must turn a profit. We have every right as consumers to complain about the product that they are providing us that we actually wish to use. If money equates to speech for corporations, it also must be true for consumers. We have a voice. If we do not like something we can withhold our money and express our feelings. And if, and only if, those companies respond to those feelings will they survive. Don't ever forget that. This isn't complaining, it is exercising our free speech toward a product that we want to succeed. (Smart people will recognize this as a political critique on America...)
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:11PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Sep 29, 2003
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Glad to hear the Helvault was (apparently) a success, because I want the game to do well but I for one knew the contents would be... lackluster. It was an obvious marketing gimmick, and based on WotC's track record I had already guessed there'd be dice and tokens + something else marginal (I didn't spend much time thinking about it, but in hindsight oversized promos seem like an obvious choice). Frankly, the only reason I went to the store to play was because one of my friends was supposed to be coming from out of town to hang out for the day, and the only thing keeping my day from being mediocre since he ended up having to take care of his sick wife (and playing with random people isn't much fun) was that my other friend stayed to play in spite of having run the midnight pre-re (I'd fully expected him to go home and sleep instead). Honestly, since the change from large pre-releases, knowing that a friend is going is the only thing that makes me attend a pre-release anymore. At least with the large one, we weren't split between multiple stores and prizes were better, plus 2HG (or sometimes drafts) was a great way to spend the afternoon after playing in the morning flight. Too bad that's a relic of a by-gone era, never to be seen again, since the small store pre-res obviously pull in so much more profit for WotC (otherwise we'd have them back, since all I hear from people in the area is how much they miss the large ones).
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:12PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Sep 27, 2009
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Wow people are bitching about FREE stuff???
I understand your point: how can people complain about free stuff? But Wizards is still interested in feedback, as was suggested by todays Magic Arcana. Let me say that I'm extremely grateful to have recieved my free stuff, but still, I believe my experience could have been better. Wizards is interested in my feedback, so here it is:
Spindown Counters
I loved the spindown counters. I always love dice, and couldn't get enough of them. This is also something that virtually every player in my area could use, and use frequently. Some variance in colors would have been nice, but I understand it may be cheaper (or more thematic) to go all the same color.
Tokens
I also enjoyed the double sided tokens. For me, tokens are fun to collect and use, so they were much appreciated. There were a few people at my pre-release who were uninterested, but those people didn't have too much trouble using them as trading fodder either.
Oversized Cards
I was, however, disapointed with the oversized cards. Sure, they're kinda fun and interesting, but at the same time, useless. When free stuff is handed out, I like it to be things I can actually use (such as the two previous items I was happy to get).
Perhaps a small handfull of people will use their oversized legends, but at my local store, I doubt it. I've never seen anyone use an oversized card (even the commander ones) for anything. In my opinion, it would have been better to just print normal sized versions of the cards. People would have been much happier to get something they could use. You guys used to hand out a free, foil mythic promo to everyone at pre-releases, remember? If anything, I imagine it would have saved you money since it takes less paper to print smaller cards.
Heck, I would have even been happier with some extra tokens instead of an oversized card.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:20PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Apr 10, 2009
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"54 Promo Foils thematically tied to angels or demons"
"a few of which were older judge promos"
I just wish WoTC didn't include these in their premium Helvaults, maybe I don't feel this much dissapointment...........
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:21PM
#16
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Wow people are bitching about FREE stuff???
I understand your point: how can people complain about free stuff? But Wizards is still interested in feedback, as was suggested by todays Magic Arcana. Let me say that I'm extremely grateful to have recieved my free stuff, but still, I believe my experience could have been better. Wizards is interested in my feedback, so here it is:
Spindown Counters
I loved the spindown counters. I always love dice, and couldn't get enough of them. This is also something that virtually every player in my area could use, and use frequently. Some variance in colors would have been nice, but I understand it may be cheaper (or more thematic) to go all the same color.
Tokens
I also enjoyed the double sided tokens. For me, tokens are fun to collect and use, so they were much appreciated. There were a few people at my pre-release who were uninterested, but those people didn't have too much trouble using them as trading fodder either.
Oversized Cards
I was, however, disapointed with the oversized cards. Sure, they're kinda fun and interesting, but at the same time, useless. When free stuff is handed out, I like it to be things I can actually use (such as the two previous items I was happy to get).
Perhaps a small handfull of people will use their oversized legends, but at my local store, I doubt it. I've never seen anyone use an oversized card (even the commander ones) for anything. In my opinion, it would have been better to just print normal sized versions of the cards. People would have been much happier to get something they could use. You guys used to hand out a free, foil mythic promo to everyone at pre-releases, remember? If anything, I imagine it would have saved you money since it takes less paper to print smaller cards.
Heck, I would have even been happier with some extra tokens instead of an oversized card.
While I agree with 99% of what you said, I feel the need to reiterate that this stuff is NOT FREE. It seems free because you didn't pay for it directly, but you did pay for it. Again, opportunity costs aside, they pass that overhead cost onto the consumer. We paid for it when we paid for the prerelease, bought a pack of Magic, etc. Also, it is important to include in this analysis that one of the reasons for issuing these useless oversized cards is to protect the secondary market from the flood of actual usable cards (aka m o n e y).
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the gesture, but sometimes it's the thought that hurts - particularly when we do, in fact, pay for it.
Everything else you said was spot on.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:29PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Jun 29, 2004
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I agree about the judge foil thing. If some helvaults just had foil oversized cards and tokens, most people would have just thought 'cool'. But including cards worth what, up to $100 each makes people really feel like they missed out, and in some cases because they may have been trying to support a smaller store and get screwed over for doing so.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:30PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2005
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I agree with Chronego.
As I've said before in Magic General, this is a horrible marketing decision. Not only are casual players completely "Huh?" about the prizes given (As my father, who's first prerelease this was will atest to) in the lesser vaults, the cards were mostly useless to more experienced players (Although I do appreciate the token), and the dice, quite frankly, are more appropriate for a D&D giveaway.
Furthermore, the community can not bond from this experience now, because one in 500 were treated much better than the other percentage. Now, if each vault contained a playable card (Not even judge, mind you. Just a normal FNM style gimme), there would have been no need to create a special vault. The main problem with the event is that instead of granting a bonding experience to the players, it created a reason for them to disassociate themselves from the game or the community.
This has hurt stores that are less than your Top Tier stores, and telling the community as a whole that only stores that hold hundreds of players are going to get the best prizes. This hurts your bottom line in the end, for that encourages players not to attend Gateway or Core stores, for the chances of chase prizes which shouldn't have happened.
This is a very nearsighted plan that was overly marketed, and poorly executed, and you can count me and my friends to not attend a prerelease based on your marketing ploys. We already had a bad experience when your distribution for Miroddin Besiged managed to not package rares in the stores Phyrexian half of the boosters. This further shows me that your promotions team can't handle this job.
I will continue to play magic, of course. I have faith in the development of the game, and enjoy the competition. However, I will be skeptical and ignore promotions from now on. You will have to prove through community that you can actually handle promotions responsibly for the community's welfare.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:51PM
#19
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When I heard that there were random way rare things found in some Helvaults, I thought I was being trolled.
Turns out, I was.
And from a really unexpected source.
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1 year ago ::
May 01, 2012 - 10:56PM
#20
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Another point against the Helvault "experience" is that it limited the number of people who could attend the event to 54.
I don't see how Wizards of the Coast could have given the green light to anything that would limit the number of customers giving them money.
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