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For the Fantasy draft: what if you offered a promo card or something to the winner? Something usable, of course.

Ok, this material wasn't free. We purchased a ticket into the prerelease knowing we were getting things from the hellvault. Saying that the things we got for free is saying like a movie is free if you buy the ticket. I just want to get this point across. We paid for all of the material in the hellvault, the promo card, and the six packs. So what did we get?


Let's say 2 in 9 booster packs have tokens in them. A fat pack is 35 bucks. That means for five more dollars, we would have gotten 3 more packs. Sure, we wouldn't have gotten the oversized promo, but that's only worth about a dollar online (if you can even sell it for that much). Oh. We got a promo too. That'll probably sell for a few bucks...awesome.

Yeah, Wizards, you really screwed up here. What you did was basically distribute a "Christmas" bonus to thirty out of all of your employees. Of course you are going to get backlash. Hell, I'm probably not going to any more prereleases this year because of it. You just lost 60 bucks from one of your customers, who knows how much you'll lose from the others.

Now here's something new for your business philosophy, wizards. Like it or not, the consumers are much more powerful than your marketing department. You said you were listening to us, but from what I remember the Zendikar event got a bit of a backlash as well. That means you really didn't listen to us, did you?
 

I'm a new Magic player.

I loved the first pre-release I went to. Opening packs without knowing what I was going to get and getting to share my joy with dozens of other players and friends was a blast.

I love the elaborate world-building and backstory of Innistrad (and the other planes as I learn about them).

Pre-release + super-flavorful goodies should = a great time.

I didn't care about the monetary value or even the usefulness really, of the stuff we would get at the pre-release. I was really excited about, in Doug Beyer's words, opening freaking Helvaults. Totally agreed - file under: awesome.

File under: meh. What was I supposed to be in awe of? I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that. I liked getting the die - I didn't have a spin-down - but it's gray, and boring. I was hoping there would be something that would elicit a "That is SO COOL" from me. Maybe something shiny? Even if it was just the die that was shiny? Or the token? As I said, I genuinely don't care whether the contents were worth anything, but they were kinda boring. I guess...I didn't really get it.

Everyone else at the shop I went to was disappointed too, which really brought down the whole mood of the event. (And that was before they found out about the fancy Helvaults.)

I was so excited...now I are sad.

Psychologically this promotion is negative publicity because a select few got so much more and the expectation was equality.

Note, I've heard some NY stores charged as much as $50/seat because of Helavault on the salvations forum thread talking about the experience.  That's not 'free'.  Many stores charged additional money for attendance just because 'Helavault'.

Also, the contents of one of the 30 super-vaults hit eBay -- they were not passed out to players.  I hope Wizards is aware of this and has suspended the advanced premier store which was responsible.

I am disappointed in the marketing team.  

Bring back pre-release mythics...  I haven't bothered with releases since you stopped doing them.  Really glad I skipped AVR because of Helavault.

Also, way to shaft judge program by releasing judge promos in a non-judge venue.  Do you know how hard your unpaid judging staff works?  So out of touch...

Instead of oversized promos you could perhaps release regular-sized, gold-border promos?