The fact that there has not been a response from someone at Wizards in this thread really goes to show how much they care about their user base.
That is what they have customer service support emails for (though those are rarely answered in a timely matter). Why would you expect a vested representative to come on down to a forum thread that barely hit two pages over the course of a couple of days to give what few people are in it an explanation? They can craft a statement for release on a platform that gets far more traffic and do better damage control on their terms later.
Hmm so I ordered the Terrain and Creature campaign cases for Black Friday and I still haven't seen any shipping info yet. Order status just says validated for the past 2 weeks. Is this normal?
To be honest, they've only just started doing these physical bundles. We can't know what normal is because there is no baseline to compare it to. It could be that it just takes that long for them to get it out, or it could be that they've have hiccups with the supply chain this time round...or they're just working out the kinks in their new process. Nobody knows.
Feel free to shoot customer services an email. I daresay that they'll give the same response as the others and tell you to get back to them after 30 days have passed if there is no change in status, but it's something you can do.
Sorry that this isn't a productive response...but I'm not sure there is anything to say that can help - everything is new, and we don't know what to compare it to.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I can tell you with proof that whatever WOTC is doing to ship pre-orders doesn't have a clue.
I got two confirmation emails for two different pre-orders, both with UPS tracking numbers. But one says it's arriving on Wednesday the 14th and the other says "The delivery date will be provided as soon as possible." And you guys should know I pre-ordered both Dragonlance bundles in August on the same day!! That's pretty messed up.
Thankfully, I ordered the alternate cover from Amazon and that came in on the 8th.
To be honest, I should've just waited for Dragonlance to hit stores and I would've gotten everything on the release date without any hassle. I was naive to think pre-ordering something would get me some special treatment or at least something close to the release date.
You should know that pre-orders are essential to WOTC because it gives them an estimate on how much product to print. You would think they would at least throw you a bone. Not a chance.
Conclusion: I'm not EVER going to pre-order anything from the DnD/WOTC site again because they simply don't care and are without a doubt an unprofessional company.
Vote with your dollar my friends and walk away. That's the only way they will ever change their ways and treat you with more respect.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I've just checked my local game store (I suppose their number of employees is in the lower tens), If I ordered Dragonlance today, They would send it on Monday and I would get it on Tuesday/Wednesday (and yes, based on the past experience, I would). Compare this to a multimillion dollar company, which is unable to deliver preorders made in august (so they had a plenty of time to prepare for the holidays). Getting you pre-order (which was also pricier iirc) no later then normal order is far from having high expectation.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I'm waiting for your answer.
I can walk to the bookstore and grab a cheaper copy but i choose not to do that. I have chosen to order it from a foreign company that delivers my book from a different country.
Nowhere it was promised that i would receive my book on the release day and i did not have the expectation that i would. Maybe i have less expectations for buying stuff online and delivery dates.
That does not mean people can have different opinions but it is not even a week after the release.
And congratulations on running your own VERY successful business. Maybe WOTC can hire you to make it better next time.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I'm waiting for your answer.
Ironically, the rude and dismissive nature of this post comes off as rather childish and decidedly not "grown up". It also is quite clear from your entire posting history on this thread, while you might run a business, you do not necessarily know what you are talking about.
Delivery of product is a rather difficult problem for any business, and it is a problem that gets exponentially bigger the more individual locations you have to send product to. With a small business, a small group of employees can each monitor the delivery and transactions and personally ensure delivery. But Wizards is not a small business--and the rate at which it generates customers far eclipses the scale by which it can easily higher employees to personally curate the delivery process. That means you turn to automation and developing new systems--and it is nearly impossible to find the hiccups in those systems from theory testing. You have to put them to work to see where they break down, which is why it is rather common to see this kind of breakdown from very, very large companies.
A very basic understanding of business delivery would explain why the new system is having trouble while the old does not. For the old system, to places like LGSes and Amazon, Wizards is sending the product using a time-tested system through established networks where they can pre-mail the product with the delivery occurring before release date as they can trust the seller not to actually offer the product to the customer until the release window. The new system requires Wizards to send a huge volume of product to customers, and thus more individual packages mailed as opposed to sending boxes with lots of product in them, ideally with the shipping being timed so folks do not receive their product before the actual release date (which itself is kind of difficult due to the augury involved in predicting shipping times).
Now, whether that is fair to the customer? The customer is paying for a different product between Wizards' direct sales (which come bundled with the digital version) and the Amazon product, so comparing price points is a tad silly, unless you add up the cost of buying from Amazon and buying from Beyond as well. The delivery timing is frustrating to the customer, to be sure, but any customer buying something through an entirely knew channel probably should have expected some issues for the first couple of iterations.
I’d definitely be frustrated if I’d pre-ordered. But as others have said, this is their first time doing it. I’d agree that someone in Hasbro should have had a better idea for how to do it, but even still, it’s the first time. I’d guess this is basically a stress test for the new system, so they can spend next year getting it running better before they start selling a new PHB in 2024. I guess I’m saying you all were Guinea pigs.
But, hey, Amazon is just down the road from wizards, and they just laid off 10,000 people. Maybe wizards can pick up one or two who know a thing about order fulfillment.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I'm waiting for your answer.
Ironically, the rude and dismissive nature of this post comes off as rather childish and decidedly not "grown up". It also is quite clear from your entire posting history on this thread, while you might run a business, you do not necessarily know what you are talking about.
Delivery of product is a rather difficult problem for any business, and it is a problem that gets exponentially bigger the more individual locations you have to send product to. With a small business, a small group of employees can each monitor the delivery and transactions and personally ensure delivery. But Wizards is not a small business--and the rate at which it generates customers far eclipses the scale by which it can easily higher employees to personally curate the delivery process. That means you turn to automation and developing new systems--and it is nearly impossible to find the hiccups in those systems from theory testing. You have to put them to work to see where they break down, which is why it is rather common to see this kind of breakdown from very, very large companies.
A very basic understanding of business delivery would explain why the new system is having trouble while the old does not. For the old system, to places like LGSes and Amazon, Wizards is sending the product using a time-tested system through established networks where they can pre-mail the product with the delivery occurring before release date as they can trust the seller not to actually offer the product to the customer until the release window. The new system requires Wizards to send a huge volume of product to customers, and thus more individual packages mailed as opposed to sending boxes with lots of product in them, ideally with the shipping being timed so folks do not receive their product before the actual release date (which itself is kind of difficult due to the augury involved in predicting shipping times).
Now, whether that is fair to the customer? The customer is paying for a different product between Wizards' direct sales (which come bundled with the digital version) and the Amazon product, so comparing price points is a tad silly, unless you add up the cost of buying from Amazon and buying from Beyond as well. The delivery timing is frustrating to the customer, to be sure, but any customer buying something through an entirely knew channel probably should have expected some issues for the first couple of iterations.
I expected a multi-million dollar company who took my money ahead of time to have enough knowledge and foresight to have their collective shit together enough to ship out paid products in a timely manner. Stupid me I guess to assume that would be the case, but I'm smart enough to learn my lesson and never pre-order from Wizards again.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I'm waiting for your answer.
Ironically, the rude and dismissive nature of this post comes off as rather childish and decidedly not "grown up". It also is quite clear from your entire posting history on this thread, while you might run a business, you do not necessarily know what you are talking about.
Delivery of product is a rather difficult problem for any business, and it is a problem that gets exponentially bigger the more individual locations you have to send product to. With a small business, a small group of employees can each monitor the delivery and transactions and personally ensure delivery. But Wizards is not a small business--and the rate at which it generates customers far eclipses the scale by which it can easily higher employees to personally curate the delivery process. That means you turn to automation and developing new systems--and it is nearly impossible to find the hiccups in those systems from theory testing. You have to put them to work to see where they break down, which is why it is rather common to see this kind of breakdown from very, very large companies.
A very basic understanding of business delivery would explain why the new system is having trouble while the old does not. For the old system, to places like LGSes and Amazon, Wizards is sending the product using a time-tested system through established networks where they can pre-mail the product with the delivery occurring before release date as they can trust the seller not to actually offer the product to the customer until the release window. The new system requires Wizards to send a huge volume of product to customers, and thus more individual packages mailed as opposed to sending boxes with lots of product in them, ideally with the shipping being timed so folks do not receive their product before the actual release date (which itself is kind of difficult due to the augury involved in predicting shipping times).
Now, whether that is fair to the customer? The customer is paying for a different product between Wizards' direct sales (which come bundled with the digital version) and the Amazon product, so comparing price points is a tad silly, unless you add up the cost of buying from Amazon and buying from Beyond as well. The delivery timing is frustrating to the customer, to be sure, but any customer buying something through an entirely knew channel probably should have expected some issues for the first couple of iterations.
I expected a multi-million dollar company who took my money ahead of time to have enough knowledge and foresight to have their collective shit together enough to ship out paid products in a timely manner. Stupid me I guess to assume that would be the case, but I'm smart enough to learn my lesson and never pre-order from Wizards again.
the issue is, is that its run by humans, humans who may not have the experience and knowledge due to never doing this before in the companies existence, so they are treading new water and trying to find their way. is everyone perfect when they start something? no, its reasonable for them to say "hey we havent done this before so give it 30 days to get there, and if its not well figure this stuff out"
its actually fairly common when companies start new stuff, or for publishing companies to have shipping times like that anyways, so all your doing is shitting on a company thats trying something new and ******* up, so will have lessons for next time.
Pre-ordering should have resulted in a day 1 delivery. Anything else is unacceptable. Please stop defending the multi million dollar corporation for taking peoples hard earned money and not delivering on their obligations.
Pre-ordering should have resulted in a day 1 delivery. Anything else is unacceptable. Please stop defending the multi million dollar corporation for taking peoples hard earned money and not delivering on their obligations.
You do know WOTC is a failing company, right? MTG, is failing. The DnD movie will also be a complete bust (and the reason why they want to sell off the studio), so that's not saving anything. And their little video chat revealed what I already knew... they don't care about us, only their bottom line (and if you believed any of that propaganda then that's on you).
What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
You do know WOTC is a failing company, right? MTG, is failing. The DnD movie will also be a complete bust (and the reason why they want to sell off the studio), so that's not saving anything. And their little video chat revealed what I already knew... they don't care about us, only their bottom line (and if you believed any of that propaganda then that's on you).
What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
Not to mention sales are up substantially. D&D’s recognition and popularity are up substantially due to Stranger Things and Critical Role (especially their Vox Machina show) making D&D accessible to a broader population. As much as I dislike Universes Beyond in Magic, Wizards has also leveraged those products to increase brand recognition and membership, and Magic sales continue to skyrocket.
Wizards itself continues to post strong revenues. They recently went on a big hiring kick during a period when many tech companies (and Wizards is, to an extent, a tech company - they head the digital gaming of Hasbro as well) are paying off staff. This hiring is to work on their next new projects - a video game wing headed by former BioWare executives and writers who left their company due to EA micromanaging and negatively interfering with Mass Effect games.
They have clear long-term growth potential due to the acquisition of D&D Beyond.
They have the upcoming movie which, fail or succeed (and Hasbro has a strong track record with successful movies, even if they are not high art), will still increase curiosity about the product. It also is not the reason the entertainment wing is being sold off - that is being sold because Hasbro itself is having some financial struggles (mostly due to the toy market collapsing a few years back), and they want to focus their resources on building their brands, while licensing out their IP instead of producing their own ever-increasingly-expensive-to-make films.
Now, Mr. Business would have you believe these are all pieces of propaganda and we are “not smart enough to see” that we are being lied to. Call me old fashioned, but I am inclined to believe reports that are mandated by law to be accurate and where folks can be charged with financial crimes if they lie over someone on the interwebs who has not managed even the basics of polite conversation.
You do know WOTC is a failing company, right? MTG, is failing. The DnD movie will also be a complete bust (and the reason why they want to sell off the studio), so that's not saving anything. And their little video chat revealed what I already knew... they don't care about us, only their bottom line (and if you believed any of that propaganda then that's on you).
What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
Not to mention sales are up substantially. D&D’s recognition and popularity are up substantially due to Stranger Things and Critical Role (especially their Vox Machina show) making D&D accessible to a broader population. As much as I dislike Universes Beyond in Magic, Wizards has also leveraged those products to increase brand recognition and membership, and Magic sales continue to skyrocket.
Wizards itself continues to post strong revenues. They recently went on a big hiring kick during a period when many tech companies (and Wizards is, to an extent, a tech company - they head the digital gaming of Hasbro as well) are paying off staff. This hiring is to work on their next new projects - a video game wing headed by former BioWare executives and writers who left their company due to EA micromanaging and negatively interfering with Mass Effect games.
They have clear long-term growth potential due to the acquisition of D&D Beyond.
They have the upcoming movie which, fail or succeed (and Hasbro has a strong track record with successful movies, even if they are not high art), will still increase curiosity about the product. It also is not the reason the entertainment wing is being sold off - that is being sold because Hasbro itself is having some financial struggles (mostly due to the toy market collapsing a few years back), and they want to focus their resources on building their brands, while licensing out their IP instead of producing their own ever-increasingly-expensive-to-make films.
Now, Mr. Business would have you believe these are all pieces of propaganda and we are “not smart enough to see” that we are being lied to. Call me old fashioned, but I am inclined to believe reports that are mandated by law to be accurate and where folks can be charged with financial crimes if they lie over someone on the interwebs who has not managed even the basics of polite conversation.
And yet BofA released a memo basically saying how they don't have confidence in Hasbro. Hhmmm I wonder why. Maybe short term profits are never better than long term stability?
You do know WOTC is a failing company, right? MTG, is failing. The DnD movie will also be a complete bust (and the reason why they want to sell off the studio), so that's not saving anything. And their little video chat revealed what I already knew... they don't care about us, only their bottom line (and if you believed any of that propaganda then that's on you).
What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
Not to mention sales are up substantially. D&D’s recognition and popularity are up substantially due to Stranger Things and Critical Role (especially their Vox Machina show) making D&D accessible to a broader population. As much as I dislike Universes Beyond in Magic, Wizards has also leveraged those products to increase brand recognition and membership, and Magic sales continue to skyrocket.
Wizards itself continues to post strong revenues. They recently went on a big hiring kick during a period when many tech companies (and Wizards is, to an extent, a tech company - they head the digital gaming of Hasbro as well) are paying off staff. This hiring is to work on their next new projects - a video game wing headed by former BioWare executives and writers who left their company due to EA micromanaging and negatively interfering with Mass Effect games.
They have clear long-term growth potential due to the acquisition of D&D Beyond.
They have the upcoming movie which, fail or succeed (and Hasbro has a strong track record with successful movies, even if they are not high art), will still increase curiosity about the product. It also is not the reason the entertainment wing is being sold off - that is being sold because Hasbro itself is having some financial struggles (mostly due to the toy market collapsing a few years back), and they want to focus their resources on building their brands, while licensing out their IP instead of producing their own ever-increasingly-expensive-to-make films.
Now, Mr. Business would have you believe these are all pieces of propaganda and we are “not smart enough to see” that we are being lied to. Call me old fashioned, but I am inclined to believe reports that are mandated by law to be accurate and where folks can be charged with financial crimes if they lie over someone on the interwebs who has not managed even the basics of polite conversation.
And yet BofA released a memo basically saying how they don't have confidence in Hasbro. Hhmmm I wonder why. Maybe short term profits are never better than long term stability?
The report, however, was based on skewed data--specifically they looked at big box stores and places like Amazon, assuming those to be the primary sources of business for Magic, when the reality is Wizards does about 70% of their sales through local game stores. That is an extremely big gap that calls into credibility a fair bit about the report's viability as a tool. It is also worth noting that the primary request of the report probably would not be great for the long-term health of Magic--the report wanted Wizards to stop reprinting staple cards to drive those cards up in price so secondary resellers (a market Wizards makes no direct profits from) would have safer investments.
That, however, shows an ignorance of other (probably obvious) data Wizards released--while about half of Magic players are "collectors" of some sort, those collectors take all manner of different things they focus on, be it art, unique card styles, etc. This better data allowing Wizards to more closely target different types of collectors while still preserving reprint equity, combined with the fairly obvious fact that fewer reprints makes staples skyrocket in price and drives folks away from the game also calls into question some of BoA's analysis.
And, it should not be overstated, BoA never said Wizards was failing--they did say they think the current growth is not as sustainable as they had previously thought, which very well might be the case. Wizards saw a big boom during the pandemic, as many game companies did, and they likely are not going to maintain the same growth long-term. That, however, does not mean the company is going to fail--it is fairly normal for companies to ride booms and gluts for their product.
You do know WOTC is a failing company, right? MTG, is failing. The DnD movie will also be a complete bust (and the reason why they want to sell off the studio), so that's not saving anything. And their little video chat revealed what I already knew... they don't care about us, only their bottom line (and if you believed any of that propaganda then that's on you).
What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
Not to mention sales are up substantially. D&D’s recognition and popularity are up substantially due to Stranger Things and Critical Role (especially their Vox Machina show) making D&D accessible to a broader population. As much as I dislike Universes Beyond in Magic, Wizards has also leveraged those products to increase brand recognition and membership, and Magic sales continue to skyrocket.
Wizards itself continues to post strong revenues. They recently went on a big hiring kick during a period when many tech companies (and Wizards is, to an extent, a tech company - they head the digital gaming of Hasbro as well) are paying off staff. This hiring is to work on their next new projects - a video game wing headed by former BioWare executives and writers who left their company due to EA micromanaging and negatively interfering with Mass Effect games.
They have clear long-term growth potential due to the acquisition of D&D Beyond.
They have the upcoming movie which, fail or succeed (and Hasbro has a strong track record with successful movies, even if they are not high art), will still increase curiosity about the product. It also is not the reason the entertainment wing is being sold off - that is being sold because Hasbro itself is having some financial struggles (mostly due to the toy market collapsing a few years back), and they want to focus their resources on building their brands, while licensing out their IP instead of producing their own ever-increasingly-expensive-to-make films.
Now, Mr. Business would have you believe these are all pieces of propaganda and we are “not smart enough to see” that we are being lied to. Call me old fashioned, but I am inclined to believe reports that are mandated by law to be accurate and where folks can be charged with financial crimes if they lie over someone on the interwebs who has not managed even the basics of polite conversation.
And yet BofA released a memo basically saying how they don't have confidence in Hasbro. Hhmmm I wonder why. Maybe short term profits are never better than long term stability?
The report, however, was based on skewed data--specifically they looked at big box stores and places like Amazon, assuming those to be the primary sources of business for Magic, when the reality is Wizards does about 70% of their sales through local game stores. That is an extremely big gap that calls into credibility a fair bit about the report's viability as a tool. It is also worth noting that the primary request of the report probably would not be great for the long-term health of Magic--the report wanted Wizards to stop reprinting staple cards to drive those cards up in price so secondary resellers (a market Wizards makes no direct profits from) would have safer investments.
That, however, shows an ignorance of other (probably obvious) data Wizards released--while about half of Magic players are "collectors" of some sort, those collectors take all manner of different things they focus on, be it art, unique card styles, etc. This better data allowing Wizards to more closely target different types of collectors while still preserving reprint equity, combined with the fairly obvious fact that fewer reprints makes staples skyrocket in price and drives folks away from the game also calls into question some of BoA's analysis.
And, it should not be overstated, BoA never said Wizards was failing--they did say they think the current growth is not as sustainable as they had previously thought, which very well might be the case. Wizards saw a big boom during the pandemic, as many game companies did, and they likely are not going to maintain the same growth long-term. That, however, does not mean the company is going to fail--it is fairly normal for companies to ride booms and gluts for their product.
its probably not as sustainable tbh but! that just means their goal has to shift from moving to get vast ppl to join, to keeping the vast amounts of ppl, which it seems like their trying to do now, and are having hiccups in the road cuz they havent done stuff like this before, which makes sense
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That is what they have customer service support emails for (though those are rarely answered in a timely matter). Why would you expect a vested representative to come on down to a forum thread that barely hit two pages over the course of a couple of days to give what few people are in it an explanation? They can craft a statement for release on a platform that gets far more traffic and do better damage control on their terms later.
EDIT: Oh, I guess three pages now. >_>
Hmm so I ordered the Terrain and Creature campaign cases for Black Friday and I still haven't seen any shipping info yet. Order status just says validated for the past 2 weeks. Is this normal?
To be honest, they've only just started doing these physical bundles. We can't know what normal is because there is no baseline to compare it to. It could be that it just takes that long for them to get it out, or it could be that they've have hiccups with the supply chain this time round...or they're just working out the kinks in their new process. Nobody knows.
Feel free to shoot customer services an email. I daresay that they'll give the same response as the others and tell you to get back to them after 30 days have passed if there is no change in status, but it's something you can do.
Sorry that this isn't a productive response...but I'm not sure there is anything to say that can help - everything is new, and we don't know what to compare it to.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
An update.
I can tell you with proof that whatever WOTC is doing to ship pre-orders doesn't have a clue.
I got two confirmation emails for two different pre-orders, both with UPS tracking numbers. But one says it's arriving on Wednesday the 14th and the other says "The delivery date will be provided as soon as possible." And you guys should know I pre-ordered both Dragonlance bundles in August on the same day!! That's pretty messed up.
Thankfully, I ordered the alternate cover from Amazon and that came in on the 8th.
To be honest, I should've just waited for Dragonlance to hit stores and I would've gotten everything on the release date without any hassle. I was naive to think pre-ordering something would get me some special treatment or at least something close to the release date.
You should know that pre-orders are essential to WOTC because it gives them an estimate on how much product to print. You would think they would at least throw you a bone. Not a chance.
Conclusion: I'm not EVER going to pre-order anything from the DnD/WOTC site again because they simply don't care and are without a doubt an unprofessional company.
Vote with your dollar my friends and walk away. That's the only way they will ever change their ways and treat you with more respect.
I don’t get people get so upset! Everyone knows what WOTC is doing with their shop for Dragonlance is a new thing.
There will be kinks in the line and don’t forget we are in prime holiday season. Even if WOTC was on time the chance of your delivery company being backed up is higher as well.
It is not the end of the world, we set to high of an expectation these days were same day delivery is becoming more and more a standard.
Just.. relax.. breathe in.. breathe out..
I've just checked my local game store (I suppose their number of employees is in the lower tens), If I ordered Dragonlance today, They would send it on Monday and I would get it on Tuesday/Wednesday (and yes, based on the past experience, I would). Compare this to a multimillion dollar company, which is unable to deliver preorders made in august (so they had a plenty of time to prepare for the holidays). Getting you pre-order (which was also pricier iirc) no later then normal order is far from having high expectation.
I'm assuming you are young and don't understand anything about business.
I'm a grown up and I RUN my own business (which is VERY successful), so I know what I'm talking about.
Think about it this way. I can order it off Amazon today and have it by Tuesday and pay less than I originally did when I pre-ordered it. Do you think this is a good way to run a business or fair to the customer?
I'm waiting for your answer.
I can walk to the bookstore and grab a cheaper copy but i choose not to do that. I have chosen to order it from a foreign company that delivers my book from a different country.
Nowhere it was promised that i would receive my book on the release day and i did not have the expectation that i would. Maybe i have less expectations for buying stuff online and delivery dates.
That does not mean people can have different opinions but it is not even a week after the release.
And congratulations on running your own VERY successful business. Maybe WOTC can hire you to make it better next time.
Guys I have a simple solution: just don't preorder things. It's never worth it.
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Ironically, the rude and dismissive nature of this post comes off as rather childish and decidedly not "grown up". It also is quite clear from your entire posting history on this thread, while you might run a business, you do not necessarily know what you are talking about.
Delivery of product is a rather difficult problem for any business, and it is a problem that gets exponentially bigger the more individual locations you have to send product to. With a small business, a small group of employees can each monitor the delivery and transactions and personally ensure delivery. But Wizards is not a small business--and the rate at which it generates customers far eclipses the scale by which it can easily higher employees to personally curate the delivery process. That means you turn to automation and developing new systems--and it is nearly impossible to find the hiccups in those systems from theory testing. You have to put them to work to see where they break down, which is why it is rather common to see this kind of breakdown from very, very large companies.
A very basic understanding of business delivery would explain why the new system is having trouble while the old does not. For the old system, to places like LGSes and Amazon, Wizards is sending the product using a time-tested system through established networks where they can pre-mail the product with the delivery occurring before release date as they can trust the seller not to actually offer the product to the customer until the release window. The new system requires Wizards to send a huge volume of product to customers, and thus more individual packages mailed as opposed to sending boxes with lots of product in them, ideally with the shipping being timed so folks do not receive their product before the actual release date (which itself is kind of difficult due to the augury involved in predicting shipping times).
Now, whether that is fair to the customer? The customer is paying for a different product between Wizards' direct sales (which come bundled with the digital version) and the Amazon product, so comparing price points is a tad silly, unless you add up the cost of buying from Amazon and buying from Beyond as well. The delivery timing is frustrating to the customer, to be sure, but any customer buying something through an entirely knew channel probably should have expected some issues for the first couple of iterations.
I’d definitely be frustrated if I’d pre-ordered. But as others have said, this is their first time doing it. I’d agree that someone in Hasbro should have had a better idea for how to do it, but even still, it’s the first time.
I’d guess this is basically a stress test for the new system, so they can spend next year getting it running better before they start selling a new PHB in 2024. I guess I’m saying you all were Guinea pigs.
But, hey, Amazon is just down the road from wizards, and they just laid off 10,000 people. Maybe wizards can pick up one or two who know a thing about order fulfillment.
I expected a multi-million dollar company who took my money ahead of time to have enough knowledge and foresight to have their collective shit together enough to ship out paid products in a timely manner. Stupid me I guess to assume that would be the case, but I'm smart enough to learn my lesson and never pre-order from Wizards again.
the issue is, is that its run by humans, humans who may not have the experience and knowledge due to never doing this before in the companies existence, so they are treading new water and trying to find their way. is everyone perfect when they start something? no, its reasonable for them to say "hey we havent done this before so give it 30 days to get there, and if its not well figure this stuff out"
its actually fairly common when companies start new stuff, or for publishing companies to have shipping times like that anyways, so all your doing is shitting on a company thats trying something new and ******* up, so will have lessons for next time.
Pre-ordering should have resulted in a day 1 delivery. Anything else is unacceptable. Please stop defending the multi million dollar corporation for taking peoples hard earned money and not delivering on their obligations.
Or just, you know, don't preorder things
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What are you even talking about? Neither D&D nor MTG are failing, and this is coming from someone who plays both. D&D sells millions of different books to millions of different people, it isn't automatically a failure because your one book's shipping was delayed.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.Not to mention sales are up substantially. D&D’s recognition and popularity are up substantially due to Stranger Things and Critical Role (especially their Vox Machina show) making D&D accessible to a broader population. As much as I dislike Universes Beyond in Magic, Wizards has also leveraged those products to increase brand recognition and membership, and Magic sales continue to skyrocket.
Wizards itself continues to post strong revenues. They recently went on a big hiring kick during a period when many tech companies (and Wizards is, to an extent, a tech company - they head the digital gaming of Hasbro as well) are paying off staff. This hiring is to work on their next new projects - a video game wing headed by former BioWare executives and writers who left their company due to EA micromanaging and negatively interfering with Mass Effect games.
They have clear long-term growth potential due to the acquisition of D&D Beyond.
They have the upcoming movie which, fail or succeed (and Hasbro has a strong track record with successful movies, even if they are not high art), will still increase curiosity about the product. It also is not the reason the entertainment wing is being sold off - that is being sold because Hasbro itself is having some financial struggles (mostly due to the toy market collapsing a few years back), and they want to focus their resources on building their brands, while licensing out their IP instead of producing their own ever-increasingly-expensive-to-make films.
Now, Mr. Business would have you believe these are all pieces of propaganda and we are “not smart enough to see” that we are being lied to. Call me old fashioned, but I am inclined to believe reports that are mandated by law to be accurate and where folks can be charged with financial crimes if they lie over someone on the interwebs who has not managed even the basics of polite conversation.
And yet BofA released a memo basically saying how they don't have confidence in Hasbro. Hhmmm I wonder why. Maybe short term profits are never better than long term stability?
1 shot dungeon master
The report, however, was based on skewed data--specifically they looked at big box stores and places like Amazon, assuming those to be the primary sources of business for Magic, when the reality is Wizards does about 70% of their sales through local game stores. That is an extremely big gap that calls into credibility a fair bit about the report's viability as a tool. It is also worth noting that the primary request of the report probably would not be great for the long-term health of Magic--the report wanted Wizards to stop reprinting staple cards to drive those cards up in price so secondary resellers (a market Wizards makes no direct profits from) would have safer investments.
That, however, shows an ignorance of other (probably obvious) data Wizards released--while about half of Magic players are "collectors" of some sort, those collectors take all manner of different things they focus on, be it art, unique card styles, etc. This better data allowing Wizards to more closely target different types of collectors while still preserving reprint equity, combined with the fairly obvious fact that fewer reprints makes staples skyrocket in price and drives folks away from the game also calls into question some of BoA's analysis.
And, it should not be overstated, BoA never said Wizards was failing--they did say they think the current growth is not as sustainable as they had previously thought, which very well might be the case. Wizards saw a big boom during the pandemic, as many game companies did, and they likely are not going to maintain the same growth long-term. That, however, does not mean the company is going to fail--it is fairly normal for companies to ride booms and gluts for their product.
its probably not as sustainable tbh but! that just means their goal has to shift from moving to get vast ppl to join, to keeping the vast amounts of ppl, which it seems like their trying to do now, and are having hiccups in the road cuz they havent done stuff like this before, which makes sense