I love the defense to the end people are giving WOTC.
Their shipping problems are actually all their fault, no one else's and definitely NOT the seasons. They knew the day they were releasing this thing a year or more ago. If they did not prepare for it then whose fault is that? Theirs.
More than likely WOTC is not actually the physical printing company and several other printers are given a portion of the order to fulfill. This is how its normally done. They then ship the books out to the retailers. This time they needed to send them out to the pre order customers at the same time. How would they do this? The printing companies would NOT do it. They are not set up to do it. Amazon is set up for it but for some reason WOTC did not exclusively contract them to do deal with it. Maybe they wanted too much cash. But more then likely they contacted a bunch of smaller local reshippers to handle all their local pre orders and its those people who are behind. And they could be behind for any number of reasons from they didn't get the books on time like the established retailers did to they did not get the customer information on time or even they are just small and thus slow.
WOTC should have had this all set up a month ahead of time and had everything just waiting to actually ship. Then it would have been just a few short days after the retailers started selling and everyone would be getting their books.
No WOTC dropped the ball on this by just not watching the small distributors close enough and working more with them.
More than likely WOTC is not actually the physical printing company and several other printers are given a portion of the order to fulfill. This is how its normally done. They then ship the books out to the retailers. This time they needed to send them out to the pre order customers at the same time. How would they do this? The printing companies would NOT do it. They are not set up to do it. Amazon is set up for it but for some reason WOTC did not exclusively contract them to do deal with it. Maybe they wanted too much cash. But more then likely they contacted a bunch of smaller local reshippers to handle all their local pre orders and its those people who are behind. And they could be behind for any number of reasons from they didn't get the books on time like the established retailers did to they did not get the customer information on time or even they are just small and thus slow.
I don't know if shipping directly from printer to retailers is actually how it is normally done. I've done pre-orders and kickstarters (which, yes, are separate things) through a number other ttrpg and game designers (Free League, Modiphius, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson, Arc Dream) and while there has been some hiccups in recent years because of global shipping issues, all of them endeavor and often succeed in getting the product to backers and pre-orders ahead of their appearance or availability through traditional retail outlets (bricks and mortar stores and Amazon). So let's not pretend getting a product to a preordering customer ahead of conventional retail is impossible, companies much less resourced than Hasbro get it right (they also talk to each other more than I believe Hasbro/WotC does on things like the logistics of shipping, which might be another reason Hasbro's a bit hamstrung here).
That said, and acknowledging "geeze, guys, it's my first day" being said by someone in Hasbro'd order fulfillment department, my greater sympathy is with those folks who pre-ordered expecting something more like the pre-order fulfillment folks are more accustomed to, having not read trade magazine or otherwise done research to discover how little experience Hasbro has shipping physical products directly to consumers. And even then I'm not sure whether it's really Hasbro lacking experience or WotC lack of interface with other components of Hasbro that do have experience with direct to consumer service, like Hasbro Pulse. Hasbro Pulse is sort of a kickstarter/crowdfunding program where designers float concepts that are too big or too expensive or too niche for the regular toy market place to be made through Hasbro's usual mfr (say, figures from Transformers Shattered Glass deep cut story line, or G.I. Joe pack consisting of Bongo the Balloon Bear, Kwin the Eskimo, and the Soft Master). I don't know if Dragonlance direct order numbers were in the scale of Hasbro Pulse products, could be or Dragonlance could dwarf them. That said, Hasbro seemed happy with its pre-order numbers, and opened the store up for further DDB integrated purchases, but amidst that happiness there may have been some magical thinking on the fulfillment side of things.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My guess is that except for a monthly teleconference with WOTC, Hasbro is pretty much hands off. WOTC was a fully functioning company long before Hasbro came by and bought them up. Why change what is currently working?
My guess is that except for a monthly teleconference with WOTC, Hasbro is pretty much hands off. WOTC was a fully functioning company long before Hasbro came by and bought them up. Why change what is currently working?
Because they (WotC) were trying something with which they had little experience (direct to customer order fulfillment) which Hasbro knew a thing or two about. By your logic WotC shouldn't have done this direct to consumer pre-order bundle in the first place? Why change what is currently working?
And "As a pilot, we're going to bundle the Dragonlance book with the DDB edition." "Cool, how's Amazon going to-" "Amazon won't be part of this roll out, at least initially, we're going to fulfill preorders for this bundle in house." "Oh, interesting, I wasn't aware WotC had people who've run direct to consumer order fulfillment before." "Uh, we don't, and didn't see that as a problem?" "Uh-huh. So, we have a component called Hasbro Pulse that do this sort of stuff all the time. It's not rocket science, but if you went to some panels at GAMA or whatever, you'd probably realize it requires not an inconsiderable amount of care, how about we have your fulfillment leads talk to our people at Pulse." is precisely the sort of conversation you should have during a monthly teleconference.
So far I have not seen any of the shipped orders coming out of Hasbro Pulse. I could be making a wrong assumption but you could be also in thinking that Hasbro even cared enough to ask about the roll out in anything other than a "Hows are things going" kind of way. And believe me, executives lie to each other, or at least omit a LOT of problems to their bosses in the hopes that things work out in the end.
Has anyone received their pre order conformation from Hasbro? Or their shipping information from them?
Pulse didn't have a role in this, just they're a component that could have helped WotC do this better (with greater customer satisfaction).
Why would Hasbro care? Because Hasbro knows WotC is an important/key sales maker for Hasbro so much that Hasbro elevated WotC's position in its more recent corporate org chart (and that was before the head of WotC became the head of Hasbro). They also know tens of millions of dollars was spent on DDB and any honest analyst internally would have noted the tension between digital and physical as a priority for WotC to solve. This DL bundling was a step in that direction.
I know in some places in the business world duplicity and prevarication happens ... and in the post mortem it's often very apparent that best business practice would have been for the parties to involve to be honest with each other. All of these counter arguments simply shrug at the inevitability of dysfunction, I am simply saying it could of been done better and is done better. My guess is Hasbro's failings at what some defenders are trying to paint as some insurmountable task are the sorts of things smaller players (companies mentioned in my last post) iron out in panels and seminars and happy hours at GAMA, PAX, etc. To say detractors of this bundle order have unrealistic or magical expectations of success is simply bunk given there's a whole TTRPG ecosystem that does in fact do preorders with far less problems. Not perfection, just better.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
Some folks really really want to say "first!" especially in a day where people spend a lot of communication bandwidth sending unboxing photos and similar flexes. You're absolutely right that it's a petty vanity thing in the grand scheme, at least on the consumer side of things. I don't know if pre-order sales benefits a product's accounting or what not on the business side of things.
But I mean, there are people who like to go to sneak previews and will pay full ticket cost to do so sometimes, or otherwise be first in mind. It's a performance of their passion for the brand.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
Ego, really. It's really nice to have something early. I got MotM before release (only shortly, a few days, I'm not sure why though, I just didn't question it), and that was a nice feeling, being able to flick through it just a little bit early, participate fully on the discussions (as opposed to Spelljammer where I got it months after the initial release because WotC did a very staggered release).
However, I've been burned enough times by preorders that I generally don't do it any more. It's just too often that the company just half asses it because they know the hype will sell it - or it's just not hyped enough to get me excited. I have precisely one item that I'm currently planning on ordering - Tears of the Kingdom. However, I loved the first game, love the franchise, and I've seen them pull through and deliver quality products fairly reliably. I'm not sure I've ever seen them deliver a sequel I didn't like if I liked the original. Most preorders are out of the question unless there is a significant incentive to do so.
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.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
In the case of print products, they can theoretically run out. They only print a finite number. This is even more true if you are buying it from a store where a given retailer will only get so many copies. You might end up needing to wait for a second printing and not get the product for a while. Pre-ordering digital, where they can’t run out, is the one I don’t get.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
Ego, really. It's really nice to have something early. I got MotM before release (only shortly, a few days, I'm not sure why though, I just didn't question it), and that was a nice feeling, being able to flick through it just a little bit early, participate fully on the discussions (as opposed to Spelljammer where I got it months after the initial release because WotC did a very staggered release).
However, I've been burned enough times by preorders that I generally don't do it any more. It's just too often that the company just half asses it because they know the hype will sell it - or it's just not hyped enough to get me excited. I have precisely one item that I'm currently planning on ordering - Tears of the Kingdom. However, I loved the first game, love the franchise, and I've seen them pull through and deliver quality products fairly reliably. I'm not sure I've ever seen them deliver a sequel I didn't like if I liked the original. Most preorders are out of the question unless there is a significant incentive to do so.
I get that. I still find it strange that people would rather throw their money just to get something slightly earlier than wait to see if it's actually worth it but people will buy whatever I guess.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
In the case of print products, they can theoretically run out. They only print a finite number. This is even more true if you are buying it from a store where a given retailer will only get so many copies. You might end up needing to wait for a second printing and not get the product for a while. Pre-ordering digital, where they can’t run out, is the one I don’t get.
And that's worth spending upwards of twice the base price for?
From the player perspective, you get free additional things if you preorder - extra cosmetics and stuff to customise your character sheet (and, if you are the DM, you can apply your extra customisations to your players’ sheets). If you already know you are going to buy the product, preordering gets you what you were already going to buy, plus something extra, making it better than waiting.
Wizards, of course, offers preorders and preorder bonuses because of time value of money - money is worth more the earlier you get it, so getting paid for the book a month or two early is better financially for the company.
From the player perspective, you get free additional things if you preorder - extra cosmetics and stuff to customise your character sheet (and, if you are the DM, you can apply your extra customisations to your players’ sheets). If you already know you are going to buy the product, preordering gets you what you were already going to buy, plus something extra, making it better than waiting.
Wizards, of course, offers preorders and preorder bonuses because of time value of money - money is worth more the earlier you get it, so getting paid for the book a month or two early is better financially for the company.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
Some people are just impatient and want the book as soon as possible(Me).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
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.
What all this discussion on product distribution methods does not answer is the complete and utter silence from WotC/D&D/D&D Beyond concerning this pre-order debacle.
They called this a test, and they performed absolutely horribly, from distribution to customer service. They dropped the ball on the full gambit; from not even attempting to ship pre-orders until days after the release date(delivery not expected for more than a week after if you're lucky), to releasing their customer service reps for the holidays during an important expansion of their business(either don't do the test release during a holiday, or hire seasonal workers), to their support message being that they won't even consider your inquiry for 30 days, 30 DAYS, after the release date.
And not a word. Not a word of acknowledgement that this happened. Not a word of apology to those loyal customers who trusted in their product and service enough to pre-order months in advance simply in the belief that these teams could provide a quality product on release day, or at the very least shipped by then. Not a word of assurance that they are working to resolve the issues to insure that it won't happen again. Not a word offering the slightest bit of recompense for their blatant failure on all the points listed.
Not a word. Just complete and utter silence.
It's indicative of how they view those who took part in their test, and exemplative of what is to be expected of their business practices. Those of us who took part in this 'test' who didn't know before, well... we know now.
I love the defense to the end people are giving WOTC.
Their shipping problems are actually all their fault, no one else's and definitely NOT the seasons. They knew the day they were releasing this thing a year or more ago. If they did not prepare for it then whose fault is that? Theirs.
More than likely WOTC is not actually the physical printing company and several other printers are given a portion of the order to fulfill. This is how its normally done. They then ship the books out to the retailers.
This time they needed to send them out to the pre order customers at the same time. How would they do this? The printing companies would NOT do it. They are not set up to do it. Amazon is set up for it but for some reason WOTC did not exclusively contract them to do deal with it. Maybe they wanted too much cash. But more then likely they contacted a bunch of smaller local reshippers to handle all their local pre orders and its those people who are behind. And they could be behind for any number of reasons from they didn't get the books on time like the established retailers did to they did not get the customer information on time or even they are just small and thus slow.
WOTC should have had this all set up a month ahead of time and had everything just waiting to actually ship. Then it would have been just a few short days after the retailers started selling and everyone would be getting their books.
No WOTC dropped the ball on this by just not watching the small distributors close enough and working more with them.
I don't know if shipping directly from printer to retailers is actually how it is normally done. I've done pre-orders and kickstarters (which, yes, are separate things) through a number other ttrpg and game designers (Free League, Modiphius, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson, Arc Dream) and while there has been some hiccups in recent years because of global shipping issues, all of them endeavor and often succeed in getting the product to backers and pre-orders ahead of their appearance or availability through traditional retail outlets (bricks and mortar stores and Amazon). So let's not pretend getting a product to a preordering customer ahead of conventional retail is impossible, companies much less resourced than Hasbro get it right (they also talk to each other more than I believe Hasbro/WotC does on things like the logistics of shipping, which might be another reason Hasbro's a bit hamstrung here).
That said, and acknowledging "geeze, guys, it's my first day" being said by someone in Hasbro'd order fulfillment department, my greater sympathy is with those folks who pre-ordered expecting something more like the pre-order fulfillment folks are more accustomed to, having not read trade magazine or otherwise done research to discover how little experience Hasbro has shipping physical products directly to consumers. And even then I'm not sure whether it's really Hasbro lacking experience or WotC lack of interface with other components of Hasbro that do have experience with direct to consumer service, like Hasbro Pulse. Hasbro Pulse is sort of a kickstarter/crowdfunding program where designers float concepts that are too big or too expensive or too niche for the regular toy market place to be made through Hasbro's usual mfr (say, figures from Transformers Shattered Glass deep cut story line, or G.I. Joe pack consisting of Bongo the Balloon Bear, Kwin the Eskimo, and the Soft Master). I don't know if Dragonlance direct order numbers were in the scale of Hasbro Pulse products, could be or Dragonlance could dwarf them. That said, Hasbro seemed happy with its pre-order numbers, and opened the store up for further DDB integrated purchases, but amidst that happiness there may have been some magical thinking on the fulfillment side of things.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My guess is that except for a monthly teleconference with WOTC, Hasbro is pretty much hands off. WOTC was a fully functioning company long before Hasbro came by and bought them up. Why change what is currently working?
Because they (WotC) were trying something with which they had little experience (direct to customer order fulfillment) which Hasbro knew a thing or two about. By your logic WotC shouldn't have done this direct to consumer pre-order bundle in the first place? Why change what is currently working?
And "As a pilot, we're going to bundle the Dragonlance book with the DDB edition." "Cool, how's Amazon going to-" "Amazon won't be part of this roll out, at least initially, we're going to fulfill preorders for this bundle in house." "Oh, interesting, I wasn't aware WotC had people who've run direct to consumer order fulfillment before." "Uh, we don't, and didn't see that as a problem?" "Uh-huh. So, we have a component called Hasbro Pulse that do this sort of stuff all the time. It's not rocket science, but if you went to some panels at GAMA or whatever, you'd probably realize it requires not an inconsiderable amount of care, how about we have your fulfillment leads talk to our people at Pulse." is precisely the sort of conversation you should have during a monthly teleconference.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
So far I have not seen any of the shipped orders coming out of Hasbro Pulse. I could be making a wrong assumption but you could be also in thinking that Hasbro even cared enough to ask about the roll out in anything other than a "Hows are things going" kind of way. And believe me, executives lie to each other, or at least omit a LOT of problems to their bosses in the hopes that things work out in the end.
Has anyone received their pre order conformation from Hasbro? Or their shipping information from them?
Pulse didn't have a role in this, just they're a component that could have helped WotC do this better (with greater customer satisfaction).
Why would Hasbro care? Because Hasbro knows WotC is an important/key sales maker for Hasbro so much that Hasbro elevated WotC's position in its more recent corporate org chart (and that was before the head of WotC became the head of Hasbro). They also know tens of millions of dollars was spent on DDB and any honest analyst internally would have noted the tension between digital and physical as a priority for WotC to solve. This DL bundling was a step in that direction.
I know in some places in the business world duplicity and prevarication happens ... and in the post mortem it's often very apparent that best business practice would have been for the parties to involve to be honest with each other. All of these counter arguments simply shrug at the inevitability of dysfunction, I am simply saying it could of been done better and is done better. My guess is Hasbro's failings at what some defenders are trying to paint as some insurmountable task are the sorts of things smaller players (companies mentioned in my last post) iron out in panels and seminars and happy hours at GAMA, PAX, etc. To say detractors of this bundle order have unrealistic or magical expectations of success is simply bunk given there's a whole TTRPG ecosystem that does in fact do preorders with far less problems. Not perfection, just better.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
What's even the purpose of preordering anyway? Sure, you get the books earlier, but why risk spending a ludicrous amount of money on something that might not even be worth it? Why not just wait for it to release so you can look up whether or not it's for you?
[REDACTED]
Some folks really really want to say "first!" especially in a day where people spend a lot of communication bandwidth sending unboxing photos and similar flexes. You're absolutely right that it's a petty vanity thing in the grand scheme, at least on the consumer side of things. I don't know if pre-order sales benefits a product's accounting or what not on the business side of things.
But I mean, there are people who like to go to sneak previews and will pay full ticket cost to do so sometimes, or otherwise be first in mind. It's a performance of their passion for the brand.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Ego, really. It's really nice to have something early. I got MotM before release (only shortly, a few days, I'm not sure why though, I just didn't question it), and that was a nice feeling, being able to flick through it just a little bit early, participate fully on the discussions (as opposed to Spelljammer where I got it months after the initial release because WotC did a very staggered release).
However, I've been burned enough times by preorders that I generally don't do it any more. It's just too often that the company just half asses it because they know the hype will sell it - or it's just not hyped enough to get me excited. I have precisely one item that I'm currently planning on ordering - Tears of the Kingdom. However, I loved the first game, love the franchise, and I've seen them pull through and deliver quality products fairly reliably. I'm not sure I've ever seen them deliver a sequel I didn't like if I liked the original. Most preorders are out of the question unless there is a significant incentive to do so.
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.
In the case of print products, they can theoretically run out. They only print a finite number. This is even more true if you are buying it from a store where a given retailer will only get so many copies. You might end up needing to wait for a second printing and not get the product for a while.
Pre-ordering digital, where they can’t run out, is the one I don’t get.
I get that. I still find it strange that people would rather throw their money just to get something slightly earlier than wait to see if it's actually worth it but people will buy whatever I guess.
And that's worth spending upwards of twice the base price for?
Wait you can preorder digital books? Why??
[REDACTED]
I didn't even know that was a thing lol.
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!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.From the player perspective, you get free additional things if you preorder - extra cosmetics and stuff to customise your character sheet (and, if you are the DM, you can apply your extra customisations to your players’ sheets). If you already know you are going to buy the product, preordering gets you what you were already going to buy, plus something extra, making it better than waiting.
Wizards, of course, offers preorders and preorder bonuses because of time value of money - money is worth more the earlier you get it, so getting paid for the book a month or two early is better financially for the company.
That's fair. Strange, but fair.
[REDACTED]
I SHOULD have just pre-ordered the digital book, and bought my physical book elsewhere and I wouldve had it in my hands by now.
Some people are just impatient and want the book as soon as possible(Me).
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
100% agree with you.
I am getting my book today :) And yes, i had a pre-order!
What all this discussion on product distribution methods does not answer is the complete and utter silence from WotC/D&D/D&D Beyond concerning this pre-order debacle.
They called this a test, and they performed absolutely horribly, from distribution to customer service. They dropped the ball on the full gambit; from not even attempting to ship pre-orders until days after the release date(delivery not expected for more than a week after if you're lucky), to releasing their customer service reps for the holidays during an important expansion of their business(either don't do the test release during a holiday, or hire seasonal workers), to their support message being that they won't even consider your inquiry for 30 days, 30 DAYS, after the release date.
And not a word. Not a word of acknowledgement that this happened. Not a word of apology to those loyal customers who trusted in their product and service enough to pre-order months in advance simply in the belief that these teams could provide a quality product on release day, or at the very least shipped by then. Not a word of assurance that they are working to resolve the issues to insure that it won't happen again. Not a word offering the slightest bit of recompense for their blatant failure on all the points listed.
Not a word. Just complete and utter silence.
It's indicative of how they view those who took part in their test, and exemplative of what is to be expected of their business practices. Those of us who took part in this 'test' who didn't know before, well... we know now.
I posted something to the wrong thread. My bad lol.
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!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.