Yeah, somehow my brain deduced "Pistol that looks exactly like that of the Zhayedan means that is a Breaker Pistol"
He's not entirely wrong. The only time the FLGS was really doing well was when the guy who runs an independent bookstore was also running the FLGS. Independent bookstores have to be on the ball and know their stuff because the big boxes and Amazon will eat their store for a midnight snack otherwise. But when someone is saying, "your Brand Ambassador is actively making me want to NOT spend any money on your product" a company might want to listen.
Sure, he's not entirely wrong--but it's worth mentioning that MTG is kinda uniquely positioned. Between regular events, lack of certain elements needed for play(terrain/tables), and regular releases? There's always something official that keeps interest going. Crazy as it sounds, that's partly why Games Workshop has been seeing success with their Underworlds lineup. One of the big issues with this mentality is that people commonly do exactly what you're doing: they put the "F" in front of the LGS, implying it's a "Friendly Local Gaming Store". Very rarely have I found that to be the case, even going in cold with nobody knowing me via an online presence or anything. You also have issues to factor in like distributors and the folks in charged of ordering things. If the orders are for things people don't want or aren't interested in? You're going to have problems. IMO, that's one of the biggest pitfalls with these kinds of systems. If the brand ambassador gets burned out, it will hurt you. If the brand ambassador has a personality that won't fit well in a representational role, it will hurt you.
Oh, sure, the card games always kept the lights on at AAG, even when the bookstore owner was running the place. Cardboard Crack buyers would drop $100 a week, easily. Yeah, that's a challenge. But AAG was a friendlier store when the bookstore owner was running it. Definitely true, if the product doesn't pay it's rent, time to get rid of it! I actually picked up a copy of the old War of the Ring rulebook (MSRP of $60) that had two $20-off stickers on it and a $10-off sticker on it. "Get this crap out of my store!" price: $10. The guy who runs a store for my other expensive hobby (guns), says that he doesn't keep anything in the store for more than about 45 days. After that, it goes onto an auction site. Yes, that's the lesson I wish CB would get.
He was simply Bostria. Some folks don’t appreciate his (and CB’s) particular brand of humor. Others of us do.
Gee, you'd think that you like having a long list of suggestions and questions responded to with a dismissive, flippant tone shitpost was something you'd like! As the person quoted (and therefore directly replied to), I heard, "Fuck off, I don't care what you think."
Gee, you’d think weeks on end of frothing at the mouth from entitled anonymous Internet whiners who refused to listen to anything save their own gibbering would fray your nerves to the edge and encourage you to respond with snark and sarcasm to any and all messages, regardless of whether the person posting it believed them to be valid and reasoned concerns...
I don't doubt that. It still doesn't make it acceptable to do in public. Hell, if Bostria told me privately he has to scream profanities at the screen rather than reply in the thread, I'd totally believe him, and probably buy him a bottle of his preferred adult beverage in sympathy. There is a really good reason most diplomats and lawyers are raging alcoholics, and that's exactly it. But the last thing a company should be doing is having their Brand Ambassador trolling the public and telling them to Fuck Off. It's a really good way to get someone who has spent probably $10k (or more, I haven't counted, but I know I have over $1200 just in my case of civilians!) over the last decade on Infinity minis and terrain to find something else to spend his money on. And dump all that collection onto the secondary market, probably stopping another $5-$8k of purchases from the company. Then to poison the well against the company in every single public channel he can find, and to get his friends to also poison the well in the public channels that they use that he doesn't, costing the company more sales. That whole paragraph is why big companies almost literally hang a PR person who says something like that where the public can hear it. And actually, if it was legal for the company to kill the PR person who made them look bad, they probably would mount his head on a pike as a warning to the next several generations of employees that badmouthing the customers or otherwise making the company look bad was never acceptable.
Edited: The level of immaturity and rage over harmless pranks is too much for this forum and if I read more drivel like this I will say something I am gonna regret. Back to FB it is.
You know its bad when someone runs TOWARDS FB for a more reasonable and mature environment. Talking about mounting heads on pikes for tweeting that future releases are a prank? Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons would be proud =P
But, you see, CB isn’t acting exactly how all of the forumites wish they would (without noting that fulfilling all of the conflicting wishes of the forumites would drive the company into the ground), so the torches, mobs, pitchforks and pokes are entirely justified.
Guys Please Every thread ends up turning into an argument over this and/or some other topic of contention. Can we please take it to a specific thread and let the news and releases threads be used for that? We're just rehashing the same points endlessly here.
Oh ffs, soon it'll be a year, and we're still arguing about this? Some of us found it infuriating, some of us found it funny, but it's high time to move on. What's this, Hatfields & McCoys, Infinity Edition?
Yes, that’s lovely, but my father in law’s smoked and brined Christmas Day preparation is right there with it.
