Hello everyone.

I want to make a post about the horrid attitude FFG has displayed not only towards Europe, for some time, but towards all their Netrunner player base, by ruining an even that has been scheduled months ahead and all application deadlines have been met by the organizer.

An event that not only people from Bulgaria, but from neighbour countries like Greece, Serbia and Romania, have all been looking forward to.


Here is, in words of the organizer himself ( Mr. Nikolai Tsekov ) , how everything happened.

Please bare with me through the wall of text, because what he has to say is important.

Words can't express how much I, and all of my friends, are simply astonished by the absurd attitude of FFG towards this.

I personally know Mr. Teskov and he has done everything in his power to popularize Netrunner in Bulgaria. To our knowledge, not only he has succeeded in that, but he seems to have created the most up-to date Netrunner store on the Balkans, considering we have heard from our Serbian, Romanian and Greek neighbours about the unavailability of the latest and most recent Data Packs in their own countries.

It is absolutely out of question, in my mind, that this person wasn't one of the first, who applied for the Chronos Protocol Kit.

Yet Fantasy Flight Games, display such neglect for an event of this magnitude! This attitude CAN'T be tolerated!

EDIT: I will quote one person from our playgroup, who said " And i will make as much as possible to share this with the whole gaming world. Let's see if they can handle bad publicity! " - because with such actions, they definitely deserve it!

I am so furious at FFG right now. I was waiting for this event for months. It's not that FFG can't do anything right about their organized play - expensive kits, that arrive late and no one knows when exactly they will arrive. It's just that they simply don't care, especially for European players. This simply doesn't happen with Wizards of the Coast and that is why they have 50 to 100 times the competitive player base.

I am so furious at FFG right now. I was waiting for this event for months. It's not that FFG can't do anything right about their organized play - expensive kits, that arrive late and no one knows when exactly they will arrive. It's just that they simply don't care, especially for European players. This simply doesn't happen with Wizards of the Coast and that is why they have 50 to 100 times the competitive player base.

I think you're confusing the cause with the effect. FFG does not have 50 to 100 times the competitive player base's money therfore they can't show the kind of support that WotC can.

The situation sucks but quite honestly it's not that surprising. FFG is still a small company and the chronos tour was something they put together to try and please a vocal minority of europeans who felt spurned by the plugged-in tour. It seems to me like this is a damned if they do damend if they don't sort of a predicament for FFG. Only provide tournament support for North America and then get flak for "not caring about Europeans" or try and please everyone and then get flak when things fall through for... "not caring about Europeans"

Have to disagree with you there. If FFG actually put a bit more effort in their organized play they would see the player base increase. You have to invest in your community to expand it and not simply expect that a large community will come into existence on its own and just dump a ton of money in your lap.

I'm not saying that they'll get 50 to 100 times more players simply if they did things better, but they would get to see a buildup. Instead the Netrunner community in Bulgaria is shrinking and the options for getting tournament kits is getting smaller and smaller due to stupid restrictions like the fact that the TO can only buy kits from a single distributor that never delivers on time.

FFG may not be the size of WotC but it is one of the bigger board game companies and they do get a lot of money from Netruner as it is their most popular LCG. They also get money for their kits (something WotC doesn't get because their promotional stuff is free), which are rather expensive for Bulgarian living standards. In the end they said they will ship a Chronos Protocol kit, the were aware of the tournament months ahead of it, all they had to do was ship the kit on time, which is not that difficult.

And FFG organized play sucks compared to smaller companies as well - Wizkids provides better support, heck we even had a King of Tokyo tournament in our local store and guess what - the prizes from the publishers arrived on time before the tournament.

They don't have the money so they choose to mess with the EU market instead and profit from selling OP kits here**? I'm even going to say I was literally forced by FFG (and I can quote emails) to deal with their local distributor exactly by using the "if you want OP kits" card. If I ordered the thing from Esdevium as I did before this would not happen.

If they have problems managing the European events, they can just leave the stores and clubs to get the kits from whichever distributor they want and just request the results at the end - I don't see what good is coming from messing with supposedly free market anyway. This will leave their hands empty for some other stuff.

**A kit containing a playmat + few cards costs us 25-30 EUR incl. VAT (plus shipping). An Ultra Pro playmat with the latest tobleron package costs 13 euro (dealer price) with VAT. For the rest of the price you can buy whole game in a box at MSRP. And no one is asking them to pay the kits and shipping for us - we just want them on time. It's just that right now a GN kit costs more than it should, and the rest of the kits prices are just offensive. Have you seen the X-Wing Store Championship kit? For the second bestselling game in miniatures world! 78 Euro and we get a plaque, two cheap clumsy boxes, few acrylic rulers and bunch of cards with clearly lower quality than the original ones. That's a $100+ kit.

"vocal minority of Europeans " ???? MINORITY ??? I watched the updates on the website from the Plugged-in tour and as far as I recall, there were <20 people in some stores ( if not most) ... Would you be surprised if the "European Minority" turns out to double that number in such events?

I think it's time you Americans get off your high horse and start treating European customers with equal respect.

ALSO, I guess maybe you are unaware, but the tournament organizers BUYs the Kits ( including Chronos Protocol) and the financing of the ENTIRE event is completely on the back of the TO. So take this attitude of yours "FFG doesn't have 50 to 100 times the competitive player base's money" and shove it up where sunlight doesn't reach. They already do jack ass, except to sell overprized Kits the value of which, doesn't match the contents within. PROVIDING, the the Kits in question, ON TIME is THE LEAST they could do ...

Netrunner will never be Magic. That's something that I think some people don't get and expect that all you need is for the player base to grow and all of a sudden there will be a worldwide pro-tour and 4,000 people attendance tournaments. That will NEVER happen for netrunner. Case in point is this. FFG came out with the only option which has any way of making money for both them and the stores/tournament organziers (the draft) and what is the #1 complaint? "I can't believe how expensive it is." Netrunner players will never want to spend the kind of money that Magic players do on a regular basis. That's the reason why we went to the LCG model in the first place. Sure the LCG model is profitable for FFG but it is nowhere slose to WotC proffitability.

I was very surprised to see the gigantic prize pool for the Bulgarian tournament. I'm not versed in Bulgarian economics to actually know whether it had a chance to be proffitable (or at least not financially ruin the organizers) but I can tell you that there is no way something like that would ever work in the US. With the exception of Worlds and Gencon no netrunner tournament has any hope of getting anywhere close to the numbers required to make $1,000 a viable prize pool unless somebody just wanted to throw away $1,000. So I'm not sure if it's fair to blame FFG for grand plans that weren't very realistic to begin with.

As far as tournament support again FFG has stated on numerous occasions that netrunner's popularity took them by surprise and they are still catching up with development and support. The Chronos protocol tour was put together quickly because of the outrage that Europeans felt at being ignored. Clearly the logistics could have porbably been worked out better (maybe they are contractually obligated to only work with that one crappy distributor and shipping things internationally is actually much much more difficult then it sounds) but I can't say it's that surprising.

"vocal minority of Europeans " ???? MINORITY ??? I watched the updates on the website from the Plugged-in tour and as far as I recall, there were <20 people in some stores ( if not most) ... Would you be surprised if the "European Minority" turns out to double that number in such events?

I think it's time you Americans get off your high horse and start treating European customers with equal respect.

ALSO, I guess maybe you are unaware, but the tournament organizers BUYs the Kits ( including Chronos Protocol) and the financing of the ENTIRE event is completely on the back of the TO. So take this attitude of yours "FFG doesn't have 50 to 100 times the competitive player base's money" and shove it up where sunlight doesn't reach. They already do jack ass, except to sell overprized Kits the value of which, doesn't match the contents within. PROVIDING, the the Kits in question, ON TIME is THE LEAST they could do ...

I don't think you understand what vocal minority means. It means a very loud but minor part of the entire community that was outraged and actually describes you perfectly.

Us Americans are not on any high horses. I'm just confused by your entitlement. Why does FFG owe you anything at all? Because you buy their games? FFG will only do what makes sense financially for them. They don't owe you anything. Let me repeat that THEY DON'T OWE YOU ANYTHING. You don't like the way they treat you? Don't buy their games. But for you to come here and talk about how FFG ruined some tournament by not being able to ship a tournament kit on time is pretty presumptious. You just wanted to use FFG's marketing machine for the Chronos protocol tour to advertise for your own tournament and use FFG's prizes as a way to draw big crowds. That didn't work. It sucks and I'm sure FFG has some blame in this but seriously people like you make it 1000 times harder for FFG to do anyting for the community at all.

And as far as the worth of the FFG kits, they are apparently important enough to be abel to shut down an entire tournament so maybe they are not that overpriced?

1) As a consumer, I'm entitled to what their other consumers are. If they print worse quality cards for example, I'm entitled to receiving the same quality of cards, as other consumers receive for the same price.

2) Yes, if they keep doing ignorant things, we will stop buying their products. Guess what then, they will lose their European market. What then??? They will stay small and never do anything out of America ... IN 2014 ... LET ME REPEAT THAT ... IN 2014 - ONE MARKET ( come talk to me again about what makes sense financially )

3) USING FFG's prizes to as a way to draw big crowds? " They are apparently important enough to be ABEL to shut down an entire tournament" ?

- No , they aren't shutting down the entire tournament. If you have read the whole thing, you would know that the tournament is still being held, just with different structures and different prizes.

- I think you severely misunderstand the situation. The Tournament Organizer, cancels the current structure of the event, BECAUSE he feels entitled to, due to the poor effort from FFG and that he will be lying and misleading his customers/ participants . For SOME OF US , CUSTOMER LOYALTY still means something ... Do u understand?

I swear, for every 1 decent American I meet, there are 50,000 like you.

As one of the sad minority that was looking forward to the event, let me also voice my distaste with the bad organization and communication between FFG, their distributors and customers.

With some friends we are trying to get a small start up going on the side of our full time jobs. We do this from Bulgaria and ship worldwide. So I know that good communication and organization of distribution is hard but very crucial to building a satisfied customer base.

My advice to FFG is to try and improve their communication speed and distribution flexibility worldwide. They have a wide enough range of board and card games liked across the world that it would be a worthwhile investment.

P.S: Also rulebooks should be checked more thoroughly for inconsistencies. With some friends we joke that it is not a FFG game if you don't encounter a rule contradiction at least once per game session.

1) As a consumer, I'm entitled to what their other consumers are. If they print worse quality cards for example, I'm entitled to receiving the same quality of cards, as other consumers receive for the same price.

2) Yes, if they keep doing ignorant things, we will stop buying their products. Guess what then, they will lose their European market. What then??? They will stay small and never do anything out of America ... IN 2014 ... LET ME REPEAT THAT ... IN 2014 - ONE MARKET ( come talk to me again about what makes sense financially )

3) USING FFG's prizes to as a way to draw big crowds? " They are apparently important enough to be ABEL to shut down an entire tournament" ?

- No , they aren't shutting down the entire tournament. If you have read the whole thing, you would know that the tournament is still being held, just with different structures and different prizes.

- I think you severely misunderstand the situation. The Tournament Organizer, cancels the current structure of the event, BECAUSE he feels entitled to, due to the poor effort from FFG and that he will be lying and misleading his customers/ participants . For SOME OF US , CUSTOMER LOYALTY still means something ... Do u understand?

I swear, for every 1 decent American I meet, there are 50,000 like you.

This discussion is pointless. You're mad at FFG and is powerless to do anything about it so all you can do is rage on the internet. I'm sorry that things didn't go as you planned. Sometimes bad things happen in the world and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If you want to look at a constructive post all you have to do is look at the post bellow you:

As one of the sad minority that was looking forward to the event, let me also voice my distaste with the bad organization and communication between FFG, their distributors and customers.

With some friends we are trying to get a small start up going on the side of our full time jobs. We do this from Bulgaria and ship worldwide. So I know that good communication and organization of distribution is hard but very crucial to building a satisfied customer base.

My advice to FFG is to try and improve their communication speed and distribution flexibility worldwide. They have a wide enough range of board and card games liked across the world that it would be a worthwhile investment.

P.S: Also rulebooks should be checked more thoroughly for inconsistencies. With some friends we joke that it is not a FFG game if you don't encounter a rule contradiction at least once per game session.

As I mentioned before FFG is really not as big as people seem to think they are. I'm sure they have worldwide aspirations but right now I don't think they have the kind of resources that people all over the world would expect where things don't fall through the cracks every once in a while.

And anyways even though you don't get a Chronos prtocol tour it still sounds like you'll get a draft out of it. From personal experience I'd recommend going to do the draft if you have the money to spare. It's very different from the regular way Netrunner plays and is a ton of fun.

Netrunner will never be Magic.

I also doubt they will be even comparable. But judging from TO and store economics I should emphasise on the fact that purely mathematically, they are comparable. The average dealer booster price is 2 times lower than the average pack price. The average retail price of a pack is more than the cost of three booster (nearly that of 4 boosters and contains exactly 4 boosters worth of cards (60 vs 15), with less spent on cards quality and packaging (no need for booster algorithms), meaning a single pack makes more money than 4 boosters for the publisher. And this is the average monthly participation of a casual Magic player. MTG true power comes from its history and very good OP, where players pay a lot on drafts and sealed. Booster rewards are on store's account, any promotional stuff is on WotC.

I was very surprised to see the gigantic prize pool for the Bulgarian tournament. I'm not versed in Bulgarian economics to actually know whether it had a chance to be proffitable (or at least not financially ruin the organizers) but I can tell you that there is no way something like that would ever work in the US. With the exception of Worlds and Gencon no netrunner tournament has any hope of getting anywhere close to the numbers required to make $1,000 a viable prize pool unless somebody just wanted to throw away $1,000

I don't think I need to show the math, but given we have sponsors (which are now free to withdraw, since they don't have an event to sponsor), it was OK. We talked the sponsors back when there were no other events in April. Change of plans - OK, we dealt with it the best possible way, we still had enough people coming and we added a Tabletop Event. Plus I invest myself, and this is my own choice. But then ruining the most important part of the event with not sending kit - this was not my fault. Just can't blame anyone for not coming, nether someone can blame me because I don't want to run the event and send some rewards later.

Also please remember they had alternative art cards at Nordic. FFG were clear that we cannot get anything like this for the OPT. Even if we had few months ahead of us, it was clear no. Then the Chronos seemed as a good idea, I had nothing against it even knowing t will hurt the number of players. It is engaging.

FFG will only do what makes sense financially for them. They don't owe you anything. Let me repeat that THEY DON'T OWE YOU ANYTHING.

FFG have key selling point in having OP. If they say there is tournament scene - there should be, esle there are angry customers and they are bad business.

I always try to put myself in someone else's shoes so I can understand there might be problems here and there. If they have problems shipping products and kits, at least they should not mess with the clumsy distribution. I always make sure our store gets new games asap. Kits too. Any events we can participate are welcomed. I just cannot deal with having to email back and forth so many times on something that stores in UK (which is open market for us) don't have to do.

This discussion is pointless. You're mad at FFG and is powerless to do anything about it so all you can do is rage on the internet..

Actually he can stop playing. Which I won't like.

I also doubt they will be even comparable. But judging from TO and store economics I should emphasise on the fact that purely mathematically, they are comparable. The average dealer booster price is 2 times lower than the average pack price. The average retail price of a pack is more than the cost of three booster (nearly that of 4 boosters and contains exactly 4 boosters worth of cards (60 vs 15), with less spent on cards quality and packaging (no need for booster algorithms), meaning a single pack makes more money than 4 boosters for the publisher. And this is the average monthly participation of a casual Magic player. MTG true power comes from its history and very good OP, where players pay a lot on drafts and sealed. Booster rewards are on store's account, any promotional stuff is on WotC.

Actually (as I'm sure you know) the real proffit from Magic comes from second-hand sales and allows companies like SCG (Star City Games) to exist and prosper. Because this is absent from an LCG model even if drafting were to become very popular there would not be enough money in it to create the kind of a competitive card playing scene ex-magic players are used to

I don't think I need to show the math, but given we have sponsors (which are now free to withdraw, since they don't have an event to sponsor), it was OK. We talked the sponsors back when there were no other events in April. Change of plans - OK, we dealt with it the best possible way, we still had enough people coming and we added a Tabletop Event. Plus I invest myself, and this is my own choice. But then ruining the most important part of the event with not sending kit - this was not my fault. Just can't blame anyone for not coming, nether someone can blame me because I don't want to run the event and send some rewards later.

I was not implying that you were throwing money away in this particular instance or that you did anything wrong. I'm just saying that I don't see this ever happening in the US (with that large of a prize pool). Do you think had everything gone right this kind of a tournament would have been succesfull and more importantly sustainable?

FFG have key selling point in having OP. If they say there is tournament scene - there should be, esle there are angry customers and they are bad business.

I don't know how much it is FFG's job to promote a tournament scene. They aren't great at it because I don't think they imagined people would be interested in this game that much. One only needs to look at their FAQ publishing schedule and the way rules inquiries are handled. Their lead designer still answers every single rules question that comes in. Clearly that is not sustainable if the plan is to promote this as a proffesionally competitive game.

I always try to put myself in someone else's shoes so I can understand there might be problems here and there. If they have problems shipping products and kits, at least they should not mess with the clumsy distribution. I always make sure our store gets new games asap. Kits too. Any events we can participate are welcomed. I just cannot deal with having to email back and forth so many times on something that stores in UK (which is open market for us) don't have to do.

I don't know what FFGs contractual obligations are but I imagine that has something to do with them not letting you deal with anyone else. It sucks and as I said before I'm not saying FFG is blameless here. But then again I think people way overestimate FFG's abilities.

Actually he can stop playing. Which I won't like.

You won't like it but I think my point is that FFG will not care that much.

Actually (as I'm sure you know) the real proffit from Magic comes from second-hand sales and allows companies like SCG (Star City Games) to exist and prosper. Because this is absent from an LCG model even if drafting were to become very popular there would not be enough money in it to create the kind of a competitive card playing scene ex-magic players are used to

The whole Europe pretty much exists without sites like SCG. We have Magiccardmarket and its user driven.

I'm a store owner, and we don't need secondary market, it's the draft and sealed, as well as the few retail products that drive MTG.

Do you think had everything gone right this kind of a tournament would have been succesfull and more importantly sustainable?

Yes, given it retains its sponsorship. I only have to do it once per year after all.

I don't know what FFGs contractual obligations are but I imagine that has something to do with them not letting you deal with anyone else. It sucks and as I said before I'm not saying FFG is blameless here. But then again I think people way overestimate FFG's abilities.

Nothing like this, even the said distributor feels for us and decided it is OK to return to how we worked before. And I don't believe it's legal to twist hands like this anyway. And I can quote laws, I'm not just a faith believer on this. I mean that they are not obliged to support the distributors this way. I don't know how it works in USA, but essentially they cut my support if I don't buy locally, or it was well implied it will be like this (and we got a scheduled kit withdrawn with a call for showing off). And that's not because we sell less Netrunner (or even AGOT, although I don't push that hard there anymore) than the distributor. What's the point of having to get the X-Wing kit from a distributor that never supplied the game for example? Almost the same with ANR.

Anyway, going to bed, nice discussion and all.

FFG doesn't owe me anything, but such things are enough for me to consider dropping off my support of their games. I am a drop in the ocean, but the direction of FFG's policies is disturbing. From what I am seeing, they are practically bullying our community and essentially hindering its growth. Who cares about Netrunner in Bulgaria? Even our official "distributor" is not interested in the game, although there is a great potential right now for a healthy community. Not to mention that he is a competing FLGS owner... Yes, I am implying foul play here. It'not the first time such thing happened on our soil.

No matter how big company you are, you don't want to turn away your customers.

Wow, deep breath before I plunge in...

I 'm really sorry things worked out that way for you guys in Bulgaria. I live in the UK, and I was really disappointed with Plugged-in too (as much for Alt-Gabe as anything else) but it's easy to forget that for the UK and US, we're pretty priveleged by comparison to a lot of other countries.

Obviously tempers are flaring here, but I think everyone could do with taking a step back. I can't claim to know the details of how this all came to pass. The only people with any hard info are the OP, FFG, and maybe the distributors, and I doubt if any one person is privy to all the info.

Clearly there's been a breakdown of communication/procedure/policy which has screwed over this CP event. That sucks enormously. Starting a flame war on FFG's site though is pretty meaningless, and unfortunately comes across as kind of petty (please don't take that as aggression on my part; I know this obviously meant a lot to you guys or you'd not be here, and i'm not unsympathetic).

At the same time, defending FFG blindly as saying they won't care if people stop playing comes across as incredibly callous. I know you want to defend FFG, but I'm pretty sure they do care about their playerbase. Sure, one person not playing is a drop in the ocean, but that's not the point - companies care about their reputation and public image; happy customers are promoters and a source of additional revenue, whereas unhappy customers are detractors and a potential cause of additional lost sales (or at least it can inhibit growth). If that seems impersonal, well, it is, and I'm not saying FFG don't also care on a more personal level (I can't speak for them obviously) but you can be **** sure they care for every lost sale.

And don't forget that in the US you ARE speaking from a position of privilege, whether you realise it or not. You live in a country that gets these products with little to no disruption of service. There's a reason you don't get Blue Shells when you're winning, so please don't make comments about other people's 'entitlement'.

tl;dr: it does no good for us to rant and rave on t'internet about issues like this. The only reasonable response is to accept what's happened, and try to find a reasonable resolution for all affected parties. Flaming on a public forum helps no-one, and everybody loses.

Actually I'm way past no ranting in forums. Back in Nov/Dec when they forced us into agreeing to work with the local distributor (and a rival LGS) I really cared, I was frustrated, yet I swallowed (some) pride and went on. We have a saying like "another nail in the coffin", it's just that the last one was surprisingly big.

Some of the people above I know have spent small fortunes on games, so I do believe everyone on the chain should care aboit their opinion.

It seems that tensions are getting high in this thread, so I'll just quickly summarize my opinions on the most important (to me) subject.

As much as I'd like to turn FFG into the Devil and blame them for all the world's suffering, their fault here is really simple - forcing (according to the information given here) the OP to deal with a local distributor. While I want to believe that everyone has others' best interests in mind, I think FFG neglected to check (and this is somewhat understandable, as they are a "small" company in the grand scheme of things) if said distributor runs a rival LGS, which has a rather strained relationship with the OP's due to a multitude of surprisingly similar situations in the past. Seemingly attempting to encourage deals with a local distributor, I believe that they have wrongly attempted to "fix something that isn't broken", which has lead to this whole fiasco.

Most of the anger and frustration here is simply due to the enormous amount of work (and compromises) put into this project, along with the fact that this was planned very, very far in advance, only to be ruined a week before the actual date. While I highly doubt that posting here will have any significant (if at all) impact on FFG's business practices, I believe that it is important to provide feedback (albeit, not in the tone that most people are using), so that the "service" we receive can be further improved. Provided, it is possible that a FFG representative might never see/care enough about this, however, it is the only way for normal players who simply enjoy the game and wish their local community to prosper to speak their mind.

Well said, Hakker.

Wow, deep breath before I plunge in...

I 'm really sorry things worked out that way for you guys in Bulgaria. I live in the UK, and I was really disappointed with Plugged-in too (as much for Alt-Gabe as anything else) but it's easy to forget that for the UK and US, we're pretty priveleged by comparison to a lot of other countries.

Obviously tempers are flaring here, but I think everyone could do with taking a step back. I can't claim to know the details of how this all came to pass. The only people with any hard info are the OP, FFG, and maybe the distributors, and I doubt if any one person is privy to all the info.

Clearly there's been a breakdown of communication/procedure/policy which has screwed over this CP event. That sucks enormously. Starting a flame war on FFG's site though is pretty meaningless, and unfortunately comes across as kind of petty (please don't take that as aggression on my part; I know this obviously meant a lot to you guys or you'd not be here, and i'm not unsympathetic).

At the same time, defending FFG blindly as saying they won't care if people stop playing comes across as incredibly callous. I know you want to defend FFG, but I'm pretty sure they do care about their playerbase. Sure, one person not playing is a drop in the ocean, but that's not the point - companies care about their reputation and public image; happy customers are promoters and a source of additional revenue, whereas unhappy customers are detractors and a potential cause of additional lost sales (or at least it can inhibit growth). If that seems impersonal, well, it is, and I'm not saying FFG don't also care on a more personal level (I can't speak for them obviously) but you can be **** sure they care for every lost sale.

And don't forget that in the US you ARE speaking from a position of privilege, whether you realise it or not. You live in a country that gets these products with little to no disruption of service. There's a reason you don't get Blue Shells when you're winning, so please don't make comments about other people's 'entitlement'.

tl;dr: it does no good for us to rant and rave on t'internet about issues like this. The only reasonable response is to accept what's happened, and try to find a reasonable resolution for all affected parties. Flaming on a public forum helps no-one, and everybody loses.

Now this is a post, which people like frybender can learn from.

Thank you for that post CommissarFeesh

My initial point, was not to start a "flame war on the forum" and "rage on the internet", but was to provide feedback and alert the community ( if not FFG) about such neglect towards an event ( i say it again) of the highest magnitude (probably after regionals and worlds) ... however the horrible blindly defending attitude of frybender, let my emotions get the better of me.

Another thing I would like to mention though, is that I don't really consider a FFG a "small company". The reason is that they have license for, let me list :

- Star Wars

- Game of Thrones

- Lord of the Rings

- Warhammer Universe

These are one of the biggest franchises ever, crossing over multiple mediums. You can't buy them if you are a "small company". Hence, why I expected a better attitude and distribution from FFG towards Europe ( and rest of the world), knowing fully well, that the market of those franchises transcends "just America".

And don't forget that in the US you ARE speaking from a position of privilege, whether you realise it or not. You live in a country that gets these products with little to no disruption of service. There's a reason you don't get Blue Shells when you're winning, so please don't make comments about other people's 'entitlement'.

The enitlement I talk about is that if FFG is going to do something for someone it has to do that for absolutely everyone. It's an attitude of "If we can't have it then no one should." Honestly I'm surprised that there aren't more posts on the internet complaining that FFG only built a game center in Minneapolis and not in every major metropolitan area in the world. When they first announced the plugged-in tour I was flabbergasted by the response. Instead of being happy that FFG is doing something like this for their fans it was 95% "HOW DARE FFG DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS FOR SOMEONE ELSE AND IGNORE ME!!!" Mind you this wasn't just the Europeans that were complaining. Any place that wasn't with-in a 2hour driving distance of a tour seemed to have at least a couple of people having a "woe is me because FFG hates me" attitude. I just can't wrap my head around that kind of an attitude. I've said this before and I'll say it again: my gain does not mean someone else's loss. And while clearly I have no way to prove this I guarantee you that my response would be the same if the situation were reversed and I was getting the short end of the stick. I would just be happy that a company cares enough about it's player base that it's trying to give back to it's players.

And it would be ok if this was just someone blowing-off steam on the internet. But the problem is (and I know you follow the boards and the community enough to know this Feesh) that FFG actually does listen to the community and they do pay attention to what the community says. And the result of the plugged-in tour response wasn't just that Europe got the Chronos protocol but also that FFG will most likely never do this sort of thing again because of the negative response that they got. So ranting posts like these on the internet, while I'm sure they feel good, do end up hurting our small community in the end after all. As Damon Stone said: (and I quote) "F*** the forums"

Now this is a post, which people like frybender can learn from.

Thank you for that post CommissarFeesh

My initial point, was not to start a "flame war on the forum" and "rage on the internet", but was to provide feedback and alert the community ( if not FFG) about such neglect towards an event ( i say it again) of the highest magnitude (probably after regionals and worlds) ... however the horrible blindly defending attitude of frybender, let my emotions get the better of me.

Another thing I would like to mention though, is that I don't really consider a FFG a "small company". The reason is that they have license for, let me list :

- Star Wars

- Game of Thrones

- Lord of the Rings

- Warhammer Universe

These are one of the biggest franchises ever, crossing over multiple mediums. You can't buy them if you are a "small company". Hence, why I expected a better attitude and distribution from FFG towards Europe ( and rest of the world), knowing fully well, that the market of those franchises transcends "just America".

The funnny thing about all of this is that I wasn't really defending FFG from the start (if you look at my original post). Just pointing out that they are not as big as people seem to think they are. Also I think you got enraged because you misunderstood what vocal minority means.

It's great that you don't consider FFG a small company but unfortunately things don't work purely off of your considerations. Yes they have a lot of licenses but that doesn't make them some huge worldwide conglamoration. If you're ever in the US and you end up being in the area of Minneapolis you really should stop by the FFG center. I think it will be quite eye-opening for you when you realize just how "big" of a company they really are. From the multiple conversations that I've personally had and have heard others have had with every FFG employee they really are trying their hardest to please everyone and grow as fast as they can but unfortunately you can't just become a worldwide leader in boardgaming with offices in every corner of the world in a couple of months.

So I'll reiterate: the situation sucks and I'm sure that FFG is at least partly (and maybe even wholly) to blame. Please understand that this does not come out of some evil nefarious hatred that FFG has for all of Europe (although the whole competing FLGS's does sound kind of weird). They simply don't have the logistics in place yet for the kind of worldwide support that many people seem to expect. I hope that you guys still get to put on a great event even without the Chronos swag, and hopefully FFG will make it right sometime later-on.

This thread has been locked as the information being portrayed is incomplete. Be aware that FFG is aware of this unfortunate situation and is reaching out to the involved parties again by email to try and resolve this issue.