That is true about me already having RG, and thus it must exist in physical form. But the question is how many have been printed so far. Perhaps the 300 copies (I made that up, I really don't know how many copies there where) where the only ones produced so far. They have to print several more copies to cover the the numerous bookstores, gamestores and such. I do know we played a demo game with the gent in charge of the warehouse, and he said they where always extremely busy and sometimes it was hard to keep up with shipping demands as far as products that come from the manufacture vs. those shipped to stores.

Perhaps the reason is because they can not keep up with the demand of those that wish to sell it. But for CHRIST SAKES I spent alot of money on the Collectors Edition. I was expecting to get it at the end of this month because like most people, I am unable to go to Gencon. (Full time student, and workstudy, not a whole lot of time.) Also it being past the Misery River(Missorui(sp?) River, meant I couldn't go to it and still be able to afford going to my sisters wedding this weekend.

On that note I had it expressed Shipped Hoping that I would be able to read it on the trip over and at night with my head phones on, so I didn't have to listen to grandmother complain about how I am not married and why she doesn't have great grandkids yet. Keep telling her I can give her a few but she wont like it cause I wouldn't be married.

Anyway the short of it is I believe that those who have already bought the CE version should already have it shipped to them, ON THE DAY that they sold them at Gencon. Otherwise I would have waited till I saw it on the selves here at my LGS. WONT MAKE that mistake again.

/rant

Ranek7212 said:

I have to agree with this.

TalkingMuffin said:

heck, Im going to get that printedon a t-shirt, even the grandmother part!

I personally have bought the collectors edition just so that I have the collectors edition - I wasn't under any illusions that they'd be sending it out before the retail release of the standard edition as IIRC it quite clearly stated on the order/info page that it wouldn't be shipped until the standard edition was.

Also I can't fault FFG for having a few copies available for people to buy at Gen Con - hell, that's half the reason I attend Con's is that there’s a chance that my favourite companies have pre-release copies of stuff up for grabs! And it'd be a pretty poor showing for a company of FFG's pedigree to attend one of the biggest RPG shows in the world and not hope to have something up for grabs that they can expect to sell to at the very least offset some of the costs of showing their faces there.

Wait, I am totally confused now. FFG was sellin collectors edition on GenCon? Or 'just' the regular edition?

I posted something similar on the collectors edition page but i sent in an email to customer services and here is the response i got :-

" As stated on the Collectors Edition page, this item is a pre-order. Each of these 1000 boxes is being hand assembled and shipped to the FFG warehouse, where the Warrants of Trade will be inserted into the front cover and shipped to you.

The 200 copies of the regular Rogue Trader core book sold at Gen Con were airshipped directly from the printer to Indianapolis to get a few copies out into the public. We do this every year at Gen Con for a select number of games that will be released in the coming months.

The Collectors Edition will begin to ship as soon as they arrive in our warehouse and are assembled. We expect that they will be shipped out at the same time as the full shipment of core books arrive. "

Its a polite enough response but doesn't really explain why its taking so long to get stuff printed or why they didn't pre-print 1000 boxes for the limited edition as they would only have 1000 to sell ever anyway.

I'm just a little ticked about this as far as i remember the best customer service quote is " under promise, over deliver " not the other way around .

Well I believe that most companies today forget that they need to keep promises. Now I do not blame Ross or any of the other mods/Game Developers, as this is most likely not their call. '

Still It would be nice if they did record the stuff on RT for us, I could really care less about the new 3rd edition. Don't get me wrong its nice and all, but I am a little burned out of the whole medeval fantasy setting.

Edit: I placed Joss instead of Ross, my apoligies

It could be that the printers postponed FFGs order.

Roleplaying games are never the biggest sellers, so if the printers got a large emergency print request come through from another company that gets through more units than the average RPG, they would most likely push back the small RPG order to keep their bigger more lucrative customer happy.

Well tell us that then then so we can all send nasty emails to the printer company

Only joking but at least we would know that it was out of FFG hands.

I myself would just like to comment that i don't hold this against Ross or any of the design teams but we all know the world is run by accountants who only see things in numbers and not things like customer happiness or things that we the RPG community care about.

Well, of course it's not Ross' fault. Likely FFG is at the mercy of their Printers. It could also be there was a flaw in the print run or binding process which would have necessitated another run. Say, they accidentally left out a couple pages... Of course, this would set the entire job back as FFG would not want to ship defective product just to make a deadline. That wouldn't make anyone happy.

I never did get my copy, by the way. Still hopeful about this friday, but I see B&N pushed their ship date back to the end of September, which isn't very encouraging.

I have seen a lot of people say "They are at the mercy of their printers.".

Do printers who arbitrarily push back print runs really stay in business?

I mean in any other business if the contractor said to the customer, "Well we told you we were gonna do yours next, but we decided to do this other guy instead. " would find itself out of business almost immediately. They would also be sued for breach of contract as well.

There is another point, while I don't know printing specifiaclly, I do know production lines in general. It should not take very much time to print those books once the production line is set up. Much of the time taken will be in setting up the line. But since they already HAD the line set up (they had some books at gencon) it makes much more sense (common and financial) to finish the run in one go. Stopping the line to produce something else and then doing it all over again to change back makes no sense.

The whole statement they did a small print run just for Gencon strikes me as a pure fabrication. Maybe the printing industry works differently than everything else. But if so some one will have to explain to me why. Is setup really so quick and easy that it is not a factor? Even if it is it does not explain my first point.

I think that delay has more to do with transportation and distribution end of things and not printers.

I mean they probably rushed and did bindings on 200 copies for GenCon and rest was probably also printed but not cut and binded. That is probably being done as we speak or even is already done and now they have to ship (regular surface transports remember they have flown in copies for GenCon) books and then from their warehouses to brick and mortar stores and probably to online shops warehouses (I am not really sure about the last part). This can take time, I suppose.

On the other hand it seems to me that sometimes they seem afraid to talk straight to their customers (WFRP 3e and shipping dates for RT). I can not say that I blame them but you know there are guys and girls who are paid for that kind of stress.

llsoth said:

I quite agree that a print shop who routinely bumped one customer in favor of another customer would be quickly out of business. However easy it is to say "Well, use a different printer!", at this stage of production it might be unwise for this particular project. Other print shops exist, but if they have a contract they might be stuck using this one (for the time being) and are still "at the mercy of the printers".

I also see the "small print run just for GenCon" as a fabrication. I can, however, see a mechanical failure during the run, or another error which caused some or all of the subsequent product to wind up in the recycle bin for a start-over.

It would be nice if FFG would just say "We're having trouble with X and we'll ship as soon as we can". We're understanding. It's not like this is a MMOG forum with psycho Shaman-Class fanbois.

It would just save me a lot of gas not to have to go bug my local retailer every Friday about it.

Cat that Walked by Himself said:

FedEX is 3-7 business days for the cheap shipping.

Like I said above, I'm not going to chew them a new A-hole. I'd just like to know when I can reasonably expect it is all. They're past the point where they need to build up more hype.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Yep I agree, I need a date, not more hype.

The way I look at it, since the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader wasn't actually an RPG, I've been waiting over 20 YEARS for this book. Yes, another month is a long, long time when you're obsessed.

Amazon just e-mailed me saying they have new release date infomation and say

Estimated arrival date: September 17 2009 - September 18 2009

Lanowar said:

How many times has Amazon changed the estimated arrival date now? Their laughable arrival estimates are one of the few flaws they have.

The books are shipping when I get my shipping notice from FFG. No sooner, no later.

To be fair, Amazon has updated their release date once and once only, and that was after the guys from FFG were back from gen-con, so i'm guessing they actually spoke to someone at FFG.

That said, i'm not taking it as gospel, but it's a darn sight more useful than a "Fall" release date.

Ranek7212 said:

What sucks is that we can't really speak with our wallets and say, "Screw you, FFG! I'll get RT somewhere else!". Game companies know this and I think some are proud of the fact and let their product suffer. However, I don't see FFG doing this. Do they make mistakes? Sure, but they do seem to care about their products and fans.

White Wolf is NOTORIOUS for making slip-shod stuff and never, every doing a **** thing about it. So, as much as I like(d) some of their stuff, I got fed up with them and not only do I not buy anymore of their products (even the good stuff), I actively try to keep their sales down here. Sure, I live in a small town and all, but I know of at least two players who won't buy/play Exalted anymore and one who I scared away from it. Another friend is in California and has been trying to "wound" Exalted sales. He's kept four people from it. Small steps.

I'm not saying do that to FFG, not at all. In fact, they at least put out errata and such and will actually be vocal about issues, so I guess that was a rather long rant for no other reason other than to take a jab at WW. Sorry! LOL So, my point is that while we're still waiting and it sucks, FFG has been **** cool and I'm, behind them. The CE issues sucks bad and I agree that was handled a wee poorly, but still. RT is going to be awesome and it's that awesome that's got us in a tizzy!

I'm done, sorry...

Perhaps it is an editing issue? If 200 copies go out, and lots of errors are discovered, it is certainly easier to fix 200 copies than 1000 copies. It is really ingenious to have 200 people PAY YOU to EDIT for you. The old editing saying goes "It is best to have 2 pairs of eyes edit than one." So 200 pairs of eyes would really, really catch stuff.

That is perhaps the best wat to do it.

It could be many many things that we will never know of. Hell, it could have been that FFG wouldn't have had any RT books for the con but paid extra per copy to have 500 or how ever many pushed to the front of the line and hurried out. It could be that all the books are printed, but the cutters and binders are working on other orders and, again, FFG had to request a hand full of copies be rushed for the con but didn't wish to pay the extra fees to have the whole print run rush bound.