Agree w/ Cody - I think the fair response is that this is simply the way they have chosen to do things and is not a lack of understanding of demand, sales numbers and other factors (such as the existence of other conference centers and cities) - this is all data they are privy to that we the huddled masses aren't.

My hunch is that they simply don't want to commit staff and other resources for more than the event as it is currently laid out.

No, I think generally it is more often correct to assume that bad execution comes from incompetence rather than unavoidable circumstances. There are very few unavoidable circumstances.

No, I think generally it is more often correct to assume that bad execution comes from incompetence rather than unavoidable circumstances. There are very few unavoidable circumstances.

PPPPPP

I am not sure that the X-Wing Miniatures Word Championship will ever grow to match what players expect.

This is a table top game with a limited life span. FFG probably doesn't think that it makes sense to bother creating a large-scale tournament to accomodate 1000 of its most dedicated players. They just want to focus on mass appeal while the game is in the strongest phase of its life cycle.

I haven't read the following 3 pages of comments yet but will reply to this one while it's fresh.

Given the popularity of the Star Wars franchise, and as a few people did comment below, I don't see this game leaving any time soon. Look at WH40K. It has, essentially, no major marketing campaigns behind it, but it's lasted - and arguably grown (often in spite of GW's best efforts) for almost thirty years. THIRTY YEARS. Backed by new movie trilogies, Disney (who aren't exactly chumps when it comes to extending a product's life), and the game still growing by leaps and bounds... I don't see X-Wing leaving the table top miniature market any time soon.

Suggesting that the game is at the "strongest phase" and that FFG needs to capitalize on it by self-limiting their product seems a bit disconnected.

People are complaining about the lack of slots when FFG had access to data about competitive x-wing player numbers. And they seem to have acted poorly and lacking on this subject.

Moving a primary game to a bad timespot with low attendance cap can be and hopefully is incompetence , because the plausible alternative theory that x-wing is on wednesday is to allow the players to try other games is actually treating them with cattle with wallets." So you are at a convention in the middle of the week? Either play our other games or sacrifice at least 2 days where most people conventionaly have work/school. "

I am not even left out, i live around 8000 km's away and have no chance to go there even if i was given a ticket. But with a game where it's entire organized play funnels players into a single annual event and making it this closed is hopefully a judgement error and not intentional decision.

I was hoping someone else would verbalise my feelings. Thanks K.O., very eloquent.

Your hate toward this whole debacle has made you powerful...As far as emailing FFG...."Use your aggressive feelings boy!"

I challenge everyone in this thread who thinks this is a matter of artificial scarcity to write up a detailed plan for accommodating 256 players in an X-Wing tournament, using only the resources available to FFG.

Do you know what those resources are? Neither do I. So stop second-guessing the people who do.

Ffg is not doing this out of their own pocket, they are charging people for it. And where is your evidence that is is not artifical scarcity?

People are makin their ideas drom the avilable data they have. When we get more data we will form up new ideas, we are not brutes here after all.

I agree with the idea of holding it in a location that can support the obvious demand in numbers. Breaking out individual games or genres would lead to a fracture in generating interest in multiple platforms, which as a business is understandably FFG's goal. IMHO there is a win-win solution of moving it to a location that can physically support the sheer numbers. If you get more people physically to the location, you're going to generate interest in other games and gain brand loyalty regardless of hosting site.

My suggestion: Las Vegas.

Huge convention halls

Central location within the U.S. Cheap, frequent airfare from around the world.

Weather is more palatable during that time of year

... And we can bet on the outcomes! (That last one is a bit of a stretch).

I would have to disagree on Las Vegas being centrally located within the US.

No offense to its residents, but Lebanon, Kansas (the closet city to the center of the continental Is) probably isn't going to cut it.

I challenge everyone in this thread who thinks this is a matter of artificial scarcity to write up a detailed plan for accommodating 256 players in an X-Wing tournament, using only the resources available to FFG.

Do you know what those resources are? Neither do I. So stop second-guessing the people who do.

It is currently June. Worlds is in November. Even if they were to have 1024 players, they have 5 months to plan for location, logistics, and staffing.

Seems to me that they already did that planning and knew just what they could handle. Do you have any information about that that I don't?

I'm also waiting for anyone to mention the fact that FFG has at least two new games they're holding events for. That has to be putting additional strain on their workload for that week.

It is currently June. Worlds is in November. Even if they were to have 1024 players, they have 5 months to plan for location, logistics, and staffing.

Which likely proves that it is a calculated decision, right?

At least you heroes have a chance of getting to Worlds, Gencon, etc. Anyone (like myself) who doesn't live in the USA, gets the privilege of sitting back and watching the action unfold from these here forums. People were complaining that new expansions were selling out at Gencon last year and they only got 1 Decimator .. pfffft. At least they had/have the chance.

I had to login to my PC on the side of the road at 9am in the morning to get tickets to Rage Against the Machine years back. It's the nature of the beast. These things are popular and if you want to be part of them, you have to make some sacrifices or miss out.

Agree with the sentiment expressed. I can't go to Nationals, with it falling the week after the only Regionals I can attend (Chicago) and the Nationals competition falling on a weekday. I'd considered attending Worlds instead. But with the Wednesday primary game period, no go this year -- even before attempting to get in through the registration process.

I understand the desire to have multiple events simultaneously to offer options. Is there enough overlap in audiences to offer card and wargames simultaneously, or could they split the card games into one event and the wargames into another? That way there would still be enough simultaneous events to provide interest while opening up more participation for the same support staff. Or alternately, all the Star Wars events on the same weekend Worlds, with the non-Star Wars events with a separate Worlds event.

(confused) = is World's attendance limited to US residents only? Seems to me, by nature of your own argument you *could* make it if you really wanted to

I challenge everyone in this thread who thinks this is a matter of artificial scarcity to write up a detailed plan for accommodating 256 players in an X-Wing tournament, using only the resources available to FFG.

Do you know what those resources are? Neither do I. So stop second-guessing the people who do.

It is currently June. Worlds is in November. Even if they were to have 1024 players, they have 5 months to plan for location, logistics, and staffing.

Well, not exactly. The location would already have to be locked in before tickets go on sale. Otherwise they won't know:

-How much the venue will cost to rent

-If there is even a venue available or other events in the city they need to compete against

-Travel arrangements for their own team/equipment/merchandise

-Travel arrangements for their attendees (though that's not on them, it is a necessary piece of information)

-Available vendors for the venue to book (food, AV, media, trash removal, parking, security)

Besides, as far as I know, 5 months is the equivalent to "last minute" when it comes to venue event planning. This stuff can get booked a year or longer in advance.

So ways to fix this year

Changing the schedule can't really happen because of all the people for all the events that have already booked travel and hotels. That would cause an uproar way worse than this.

Open more slots. This would make the most sense to me. But people are still always going to be left out. But if they added 104 more spots, and ran two concurrent flights of 180 cutting to top 16 each with top 32 playing out Thursday, I think you'd see a better reaction. Yes, that requires more staff and TO's but it would go a long way in fixing the sentiments with the community and gameplay factors that have only been slightly addressed.

Also keeping the flights concurrent can let you balance the day of between checkin and start. That way flight 1 isn't booked solid with good players while flight 2 still has open spots.

Not attending for scheduling and financial reasons is one thing. Not being able to attend even though you were planning on it because you couldn't get to a computer in a 45 min block is what I think some are frustrated with.

Not attending for scheduling and financial reasons is one thing. Not being able to attend even though you were planning on it because you couldn't get to a computer in a 45 min block is what I think some are frustrated with.

I've said this elsewhere and I'll say it again, events selling out at light speed is not uncommon. If you ever tried to see a popular band in a smaller venue, this is it; you go to the page, wait for the clock to get to the sale time, hit refresh and go go go!

You get it or you don't.

I remember being on the phone with a friend for one concert, years back, at a big arena, and we both logged in to Ticketmaster to each get a pair of "best available" tickets right as they went on sale. I got a pair of floors, and he got a pair of nosebleeds. We did this at the exact same time.

Now imagine something smaller in scale. It would be over pretty fast. Factor in that Worlds (as far as I know) sells the ticket by putting "YOU" on the guest list. So scalping a Worlds ticket might not be as viable as scalping a concert ticket, so it's probably safe to say that for everyone that was hammering their refresh button at sale time, whether you got in or not, you did all you could. If you couldn't get there until 30 minutes after sale time, then you have to know that there were going to be people who wanted to go so badly that they made sure they were there.

It's just how it goes when a high demand item with limited stock goes on sale. Black Friday door crashers in the USA or Boxing Day in Canada are the same idea. Would you really be upset at Best Buy for not having any "limited stock" door crasher TV's left when you showed up 30mins after the store opened when people were going to be waiting for hours ahead of you to ensure their odds of success were higher?

That's the game. I know that as motivated as some of us were, "life happens" and you couldn't get to a computer/smartphone right at sale time and you missed out. It's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the way it goes. Just because you couldn't make it happen doesn't mean others couldn't. A line was going to be drawn somewhere and the responsible thing to do for yourself would be to carefully heed FFG's warnings in the articles about Worlds and really set your expectations to allow for a potential X-Wing sell out before you got there, even if you were going right at sale time.

A line was going to be drawn somewhere

...the line must be drawn here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tleSnj4OD0g

I challenge everyone in this thread who thinks this is a matter of artificial scarcity to write up a detailed plan for accommodating 256 players in an X-Wing tournament, using only the resources available to FFG.

Do you know what those resources are? Neither do I. So stop second-guessing the people who do.

It is currently June. Worlds is in November. Even if they were to have 1024 players, they have 5 months to plan for location, logistics, and staffing.

Well, not exactly. The location would already have to be locked in before tickets go on sale. Otherwise they won't know:

-How much the venue will cost to rent

-If there is even a venue available or other events in the city they need to compete against

-Travel arrangements for their own team/equipment/merchandise

-Travel arrangements for their attendees (though that's not on them, it is a necessary piece of information)

-Available vendors for the venue to book (food, AV, media, trash removal, parking, security)

Besides, as far as I know, 5 months is the equivalent to "last minute" when it comes to venue event planning. This stuff can get booked a year or longer in advance.

It's called pre-registration. Like someone already mentioned. Have that out earlier, see how many people plan on going, which games they're interested in, etc... and then you'll know exactly how much overlap there is and how many people will be playing in each game.

As someone who plans a lot of events (sure, not at the 1000+ person level, but the principles are similar), sending out a pre-reg poll or similar helps with planning DRAMATICALLY. I'm just surprised FFG didn't do that.

For those who compare this with concert tickets and other scarce items, yes, sometimes if the demand is so high, even those bands open up more concert dates to accommodate their fans. Plus, FFG seems to talk up a lot about getting participation and trying to accommodate for the demand, so it definitely seems like they underestimated the demand with the planning.

Finally, it still doesn't make any sense for them to put the biggest event (and money maker) on Wed instead of later in the week, other than intentionally getting people to stay and play their other games. I hope that's not their ploy, even though it makes business sense, it's just not customer friendly.

It honestly doesn't matter if "scarcity of tickets due to space" is a correctable issue or not.

The only fair way to distribute tickets that are certainly going to sell out is a lottery system: have a 48-hour time period in which people who want tickets sign-up, and then distribute the opportunity to actually purchase the tickets in a lottery.

If I were a betting man -- and I am -- I would bet that FFG does this next year. Hell, even GenCon Housing finally learned this lesson.

Ok,

Bear with me though. Using your Concert analogy it was as if last year that concert sold out the venue with a packed house. This year, they restrict the number of seats by half in order to make room fir the opening band fans...

Ok,

Bear with me though. Using your Concert analogy it was as if last year that concert sold out the venue with a packed house. This year, they restrict the number of seats by half in order to make room fir the opening band fans...

It's not the correct analogy, though, especially since pretty much all those "opening bands" sold out. That's one issue with this thread is that while X-Wing may be their biggest seller, it's certainly not the only thing that sold out.