We play what fits in our schedule, so it's highly unlikely that will follow the order as written. My local con has a room full of tables too, with content all over the spectrum.
Very true. I also suspect that, if you took a good look at your con schedule, you'd find that -- say the con is running a three-part series -- the first mod in that series is heavily scheduled on the first day, the second mod is heavily scheduled on the second day, and the third is heavily scheduled on the third day. This is simply out of recognition that most players want to approach content in the order that the designers developed it for maximal story appreciation, and that allowing other 'orderings' is a concession to the realities of convention play, not the preferred mode of convention play.
Not saying it's most important at all, but it IS an advertised feature. As such, a player understands that it is not the same as a home campaign and you shouldn't always expect a coherent story, but rather episodic vignettes.
Absolutely disagree. Players may be willing to accept that, given their circumstances (like rooneg's above), they may not be able to enjoy the full story experience, but given the option, many players will prefer to get both the moment-to-moment play experience and the enjoyment of being in an over-arching serial story.
Look at movies -- I wouldn't say people are going to Marvel movies to get 'episodic vignettes', but to get stories that both stand on their own as stories, but that also feed into a larger overall narrative and build the world that all the characters 'live' in. To say you like that in movies but don't want it in your D&D seems weird to me.
The fact that you seem to have a set group and have that luxury is fantastic - for you. But don't believe that it's the norm for everyone trying to enjoy AL play.
I don't see it as a luxury -- I see it as the default setting for AL play. WotC would likely know better than I do, because they actually take surveys and ask their customers these things, but everything I've heard from WotC folks is that most AL players do participate in regular AL games. They're just not required to do so on Wednesday's anymore, since WotC freed up the old Encounters program to run on any day that works for a local group.
As others have said, YOU don't need to every play a Season 1 mod again if you don't want to, but I may like dragons and have fond memories of Phlan from my college days playing CRPGs. Those mods look really fun to run and I have players who'd like them to, so why shouldn't we be able to use them still today?
Here's the thing -- if you have fond memories of Phlan and want to play through the old Season One mods out of a sense of nostalgia, you can do that, even if the adventure is retired from official AL play. The only thing you couldn't do is run the adventure for AL rewards.
And that's the reason to retire the adventures. People who want to play the adventures 'for fun' can play them whenever they want. But if you're going to argue that the main reason to play an AL adventure is for the rewards, then you're really not playing it out of nostalgia or any other 'fun' than the progression of the AL campaign.
Play the old adventures whenever you want. At some point, though, it becomes incumbent on the campaign to retire old adventures to remove them from the 'official' campaign. It doesn't have to happen tomorrow, but eventually it will happen.
--
Pauper
