Sidonunspa--At this point, it seems that the AL emphasis is on in-store play. Almost exclusively. And that's apparently on purpose. WotC doesn't need to encourage people to buy the game as much as they need other things to happen. They want people specifically playing the game in stores. Because it's not whether you are playing the game that's important. It's where you are playing the game. It's sorta like taking one step back to eventually take two steps forward.
AL seems to be about promoting WotC's relationship with stores in a much more overt fashion than any other OP structures in the past. Especially Pathfinder. What do stores get out of selling Pathfinder materials when there's no compunction for players to come into the store to play the game or (as a consequence of their presence) buy product? They can just as easily get everything they need, including adventures, online. PF players don't need a store at all, really. A store should support Pathfinder... why, again?
Adventurer's League seems to serve a very particular purpose for WotC. It's not primarily about selling D&D product. That can be done through online vendors. It's about WotC's relationships with stores. As a store owner, who are you going to favor: the company that practically requires players to go through them to get adventures and play them in their store, or the company that doesn't? If the player is going to buy product anyway, wouldn't a store want the opportunity for players to buy it from them? So the players play in the stores or have a store connection.
It has been stated many times that the purpose of the Encounters portion of AL is that new players who are unfamiliar with RPGs will learn when/how/where to get involved. WotC very much wants D&D identified with Wednesdays like they already have Magic identified with Fridays. And they're using Encounters to do that. So you can see why not having a specific time to learn how to play is fundamentally detrimental to WotC's branding efforts. WotC wants D&D public play to need stores similarly to how Magic requires stores for tournament play. (I'm not sure whether that's an effective--or even logical--strategic move in WotC's branding efforts, but that's just my opinion.) Why? It seems they're betting that the storefront is the central, defining feature of RPG play where communication happens between players. They want to be plugged into that. Because we players are the industry's best salesmen. And keeping us interacting with each other, in the right location (including public gamedays and cons), is where we talk about games. Online interaction isn't as effective--it's usually where you go when you have a problem or want to complain, not celebrate successes, share positive experiences, and talk "up" a game. Online communities are (and I know this is a vast generalization) generally negative... Their potential for growing the RPG industry itself is only so effective...
So you can also see why making the adventures shorter or non-serialized might also problem: it doesn't really encourage people to keep coming back to play in the stores consistently. If they're really just bite-sized experiences, the stores don't gain as much and less social interaction happens. And making them available online for non-store play also defeats the very function of the OP and discourages the storefront social aspect they believe is key to growing the RPG industry.
Bottom line--Encounters doesn't seem to be about veteran players at heart--at least initially. In some ways it's a losing battle in the long run for WotC to cater to the pool of pre-existing RPGers--that would be marketing to the in-crowd who already have their biases, their opinions, their attitudes and one that inevitably only gets smaller with each new RPG created. The better bet is to appeal to the "great unwashed", or the returning player of yesteryear. Encounters is not about those who already know enough about RPGs to find this website and have this discussion. Neither is Wednesday nights. AL doesn't factor in pre-existing player time because WotC is aiming at a whole different pie of potential players. We've already made it the game we wanted through play testing.
AL isn't ever going to be like other OPs. It doesn't seem like that's why it exists. It's instead about creating new consumers through stores to increase the size of the player base. There's doesn't seem to be a desire on WotC's part to emulate LFR or LG or even PF because catering to pre-existing RPGers is only part of the point: it's not about that right now, it's about pushing out to a whole new player demographic. Veteran players that turn away from 5E or AL will be fewer than the flood of new players coming in. Even Expeditions, which isn't specifically about playing on Wednesday nights, still requires a store connection with very rare exceptions, so it's also serving part of AL's function exactly the way they want it to. And that's why even non-store AL games have to be open to the public.
I hate to be a downer because I love 5E and AL, but I'm not expecting it to be anything beyond what it is at this very moment. I'm not expecting change at all as it seems to be doing exactly what WotC wants it to do right now. Veteran players aren't their priority, it seems. And we can either enjoy what's given to us and our experiences at our own individual tables, for what they're worth, or choose to walk away. Can we have fun given the structure (or lack thereof) as it exists? WotC seems to be gambling that we will. And if we don't, they still win--we'll most likely play the game in our own way on our own because it's a good game. We helped make it that way. They don't have to sell it to us--we've sold it to ourselves.
We'll see what happens.
