No Dice <Nerd Rage>

[On Puget Sound]

If I were doing WotC's marketing, I'd be sending you email too. It works. The number of people like you that will be angry enough to stop buying is so much tinier than the numbr of people who will be induced to buy, that not sending the email would be a very poor business decision. Aside from the fact that if this innocuous email makes you so angry, you were probably already angry at them about something else and weren't going to buy anything anyway... sending this is very unlikely to be the tipping point that loses a customer, compared with the likelihood that it will bring in new customers.

And it looks like they aren't even asking you to spend money. They're inviting you to a free event featuring a hobby you're interested in, in the hope that you may see something you want to spend money on. But you're welcome to go, play games with other people, and go home without giving them a dime. Why is this invite so unwelcome?

And "hostile to promoting any kind of gaming community"? Umm, have you not seen Mike Mearls, Rob Hensoo and many others hanging around here at Enworld answering questions? And what is this whole encounters thing if not an attempt to promote a gaming community? Their whole business model depends on having and growing a gaming community; promoting one is pretty high on their list even if they're not succeeding in creating one that you'd like to join.

 

[Seer-1]

Viva la revolucion

Seeing the new generation become so docile when a large corporation feeds us garbage and tells us it's anything but makes baby Satan cry. Where is the open disgust? The mutiny? The quality of their products saw a drastic drop in 4E yet for some reason, the spirit of [deleted] has not risen. So yes, a boycott is an excellent idea. Do yourselves a favor and find a d20 system online, made by someone who still loves the game, today.

[Edit - Do not attempt to cunningly disguise swear words. If you are confused about the simple rules you agreed to when you registered, you may review them here. - Morrus.]

 

[Dice4Hire]

Seeing the new generation become so docile when a large corporation feeds us garbage and tells us it's anything but makes baby Satan cry. Where is the open disgust? The mutiny? The quality of their products saw a drastic drop in 4E yet for some reason, the spirit of No has no risen yet. So yes, a boycott is an excellent idea. Do yourselves a favor and find a d20 system online, made by someone who still loves the game, today.

reported.

 

[Seer-1]

Removed by admin.

 

[Pseudonym]

Here I thought you were going to go off on a rant about Amber or some other diceless system.

Tell you what, send me your email and I can get you in on this awesome PBEM game I'm playing with the Nigerian Finance Minister.

 

[the Jester]

I don't understand the rage here, honestly.

You got an email that was NOT trying to sell you anything, but was offering you information about some free gaming activity. A lot of gamers- especially those without regular groups- would LOVE to be in your shoes.

 

[Festivus]

So...

It took me a couple reads, but if I understand correctly, your gripe is that someone who runs a meetup group voluntarily passed along some marketing for a (presumably) relevant program and you're annoyed by that because you disagree with some choices the company made?

Even my own summary of that makes little sense. It would be like a teammate on a sports team suggesting a new flavor of Gatorade, and then you get mad at Gatorade because they don't bottle the drink in a way you find acceptable.

You're taking two completely disparate things and trying to force a very tenuous link between them...

If the Meetup site was sponsored, you can click on the sponsorship area and see the terms of that sponsorship. Don't like it, leave the meetup. WoTC isn't trying to sell you anything, they wanted to alert you to the fact that the meetup is offering this great gaming opportunity FREE, with support from them. The main beneficiaries of this email is a) YOU, for the free opportunity, b) the retail store that is hosting encounters, because that is foot traffic in the door, and c) the meetup group, because Meetup isn't cheap, and the sponsorship really helps (and prize support doesn't hurt either).

WoTC asked Meetup organizers to FORWARD the email to the membership in order to continue to comply with the sponsorship program. They never asked for members email addresses (not like you have access to those anyhow in Meetup).

Like anything in this day and age, this is a new marketing method being tried out by WoTC. I, for one, applaud this effort to leverage new media and bring more people into play opportunities.

As others have said, if you have a beef, bring it up with your meetup (perhaps it's even my meetup, who knows)

 

[Steel_Wind]

When:

• somebody offers to advise you won 24,000,000.00 pound sterling...
• somebody tries to sell you Viagara, Oxycontin or Cialis...
• somebody tell you how THEY have the secret on how to make your penis bigger...
• somebody has a "business proposal" for you incluided in the malware.rtf attachment
• somebody from the Ivory Coast or Nigeria offers to loan you/give you/broker or says anything as relatively inoffensive, up to and including merely saying "hi"

All via unsolicited mail?

THEN you have a right to bitch.

When a gamer recieves a notice about a Wizards D&D Encounter in your area? That's called ON TOPIC.

If you don't like it - delete it.

Frankly, the drama and nerd rage of the Original post is entirely uncalled for, imo.

 

[Crothian]

Please, don't be dramatic. I'm talking about members of the meetup group being shop owners that run games out of their stores, and how they are asked/"heavily incentivised" by WotC to spread their advertisements via social networking.

I wasn't being dramatic though the way you responded to a spam e-mail does sound like this is a tragedy. They are asked, they can refuse. If they do as Wizards says they get perks. It's like my job, they ask me to show up and do work. If I do they pay me.

I don't think so. If I owned a store, and was basically required to spread promotional information by a producer else lose the privilege of selling the product, my hands would be tied.

No, they are not tied. There are probably thousands of stores that don't do this and still get by. They even still sell D&D books though truth be told they sell way more Paizo books these days so if they had to stop selling D&D they wouldn't even losing their best sellers.

What's made me mad is WotC's overly aggressive advertisements and policies. Or should I say, hostile policies? Cause they seem to be hostile to promoting any kind of gaming community, whatever the ads themselves might say.

E-mail notifications are not overly aggressive. It's just a basic marketing tool that it gets mentioned in many of my business classes. I have no idea how this is hostile or how they are hostile to any gaming community.

 

[Mark CMG]

(. . .) on my black list.
No PDFs = none of my money.
Restrictive Third Party licenses = none of my money.
The well is poisoned, you aren't getting a dime of mine until these policies are revised or abandoned.

Hopefully, this opinion which is held by many, will not fall on deaf ears.