World of Warcraft and UDE Point System Fiasco 251
Richard Manley writes "A report on the card game trinket fiasco. When the UDE (Upper Deck Entertainment) point system finally went live, I would imagine most of the people that logged in felt the same fury I did. Blizzard knows the lengths that its fans will go to get trinkets (look at the price of Murloc cards on eBay), but their arrangement with Upper Deck simply takes advantage of the good will many fans have shown." From the article: "This means that in order to get these trinkets, one would have to purchase 9 BOXES of cards for the fireworks and 21 BOXES of cards for the ogre. What does this mean? Want a fireworks trinket? Sure, it is only going to cost you $900.00. Want an Ogre trinket? No problem, it is only going to cost you $2,100.00. Bear in mind that these items are purely for show off purposes and give no in-game advantage to players." Having been through the Magic: The Gathering addiction twice, I've decided staying away from this Collectible Card Game is a good idea.
Re:What will happen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HELP! (Score:5, Informative)
Virg
QQ More (Score:3, Informative)
- You get 100 points per pack.
- You can get a nice amount of points in special tournaments [upperdeck.com] (probably more than 100 points and less than 5000).
- You can get omg lucky! and open an special Legendary Loot [upperdeck.com] card. It gives you a code for a special reward in game. Turtle mounts [ebay.com] are reaching some high prices...
So this is more a problem of children crying GIEF NAO!
Re:A Minor Nit to Pick (Score:5, Informative)
Latest numbers from http://www.mmogchart.com/ [mmogchart.com] put Lineage and Lineage II combined at about 3 million subscribers. WoW is at about 6.5 million and on their website they recently claimed to be over 7 million. That sounds like a pretty big lead to me.
Ain't it a shame when facts get in the way of making a point? What was your point anyway?
Re:Aah yes ... (Score:4, Informative)
UDE (Upper Deck Entertainment) Released a card game for WoW last week, it is one of the better CCG's (collectible card game) we've seen in a long long time.
In each pack of cards is a 'FREE' UDE points card, it is worth 100 UDE points, which are good for redeeming UDE merchandise and in game WoW items.
The submitter (and invariably slashdot) have a pretty tainted view of things, since this item is free and is there simply as a value add to the card game, they of course make no mention of the 'loot' cards you can pull in the set that give you in game mounts one of which is currently ebaying for $250~300.
Only complaints about the free item they put into the card packs, which reward the CCG game players for purchasing the packs.
Any WoW online player that bought the packs only for the possibility of getting online items is a huge and total fool.
People want to complain when a product that wasn't meant to be used in a certain way doesn't work the way they want it too as is the case here.
This is a CCG rarity and scarcity are a factor for people who play a game like this, you either grok that and are okay with it and play the game or you don't.
Also as another note, this game is so good it's sold out within the week at 100's of stores across the country (including mine)
I can tell you, since I sold 90% of the product at my shop no one there even cared about the points (or if they did, it was an after thought)
Doing the math (Was: Re:What will happen) (Score:2, Informative)
The UDE reward points in the World of Warcraft TCG were intended to be a reward for players - not a reason to drive sales. They're simply a "bonus" that can be redeemed for not only items in the WoW online game, but also for physical items like deck boxes, playmats, token cards, etc. However, we understand that we didn't do the best job communicating our intent, so as of Monday morning we've announced that we're cutting the points required to obtain the trinkets in half [upperdeck.com], and eliminating the threshold for the tabard.
A pack of cards, containing 100 points, sells for $5.00, while an entire box, containing 24 packs or 2400 points, costs around $100.00. UDE lists the in-game fireworks trinket at 20,000 points and the ogre trinket at a whopping 50,000 points. The talbard, which sells for a "reasonable" 2,500 points, actually requires an account of points worth 25,000, placing it in the same price bracket as the other trinkets.
The article's math is a little off. The MSRP for a booster pack is $3.89, so a box of 24 packs retails for $93.36. Most game stores sell boxes at a discount, and if you poke around online or on eBay you can find them as low as $60. With the new costs announced today, you can accumulate enough points for the fireworks trinket by spending $389 at retail, or about $250 if you order online. The Ogre trinket will cost about $625 if you bought boxes just for the reward points.
The article glosses over the fact that alongside the UDE points, you're also getting cards to, you know, actually play the game. You end up with at least 250 Rare/Epic and 750 Uncommon cards which all have a value on the secondary market, and looking at prices one week out from release [strikezoneonline.com] things are looking pretty good. If you just want the UDE points, then take your cards to a game store or put them on eBay, and you can recoup a large amount of the money you spent on cards originally.
Honestly though, you should just give the game a chance. It's the best TCG to be released in the last 10 years, and does a good job being honest to the online game. If anyone at a recognized website or print publication wants some product to review the actual gameplay, please send me a message and I'll get some out to you this week.
Cheers,
Ben
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Ben Drago
Organized Play
Upper Deck Entertainment