Random Rant- The State of Magic

~ curiousreadings

OK- so Arena is finally out. And it isn’t half bad- the only things about it that annoy me are-

  1. It creatively acquired a lot of stuff from Hearthstone (yes, I know this because I’ve played Hearthstone, quit judging me).
  2. No ability to play against friends or the computer.
  3. No Two Headed Dragon

 

Other than that- the decks are powerful and fun to play. There’s absolutely no socializing in the game, so it’s just get in and play, which is kind of a plus, at least to me. Card flippers and other distractions annoy me when playing in the flesh, sooooo, yeah. If Arena can give us those few little bits, I’m a happy girl. Oh yeah, and if people will quit conceding- c’mon man, you don’t know what will happen, let the damn game play out already.

That said, Arena will not take the place of actually sitting down with decks- for us kitchen table (now Den of Geek) playing still trumps the digital by quite a swath.

Speaking of physical cards- last week Hasbro decided to release a super uber cool Ravnica set on their website alone. Can’t get it through their local distributors… which sucks. It’s bad enough to have Amazon and the other online retailers cutting profit to the bone to try to get customers- not everyone realizes when you go around the local game shop to save a few bucks (that you usually make up for in paying for shipping), there will come a time when you don’t have a local game shop anymore. What a double backstab to have sets only released through the publisher, too.

At least.. if that actually works. Which, I can tell you, it doesn’t. Getting my order in took at least a dozen attempts, with all kinds of errors popping up and a quadruple billing of my account. And the order was supposed to ship the next day- well, it didn’t.

Sharing my email in to Hasbro cause it’ll cover all the points of my supreme irritation just as well-

To Whom It May Concern-

I have just been hung up on by one of your employees, who informed me that this product, ordered and paid for on October 3, did not ship on October 4 as the system notified me it would. It is now October 8, and having received no updates nor status changes, I first tried to use your contact form on the website, which gave me an error. (The same error I encountered 6 or 7 times when trying to place my order, I might add.)
Since calling in was the only other option being provided, I did just that and (after holding for twenty minutes and being told I was going to be disconnected) spoke to Rory. Rory was the epitome of the terrible customer service agent, from her droning tone to her refusal to escalate my concern to the lack of anything resembling helpfulness to the fact that, in spite of not being yelled at or cussed at in any way, she hung up on me after I asked her not to speak over me.
I’m already very, very angry that I have to jump through all these hoops instead of placing an order with my very friendly local game shop, who is always helpful and kind to me. I cannot fathom why in heaven’s name you are trying to handle orders for this product yourselves when it is abundantly clear that you lack any kind of infrastructure to support the demand. Your shortsighted foolishness has already seen to it that I will never order directly from you again- it’s just not worth the aggravation of having hundreds of dollars out of my pocket with no clear indication about when or if a product will be received while you cut out the local game shop that supports your products.
It’s bad business.
A. Wellman
So yeah. Won’t be doing that again ever.