Just Keep Churning Em Out, WoTC, Hasbro

LOL.  ANOTHER A+A variant(s)!  In under 6 months from the last one!!!  WHEEE!!!  SHELL OUT EVEN MORE $$$CASH$$$ FOR ANOTHER BOARD GAME(S)!!!  (HEY KIDS!!!  You’ve got nothing better to do!  C’mon, buy nineteen copies!  We’re even making a new Pacific game which is essentially the old AA Pacific map with its old Revised ruleset now replaced with the new AA50 ruleset!  BUY IT NOW!!!)

While if one tries to independently make a computerized form where you EMULATE all the different board games, IT’S THE END OF TEH WORLD!!!  CEASE AND DESIST ORDERS EVERYWHERE!!!  Even if 50 people in the entire world use it at any given time, from all over the world, and it’s the only way they can play it with real lives and busy schedules!  Wait, I’m not talking about PBF games on the Axisandallies.org website, I’m talking about the freeware TripleA…

Actually, the fact the Hasbro DID sell out ALL its AA50 copies makes me wonder why they NEEDED to go after TripleA.  It’s not like they were losing any business since ALL the copies printed sold out.  Sounds like inefficient business practices to me.  Yet somehow they are shutting down ANY form of electronic competition while churning out MORE and MORE schlock box editions with slightly tweaked AA50 rulesets.  You’d think making/sponsoring an electronic form of A&A with its greater ease and flexibility would be in their best interests, but no…  Boxed sets it is!  Who cares if it’s 2009?  And the fan bois out there will eat this up, you know they will.  WHY NOT JUST RUN A REPRINT OF THE ENTIRE REVISED SERIES OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS FOR $40 A POP???  NEW AA50 MANUALS $10 EXTRA.  EACH.

Great way to run a business.  RUNNING IT INTO THE GROUND.  See ya for Axis and Allies: October 1935 - The Second Italo-Abyssinian War!  I won’t be there.

Ok, yeah, went off the handle a bit there, but I hadn’t seen much new stuff about the TripleA shutdown, and its still the same ol’ status quo there.  What pisses me off the most is that TripleA IS essentially the PBF game, just in a much more simplified and streamlined program (also no dice roll typing errors), and that an easy-to-use/learn interface is what will get new players into the game and keep old players interested rather than scare them away.  Which also means that MOST TRIPLEA PLAYERS HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT OR WILL POSSIBLY BUY A BOARD COPY OF THE GAME IF THEY ENJOY PLAYING TRIPLEA ONLINE.  Which new players most certainly won’t if they don’t know the rules, have never played it before (TripleA is kinda a trial version of A&A for free), AND are presented with a $40 price tag at the game store with no incentives other than “Hey this game looks cool I’ve never heard of A&A before guess Wizards doesn’t advertise it…”

$40 price tag at the gameshop and seeing 40 other variants out there for almost the EXACT SAME DAMN THING is going to make A&A lose a lot of potential new players… Maybe this is Wizard’s plan to make A&A like Magic the Gathering… have a new box set out every 3 months that trumps all the other sets, except that buying a new “booster pack” is gonna cost you $40-50 a throw instead of $3.99.  HEREIN LIES WIZARDS OF THE COAST’S INSIDIOUS PLAN… :-o

@johnnymarr:

we should be happy any company still makes boardgames

We’re also not exchanging these conversations with pen and paper!

We’ve had computers for fifty years now!  It can’t be that difficult to make/hire programmers to make a capable A&A client, if rights issues are all they’re concerned about.  (I have my doubts.)

@Emperor_Taiki:

Well, what do you think WOTC should be doing, I mean i wish Larry would adopt more realistic rules, add new sculpts and add an airborne piece, but I think these new 1940 games are going to be a big improvement and i rather WOTC spend there money of A&A than magic or D&D crap. I mean dont you want A&A to imporve?, otherwise you can just play classic and it dosnt matter what WOTC does.

exactly.  They have better things to do with their time (like improving Axis and Allies, or ADVERTISING Axis and Allies maybe) than shutdown independent fan developed software that’s gotten more people into Axis and Allies and is probably responsible for selling more box sets than ANY A&A advertising campaign WoTC has ever used (if ever).  My god, if Axis and Allies ever got mainstream (like on the level of popularity of Risk, (which, granted, is still probably pretty low)) WoTC could burn all their Magic cards in a Infinite Mana Lava Burst.