Should we be glad Age of Annihilation failed?

[RickyDMMontoya]

With the recent and ongoing controversies that Hasbro is having with both MTG and D&D, should we maybe be glad that the Age of Annihilation Hasbro pulse thing failed?

It seems that the upper management of Hasbro are concerned more with monetization, monetization, and predatory microtransaction business models than they are with their products or game communities.



https://www.theguardian.com/games/20...-the-coast-ogl

When things like this are reflective of community sentiment, maybe it's best if Hasbro just forgets about Heroscape until someone better comes along.

[caps]

I think it would have been great for Age of Annihilation to succeed, regardless of what's happening with Wizards and the OGL right now.

[Captain Stupendous]

Originally Posted by caps

I think it would have been great for Age of Annihilation to succeed, regardless of what's happening with Wizards and the OGL right now.

Agreed.

[chas]

Did it fail? Officially, yes. But I'm playing it right now on my table, with all the elements previewed in the Haslab Offering copied, customed, and proxied. For how I'm doing it, see my signature thread below.

Heroscape Lives! Now including Age of Annihilation! Scape On!

[AMIS]

We shouldn't be happy when any game fails. At that point, fun fails.

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) being a money grab is nothing new and the main reason I dropped out of it completely in the mid 80's. Yes even back then rules were being changed and additions to rules were being thrown out to make the base ideas convoluted and make money on attempted clarifications.

Trying to get more money from other corporations for owned intellectual property is kind of a neat thought...but you'd think the folks at D&D would be careful not to poke the bear considering the idea behind D&D comes Lord of the Rings (LOTR). While the licenses were bought recently, if this becomes a successful way to make money for Hasbro, think of the money the owners of LOTR could make.

Age of Annihilation has sparked new interest in the game and let content creators play on, so I'm not sure it has been the total disaster that the campaign was. I can only hope Craig keeps up the attempts to resurrect Heroscape. It is a game that deserves to be played though the ages. I'm personally hope the rules don't alter much.

[Tornado]

TSR purposely made new bad rules to make people not only buy the new system rules but to buy the clarifications?
Is this second or third edition?
Never been a fan of the system (was into Palladium RPG (1.0) but that is downright dastardly of them.

[Dysole]

I wouldn't use the word "glad". Hasbro and wizards though have lost all goodwill they had for a while and I do not trust them at this point. I would've loved to see AoA come to pass. I'm no longer convinced it wouldn't have also had a bunch of baggage that would taint it for me. The AoA units occupy a weird head space for me. I'm not sure they ever won't. I hope Craig manages to find a way to revive Heroscape either at a different company or with a genuinely changed Hasbro.

~Dysole, with her two cents

[Nukatha]

I just logged in to see if a thread like this existed.
It certainly makes the botched handling of the Heroscapr Haslab look like a symptom of larger problems at Hasbro/Wizards as a whole, rather than a unique occurrence.

[Grey Waves]

I don't think that the current state of Hasbro/WOTC means that we should be glad AoA failed.

However, what I do think is that the current state of Hasbro/WOTC gives insight into why AoA failed. The extremely high funding goal, the single, all-in-one backing tier, the refusal to have any common units as optional purchasable add-ons - it all points to a company that wanted to completely eliminate any chance that they would end up losing money on the project, even if it meant that the campaign wouldn't actually end up going through. The idea that 'maybe the campaign itself won't make us a ton of money, but we'll make it back when the game goes into full production' doesn't seem to have even entered their minds.

[RickyDMMontoya]

It was clearly overpriced, and could have been the sign of a new predatory pricing model.

How long would it have been until these microtransaction obsessed vampires hit on Heroscape blind bags?

[RickyDMMontoya]

The hits keep coming.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...ancial-Results

[Nukatha]

Maybe they'll liquidate some IPs and Soaring Rhino or Plaid Hat can step in.