Fuck you very much, Topps.

[Biomechanoid]

Thanks, Topps, for buying Wizkids Games and all but running the company into the ground. Thanks for turning Collectible Miniatures Games into card games. Thanks for forcing a reputable design team to crank out junk products for the sake of your bottom line. Thanks for bastardizing a toy maker for corporate greed. Thanks for being the most illegitimate parent company the industry has ever witnessed. Thanks for needlessly terminating jobs for your so-called "reorganization." What's next, outsourcing game design? That would be fucking brilliant. Marc Lore should get a raise while you're at it, and a big corporate bonus check. Thanks for fucking your subsidiary's loyal fanbase again and again.

While we're at it, how about a big middle finger to DC and Marvel comics for their licensing bullshit. I'd like to send a nice card and a bouquet of flowers to all the asshole lawyers who keep throwing in wrenches as far as production, art, marketing, promotion, and licensing are concerned. Great job, you guys. We really appreciate the way you rape our favorite characters.

And to Wizard Entertainment, who's stellar customer service group exhibits all the dedication of a phone book editor with A.D.D., you can take your magazine subscriber exclusives, shine them up real nice, turn them sideways, and shove them up your ass. Thanks for consistantly ripping off your customers.

And lastly, let's have a big round of applause for Jordan Weisman. In all seriousness, he is responsible for bringing us some of the greatest gaming products ever made. It's sad, though, that unless he gets his company's act together, the ship is going to sink, and he'll be remembered as one of the biggest douche-bag sellouts of all time.

[Ronfar]

?
What happened, Imbalance?
Holy smokes, you're really steamed about something, what?

I can't really tell from your post here what set you off.

<font color="#99FFCC" size="1">[ June 24, 2006 10:11 AM: Message edited by: Ronfar ]</font>

[Ronfar]

Really, really angry.

[Biomechanoid]

Sometimes, you just have to speak exactly what's on your mind. This is the one place I can do it. Otherwise, you just stay angry all the time, and what good is that? I've had time to cool, but even in calmer hindsight I wouldn't take back a word of that. In fact, I could add to it the incredible disappointments that add up to be Sinister, but that's already been addressed to the nth degree on the censored forums. This thread will eventually die, or maybe Hostboard will shut me down for the obsenities in my tirade, but the sentiment is resonant. Ultimately, these words carry so little weight, that's why they are easy to let go of. It's the action of refusing to waste another dime of my income on this product that will bear my message's burden all the way to Topps' ear.

[Ronfar]

Apparently I missed something.
I haven't noticed any significant change to anything recently.

I read something about "reorganization"; I guessed that it meant that wizkids was going to drop their least successful product line(s).

As for licensing. It does seem that wizkids doesn't have a great ton of freedom. The most apparent case being the absence of artwork on the DC feat cards and battlefield conditions.


Heeeeey! Wizkids! You really pissed off Imbalance!
Best chance you got is to start crankin' out the GRENDEL! [img]wink.gif[/img]

[BigBlowfish]

I guess we could pull a hostile takeover like in Die Hard, except minus Bruce Willis and the German guys.

[joeldad]

Yeah, I know a guy who was supposed to get a job in WK a long time ago, ran the demo squad for free for them, did tons of stuff and they just royally screwed him.

The WK employees must have gotten pretty sick with the new ownership if they are all quitting (Bro_Mags namely), and I live near to WK and knew a few of the people there (Tony, Leslie, and met Bro_Mags). The new guys in charge are jerks, plain and simple.

[HeWhoIs]

Don't make him angry. You won't like it when he's angry.

[Biomechanoid]

Actually, I think people like me less when I'm happy...

So, I guess something else might be needed to bump this little gem off of the top of the thread list...

[colin_in_sick]

Fuck Wizkids in the blistered ass with a splintered baseball bat wrapped in rusted barbed wire.

There are about 19 reasons I quit HeroClix, and at least 14 of them can be attributed directly to to Whiz-in-your-faceKids.

I'm not going to address my exact gripes--I got tired of that many months ago--but I will say that I disagree with virutually every decision the company has made in the past two years. I put up with their shit much longer than I should have. My last 8 to 12 months of HeroClix brought me more frustration that entertainment, and I resent anyone who has outright ENJOYED what Wizkids or Topps or whomever you want to blame has thrown in my face.

I look forward to Horrorclix, but I do so with the same skepticism I have toward the PlayStation 3 and the next Hulk movie. I doubt that the product will live up to my expectations. In fact, I'm already assuming it will suck. It will be an insultingly lame execution of a great premise. I'm already blaming the company for its incompetence, and I regret that such a game isn't being released by Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck, or even fucking Hasbro.

I hope to buy HorrorClix from an online discount distributor, which does nothing but hurt Wizkids in the long run. I will buy HorrorClix as an ordinary, entertaining game I can hopefully play with some friends at an ordinary social gathering. If the game were being marketed by a different company, then maybe I could imagine falling for the same OCD traps that lured me into HeroClix, but that will never happen again unless such a CMG proves to actually be FUN, INTERESTING, and REWARDING--and by "rewarding," I'm not talking about bullshit mail-order prizes I can earn by purchasing a farmer's shit-ton of Magma boosters, or tricking some of the people I actually LIKE into showing up for some geek-gazmic bitchfest "tournament" at the local dork shop.

If the game is fun, exciting, and rewarding, the maybe it will become a new "hobby" for me. Otherwise, I'll enjoy it in the same way I enjoy Uno, Monopoly, or Clue--an occasional, whimsical diversion. Honestly, I'm expecting the worst. After all, Wizkids has DEFINTELY taught me what to expect from another HC/MK/MW clone: more of the same bullshit.

A small part of me wants HorrorClix to be a success...IF I can enjoy it for years to come. The bigger part of me hopes it's an even more monumental failure than Creepy Freaks. I don't like HeroClix anymore. I don't like Wizkids. I don't like corporate incompetence, and I don't like companies that consistently and habitually shit in the mouths of their most "loyal" customers. Wizkids can go to hell. I honestly hope that the lot of them end up penniless and diseased on the streets of Bangladesh.

I feel like I was getting to a point, but I've forgotten what it was.