Concerning the World of Warcraft TCG

you know card games are a shaky business, its so easy to fail making a new card game. you can have a lack of organized play, bad marketing, hell you can have a bad game period. even just trying to create a player base when other games dominate the market is difficult. that being said, probably my second favorite card game out there is being put on hiatus.

the World of Warcraft TCG, which you may have read me praising for its wealth of gameplay types, great player inscentives, price, and all around good game design is being put on hold for quite literally the dumbest reason ever.

bad press.

seriously out of everything that couldve pulled the game it had to be that?!

now i dont claim to know the whole story but let me explain. I first saw this post on WoW.com (not to be confused with the official site worldofwarcraft.com)

http://www.wow.com/2010/02/17/upper-deck-comments-on-loss-of-wow-tcg-license/

my first reaction whats "AWHHHHAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT?"

thats right complete with sideways head turning.

why the hell would Upper Deck do anything like counterfeiting? apparently, at one point they held a liscence for Yu-Gi-Oh, to what extent i don't know but in some capicity. after this liscence was lost, they continued printing cards allegedly and Konami sued them.

well after following the chain of articles the picture began to clear up a bit

http://www.wow.com/2010/02/12/blizzard-wow-tcg-will-come-back-better-than-ever?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_wowinsider

http://www.wow.com/2010/02/12/upper-deck-and-wow-tcg-parting-ways?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_wowinsider

and the even older post (over 92 days old -- thats 3 months!)

http://www.wow.com/2009/11/15/rumors-of-wow-tcgs-demise-greatly-exaggerated?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_wowinsider

after all of this its hard to see how this wasn't comming, but all in all it basically points to several factors, and despite which are true and which aren't, it seems like the WoW TCG was destined to get away from UDE no matter what.

curious about all this i went to the Upper Deck site for the WoW TCG, no mention there of losing the liscence (big surprise), but on the Upper deck main page i did find these:

http://www.upperdeck-international.com/tabid/56/language/en-US/Default.aspx?AnnouncementID=20

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/ude/en/articles.aspx?aid=7453

I didnt bother checking Konami's site, this confirmed for me all i needed to know. UDE was sued for violating liscencing agreements. is it so hard to believe they might lose contracts because of the negative publicity?

not really.

is it hard to believe they would play the bad ecnomy card to try and save face in light of negative allegations to their comany?

not really.

its also no secret that Blizzard and UDE worked very closely on the WoW TCG, to what extent was the work done who knows, but if it is true that Blizzard has had a majority in the planning and development, maybe they say this as an easy way to bring things in house or to another company of their choice.

at this point anything is possible, but to anyone out there who loved this TCG as much as me, make sure you use any UDE points you have left over, and any unredeemed loot cards. cause theres no telling what will happen to them after march.

im not sure what to make of the crafting redemption issue, i myself was planning on redeeming some just recently, but i guess i have nothing to really lose by sending them in. hopefully theyll be able to honor everything they recieve before a certain date.

there will also probably be a snatch and grab for cards before march, but i think that waiting for sales from either UDE, just before they lose thier liscence or from the distributors they sell what they can of thier stock to before hand. i do expect some good deals for packs and boxes online.

but most of all im keeping my fingers crossed that the game does come back, or that the format of the game doesnt change. Id hate for all my old cards to be useless if they bring the game to a new company and they change it up.

heres to hoping.