MTG Salvation

Quote from cfusionpm »

Using other people's accounts who have no interest in the product themselves is essentially the same thing as using a bot or fake account to make the purchase.

I see this all the time on the floor of Comic Con every year. I was able to get four sets of the Terese Nielson PWs, because 3 of my friends agreed to wait in line with me and get one (limit 1 per badge, stamped and checked with ID). However, I also ran across a guy early in the day, and then again late in the day, who had been paying people in line to purchase them for him (usually $20-40), and ended up with over 100 sets.

Where do we draw the line between opportunistic and scummy parasites?

yeah i dont know. i think answering that question would involve digging into the dark corners of the secondary market, why it is the way it is, etc.

im not naive enough to believe everyone should get the cards they want for cheap, or that those who recognize there is a market for mtg cards/products and participate in it for their own gain are bad people. lying, stealing, cheating, scamming, etc; its when those classes of malicious or sociopathic behavior are involved that we know for sure its in 'scumbag' territory.

as to your example, i think the guy at the convention is worse. mostly because its an in person event (gotta believe security watches for such stuff), and they would have had to be approaching and soliciting random people; which is disruptive to the festive atmosphere and all around just shady.

the guy who got all those ME boxes, yeah he violated the spirit of the rules but not the actual rules. not to condone it or anything, but unlike bots that exploit the technology in a way that can be harmful to the system (overload requests crashing something), the purchases are indistinguishable from any other and paid for legitimately. im not even sure they could devise some means to detect the same happening in the future, and even if they could, acting upon it would be something other than an impartial sale. itd be asking wizards to somehow know and give preference to 'real mtg players who just want the cards to play with'; which is absurd. if they want less opportunists, then dont print 12k boxes of something with so much value packed in the act of getting one functionally doubles your money immediately. raise the price, choose different walkers, print more boxes, etc.

yeah i saw people talking about that image. as i understand it this person allegedly didnt use bots but rather just paid a lot of people they knew $50 (so $300 per) to get so many boxes. no idea if its true, as apparently all of them had no knowledge of mtg and or just didnt care about the value of the contents; however it would explain how someone could circumvent being flagged for duplicate mailing addresses, IP address, and payment method.

i have no doubt that bots were used, and some were successful. however their benefit mainly comes from being able to submit a purchase request quicker since direct calls to the page bypasses them having to load. having a bot network with real distinct physical addresses to mail to, using different payment methods of which pass common fraud detection heuristics - is not trivial. at least not unless you have a serious background in digital crime.

then again the mtg collector/player crowd has close links to the cryptocurrency crowd; so maybe it was more rampant than im giving credit.

the best idea is stop all this promo/specialty nonsense all together and just design really good sets that people open because the gameplay is awesome and regular value reprints are baked in.

there is money to be made though, and mythic editions presumably make the most. masterpieces are profitable due to boosting product sales, but just not as much i guess.

Quote from Dom4419 »

Shouldn't the compensation be agreed upon by both parties legally? If so I wouldn't agree to it, I would rather have them cut the sheet first then send the cards.

when its voluntary on their part, no.

if you are just looking at the value you can convert right away, then yeah i think a lot of people would prefer cut sheets. uncut sheets however still maintain the spirit of a unique collectors item with the added novelty appeal, whereas just sending you a pile of cards indistinguishable from what you can pull from regular packs is just a numbers game (ie how much are these cards worth).

i think people are overlooking how much the contents of the sheets and the sheets themselves would be worth, cut or not. if they sent you cut cards, even if the influx of supply on the market dropped prices by 50% youd still have north of $200 worth of cardboard sent to you (much more if prices were to drop less). the uncut sheets could easily command 100-150 price tags even during the period when people are trying to dump them, likely exceeding that shortly after.

this is generous on wizards part, even more so than box toppers by a good margin. also you get the $20 gift card to boot. all for the 'ordeal' of clicking a few buttons and having money tied up for a little over a week. dont get me wrong, the sale was horrible, easily the worst online purchase experience ive ever had. i just think the perspectives involving being owed anything or what they think they deserve are incorrect (not saying the person i quoted is displaying this, just as a general statement).

Quote from Quamobrem »

From that link, this seems to be precisely what they're going for.

Frankly, I hope it succeeds, and not just because that means I'd be getting enough money to buy a box, but also because WotC needs to learn a ******* lesson from this, that they won't learn otherwise.

Though my other hope is that, should the case look like it might succeed, Wizards will just curtail it by offering a second print run to everyone who still has an un-cancelled order.

i suggest that you let go of the notion that more WAR ME boxes will be made. it just isnt a realistic expectation, even if class action suit is on the verge of going poorly for them. they would be attempting to solve a legal issue by opening themselves up to another.

also even if resoundingly won, with the best case of full damages awarded, what the affected receive isnt the full amount. why do you think a law firm would file suit, with all the associated time and effort,that is free to join in? its cause they would take a cut, of which the remaining wouldnt be split evenly (class representatives who play a part in the case would typically receive more).

im all for sticking it to greedy corporations, but the average joe/jane involved wouldnt get much even if the case plays out to its most favorable outcome.

Quote from Dusk707 »

Third, for those whom do meet the criteria, what about the $20 gift card and a foil uncut sheet of the rare/mythic rare cards from WAR is not enough compensation for the damages caused? How is this damage even calculated, due to these people getting their money back? They are gaining items and are out only the time they spent trying to get through the, apparently, abysmal checkout process.

the most ambitious, yet only choice for the prosecutors if they hope to get a dime, is to seek damages calculated to restore the affected to where they would have been had the sale gone through. in other words the difference between the retail cost ($250) and the fair market value within a given time frame. what time frame they use, or where they pull prices to determine market value from; well i dunno about that. for example if the market values of a box is 850, the damage is 850 - 250 = 600. i think anyone can see why id call that ambitious.

Quote from JaceBluesMaster »

Someone is forming the basis for a class action lawsuit.

the basis is already formed, as seen by the specifics outlined by that law firm. the question is whether said basis forms a case that a judge would be willing to pursue.

im not an expert on the law by any means, but personally i think the suit is a non-starter. especially because both ebay and hasbro have voluntarily offered compensation; meaning any sort of damages that the prosecutors aims to get reparations for would have to exceed the value of those by a considerable margin. people may not realize it, but both ebay and hasbro offer those things for more than just garnering any lost good will; they do it to shield themselves specifically from these types of class action suits as its akin to a preemptive settlement.

the suit also notably avoids ebay, as their terms of agreement have arbitration clauses that protect them from class action suits. however hasbro/wizards would undoubtedly include them in their defense since they ran the sale and at the very least would need to be subpoenaed for their system logs. im dubious that those logs would paint a picture that doesnt bring doubt upon any parties culpability in breaking the 'contract' cited as the premise of the lawsuit.

as i understand it though, the lawyer is legit with experience in other class action cases. what was filed isnt completely unfounded, so i do hope it gets traction. if nothing else than to serve as a stark reminder that what happened should be avoided in the future.

on another but somewhat related note; this sale was cocked up so badly that its plausible hasbro and ebay cut their partnership for sales of this type. meaning if mythic editions are sold in the future (why would they not be, they are a gold mine) then there is a decent chance it will be ran somewhere else/differently.

i think the point is that some amount of people are going to cut the sheets then sell the cards as if they were pulled from a pack. unless you have some access to an industrial cutter that can replicate wizards production facilities with accuracy; then those cards should be identified (by the seller/trader) accordingly.

i cant see how the sheets would ever go for anything less than $50. even at that rate, after shipping and fees associated with selling, the overall value of the compensation with the ebay gift card isnt anything to scoff at.

that is the most conservative of estimates though, and its plausible the market value ends up being north of $100.

the WAR ME purchase experience was absolutely abysmal, which is going to leave a seriously bitter taste in the mouths of anyone looking to get one but didnt. however for those thinking they 'deserve' or are owed more consider this: if someone offered you the deal of earning at least $100 and all you have to do is not spend $500 of your money; then who wouldnt take that deal? you'd be silly not to.

the compensation is somewhat of a soft confirmation that it may not have been logistically feasible to create and then print something unique, or even print something that is/has been scheduled to be printed at some other time. so unlike the case with the UMA box toppers being given out, which had already been produced and packaged, wizards went to what they could get in a timely manner.

id imagine many will probably think theyd rather just get that sheet, but cut into cards. however, it being a sheet retains the spirit of a collectors piece, while not quite being as on the nose about 'here are some cards indistinguishable from what is found in packs, and thus worth exactly as much as seen on the secondary market'. i cant say i know anything about getting the sheet cut properly after getting them (straight cuts would leave square corners, even if exact to card size - thus not tournament legal afaik). i know people do this, particularly for mis cuts, and play with them; so its not impossible.

as for how many of these will be out there (ie the number of people being compensated with them). hard to tell exactly with it being a given that some significant portion of the 45k 'sold' shown a the end of the ME sale were just failed/erroneous transactions. my guess if i had to throw a number out would be in the 15-20k range.

lastly, and this is assuming they are all contained on one sheet, the JPN alt-art walkers are the obvious potential alternative that meets the conditions i mentioned at the start (in production right now). im dubious that wizards didnt realize it as a consideration, which therefore means they actively decided against it. their rarity (show up half the time), and how sought after some of them are (as reflected in their market price atm); might have had an uncut sheet with the full foil set of them together being worth quite a bit down the road.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from tronix »

getting towards the end of the day, no shipping update for me. maybe tomorrow. maybe never

Same boat here. There's a phone number in the confirmation message; might give that a call: 866-540-3229

i wouldnt bother tbh. that phone number is ebay's (im pretty sure), and as far as shipping fulfillment goes they arent even involved. hasbro is closed for calls till tomorrow.

so you gotta contact hasbro, and they are unwilling to say or do anything more than check you are one of the lucky members of the 'congrats' club, and that everyone in said club should be getting their orders shipped as soon as possible.

that tracking update is all that matters, so all we can do is wait for the labels to be created and added at this glacial pace.

getting towards the end of the day, no shipping update for me. maybe tomorrow. maybe never

Quote from Quamobrem »

I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I'll keep hoping for a second print run, given how much of a mess this was.

wizards painted themselves into a corner by explicitly stating a limit with a firm assurance that no more would be printed. had they not it doesnt seem farfetched that they might have printed a few thousand more (like 3k or something), while still maintaining the spirit of 'limited print run'.

then again i have little to no knowledge of how production happens, given the timeline of the release of sets/products relative to how far in advance design/dev is it stands to reason they cant just fire up a printer willy nilly and produce whatever they want; so who knows.

Quote from cfusionpm »

For those getting shipping notice today, what part of the country are you located? And do you know approx how many were listed sold when you purchased?

Got my order confirm message days ago, but still waiting on shipping notification.

from the reddit posts ive been checking regularly to see if anything new has been happening people are claiming no tracking from areas all over the US, some canada, some EU or asia. definitely not enough info to discern any sort of pattern (like people theorizing 2 box orders were going to be shipped last).

Quote from Phoenix_Wombat »

Sunday evening got email that my package shipped, about 20 minutes ago knock at the door. Fedex guy handed me a package it was the Masterpiece box. All I can say is I have my fingers crossed for those still in limbo.

sunday is the earliest ive seen being updated with shipping info. still nothing for me. from what im reading in other places, more people got shipping confirmation today. appears i missed this round, which isnt a good sign, but not like i can do anything about it at this point.

if you got a message from ebay, it only pertained to orders that were completed and paid (necessitating a refund). for all intents and purposes those failed transactions that happened at the start of the sale never happened, and thus not worth acknowledging. not saying that is right or just or fair or whatever, but just what has happened; no money changed hands = no transaction occurred.

Quote from Arkmer »

Do we have an idea of how common the "congrats email with no shipping" situation is? I know I'm in that boat right now and it's making me nervous.

im in the same boat. ive read more of the same from comments on reddit, but its such a narrow perspective on what is going on that there is no way to tell how extensive it is.

but yeah, def got the sinking feeling that i got screwed after all.