1108382:

1753131:

What NEEDS to happen is you guys have to get City, Date and Venue information out 4 months before the event.

Seriously.

Hotel room prices nearly doubled before you guys released official information for Austin. If you question this please call me, i got details for you. PM if you do not know how to get a hold of me.

The city, date, and venue information was announced on October 17, 2008, almost exactly one year before the event. The press release is quite easy to find to verify the date.

"Paris, France (10 October, 2008) - Continuing the globe-trotting tradition of the World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game World Championship Tournament, Upper Deck (UD) today announced plans to bring the event to Austin, Texas in 2009. To be held at the Austin Convention Center, October 8th - 11th, 2009, the 2009 World of Warcraft TCG World Championship Tournament will feature a prize pool worth more than $250,000! "

I have no idea where you got that from.

Check this thread out from Aug 17 2009

People are asking where exactly will Worlds be in Austin, refering to the Austin Convention Center website not any official announcement from UDE.

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1816635.aspx

Why didn't someone post what you just did in this thread?

1108382:

Things I wish I could have changed:

- The University of Texas having a home football game that weekend. When we booked the venue, their football schedule was not public. That doubled hotel prices near the convention center, as everyone wants to say next to 6th Street and the Warehouse District.
- Providing better travel information to international players in their local language. There was quite a bit of information about travel, hotels, restaurants, nightlife, and things to do, but it was all in English.

Actually the day after this thread the Garden Inn Hilton had rooms for 150-160 a night. Two weeks later the prices went up to 250 a night.

The main thing people want when picking a room is not to have to walk miles or get a cab every day to the venue, that is why the location of the venue is important.

Personally I did not even know about 6th street until after I booked my hotel.

1753131:

1108382:

The city, date, and venue information was announced on October 17, 2008, almost exactly one year before the event. The press release is quite easy to find to verify the date.

"Paris, France (10 October, 2008) - Continuing the globe-trotting tradition of the World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game World Championship Tournament, Upper Deck (UD) today announced plans to bring the event to Austin, Texas in 2009. To be held at the Austin Convention Center, October 8th - 11th, 2009, the 2009 World of Warcraft TCG World Championship Tournament will feature a prize pool worth more than $250,000! "

I have no idea where you got that from.

It was announced at the player's meeting at Worlds 2008 in Paris on Friday morning, and a press release went out simultaneously. It was also put up at the OP pages at wowtcg.com/worlds and in the Worlds event coverage (it's the first article from Friday morning):

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/events/event.aspx?eid=38

And it was a front page article immediately after Worlds:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/news/article.aspx?aid=4890

I'll be honest, I think we did a pretty good job getting this information out there.

Check this thread out from Aug 17 2009

People are asking where exactly will Worlds be in Austin, refering to the Austin Convention Center website not any official announcement from UDE.

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1816635.aspx

Why didn't someone post what you just did in this thread?

The thread you linked was started on the Monday after Gen Con, and only bumped for one day. People just missed it.

There is a lot of information on the OP web pages at wowtcg.com/op and in the OP news feed at:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/OP/rss.aspx

I'm not going to lie - we used to struggle to get the OP websites updated in a timely manner, and too much information went up on the main page or the forums because of web issues. But now people still don't look past the main page, and there's too many times that news there falls off to fast.

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Ben Drago
Marketing Manager, Organized Play

If you need assistance or have any other comments, please send it to my attention at player@upperdeck.com.
Read my blog post about one-game match format here.

Put next year's OP calendar (ie the graphic which had all the DMF's listed which is up on the OP page/was in Paris etc) on the main-page. The current 'upcoming events' tab is easily overlooked and just isn't as pretty.

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Zapped Giants - UK Community Site, now with daily articles!

The Hilton Garden Inn was never charging $250! if you paid that you got savagly ripped off. We paid $140 paying in advance two weeks before the event and I even added an extra day while I was there for $180.

 

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Has made top8 of some events

Here is my ranking for cities I have visited for WoW TCG tournaments:

1. Seattle
The Good: Its on the ocean, has a sci fi museum.. everything is right downtown.  Saw a Mariners game, went to the aquarium, and is relatively close to where I live and has cheap hotels.
The Bad: Some guy named Matt Walsh and his unwelcome sexual advances.

2. San Fransisco
The Good: Its on the ocean, has some tourism (golden gate bridge), good food near the venue, hotels overlooking the bay, relatively cheap hotels, relatively cheap flight prices, Free Shuttle bus from venue to airport
The Bad: Distance from venue to see Golden gate bridge.  Felt Like I was in the middle of no where

3. Indianapolis
The Good: Gen con immediately near by for constant entertainment, Biggest/cheapest/best tasting food of any city I have visited, reasonable flight prices, reasonable hotel prices if you go by the airport
The bad: Having to cab from the airport to the venue every morning (because nearby hotels are booked up 8 months in advance) No "site seeing" things, bad water

4. Phillidelphia
The good: Cheesesteaks, interesting people, reasonably priced everything, Big enough airport to fly to from anywhere, Rocky statue, lots of history
The Bad: Dirty City, some parts of the city not safe

5. Austin
The good: Great food everywhere, lots of hotels near the venue, 75 cent bus from airport to 3 blocks from the venue
The Bad: No tourism locations, Expensive hotels, hard to fly to, TERRIBLE/smelly water

6. Salem
The good: I liked the venue, cheap hotels
The bad: Imposssible to fly to, average food, NOTHING to do outside of cards

7. Boston
The Good: Getting a tour of Fenway Park, High Quantity of AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL gingers.
The Bad: RIDICULOUS cost of everything, Subway a huge pain in the ass to navigage (had to go 10 minutes out of our way to catch a connecting train that ended up stopping at original station we were ate), ridiculous cost of everything

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Chris "Jedion" Reilkoff

I will never understand Europeans who come to the US to see old buildings and historical sites. That makes no sense at all. I guess it's pretty much like Americans going to Europe and complaining about not finding their favorite fast food restaurant.

As the saying goes, "Europe has too much history and not enough geography; America has too much geography and not enough history". Ancient history here is something that happened in the 1800's.

Having said that, Austin has more historical crapola than plenty of other major cities in the US. Sure, it's not New York or Boston or San Francisco, but still... There are plenty of big cities in America where it's hard to find a single building build after the 1950's, and Austin isn't one of those.

I'm one of those people who barely has time to leave the convention hall at something like NACC, though. I'm lucky if I can get out to go out to eat one night. Other than that, it's just nonstop card playing. Worlds could be in an underground bunker in the Nevada desert and I'd be just fine.

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ConradHex's WoWTCG Card Price-List

1108382:

And it was a front page article immediately after Worlds:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/news/article.aspx?aid=4890

This link I was aware of. You will notice is says nothing about the venue which is information needed to book a hotel. If this was known at worlds why did it not make it in here?

1108382:

There is a lot of information on the OP web pages at wowtcg.com/op and in the OP news feed at:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/OP/rss.aspx

I'm not going to lie - we used to struggle to get the OP websites updated in a timely manner, and too much information went up on the main page or the forums because of web issues. But now people still don't look past the main page, and there's too many times that news there falls off to fast.

Actually you guys still have issues

Hmm I wanna know where to go in Austin so i can book my hotel

Do I check

1. Main Page article archives...this can take 15-20 mins sometimes to scan through all the pages of archives

2. OP Page. Rarely is information as up to date here as it could be

3. One of the Blogs. Sometimes a real good source of information

4. Facebook page

5. Press Releases

6. Event coverages. Which event do I look at? Which part of the coverage do I look in? For people who do not read every word of the coverage this can be time consuming.

7. Forums. Imo this is the best resources for two reasons. 1. There are half a dozen different UDE locations to find information and sometimes information can be found through non-UDE information sources (Austin Convention Center Website). 2. Sometimes it seems UDE really does not care about getting information out to players. The best resource most of the time is other players.

Will stop here but isn't there a twitter thing and now a OP News feed that I did not see before today.

The only reason I posted information about the Convention Center Website in the thread I made an example of is because this came up before in a thread and another player from Texas referenced the Austin Convention Center website.

If will find this 2nd thread if you truely think you guys are doing enough to get ALL THREE parts of the information out

1. Date
2. City
AND
3. Venue

As long as we have to go through half a dozen different information sources and ANY of those information sources is not complete you guys are lacking.

Look I worked in the industry and I know it is not that hard to release these three pieces of information.

Other stuff is more complicated I understand but date, city and venue is about as simple as it gets.

I will say you guys were decent at getting the 09 info out in 08.  There were locations and relative dates for the DMF's and major events which made planning a little easier as we had an idea what events we would be attending and (roughly) when.  But with no exact dates or specific venues we still couldn't get more specific with planning than I need some time off in July to go to Boston.  However, there's exactly 0 info about 2010 unless you count the rcq 5 season info. 

I will also agree with Jack in that the information should be more visible on the front page.  Not everyone who comes to the site goes to the forums or the OP Page.  Putting the DMF graphic on the front page would be a big help and maybe adding a permanent spot in the flash rotation for the OP page/feed may help too. 

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1753131:

1108382:

And it was a front page article immediately after Worlds:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/news/article.aspx?aid=4890

This link I was aware of. You will notice is says nothing about the venue which is information needed to book a hotel. If this was known at worlds why did it not make it in here?

What do you mean "if this was known at Worlds"?

1108382:

2. OP Page. Rarely is information as up to date here as it could be

That's not correct anymore. For the last six months I've required my team update the OP pages first for any official news. We may also push the announcement out to the OP news, forums, main page, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc, but the OP page always is the primary source of information.

If you find places where this is not true let me know, because someone screwed up and I need to go yell at them.

As long as we have to go through half a dozen different information sources and ANY of those information sources is not complete you guys are lacking..

The official OP pages for Worlds, wowtcg.com/worlds, had this information. The new OP web design launched in February, so it was very easy to find the Worlds page.

Here's the deal: I'll promise to make sure that wowtcg.com/op is always the best source for official OP information. But y'all have to actually read it. Deal?

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--
Ben Drago
Marketing Manager, Organized Play

If you need assistance or have any other comments, please send it to my attention at player@upperdeck.com.
Read my blog post about one-game match format here.

1326613:

I agree with thabigwolf.  Clearly UDE is trying to kill off its playerbase by holding tournaments in dangerous areas.  What's next, DMF: The Sun?

That is absolutely going in my profile Phil.



I don't think it's fair to say that wow is a US game, considering that DMFs in Europe have been outdrawing US tournaments by quite a bit recently.  Perhaps it is because Europe is much smaller and traveling is easier, but that doesn't take away from the statistics.  I think US/Europe on and off is a fair way to do it....Or they could just follow around Magic pro tours and go to Amsterdam.......

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Arsenal for the Premiership!

1108382:

Here's the deal: I'll promise to make sure that wowtcg.com/op is always the best source for official OP information. But y'all have to actually read it. Deal?

No, NO, and NO.

The forums are always the best place and most looked at. When you have any OP news, post in this forum. When you have the Worlds info (not that I care), put a sticky at the top with 'Worlds Information Annoucement'.

People come to the forums all the time to see what's going on on multiple topics. People don't go over to OP constantly (other than me :)) to check what the latest OP stuff is.

Cheers.

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Come play at C & Js in Newark, CA

1189990:

1108382:

Here's the deal: I'll promise to make sure that wowtcg.com/op is always the best source for official OP information. But y'all have to actually read it. Deal?

No, NO, and NO.

The forums are always the best place and most looked at. When you have any OP news, post in this forum.

If you want them to use the forums, why did you go on this tirade for months?

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/1/1588474/ShowThread.aspx

Ultimately, I think that there needs to be a central place where OP news can be found. If that's the OP page, great, maybe post a link on the forums to the OP announcement and sticky it. If you want to only use the forums, just do the forums and keep it up to date.

Whatever you do, just keep it consistent, that's my thinking.

1189990:

1108382:

Here's the deal: I'll promise to make sure that wowtcg.com/op is always the best source for official OP information. But y'all have to actually read it. Deal?

No, NO, and NO.

The forums are always the best place and most looked at. When you have any OP news, post in this forum. When you have the Worlds info (not that I care), put a sticky at the top with 'Worlds Information Annoucement'.

People come to the forums all the time to see what's going on on multiple topics. People don't go over to OP constantly (other than me :)) to check what the latest OP stuff is.

Cheers.

Sorry buddy, but you're wrong. Look at this thread here - the fourms obviously failed when the thread about Austin the day after Gen Con didn't get an answer, even though the information was easily available.

The forums are important, and I like our community. But the signal-to-noise ratio is always going to be a challenge, and it's too easy for people to miss important info and/or get incorrect info. If we post every single OP announcement in the forums, they will be filled with a dozen sticky threads. And if we don't post _everything_, then people will complain because they can't find what they're looking for.

We all need to be re-trained to use the OP web pages as the single authoritative source. Forum threads are great to discuss the info, but the web page needs to be the final, official source of record.

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--
Ben Drago
Marketing Manager, Organized Play

If you need assistance or have any other comments, please send it to my attention at player@upperdeck.com.
Read my blog post about one-game match format here.

Really to be honest, I am looking forward to going to some of the events this year.  As a noob, it doesn't matter where you put the info, I will find it eventually as long as you give me some then I'm happy. 

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Personally I appreciate that 2009 DMFs/Worlds were given out in 2008 and eagerly await next year's lineup.  Hoping it will be sometime soon as I'm eager to see if there's any I can go to.

I can only speak for myself but I check the Organized Play forums for updates and then read the OP page when someone posts that something else has been updated there.  You, Roshen, Gwon all sometimes post that the Op page has been updated and then I'll check it out (lanky sometimes too).  I don't know if this is a holdover from me being with the game so long but I'm used to the forums having the relevant information and the "first stop" information.  I think if you update the web page and if it's any major news just do what you've been doing and putting a post in the OP forums that the site has been updated that that's good enough for me, but I rarely go to the OP page first to check for new info. 

I think it has to do with "where I already am".  I browse the forums and as such I'm exposed to new posts much more readily than anything else. 

 

I had no problems with Austin, found a cheap hotel and there was a small lot across the street with unmetered parking, lots of other cities would have charged me $8-$10 for the privalege of resting my vehicle on their dirt for 12 hours at a time. 

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Only two things are infinite......