So this discussion got more interesting since last I read it
. A bit late to the party, I know, but the smartest post in the thread is a few pages back by SixDaysShort.
I am absolutely not surprised that the reviewer had a bad impression of the game if he played the physical TCG, because at its core, Shadow Eara is an OK TCG at best - the thing which sets it apart from the pack is* its digital payment model and multi-platform support. The physical TCG market is very, very saturated and dominated (rightly) by the 100lb gorilla in the room which has more than 12 million (yes, million) active players. To stand out in the physical marketplace you need to have some combination of a highly innovative game, particularly good execution or a high profile licence (and the latter is not enough as basically all of Decipher's failed efforts attest - Star Wars, Star Trek and LoTR, you can hardly get 3 better licenses than that). As Shadow Era is a fundamentally not very innovative game, with no licence, and from the sounds of it has poor execution in its physical game, I'm not surprised it reviewed poorly.
I'm still baffled as to why Wulven thought it was a good idea to move into the physical game, other than maybe a personal desire by people at the company to get some physical property. Take a look at this cursory list of failed TcGs:
Star Wars (twice)
Lord of the Rings
Star Trek
Harry Potter
Marvel/DC superheroes
Stargate
X-Men
These are premium licenses, and most of those games were backed by big companies. All of them have failed. As far as I can tell, of the 100+ physical TCGs which have been released in the past 15 years or so, only 4 have any continuing level of success and I think WoW is fading fast. It's a brutal market, with exceptionally harsh network effect barriers that are basically impossible to overcome, and is rapidly being supplanted by the much cheaper to buy into "living card game" format (where you buy a box that has all of the cards for the set and then add to it over time with add-on packs, eg. Dominion and Citadel).
I don't know the extent to which efforts to get the physical game up and running have diverted attention from the online game or contributed to the incredible delay in this expansion, but it certainly seems to have been a questionable move from a business standpoint...
*or at least was, the pack is catching up and technical flaws in the SE platform are frustrating more and more people.
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