Quote Originally Posted by HMS Lydia View Post
Kieth, in another thread you indicated that you had received your retail order. Of course you can't fill any orders with it yet. But the point is, if you have your retail order you can be others do as well, and it is certain distributors have theirs. No retailer or distributor should have received anything until all KS backers received ther stuff. Yes, I consider that an error. What do I expect them to do about it. Nothing! I'm okay with the fact that Ares realizes that this didn't go the way planned. I don't think there was an intentional thought to withhold anything from backers, or purposely delay it getting out. This was just a little poor planning and coordination. Ares is the warehouse/distributors customer as such there should have been some control over order of shipping.

The product shipped to distributors and retailers for the most part will sit on shelves until the street date. The warehouseman that picked that order could have picked an order to KS backer, who would have made use of it over the holiday season. Look I'm not mad and I'm certainly going to continue to support Ares and the game. It was an mistake. I appeciate the KS update and that satisfies me. Will it satisfy everyone, probably not.

I'm not so sure me getting my retail supplies indicates anything in regards to other stores (outside the German incident we know about). I deal directly with Ares for my orders and products. Most if not almost all other store would be going through distributors. I know for a fact that my FLGS has not gotten their retail order (or KS order for that matter) as I talked to the owner last night when he was helping swap out a broken dishwasher at one of my rental properties. lol

Warehouses and distributors charge money per square foot to store products. I don't see any company being able to keep the warehouse from shipping out large volume consuming stacks of boxes just because the KS got pushed back. They are going to clear that warehouse space as fast as possible and leave the waiting for Jan 13th to someone else. I think that is what happened with Germany. The warehouse shipped all the retail orders to them with a do not release date, as soon as they could. I'm sure this was to clear space as well as help ensure the EU had the products in time to meet the street release date. That German distributor got it, processed it and sent it out early for whatever reason. Things like this is what makes it so hard for a small company to do simultaneous world wide releases something often called for on the Wings side of the house).

Ares is in a bad spot as the warehouse they use is also their US distributor. So if they have to fire the warehouse, they have to come up with a whole new distribution method for all of their games.

On a personal note, I don't think any KS should use the reward of getting the product early. It's not really a tangible reward, ultimately does not really matter to 99% of potential backers and can only hurt you as a business.