Yeah I pretty much assumed all along that the Mythic Tier "unlocks" would be exclusive to the pledgers, just like the "limited edition" releases would only go to pledgers of any sort, and then the "Pulse exclusives" would be to the website. I don't like that idea of course, I would prefer that anything they create would be available to anyone who wants to buy it (and I don't just mean those willing to fork over for scalpers on ebay!). But that is the impression they've given all along. SOME stuff will only ever be for those who "backed" the campaign during that tiny fundraising window, hence would only be available to others via the re-sale aftermarket.
HeroQuest shouldn't be some kind of secret, elite thing that is only for a very select niche of nerdy adults with money to burn, it should be like it was back in the day, an attempt to be a mainstream dungeon crawler for the masses that was fun and easy to learn, which kind of requires it to be widely available. If a big portion of it is sealed off and only given to collectors (who may not even ever take it out of the packaging to actually play it with friends), then it's a waste, in my humble opinion and goes against the spirit of the original product. But companies will do what they want, I don't have to like it, but I suspect and fear they won't change that, though the only way to attempt to change it would be lots of fan backlash against keeping that stuff hidden and elite. The more of my friends who have a game means more opportunities for me to play it, as I see it, and that means more word of mouth to introduce it to others. I guess a couple of alternate sculpts of characters isn't that big a deal, but we're talking entire quests, that surely people will copy and distribute, whether Hasbro likes it or not, so they might as well sell them to all and make more buck. The "early backers" can still say they got it early, possibly at a discount.
So the only "guarantee" if they release into retail, which all info seems to point to so far (would all these retailers really post misinformation based on rumor and wishful thinking only? that would be bad business for sure!) is that after the orders are fulfilled in the next month or so (assuming no delays), people could expect to be able to buy the Game System, Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord, and, maybe, if it's real, the Frozen Horror. The last one was never mentioned at all in the pledge campaign and the only hint that anything else would be coming out was the very careful and vague scripted answer in the Q&A video, that if people requested it maybe stuff like that would be looked into in the future.
I'm hopeful, but also skeptical at this point. I recall that lots of times stuff gets announced, or leaked or rumored, even getting posted to websites and then later gets cancelled (I'm thinking here of even pre-orders on Amazon.com). Until an official report comes from Hasbro, I would take it with a grain of salt, no matter how many gameshop pages post about it, that's my feeling now anyway. Why would they give them this info, knowing they would release it to the public, only to back out of it later? Who knows, but game companies like any corporation advertising their products (which is what this is, intentional or not) make mistakes, we've seen it happen before. It would be extremely odd for some countries outside the US (and not even the UK!) to get a formerly US exclusive expansion, with no mention of it at the NA base page, right?
So while more content is welcome (still waiting to see what changes would be made to it), I'm taking it with a grain of salt, but keep those reports coming in!
by Blayze » October 1st, 2021, 1:54 pm 
