"Really? REALLY?!? You are going to make the claim that Mantic is one of like 3 companies to ever ship their stuff on time? Wow. That's pretty sad. Between a friend and I, we have purchased at least 12 different KS products, from 12 different companies, and ALL of them have shown up on time (or early).
After reading through this entire post, the only hostility I felt was from you, Judge. Now, admittedly, reading the written word and inferring tone of voice can sometimes be difficult. But, the tone I was "hearing" was defensive in nature. Assuming Warwick13 is correct and you "followed" him to this forum topic to defend Mantic does seem a little fanatical to me."
I never said only 3 Kickstarters have delivered on time, nor did I make a specific example of the twelve you've backed. Now, I was speaking generally about gaming ones, but perhaps I should have been more specific and mentioned the CNN article too. But, here's some recent high profile examples that haven't even shipped yet along with their original due dates.
Ogre – Nov 2012
Sedition Wars – Nov 2012
Red Box Games – Oct 2012 (n.b. a few people have gotten some items)
Dreamforge Games – Oct 2012
Heck, even little tiny Kickstarters like Savage Outfitters had a due date of Nov 2012 and isn't done yet.
On the other hand, Dreadball has an estimated date of Dec 2012 and Jan 2013, and every single one due Dec and Jan have all been shipped as of last week. To me, that means on time (and for hundreds of backers who were expecting Jan, early).
I only "followed" Warwick because someone posted a link to this TMP post on Dakka, who read Warwick's post and took it at his word as apparently many here are doing. I absolutely did come here to defend Mantic and _especially_ the other posters on the Mantic forums. As others have pointed out, you can read the thread in question and see the disconnect between what was posted/said and what has been claimed by Warwick here.
Now, let me be clear. I am not a paid Mantic spokesman – hell for years I ignored them as a GW clone. I only recently became a fan due to Kings of War which has now become my mass battle game of choice.
I also personally disagree with retail getting copies before some backers. But Mantic has been transparent about pretty much everything. I also understand the realities of contractual deadlines to distributors who are expecting copies to send to their lifeblood – retail stores – for the biggest shopping season of the year. And I also find it REALLY hard to get mad at a company who has shipped all Dec 2012/Jan 2013 pledges IN DECEMBER 2012.
Here's a couple links where Mantic has been very transparent about what's going on:
Nov 9 – link
"But we want to be totally honest, although your copy will be in the post positively bursting with miniatures goodness and the next three months releases, there is a (small) chance that distributors will ship quickly and you may see the game hit the shelves of some retailers. However, yours will be packed full of exclusive goodies and early rewards "
Nov 23 – link
"The next piece of exciting news is that we saved enough copies of the game to ship all of the Kickstarter Pledges scheduled for January ahead of Christmas. They will now ship at the same time as everyone else's Kickstarter rewards. Just to keep you informed we will be shipping out distributor orders next week as well, so if any are super quick they may hit shelves next Saturday – but they should be arriving at the same time as yours the following week – though obviously without the MVPs and the other goodies you'll all have in your first shipment! We needed to get the trade orders sent in parallel if they were to get into the retail outlets for Christmas – we think this will bring lots more people into the game"
Nov 30 – link – shipping begins
Dec 14 – link – everything has shipped
---------------
Anyway, here's the TL;DR version for anyone perusing this thread:
Mantic shipped Kickstarter Dreadballs as promised, with all the extras that retail doesn't get, to it's backers. Oh, and the Mantic Forums are full of nice people. :)
