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I've lost all faith in GameStop, and they lost my business!
Katashi-kun
Member Posts: 517
So I was out running around the other day and remembered I had a $20 credit since X-Mas when I passed by GameStop. I have been playing LOTRO on/off since launch and well nothing else is coming out for awhile to spend money on so why not, lets go get a 2-month gamecard!
There are 4 employees there atm including the store manager, walked to the desk and asked if they had any LOTRO gamecards. The employee/manager or whatever gave me this cross-eyed look and said whats LOTRO? {thinking to myself OMFG!} So you seriously have no idea what LOTRO is I replied!
He then turned to the other employees and asked what LOTRO was....the other 3 also had no clue! {I'm just astonished at this point!}
So like I told them you know Lord of the Rings Online, only the most famous fantasy story out there turned into an MMO!
Finally I got a response, "Oh that game, hasn't that game been shut down, we havn't had stock of that game or gamecards since a month after launch! All I've heard was that it sucks, nobody plays it and it was shut down like 6 months ago!"
{I'm thinking; well regardless of how a game might have turned out, or not! Not knowing about the current popular games and passing along horrible intel to other customers and ur an employee of a game store, that pretty pathetic, these ppl should be fired!}
Anyway I went into a bit more that the game was live and doing exceptionally well, and that I want this dumb-ass $20 credit turned into cash and that I would never shop at any of your stores again! With quite a bit of resistance and little more heated complaining on my part the manager gave me the cash and I left!
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
Comments
Sorry you had that experience. The folks at my local Gamestop are MMO goobs like me so they have a pretty good clue. Still, I have not seen a LOTRO game card in one for a while. I have seen them at Fry's and Best Buy though. You can take your cash there!
i myself have stopped all buisness with our local gamestop here they are rude and have no clue about anything you would think working in that type of store they would have some clue about games and not be rude snobs but the gamestop 50 miles away are pretty decent so i will have to go a tad out of my way but its a whole lot better than dealing with rude customer service that shouldnt be employed there in the 1st place
Obviously they don't have them because the game isn't doing well. Blame LOTRO for being a bad game. Don't blame Gamestop .
Game stop did not have any WOW game cards either. Does that mean WOW is as bad game too or doing poorly? In fact, all they had were some cards for Xbox Live.
You sure showed them! Take that 20 dollars, and your self righteous indignation and show the world!!!!!
LOL
Its just so damn annoying to go into a game store and know more than every employee combined! Not just LOTRO but anything!
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
LOL
I live in South Florida so there are about 50 Gamestops in my area, and the employees vary greatly at each one.
DO Gamestop employees get paid more then $2200/month?
PC games are dwindling down more and more at retail shops. Gamestop used to be THE place to go for PC games, long before Best Buy. Not sure about anyone else, but both gamestops in the city I live in hardly stock any PC games at all.
theres a 3x5 rack dedicated to PC games, and thats it in both shops. As for keeping stock of MMO's, unless the game just came out dont count on seeing much on the shelves. However Gamestop still sells a LOT of PC games on their website
its PC gaming's fault in general, not gamestop. Just compare the amount of games released on console vs. the PC. Then look at how many PC games are exclusively PC and how many are exclusively console.
since the 360 and PS3 have been released, theyve absolutely been destroying the PC in games available.
anyway, as far as walk in retailers go when I want to pick up a PC game its almost always Best Buy. Just 2 years ago I would never go to BB for games. Strange how things turned..
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
with all due respect i'd rather them be talking liek this than sell a game that was already shut down. OH WAIT *dOH*.
I just remembered the last time I went to gamestop they were selling RFonline for 30 dollars (Game was made Free to play months before then).
Whether LOTRO is being stocked or not is not down to the knowledge of the employees. LOTRO is obviously not in high demand. It's not surprising really. EQ2 didn't last very long in stores either, until expansions came along.
Which reminds me of this Penny Arcade comic.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
lol that sucks they should be fired... everyone at my local shop is very knowledgable and helpful
Remember Old School Ultima Online
Well we have a couple problems here, if you came in there and started screaming I want LOTRO and if you said (Loootro) and not say Lord of the Rings Online, I'd look at you crossed eyed too.
Every since oh I dunno 3-4yrs ago when I stopped using GameStop all together they lost touch with PC and stocked, knowledgeable only about console games. I if you want PC I suggest best buy, they might not know a shit about it but they stock damn near everything for quite some time, GameStop is more of a get in get out and then we'll sell it on our website instead of stocking it.
Anyway you can't blame the employees for not knowing the MMO world, they may be gamers but they may just play fps and console games, don't assume everyone is in your genre and knows what the hell your talking about.
I only ask about release dates otherwise i almost always know more about the games.
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day.
And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
A manager who doesnt know the current big contenders for mmorpgs. I can see an min wage moron not knowing much but a manager... lol
Manager of a retail outlet really doesnt imply much knowledge these days. You wont get any semblence of intelligence untill you get into the larger stores in more populated locations.
I know the manager and emplyees at my local EB know ludicrous amounts about most games in that store.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
as a former gamestop employee I totally feel your pain. I worked there from 1997 - 2004. GS was badass untill they went public and bought out eb. After that is pretty much became all about the money instead of good customer service.
PC is now strictly an afterthought with most of the stores in my area (right next to the home office) its all about used console games.
They also dont pay very well... so you end up with a lot of retarded teenage morons, most of the good staff left long ago, or was run off by poor district / regional management.
Sadly gamestop managers dont make a whole lot, and most of the good ones at least in the dallas area got run off. Things may have changed in the past few years... but I doubt it.
Quite the opposite, the problem is these days Gamestop focuses the vast majority of it's attention on console games, with computers being an afterthought.
I've had similiar issues with them on several occasions. Not only did they not stock or have any clue about the games or expansions I was interested in, I was told no they could not order it. The sole exception to this in the MMO field seems to be WoW, they know all about that game since they usually have a display up for it.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Yeah about the only reason to go there is if you own a console. I mean even WalMart has more of a selection in games than they do, or the ones here anyway.
Sure would be nice if they'd stop concentrating everything on consoles! Give PC some wall space instead of the small end-cap or side of a shelf!
Or better yet, keep all the 1P stuff which is currently the downfall of the PC genre on an end-cap and make a huge wall display just for the MMO field! At least the way I see it the only thing really making money on PCs atm are the MMOs. Sure there are alot of 1P games that are ok, but with so much piracy its hard to make money on those anymore.
Back on topic: I havn't owned a console system since yr 2 of the Gamecube era, and I still know more about console games than any employee thats ever crossed my path! The thing that really erks me alot are that most of the employees I come across don't know anything about PC or Console most times, and only point u towards the big name for that week. When you ask about a title they have no clue what its about or why its selling so well.
Me: So whats a good RPG?
Employee: Well GTA is selling well....whats an RPG!?
ME: /slaps employee with a pink salmon!
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
GameStop and Best Buy are both famous for this. Personally, I always check out the game and do my research BEFORE going to the store, and I never impulse buy. Always always ALWAYS check out the game online (at the very least) before buying, because the goons in the store are not only useless, but will purposefully feed you false information to make a sale.
With that said, I find that the reviews on their site are pretty accurate, even if the scores don't reflect. There are some obvious exceptions (the Kane & Lynch headlines a while back come to mind) but for the most part they are useful and informative.
EDIT: TO THE OP: To be fair, there are plenty of people who don't know what a "LOTRO" is and I can't blame them. If you had said "Lord of the Rings Online" to begin with, you could have saved yourself some frustration. Despite the number of people who play MMOs, there are still a vast number of people who don't even know they exist, so always assume you're dealing with someone who is clueless. I do agree with you, though, that it's a bit surprising they didn't even know LOTRO was still running, let alone carry game cards for it.
In the past when I frequented Best Buy, Circuit City, etc for my games. My fav line ever when an employee approached me when I was in the gaming section was:
"Nope, I know more than you do, go away!!"
^Aethios: Well I use accronyms alot because well the world is always online, and thats the way we speak now, and yeah alot of times they spill over into real chat...LOL As an employee at a game store you should know some, at least I think so.
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
I would totally agree, but to demand that they know every acronym related to anything in the entire gaming culture is just ludicrous. If you went to the music shop to buy a CD, would you expect the clerk to know every artist in every genre? The people working in the store are people too, and have their own tastes. The people working in GameStop and Best Buy are usually just console gamers and may not have even owned a computer in their lives.
EDIT: To further reinforce my point, I just started some classes for a degree in Game Development, one of which was History of Gaming. I would say roughly 75% of the class has never heard the term "MMO", yet every one of them is familiar with World of Warcraft. Just some food for thought.
I would totally agree, but to demand that they know every acronym related to anything in the entire gaming culture is just ludicrous. If you went to the music shop to buy a CD, would you expect the clerk to know every artist in every genre? The people working in the store are people too, and have their own tastes. The people working in GameStop and Best Buy are usually just console gamers and may not have even owned a computer in their lives.
No not at all, but come on, LOTRO is a no-brainer! Everyone in the world should at least know LOTR + an O ....LOL.... Those books are what define the fantasy genre of video games.
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
My friend works at a gamestop, I convinced him to tell every single person who bought a non-PC game that they were absolutely frickin retarded and should rot in hell. Believe it or not, their sales doubled for Console games since then.
It's the bottom half of the population, what do you expect?
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."