You are currently viewing Let’s Battle Tour: Kasota, MN – A Clusterfuck of the Ages

Let’s Battle Tour: Kasota, MN – A Clusterfuck of the Ages

Let’s Battle Tour: Kasota

The event “Let’s Battle Tour Kasota” seemed like a good event to everyone that first signed up and paid the $22.00. You were promised a customized T-shirt, messenger bag, and customized name tag for participating.

I was watching the videos every week looking for information about the event and only got 45 seconds of information about it and this article posted by Wargaming.

Notice how it says there that you get customized merchandise as I have described above.

Only two videos mentioned the Let’s Battle Tour:

 

And another video that went missing for some time and is now back online:

Here is a screenshot of their channel at the time:

Notice it (the video) was missing as you can see here. This was taken on the day of the event. The point being is that little information was available to people going to the event except an email we got two days before the event and the two articles put out on it.

The Let’s Battle Tour was disorganized at the start. We got there (my grandfather and I) at 4:30pm. Nobody was checked in for at least a half an hour even though there were over 100 people ahead of us and many more behind us. Each truck brought in 20 or so people over 12 times in the half hour before the event, with many more trucks bringing in even more people as we waited.

The wait in the check-in line was a half an hour. Then came the tank line which was supposed to be organized by tiers 1-10.

This is where it get’s interesting: I was physically within earshot to hear one of the ‘Drive A Tank’ personnel say to the employees running the tank rides , “Wargaming just told me that we are sending anyone who doesn’t want to drive the half-track or Abbot APC back to the end of the line and have everyone line up single file.”

Pretty shocking since the Sherman was what a lot of people wanted to ride. But to have to wait a half-hour to an hour and then be told you have to go to the back of the ever longer line was just plain garbage on Wargaming’s part.

Was that really sad? Yes it was. I can only imagine how mad people were to be told that after waiting a half hour to an hour in line that the wait had been for nothing.

This event had over 500 people from what I counted. Later in the day those lines got even longer and more people had to be sent to the back of the line.

This is just poor planning on Wargaming’s part.

You see, the original plan was to have an hour for each tier and 3 vehicles transporting people around the course. The Abbot APC, a half-track, and a Sherman Easy 8 with the maximum capacity of all three being 23 people. I can imagine the surprise of having so many people at an event like this, but didn’t Wargaming know the amount of tickets they sold?

Of course they did! Because they prepared plenty of food for the event which was one of the only good things it had going for it, really.

So the question is: Why not a better system of organization?

I can think of two possibilities:

  • One: they didn’t know how many people were going to show up.
  • Two: they just didn’t care.

Let’s discuss both.

Option One: they didn’t think so many people would show up. Could be possible considering the lack of staff checking people in at first and the fact that the tier system was designed for only so many people.

Option Two: it was simply they didn’t care. This could be evidenced by the fact that there was plenty of food and the quote from the let’s drive a tank personnel that essentially relegated people to mindless cattle.

For me it is the first since they didn’t have too many people checking people in, only 5 including Tragic Loss who was handing out waiver forms. These are required by federal law and such for business of this nature. Let’s say you were finished with tank rides and eating food then what would you do?

The obvious answer being hang out with friends and wait for your customized messenger bag and t-shirt. Yes, there was a bingo twitter, Instagram contest involving taking photos of tanks, players, and Wargaming employees. That only took like 30 minutes to do at most to win a t-shirt or other prizes.

Then you could play at the game stations which there were only so many of. Then there was waiting to get your customized merchandise which you were supposed to get a text for. Waited two hours and still got nothing, then you hear the rumor “they are only giving t-shirts to those that stand in line” an anonymous person told me.

So we stood in line, my grandfather and I, for three hours and we got no text and the line never moved.

I have submitted a ticket and I suggest to those that haven’t to submit one as well. Now onto the finale.

In conclusion, the event did cost a lot of money for Wargaming to put on. The normal cost of riding a tank was $300 down to $200 with Groupon with bigger packages ranging from $1000-$5,000 for tank crushing and driving the easy 8 and t-55.

To be transparent Wargaming covered these costs for the Abbot APC, The half-track, and the Easy 8.

What could Wargaming have done better? Organize! Put a schedule out and make announcements when things change. The event was okay in my opinion , but could have been made a lot better if it had been properly organized. I submitted a ticket to support asking for the messenger bag and the t-shirt to be sent to me and for some sort of compensation. I will conclude this piece by leaving my ticket and their response.

 – This story edited and formatted by Thing 1

This Post Has 10 Comments

  1. Gomez_Adams

    This all looks and sounds very familiar. It’s about the same sort of complete dysfunction, disregard and chaos as that gathering that Meatslab went to over in Alabama a few years back.

    One would think they would have learned to do a better job, but I guess when you truly don’t give a damn, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

  2. Thing 1

    You are correct! You can read about that here. The similarities…oh, who are we kidding?

    It’s the same half-assed, dysfunctional shit done by the same half-assed, moronic, uneducated, dysfunctional people.

  3. Insurrectional_Leftist

    That would “PISS ME OFF” …!

    Did he say if he got a response back from WGNA yet on his ticket ?

    Has anyone gotten anything, or any form of compensation back on this matter at all ?

    Has anyone gotten any communication period back from them on this?

    How many categories of non-delivered goods/services have been violated here? Possible false advertising? Or lack of goods promised has occurred here, and to how many people etc?

    What else are we over looking here? Besides “Utter Incompetence, Ineptitude, and don’t give shit Wargaming business practices?”

  4. Thing 1

    Dude, it’s the last fucking image. Support replied saying that it wasn’t their job. They blamed the fucking event organizer.

  5. Insurrectional_Leftist

    Ah… I see that now.

    And I wonder if this is the same organizer they still have been using since last time since the past debacles? But, still blaming the event organizer? Not taking responsibility for this? Why doesn’t WG get their act together, and straighten the problem out?

    See, this affects your business! Your reputation, your customers, your players experience, your physical contact experience with real live people in contact who drive hours to come to your “live” events to see you! They pay a fee even, with promised expectations, as a guest to activities. And you’re meeting “your customers” Face-to-Face and you are trying to make a first and lasting impression upon them as you how you wish them to view you as a professional organization who care’s about them as a person, a customer, a player, and the money they spend with you, and most importantly the time they spend with you!

    The customer service you provide to them, is also exemplified through this experience, in many different ways. Trying to get it right to the very best of your ability means something to these people. It should mean something to you as a business firm who needs their support, time, and money to remain in business in the NA region who in all accounts that we have observed on this site, needs to stop the downward spiral of this trend of the NA population mushrooming.

    Sorry, I didn’t catch the last image apparently. ( my fault )

  6. Thing 1

    It’s bullshit. They don’t hire “organizers”. It’s their fucking employees that go there, set the shit up and fuck it all up.

    No organizer would EVER do something for them and not have a credit to themselves. It’s why you see the TICKET MASTER logo on any concert advertisement and shit like that.

    They did this using Eventbright. It is a service that allows YOU to set the whole thing up.

    Wargaming themselves were the organizers and they used Eventbright to sell the fucking tickets and shit. That was it. Wargaming are SOLELY responsible for the fuck up. All Eventbright did was provide the tickets and announcements across social media. That was fucking it.

    And now Wargaming are putting the whole thing off on Eventbright when the fact is they had NOTHING at all to do with ANY of it.

  7. Shadora

    I think driving around in tanks would be a very cool long-term promotional opportunity for WG. There are a lot of people who would want to do this, even people who don’t play their game that would pay to go because it is cheaper in mass than to go alone or with a few people. They might even make money with these events, if they were done right, even if no one winds up playing their game.

    The dysfunction though seems to be something that follows this company around everywhere it goes. They need to right the ship and should be dedicated to quality and they should fix this mess for the participants.

  8. Insurrectional_Leftist

    I guess the ole saying seems to apply, “ The only time their not lying is when their lips are not moving” ?

  9. Meatslab

    I would rather gargle a bucket filled with nails and diarrhea before I would ever attend another WG event!

  10. Thing 1

    Don’t hold back now, Meatslab…tell us all how you REALLY feel. 😉

Leave a Reply