Is Hillside Games of Asheville, NC, The Worst Game Store In America?

As with all the entries in my blog, this is an opinion piece.  I say this right off from the start for the benefit of any trigger happy libel-plaintiff-wannabe that may or may not read this.

Gaming stores in general, let alone good brick and mortar shops, are hard to come by.  This sucks for us, the gaming community, for several reasons.  Without friendly local gaming stores, it gets harder to find a local gaming group; it is even harder to introduce new people into the hobby; you get less exposure to new products; and you can miss out on meeting great new people that don't live too far from  you. 

Someone once said that FLGS are like attorneys.  A town that is not big enough to support one attorney can easily make two attorneys very prosperous.  Two different stores in different parts of town give more exposure to the hobby; can coordinate different offerings; can work together on same-type offerings and can even run team stores against each other, as in, say MtG weekend tourneys.  That is why I was so taken aback when I read this article about what - in my opinion - is the level of assholishness demonstrated by Hillside Games of Asheville, NC.  You can read the article here: Hillside Games, Asheville: The Unfriendly Local Game Store.  


It appears that Hillside Games has, in my opinion, earned a reputation for bad customer service, bad business practices, overcharging customers' credit cards without their consent, and filing fraudulent DCI suspensions against people they don't like.  Although these are my opinions, they are based on actual customer comments which you can find here: Hillside Games, Asheville: The Unfriendly Local Game Store. 


Enter The Wyvern's Tale.  On February 17, 2012, The Wyvern's Tale announced in their Facebook page their intention of opening a gaming store in Asheville.  The following day, Hillside Games, Inc. registered www.wyvernstale,com, .net, .org, .us, .mobi, .info.  After being outed for these underhanded business practices, Hillside Games actually threatened to sue The Wyvern's Tale for libel.  In my opinion, the guys at Hillside Games of Ashville have forgotten the face of their fathers.


Personally, I would never visit a store that engages in these type of practices, and I mean both as to their customers and their competitors.  I've always envisioned FLGS as one of the few places left that actually promote family values.  You get to meet new people, work together and help each other to achieve a common goal in a dungeon, learn new tactics and strategies from better players as they kick your butt in a MtG game, and just generally hang out, socialize and share with people that have at least one interest in common with you.  The actions of Hillside Games of Asheville seem to embody the opposite of all this.

Here at Bad DM's The Good, The Bad and The Gamer, we wish much success and best of luck to The Wyvern's Tale in their new endeavor.