I'm going to preface what I am about to say by mentioning that the only purchase I have ever made from this store was a bottle of glue and some dice when I rocked up to a tournament horrendously unprepared. The only vested interest I have in these guys is tournament support.
Being important to your hobby doesn't make it important to mine. You are correct i have no idea who .TCC is , that's the point. The day they open a shop in my town that may change, until then the only effect they have on me is to lessen the viability of my local shop with their pricing.
Thing is, it's not just important to my hobby, it's important to a hell of a lot of other peoples as well. We're talking about a store that pretty much single handedly supports the Sydney tournament scene with prize support, and yet these guys somehow do not support the hobby because they are a big mean online store than hands out discounts?
But hey, apparently fucking over the online store that supports pretty much all the major tournaments for the most populous city in the goddamn country is totally justified when they have a negative effect on your personal LGS which is easily mitigated by the regulars in your LGS simply agreeing to not buy online.
If the hobby goes online only it will disappear in a few years. The 'out dated' B&M is what keeps the out dated hobby going.
Bullshit.
B&M is a horrendously outdated model for a company like GW. They need to choose whether they want to be a supplier or retailer; otherwise they're competing with many of their own customers (ie independent B&M retailers as well as online stores.)
By your logic, every other game should require their own stores, which is nonsense. Warmachine, Infinity, Malifaux, Dust and Dystopian Wars are all going strong in our area off the back of independent retailers (especially the 1st two, they're booming like crazy), and GW could be doing the same by simply closing their own inefficient retail division and leaving it to LGSs.
They obviously have no real commitment to the hobby if GW saying they cannot guarantee the order makes them.drop the support so quickly. All they are upset about is having to share the booming popularity of the new releases.
They have had real commitment to the hobby, and continue to have real commitment to the hobby. Don't confuse loyalty to GW with commitment to the hobby.
They can support the hobby without supporting GW games. This just means that they take all the time, money and effort they have been putting into supporting GW systems and instead dump it into Warmachine and Infinity.
They're not upset about having to "share the booming popularity of upcoming releases", they're upset at GW deliberately trying to minimise their market share after they have spent so much time supporting and furthering GW games.
By the way, this doesn't just affect online stores. This move is going to affect all independent retailers, regardless of their physical presence. It's an obvious ploy by GW to force people to buy through their own retail and direct sales channels rather than their LGSs (which may or may not offer a discount) or online (which generally will offer a discount).