"free when you spend €130 / €130 on Harry Potter "

Huh, guess I can't spend any $ on HP or else I won't get it.
@huw

This is disappointing for anyone not planning on getting gringots. Which is fine. I am not. But the last two HP GWP had a more broad appeal... this will be the first year I don't buy any HP sets. A good GWP with a more versatile build, may have changed my mind.

As it is, if I don't get gringots what am I supposed to do with this?

My HP is focused on Hogwarts. But I understand there is appeal forDiagon alley stuff... just not from me. Especially when so many areas of Hogwarts have not been explored via Lego.... the kitchen for example...

I hope there'll be other worthwhile September GWPs; there's a lot of sets across multiple themes that launched in August that I want to pick up and hoped there'd be a decent offer. At least the theme restriction here is beneficial, those of us who'd rather leave this IP in the past for the usual reasons won't have it tacked onto our orders.

I was hoping for a modular common room to go with the Grand Staircase and Dormitory GWPs, but this is fine. At least the threshold isn't insanely high. I've got $100 of HP sets in my Lego cart already, so I'll add something else and wait a couple days to pull the trigger.

@Ridgeheart said:

"The analogy that mostly did the rounds in those days was "you bought the house, but - if you want to also have access to the bathroom, well, pay up!". Then again, dev to dev, I know we don't OWN the games, we just own the carriers or the copies of the packages. We don't even own the characters we make. I know it's in the EULA that we're not really buying that house, we're just leasing it, plus any and all rooms that the rentor decides to grant us access to. We just hammer "YEAH SURE WHATEVER I HAVE TOTALLY READ THIS" because we want to get on with the game."


Kind of sounds like what BMW is up to these days: have the people who buy their cars also pay a monthly fee/subscription to use features like seat warmers. No, they’re actually doing this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature

@StyleCounselor said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"You know, this past weekend, I dropped my daughter off at college. She's three hours away and out of our house and I won't see much of her. We'll text and e-mail a lot and there will be visits, but it's not the same.

Shortly after, I went to a bargain store and found a whole bunch of Marvel Legends figures on markdown. Not great, but not awful, and I was tempted to buy some. But it kind of felt empty doing so, and I ultimately passed. I realized that I was having a short-term desire to plug a daughter-shaped hole with some plastic toys that will take up space in my house. By the way, someday I'll die and she or my wife will have to figure out what to do with them. Action figures aren't either of their things.

Point being, arguing over the price or accessibility of a cute GWP feels like a waste of time and energy at this point. It's just *stuff.* It won't love you or hug you back, and you'll just want more of it after you get this one. And someday you'll die and it'll still be here, albeit probably inherited by someone who doesn't want it.

Sorry to be a downer. I'm giving some context. Complaints about Lego are fine, I guess, but they'll never really be communal in the grand scheme of things. I'd probably trade my whole Lego collectin to have my daughter back home. (This is hyperbolic and she wants to be at college and this is her growing up, so it's fine. I just miss my kid.)"

Brother, I feel your pain. I'm currently hosting my friend and his wife who just did the exact same thing. I have a junior in HS, so it feels like my heart is on the chopping block next. Chin up, Good Dad!!!

I don't know either how much more of the plastic toy stuff is in my future. I have way too much already. It's probably time to travel and do other things. As your contrarian-doppelganger, I buy this stuff in part because I connect with my son (and other dudes my age). But....."

Oh man...my youngest is 2, but in 20 years I'll have a triple-decker mountain of LEGO when he's done with it. Let's hope SOMEone picks up Dad's hobby...

Looks like a pretty good GWP but not aiming on getting Gringotts just yet (Concorde takes precedence!)
I may well get the excellent 76419 Hogwarts Castle and Grounds which will probably take a few months to drop in price on Amazon as I think it will be very popular at release.

Goblin

Seems a bit sad. Of course, I suppose we can thank J.K. Rowling for only naming two or three of the ones that work at Gringotts in Harry's time.

Everyone else is complainin this is DLC for the big set... for me, I can't afford the building, but I might bricklink this!

@Ridgeheart said:
" @NoOneOfImportance173 said:
"I would very much disagree with this comparison. LEGO isn't having you "pay" for this at all, unless you mean in terms of FOMO. It's a fine addendum to the main set, but you're not loosing anything without it - 76417 has all the main vaults from the movie, and is a complete package. If anything, this is like buying a skin pack in a video game. The game is perfectly complete without it, but if you get it, you can add a slightly extra cool look to the already complete thing.

It's no different than the Hogwarts Castle expansion GWPs of prior years (dorms, staircase). LEGO doesn't base the connections around them (in fact, the complete opposite), but if you have them, you can add something small extra.

(Also, as a complete aside, from a dev point of view, a lot of games put the DLC on the main disc and just have it be unlocked by purchasing. Just a common way of adding DLC by having everyone uniformly add an update on DLC release day. Just how the business tends to work for a lot of games. Can't speak to exactly how Capcom did it though, which may perfectly well be scummy in their attitude/methods)"

The analogy that mostly did the rounds in those days was "you bought the house, but - if you want to also have access to the bathroom, well, pay up!". Then again, dev to dev, I know we don't OWN the games, we just own the carriers or the copies of the packages. We don't even own the characters we make. I know it's in the EULA that we're not really buying that house, we're just leasing it, plus any and all rooms that the rentor decides to grant us access to. We just hammer "YEAH SURE WHATEVER I HAVE TOTALLY READ THIS" because we want to get on with the game.

But from a consumer's point of view it's incredibly frustrating to learn that - "say, you like Dudley, right? Elena? Would you like us to implement them in the future? Don't worry, they're already here! You already have them on your carrier! Now pay me twenty bucks for the privilege of adding them to the roster."

Okay, so - now take my seemingly unrelated griping about digital karate-men, and apply that to a physical product that people DO own (rather than leasing the individual bricks), because you hit the nail on the head with FOMO. If this GWP is used to "complete" the bank, then that implies that the bank is not complete without it, and that the people who miss out on the GWP are stuck with an incomplete model.

That is the thing though - this set isn't to "complete" the main set, and I don't know of anywhere LEGO states it as such. This set is a module, just like any Hogwarts expansion, etc. If it added something named, or extensive, or important to the set, sure? But 76417 has everything you could want out of Gringotts. Not having a random vault that was given away for free doesn't make your Gringotts any less complete than not buying a train station set makes your city passenger train incomplete.
While as a collector I might consider my own collection of Gringotts incomplete without it, your set doesn't suffer if it's not there, nor does LEGO advertise it as such. That's entirely personal preference/perception.

To return to the game analogy, if I say I want to collect every skin in the game, and there's a holiday skin that is only available for one day, that doesn't mean the game isn't a full package. The game is everything I paid for it to be. My own desire to have every skin is what is lacking - not the game's completion as a full package in and of itself."

@Rare_White_Ape said:
"I must be missing something.

This is free.

Why all the complaints?"

We like to complain.
Stickers and the complain that shall not be named are not even used.
This vault also seems a bit empty but maybe it's the weasley's vault.

I think it's a nice GWP for those that can't afford the Gringotts set or are holding off till the end of the year to get. But nothing beats the Grand Staircase 40577 GWP. Lego Harry Potter has been on the downtrend for me personally lately. I'm satisfied with what I got from the theme. I might still bite on that Gringotts for it's uniqueness alone tho.

@MeisterDad said:
" @StyleCounselor said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"You know, this past weekend, I dropped my daughter off at college. She's three hours away and out of our house and I won't see much of her. We'll text and e-mail a lot and there will be visits, but it's not the same.

Shortly after, I went to a bargain store and found a whole bunch of Marvel Legends figures on markdown. Not great, but not awful, and I was tempted to buy some. But it kind of felt empty doing so, and I ultimately passed. I realized that I was having a short-term desire to plug a daughter-shaped hole with some plastic toys that will take up space in my house. By the way, someday I'll die and she or my wife will have to figure out what to do with them. Action figures aren't either of their things.

Point being, arguing over the price or accessibility of a cute GWP feels like a waste of time and energy at this point. It's just *stuff.* It won't love you or hug you back, and you'll just want more of it after you get this one. And someday you'll die and it'll still be here, albeit probably inherited by someone who doesn't want it.

Sorry to be a downer. I'm giving some context. Complaints about Lego are fine, I guess, but they'll never really be communal in the grand scheme of things. I'd probably trade my whole Lego collectin to have my daughter back home. (This is hyperbolic and she wants to be at college and this is her growing up, so it's fine. I just miss my kid.)"

Brother, I feel your pain. I'm currently hosting my friend and his wife who just did the exact same thing. I have a junior in HS, so it feels like my heart is on the chopping block next. Chin up, Good Dad!!!

I don't know either how much more of the plastic toy stuff is in my future. I have way too much already. It's probably time to travel and do other things. As your contrarian-doppelganger, I buy this stuff in part because I connect with my son (and other dudes my age). But....."

Oh man...my youngest is 2, but in 20 years I'll have a triple-decker mountain of LEGO when he's done with it. Let's hope SOMEone picks up Dad's hobby..."

The "Swedish Death Cleaning" picked up on the fact that hobbyists often leave mounds of collectibles for adult heirs who don't want them. Some of those collectibles may even be worth lots of money, but the kids have no way of knowing that.

I think I really need to go through my comic books and leave notes on their storage containers: "This issue is the first appearance of X, and you might be able to sell it on eBay for some money," and other comics that could just say "These aren't really valuable, so give them to some kids."

With my Lego, yeah, I'm probably due to purge a lot of sets down to a few basic art pieces (like my Vader wall art and the floral sets). A bunch of the 6+ sets can probably go.

@ResIpsaLoquitur

I can feel where you're coming from. I have so many memories of my daughter I playing with LEGO and doing stuff. Then she outgrew it and I have all this Friends stuff that just sits there. It's hard to lose that connection or in your case her moving out. Unfortunately they have to grow up and leave the nest, but it sounds like you have created a world where they can always come back.

As for life, arguing about LEGO is silly. The internet is ultimately a waste since everyone has a different opinion and who knows what stems from it.

I like this GWP. I likely will get Gringotts eventually. But I agree, I have way too much LEGO as it is, so what's the point other than consume consume consume. Who has time to actually enjoy all of the great sets LEGO offers these days?

This is an excellent Gw/P.
If you don't get the big Gringott's Bank to add this on, your kid can have this desktop 'vault'/piggy bank while also having a couple of lesser expensive sets like the Quidditch Trunk and a couple of the House Banners to get to the $130usd threshold for early Xmas shopping.

I like this GWP.
And since if you buy the Gringotts set you get it anyway, it's basically a free add on to that set.

@ResIpsaLoquitur and @StyleCounselor:
I share your feelings. With my dad having died recently and my daughters growing up, the "stuff" will be all that's left sooner rather than later.
I still enjoy my hobby, but family is so much more important.

@AustinPowers said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur and @StyleCounselor:
I share your feelings. With my dad having died recently and my daughters growing up, the "stuff" will be all that's left sooner rather than later.
I still enjoy my hobby, but family is so much more important. "

Absolutely. Hope you keep on clicking (and enjoy the kid(s)), my favorite grumpy German. ;)

@Ridgeheart said:
"I'd go one step further - a few years back, Capcom pulled a particularly scummy move by making their players pay for content that was already ON the actual Street Fighter IV disc. Their reasoning was that they thought "DLC" stood for "disc-locked content", and that as such, it was totally okay for them to make players pay extra for something they'd already bought. I wish I were making that up."

Happens all the time. Computer CPUs are cheaper to manufacture in one configuration, so they make the fastest version and sell them with the speed clocked down for budget-conscious buyers. DIVX was a short-lived competitor to DVDs, where you got the disc on the cheap, but after two days from the initial purchase, you had to start renting the content if you wanted to rewatch it.

@Ridgeheart said:
"The real problem I have with this, is that Capcom charges you for something that's already there, installed, in your house, already present on the carrier you bought, which required no extra effort to develop or download."

The thing is, it _did_ require extra effort to develop. They just did it on the front end. It's cheaper to do it that way, if you can get it done before the discs go into production. The disc costs the same to produce whether the content is there or not, but downloads cost money to serve up.

@Sethro3 said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur

I can feel where you're coming from. I have so many memories of my daughter I playing with LEGO and doing stuff. Then she outgrew it and I have all this Friends stuff that just sits there. It's hard to lose that connection or in your case her moving out. Unfortunately they have to grow up and leave the nest, but it sounds like you have created a world where they can always come back.

As for life, arguing about LEGO is silly. The internet is ultimately a waste since everyone has a different opinion and who knows what stems from it.

I like this GWP. I likely will get Gringotts eventually. But I agree, I have way too much LEGO as it is, so what's the point other than consume consume consume. Who has time to actually enjoy all of the great sets LEGO offers these days?"

Yeah, I have a ton of lego from my childrens' childhood lying around. Luckily my older daughter (28) has continued the hobby and is currently building the Rivendell set. This is arguably the most beautiful lego set ever. Even my wife has started building art and flower sets. As for myself, Gringotts is a first day buy, and I hope to get the vault as well.

I have no idea if my kid will have kids. (Right now she says no, but she's 17 and has plenty of time ahead of her.) I really should maintain a grandchild stash of basic bricks.

I do have a nephew who's just starting with Lego, so there's that. I could laterally give some sets and bricks to him. We gave him a Mighty Dinosaurs set when he was around four and he absolutely loved it, even if it was a little advanced for him.

@PurpleDave said:

Happens all the time. Computer CPUs are cheaper to manufacture in one configuration, so they make the fastest version and sell them with the speed clocked down for budget-conscious buyers.]]

Almost but not quite. CPUs of a particular architecture are hard to make, so not all of them are able to achieve full performance after being manufactured. Let’s say the top-spec chip is a 12 core CPU and only 20% of them (the yield) on a big wafer were able to test with all cores running. These will be sold as the premium product and command a higher price.

For the next 20% of chips, 11 or less of the cores are functioning, so the slowest 3 of the cores are deactivated and these chips will be binned into the next product tier, which might be an 8 core CPU.

And so-on down the line for lower product tiers.

There’s nothing nefarious going on here. Chip manufactures simply cannot sell every chip they make as the whiz-bang 9000 CPU because of manufacturing defects.

Well past midnight and the set has not been released yet :-(

Just ordered the new Hogwarts castle together with the two HP GWP (40598 Gringotts Vault and 30651 Quidditch Practice)

@Altair1970 said:
"Just ordered the new Hogwarts castle together with the two HP GWP (40598 Gringotts Vault and 30651 Quidditch Practice)"

Thanks for the info - Gringotts bank is still not available in Denmark. I will never get to understand the Lego webshop

Update: Order finally placed after the normal shenanigan's of "your cart is empty", even after having added the items.

@StyleCounselor said:
" @AustinPowers said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur and @StyleCounselor:
I share your feelings. With my dad having died recently and my daughters growing up, the "stuff" will be all that's left sooner rather than later.
I still enjoy my hobby, but family is so much more important. "

Absolutely. Hope you keep on clicking (and enjoy the kid(s)), my favorite grumpy German. ;)"
Will do so.
And you may have noticed, I'm not even that grumpy anymore.
Recent events have told me to value what precious time I have and use it for things that make me happy. And contrary to popular belief, complaining doesn't make me happy.