Eudemonia

This review is strictly for the board games. Although their selection is small and their prices are normal retail values, the games that they have in stock are all popular and well known. I didn’t have time to check to see what board games that had in stock to rent to play which I will try to do next time.

I really like Eudemonia. It’s a fun place to sit and game on the computers or play card games like Magic, if that’s what you’re into. I’m in my 30s so I’m in the minority here usually. Sometimes it can get loud with some of the younger folks yelling and swearing. Doesn’t bother me all that much and the staff does a good job of managing all of that. The internet connection is pretty quick. If you have an issue connecting to a game, they usually give you a credit. Playing is fairly cheap. They have a pretty good selection of snacks and drinks to play while you game.
There are a few things that prevent me from giving them a full 5 stars.
1. It can get really dirty, especially dusty in there. The monitors and keyboards really need to be cleaned more often, especially with the eating habits of some of the folks who play there.
2. Update some of the keyboards and mice. It’s hit or miss in terms of quality.
3. Some healthier snack choices (besides peanuts) would be cool. If the first two were remedied though, I’d definitely up my rating.

I frequent the game store every week. From a mtg players point of view: it’s a good place to experience competitive mtg in any any and almost all formats around the week. Extremely large amount of mtg singles for buy/​sell.

I have been coming to this store for over 1.5 years
~ ~ ~ Scroll down to the last paragraph if you do not feel like reading my detailed opinion/​review ~ ~ ~
Card Games: The primary focus is magic the gathering, it is actually the only card game they have. They sell singles, event decks, fat packs, booster packs, intro decks, and they also buy singles. They sell singles at fairly reasonable prices. They buy singles at some what decent prices. They do not buy your singles with cash unlike what they say on the website. They only do store credit and check. Expect a large difference between store credit and check value. The magic dealers them selves are great to work with. They are very informative, not afraid to throw in jokes, and overall nice people. The magic community at this store if great for all ages. You will meet a great bit of people and most likely make a lot of new friends.
Board Games: There selection is very scrimped upon compared to games of berkeley and it’s your move. They host board game nights on thursdays. The community of board game night is older people. Overall the community plays much more difficult games that it won’t be easy for kids to jump into. In the matter of fact, I have not seen one kid play on board game night.
Computers: The computers here are above average computers that will play many games. They have well over 20 games on each computer. If you need a game to be installed via steam, just login and download it. The computers do have there moments, but you will get help from an employee quick. The techs are usually there in the morning. I myself made friends with the techs and at times we play games together. The prices seem pretty fair.
RPG gaming: They offer DnD and Pathfinder, but to be honest, I do not play any of the 2. That means I do not know the nights nor the community.
Overall store summary: They do sell snacks and drinks but they are over priced. I really wish they can have actual food but there isn’t. This store is not vapor (e-​cig) friendly. There is times where you can stand at the register staring hopelessly waiting for service but most of the time that won’t happen. The most played pc game would have to be league of legends. If you are a regular customer you will become friends with the employees. The one thing that kind of ticks me and my group is that it feels like there is no customer appreciation. There is a strong BO smell (the scary thing is when you get use to it) At the end it is a great place for fellow nerds to meet and hang out but there is some stuff that needs to be worked on.

Pretty cool game shop with collectible card games, board games, various gaming die, a nifty snack and drink area (otaku need their Pocky and ramune soda!) and a seriously awesome selection of MTG cards. The girl at the counter was super friendly and offered to show us anything we asked. There’s also a LAN room at the far end of the shop for computer gaming and a back room for game tournaments.
I meant to buy a new 20-​sided die at another gaming shop around the corner from Eudemonia, but the other place was so crowded and busy I could barely get a staff member’s attention. Luckily in Eudemonia I was able to peruse all the polyhedron pretties in peace.

I love this shop. It’s a really great combo of stuff. People are chill and they have a lot of great products for sale. The card counter, is the best thing ever!
That being said, I’ll call ahead to make sure Sam isn’t there if I want to go buy. For someone in customer service, he’s a next level ass. Rude to people paying so that he has a job… not smart business practice. Joshua on the other hand, managed to make up for what Sam lacks. He was great.

$ 45 PTQ?! I’m not a poor nerd but that is way too high. Even with factoring in that it is a new high demand set, supplying product, prize support and paying judges… none of that matters, the entry fee should just be less.

I have very mixed feelings about this place. On one hand I really like this place. The atmosphere, bar none is fantastic. There is so much to do here from playing League of Legends with a lot of other people (or other games that are installed on their PC’s), tables in the back for you to play any card you’d like with friends. The people who go here… well most of them are awesome. Friendly, and good sports just trying to have fun playing whatever games they like to play. My main issue with this place is staff. I go here for Magic: The Gathering. Sometimes, I bring in cards to trade in because I’m going to make big purchases. I’ve done this three times now and each time I have been met by a very rude, abrasive clerk. Now, they do handle business and give me fair prices which I’m happy with, but their attitudes are just so bad. Last time I went here I brought in a large stack of cards and the gentleman helping me complained about it and then told me he can’t accept most of the cards and I’m wasting his time. I’m a customer and trading in those cards to make bigger purchases. Hundreds of dollars worth of purchases that I’ve decided to not make anymore because I’m tired of dealing with the staff. Each time I have tried to trade in cards I’m made to feel like I’m doing something wrong and I’m an inconvenience with how rude the staff is so I’m completely done with the sales side of this store. I’ll keep going to play Magic in the back because I enjoy to people and atmosphere, but as far as spending money on Magic I’m not going to anymore.

This is a great place to come if you want to see how *not* to treat customers. Common things you’ll hear from the guys at the counter include:
«I’ll be with you as soon as I’m finished eating my lunch.»
«Oh, the buy price you see online isn’t always accurate.» (this after you drive all the way down to sell cards at advertised buy price.)
((crickets)) as they stare at you and never ask if you need help
«Oh, I’m sorry, that order you placed a week ago… we never shipped it»
Feel free to add some of your own, they’re a gold mine for poor customer service quotes.

Customer service is lacking. The women are good, but the men have NO clue what customer service is.
If I ask how they are today, they alway got some smart ass remark. Or just plain don’t say anything/​ignore the question.
They had NO computers to use and one computer was on, but not being used. About an hour later an employee comes up and tells me it’s his computer and that he works here and was using it… Should you he working and NOT on the computer? That why this place has horrible customer service, employees are ON computers rather than helping customers. Go clean that smelly bathroom or starting painting the gross walls. Do something. Leave me alone.
And they are expensive.
³⁄₈ favorite game is gone. Wonder of they saw review.

Since my last review, I discovered a few things that brightened my impression of Eudo.
I got to know a couple of employees there, and they’re pretty cool and friendly. For the life of me, I can’t remember their names. I can remember Dean though — he runs the place and brings his dog sometimes.
Also, they managed to secure an empty store for days with large attendance, or to hold side events away from the main store. It’s pretty sparse, but with folding tables and chairs set up, it works.
Dean has been shoring up the store a bit with a couple of projectors and monitors, for Magic players to keep track of play time. It’s a godsend; I don’t have to keep bugging people about how much time we have left.
The stale smell doesn’t bother me anymore. Maybe I happened upon a sweat-​a-​thon around the time that I wrote my initial review. Huh.
MtG supplies are on par with what I’ve seen at Games of Berkeley.
The boardgame selection is still pretty poor though. And there are these two broken soda machines near the back that I wish will be gone, freeing up some space in the store. Probably won’t make a huge difference, but they’re just… sitting there.

Huge LAN area that’s almost never crowded (except in the case of birthday parties and whatnot).
This place is a spot for gamers and geeks. Magic, D&D, and a LAN center combined. If you’re looking for board games like Life or Sorry, this is not the place that you will find it.
You will find deeper games, however — Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and various sci-​fi themed Monopoly. It’s a niche place, but definitely worth a look if you’re trying to find something for a nerdy (is nerdy still an insult? I don’t think so) friend of yours.
There’s also a fantastic LAN area, with rentable headphones and a good amount of popular games pre-​installed — Starcraft, League of Legends, Day of Defeat, etc. It’s only about $ 3/​hour, so it’s definitely worth it if you’re just looking to burn an hour or so. Love this place.

Customer service is atrocious. The guys behind the counter never want to help are are very rude to customers. The girl is nice though. Too bad, because the otherwise have a great selection.

Eudemonia has the challenge of being a secondary game store in a town mostly owned by Games of Berkeley. As such, it does an admirable job holding its own. Of course, it’s main distinction/​draw is the banks of computers available for online gaming — WoW, LoL, Halo, Starcraft 2, or what have you, at what seem like reasonable prices. They also have an active M: tG community and run a lot of events.
I’m a bit of an odd duck as I do neither of those, but rather appreciate Eudemonia for its boardgame nights primarily. The store stocks a decent amount of board games, including all the new and shiny ones, but doesn’t focus its efforts (understandably) on competing in terms of selection with GoB. Their play area in the back is well lit and relatively spacious, given constraints, and doesn’t feel like an underground cave like GoB can. The people who play are friendly and fun, and the staff at Eudo mostly seems eager to please.
I enjoy coming here when I can. It’s not the best game store in the Bay Area, but it’s certainly worth a visit if you’re around, or looking for fun.

I recently started going to Eudemonia because I heard about their Magic Sealed League. In the last few weeks I have been in the store on multiple days and I am a little confused by the previous reviews because I have not experienced any of the negative things mentioned. The workers have all made an effort to get to know me and they have been nothing but polite and helpful. I can also honestly say that I have yet to encounter weird/​bad smells or hordes of misbehaving children.
Now the thing with the other reviews that angers me is that there is a lot of mention of fat guys and nerds. Well, I’m a fat girl and I really don’t see how this has anything to do with the review. The players I have seen at the store have been fat, skinny, white, asian, male and female. Also if we are going to talk about the customers, I’ll say that they have all been very friendly and inviting.
I have been very happy with the store and the only improvements I would ask for are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. (Please fix the Pepsi machine!)

I really wish I could give this store a better rating, but I can’t.
First off, the majority of the people who come here are highly immature and do not know how to act in public. Another good 80% of those individuals have no clue that soap and deodorant keep you clean and hygienic.
Next offense? The attitude of the staff members. While several of the full-​time staffers are VERY nice people and have excellent customer service skills, there are 3 to 4 guys that are always rude when you ask them for assistance with anything. Sorry, but at the prices this place charges, your staff should be smiling and willing to help customers in ANY way possible.
Finally, this building smells. Some days it stinks like a toilet has backed up and never cleaned.
While I love this type of store in general, I’d have to say Eudemonia is the WORST RPG/​MTG shop I’ve visiting in the Bay Area.
It’s not worth the schlep here to draft MTG; Oakland is closer and far better across the board; especially where customer service and maturity levels are concerned.

I’ve only been here once but it was a pretty good experience. I paid around $ 10 for 3 hours of gaming PC time. The two games I wanted to play, Mechwarrior Online and Planetside 2, were not up-​to-​date on their systems, so I spent at least 40 minutes just waiting for the games to patch themselves.
I told the store people what was going on and they added those 40 minutes back to my account. They let me browse the web through Firefox during the update time too.
MechWarrior Online ran really well on their systems. High frame rate at 1920×1080 resolution. Planetside 2 ran very poorly whenever I got into a big battle, and big battles are that game’s selling point, so that wasn’t very fun. But I hear that game runs poorly on even the beefiest machines, so I don’t know how much of the issue is because of Eudomonia’s machine build quality. Whatever the cause, I can’t recommend Planetside 2 at Eudomonia. Frame rate was just too low.
Overall Eudemonia was a pretty cool place. It’s in a great location surrounded by lots of nice places to eat, too. From what I can tell, it’s the only gaming LAN center available in the San Fran-​Oakland area. Keep this place alive! It’s all we got!
I hope they install Chivalry and Natural Selection 2 some day, too. :)

I was very displeased with Eudemonia today. I went online and purchased 13x of a single Magic card for $ 1.49 each. I went into the store to pick them up, only to find that my order had not only been canceled, but the price of each card has gone up to $ 2.99. Doubled the original price. I spoke to a very unpleasant young man who would not sell me any of the cards at the original price. He showed me the store policy about purchasing more than 4x of any one card, but there was nothing written there about what happens to the order above 4. A employee over the phone spoke to me after I read their store policies at home and he said «Once you purchase 4x of any 1 card, then anything above that will be canceled and refunded» I explained to him that my entire order was canceled and I had to bitch at the young punk at the register to sell me just the regular 4 at the original price.
Overall, a terrible experience where I lost a lot of money and Eudemonia lost a lot of business. I will not be going into their store and resort to just ordering Magic cards on
.

Meh. Not much to say about the LAN center part here. I’ve visited my vast share of LAN centers, but this one is probably the least organized. Nearly half of the very little selection of computers were out of order, and the layout of said computers are terrible! I suppose it’s hard to format a good layout with such a narrow store. Their selection of games were all of the popular games, of course, but nothing more. It’s cool, cause we were only there to play 1.6.
The store section was pretty cool. There were a ton of junk food, sodas, and energy drinks for sale. Along with a shitton of board games. There were also a whole lot of people playing MTG & D&D in the back room.
I guess what made me dislike this place was the snottiness of the workers there. TERRIBLE customer service. I’m sorry, I don’t play MTG or D&D, but when it comes to computer games, I will knowledge the fuck out of you. So don’t turn your nose on me when I ask you questions about YOUR store and mumble some piece of crap I cannot comprehend because I LOOK LIKE someone who wouldn’t know shit about anything geeky.
Horrible smell. Sorry, there is no way I’d ever get used to this level of reekosity.

When you own and run a business that attracts the MMORPG/​Magic/​Dungeons and Dragons crowd, that doesn’t mean that you should let both the interior and exterior of your establishment reflect the unkempt, grimy, apathetic stereotype of the nerd. As I walked in I was slammed with the scent of unshowered bodies and social ineptitude; moving forward I will admit I was impressed with the varied array of chips, soft drinks, candies, and instant noodles they had for sale — a paradise for the junk food junkie like myself, as well as for the online warrior too busy leveling up to care about eating real food. The two young people behind the counter severely lacked in customer service and manners; yes, because being surrounded by sweating, heavy-​breathing, high-​pitched, nasal-​voiced, awkward WoW players all day and night somehow entitles you to be an asshole to potential customers. Their greetings were half-​assed and uninterested at best, and when asked questions there was no rush to help you out nor any feeling of you being a valued customer whatsoever.
The entire place, while huge, still managed to feel dim and poorly maintained. It felt like everything was thrown together haphazardly and with little effort or pride taken into the appearance of anything in the store. Rows and rows of computers line the interior of the place, and there’s a room in the back used for Magic and other card games. What didn’t impress me, however, were the stacks of boxes and other miscellaneous items laying around the room, including various chairs, some of which were broken, and bins filled with who-​knows-​what. Essentially the owners are using the back meeting room for storage as well as cards. Not particularly professional. In general I wouldn’t return to this place; there are so many other, better gaming shops in the bay area you can go to where the owners have a sense of respect for not only their patrons, but also for the store itself. Although the angry exclamations from the gamers on their computers were priceless enough to listen to that I’d make a return visit only once more. Maybe. That may be giving this place way too much credit.