With two full years to develop a Smaug toy which JJP fully understood the entire pinball community was anticipating to drop their jaws to the ground, and the reveal is a non-interactive Smaug/NF Skull on a swivel, nobody should be surprised by the universal disappointment with the Hobbit.
The center ramps also just don't look kinetically appealing, with constant U-turns and repeat shots over and over, and they don't look physically appealing either. At least some Dwarf rune etching in them or something? Just plain metal, perfectly symmetrical. It looks lazy to me, in every aspect.
JJP should've known that players were expecting a fully interactive Smaug to blow them away. The drops are very cool, but in this new field of creativity where DP is able to produce a TBL prototype in far less time which is far more featured and polished, just having the same old playfield designers with the same old formulas is not going to work anymore (see TWD also). Disappointment needs to be expressed, so that JJP understands expectations were not met.
Hobbit video of gameplay was really depressing to this pre-orderer. I am leaning heavily towards moving on to TBL unless something really dramatic happens with TH and soon...
Oh, and yet again, the JJP pre-orders who have had their money down on the Limited Edition for two years were baited-and-switched again.... "Oh, you thought you were pre-ordering the supreme edition of this game? Hehe, just kidding, here's the REAL supreme version of the machine, available for more money..." That act is tired, too. Really? Again?
Definitely disappointed.