Why I don't play 4E.
DISCLAIMER: This is a criticism of Wizards of the Coast customer service not 4th edition.
Question: Why am I not supporting 4E?
Answer: because Wizards of the Coast offended me as a loyal customer.
Question: How did they offend you?
Answer: Well I was also a loyal subscriber to Dungeon and Dragon Magazines via my local hobby shop that I also support. When they canceled it as a print magazine with no reasonable explanation
Question: What do you consider reasonable?
Answer: If the magazine is unprofitable, now as I understand it this was a licensed product to Paizo Publishing they paid for the rights to publish and covered all the other costs, so Wizards of the Coast always made money, always!
What about Dungeon and Dragon PDFs? I guess wizards thought I would just translate over to a pure PDF especially if it was free. No, I never downloaded a single issue. The feature I would have used from their Digital Initiative, the virtual table top well their reviews speak for themselves and all my friends say “Don’t bother go use Fantasy Grounds or Maptool”
Then there is their disastrous handling of the Gaming System License as the majority of my favorite 3rd party publishers are not creating content for 4th Edition. So WotC now fails to have companies who have not offended me making products in support of the new edition.
Now back when 3E came out I was reading about all the cool changes in Dragon and Dungeon Magazine, the same when 3.5 came along, my players would read my copy at the table while we chatted or if a PC died, and had to wait to be raised.
Now along comes 4th edition, except no magazine, so I am still playing 3.X. My players don’t care, I am the Only DM, they are happy they don’t have to buy new books like they did when 3.5 came out. Eventually though we switched over to Arcana Evolved so we bought some new books anyway. I am now looking wistfully though at Pathfinder Beta.
I also picked up Kobold Quarterly as my hobby shop started carrying it; I even bought a subscription to help this magazine out.
I so far have seen only one product that made me consider 4th edition and that was Open Design’s Wrath of the River King, but alas it was a patronage project and is no longer available to the public.
As you will see this has nothing to do with 4th edition mechanics vs. 3.5, what WotC is doing to the Realms, or that the current print copy print smears. This has to do with how they rewarded my customer loyalty of 15+ years
4th edition could be the best game in the world and I would never know it, because Wizard’s failed to consider me in their demographics, failing to consider that the next generation of gamers is sitting at my table learning to play D&D from the current DM (me). So I guess they will learn to play Arcana Evolved or Pathfinder next.
This is only my experience, I could be a very small sample of the community as a whole. I could be wrong (though I doubt it).
Steven D. Russell
Rite Publishing
Question: Why am I not supporting 4E?
Answer: because Wizards of the Coast offended me as a loyal customer.
Question: How did they offend you?
Answer: Well I was also a loyal subscriber to Dungeon and Dragon Magazines via my local hobby shop that I also support. When they canceled it as a print magazine with no reasonable explanation
Question: What do you consider reasonable?
Answer: If the magazine is unprofitable, now as I understand it this was a licensed product to Paizo Publishing they paid for the rights to publish and covered all the other costs, so Wizards of the Coast always made money, always!
What about Dungeon and Dragon PDFs? I guess wizards thought I would just translate over to a pure PDF especially if it was free. No, I never downloaded a single issue. The feature I would have used from their Digital Initiative, the virtual table top well their reviews speak for themselves and all my friends say “Don’t bother go use Fantasy Grounds or Maptool”
Then there is their disastrous handling of the Gaming System License as the majority of my favorite 3rd party publishers are not creating content for 4th Edition. So WotC now fails to have companies who have not offended me making products in support of the new edition.
Now back when 3E came out I was reading about all the cool changes in Dragon and Dungeon Magazine, the same when 3.5 came along, my players would read my copy at the table while we chatted or if a PC died, and had to wait to be raised.
Now along comes 4th edition, except no magazine, so I am still playing 3.X. My players don’t care, I am the Only DM, they are happy they don’t have to buy new books like they did when 3.5 came out. Eventually though we switched over to Arcana Evolved so we bought some new books anyway. I am now looking wistfully though at Pathfinder Beta.
I also picked up Kobold Quarterly as my hobby shop started carrying it; I even bought a subscription to help this magazine out.
I so far have seen only one product that made me consider 4th edition and that was Open Design’s Wrath of the River King, but alas it was a patronage project and is no longer available to the public.
As you will see this has nothing to do with 4th edition mechanics vs. 3.5, what WotC is doing to the Realms, or that the current print copy print smears. This has to do with how they rewarded my customer loyalty of 15+ years
4th edition could be the best game in the world and I would never know it, because Wizard’s failed to consider me in their demographics, failing to consider that the next generation of gamers is sitting at my table learning to play D&D from the current DM (me). So I guess they will learn to play Arcana Evolved or Pathfinder next.
This is only my experience, I could be a very small sample of the community as a whole. I could be wrong (though I doubt it).
Steven D. Russell
Rite Publishing
Total Comments 33
Comments
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Looks to me like an overreaction, but whatever floats your boat
I am pretty certain you'll have a lot of fun with Arcana Evolved, too.Posted 20th October 2008 at 10:06 AM by Mustrum_Ridcully
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I agree with most of your perspective, Qwillion. Although I have played a couple of 4E sessions and really haven't been blown away by the mechanics or the style, I'm primarily cold on it because of the snatching away of my much-beloved Dungeon and Dragon physical magazines, as well as the skeevy description of the DDI licensing plan. A monthly fee is reasonable...charging extra for virtual minis to use on the virtual tabletop that will allegedly exist just rankles. It doesn't cost anything to share this development once it's complete...and if everyone is paying a monthly fee to use the service, they have no excuse for charging MORE for doing work that should be a standard part of the online subscription in the first place.
It's a shame Wizards was ever sold to Hasbro, I don't think that they've made anything near the types of improvements that we saw when TSR was purchased by Wizards. Hasbro is a typical company, where the focus is on maximizing profits, when instead the focus should be on maximizing the quality of the products. If Wizards was serious about offering an electronic product presentation, they should have hired a team of professional web and software developers to create the product. However they're actually going about it, the fact that they still have little to show with several years' notice behind the scenes demonstrates to me at least that they're not really serious about their product, only about taking money from consumers.Posted 20th October 2008 at 02:29 PM by SolitonMan -
I am pretty sure they did consider you in their demographics, and determined that people like you are less likely to generate revenue for them, and thus it doesn't matter if you like what they did. And you know what? They are absolutely correct.
You are refusing to play 4th edition because you cannot buy hard copy magazines for it, nor give your money to other 3rd party companies outside the pervue of Wizards of the Coast. Quite frankly... if that's the kind of "loyal customer" you are, I'm not at all surprised they weren't looking to your demographic for numbers on their decision-making process.
Your demographic is getting smaller and smaller... players who need to have a glossy, full-color, physical item to hold and flip through at the game table. More and more players are now bringing their laptops to the game table... where having the magazines inside their machines digitally makes more sense and costs the company a lot less money to produce.
Your demographic also doesn't generate as much revenue as other D&D demographics, because you say quite plainly that you would rather spend your money on outside publishers, and not WotC. Oh sure, you might've bought the PH, DMG and the MM... you know, for the basic rules... but other than that, if you couldn't have other company's products, then you weren't going to play.
And you're surprised that Wizards isn't looking to you and your ilk to determine what is best for their brand and their money-making potential? I'm not. And I'm sure most other people aren't either. You aren't a good customer indicator of what they should do to maximize interest and maximize sales in their products. So if I was them, I'd only be giving your demographic a passing glance as well.
And if you don't make the switch over to 4e? Oh well. No big loss. You weren't spending money on my stuff anyway.Posted 20th October 2008 at 03:20 PM by DEFCON 1 - Why I don't play 4E....
wow hopefully not double posting.
This is for me in part about OGL and how the SRD changed. Hasbro, whoever had their reasons I'm sure, but I don't have to like them. Also the new edition came too soon. I'd guess this was more a marketing decision made by a suit than by a game designer or someone who understood the industry. I have a substantial investment in 3e materials and I just can't see paying out for a new edition than invalidates that, just yet; so likely 4e will be something that I invest $0 in. Perhaps someday if there's a 5e I may give that a look. Times now are a bit hard (no weeping for me please, facts of life) and paying out money for entertainment purposes is something I'm looking at closely for value. This will hopefully change someday and I'll buy more gaming stuff when theres more cash available for that. 4e is just done wrong and timed wrong. I haven't even looked at the nature of the rules, so I can't comment on them. And Won't.Posted 20th October 2008 at 04:33 PM by genericgeriatric -
No, prior to the change I bought every D&D product for 2nd editon, 3.0 and 3.5. Along with lots of Magic the Gathering, WoT Rpg, Starwars and quite a few D&D minis.Quote:Defcon 1: "Loyal"
No, unfortunatlly your wrong, it is now costing them more to produce. Before it was 100% profit licence with no production cost.Quote:"and costs the company a lot less money to produce.
No, unfortunatlly I never said that, I wrote that after WotC offended me I stopped buying thier product and was forced to go with other publishers exclusively. I will miss products such as the Draconomicon, and the Realms, (which I was a fan and a collector of, I have every product for the realms that was ever printed).Quote:..you say quite plainly that you would rather spend your money on outside publishers
No, unfortunatlly I never said that either, I wrote that now since I could no longer support WotC, I was looking at my fav companies (Green Ronin, Paizo, Necromancer Games) but they refused to support GSL.Quote:if you couldn't have other company's products, then you weren't going to play.
No, since your concluding assumptions is entirely wrong to begin with (as explained above), I don't know how to address it but lets assume you were right your still disregarding the demographics of my 8 players who range from 13 (a player's daughter) to 33 (her father).Quote:Oh well. No big loss. You weren't spending money on my stuff anyway.
In my conclusion I do have a quesiton for what happens if the old print magazine subscription #s are greater that the new subscription #S to DDI? What happens if Dragon and Dungeon Magainzes digitial go the way of Gleemax?Posted 20th October 2008 at 06:01 PM by Qwillion -
See I wont pay for something I cant hold. I dont buy MP3's, I dont buy PDF's. Only free stuff for me.
Had Dungeons and Dragon been Free Pdf downloads I would buy them, however, there is one problem, I hate 4e.
I think WOTC is going about this all wrong. The group they are targeting to buy digital stuff is too young to have the disposable income and the older crowd likes print copies or are too responsible to buy digital copies, that could disappear at the first sign of file corruption or harddrive failure.
And as far as the virtual tabletop goes, I dont wanna pay for it. Im getting ready ot buy a Mic and cam so I can game with my old group over the net, and we are going to us MSN chat. Free! Side from hardware price im gaming for free. No monthly fee, no shoddy graphics. No buying extra features.Posted 20th October 2008 at 06:43 PM by Arashi Ravenblade -
Why I play 4E even though I really don't want to.
I have no choice. I have to either play 4E, or play nothing at all. And I want to play something. What really frustrates and angers me is that my DM now says that he hates 3E and will never go back, and that he wouldn't even play if I ran my game. He's bought into the the hype WotC has been putting out saying how horrible 3E was, and he now says he can't believe ho he ever played the game or thought it was any good. And I am stunned! He LOVED 3E when we played it, but now he says it's just too unwieldy and he hates it.
It really angers me. I love 3E. 4E feels like a videogame on paper to me. You have your buttons to hit when they refresh, and you use the same powers in virtually the same order every fight. But, frankly, I don't know if I'd want to go back to 3E myself, now. 4E has really soured me on the idea of "game balance." Game balance is the idea that everyone gets to have an equal amount of the spotlight during a game. But it's a VERY poor way to model fantasy literature, or mythology. Why should Fighters be equally as powerful as Wizards, when in ALL of fantasy and mythology Wizards are powerful wielders of awesomely powerful supernatural forces? Frankly, I want to play 1E again, where they realized that game balance can be handled best by a good DM. My DM used to be a great DM, and he knew instinctively how to handle game balance. If a player wasn't getting enough spotlight, he'd have something happen in the game world to shift some of the focus to that player's character. Every character didn't have automatic, perfectly equal "spotlight on me" buttons to push to make something cool to happen every fight. Honestly, I really feel that giving everyone character a chance to shine every single fight dilutes the spotlight, and instead of a spotlight we end up with a soft glow spread around a group of people constantly; instead of everyone getting a chance to shine every so often, we've ended up with a muddied light that doesn't fade, but doesn't really stand out, either. There's just TOO MUCH "cool stuff" that everyone gets.
I greatly dislike the concept of "powers" that every class gets. I'm fine with supernatural powers being limited by how many times they can be performed per day, or per fight, but mundane actions like a weapon maneuver? It ruins my suspension of disbelief. I don't like the fact that Fighters can do just as much damage with a fancy sword attack as a Wizard can with a gout of supernatural fire. It makes the game seem shallow.
But, really, 4E has just soured me on D&D in general. That's why I haven't even read ENWorld in months. The game has all but died for me. That, and I'm tired of seeing the WotC apologists attack, openly or veiled, anyone who isn't orgasmic over 4E. I'd much rather be playing Call of Cthulhu, or better yet, CthulhuTech. But my group plays D&D and won't even consider anything else, and now they're in love with 4E. And so I'm stuck with it, because there isn't anyone else in the tiny backwater town I live in to play RPGs with.
I'm stuck with 4E, but it's only a matter of time, now, before I just lose interest in playing at all becaue of the shallowness of this game. I ued to write up detailed backgrounds for my charcters, spend a lot of time drawing them and coming up with details about them. But I just don't care anymore. And it makes me really sad.Posted 20th October 2008 at 07:11 PM by Aaron L - Aaron L
While I appreciate a prespective on 4E, mechanics it was something I was looking to avoid since I have no experiance with them at all.
I understand your fustration if your DM is refusing to run or play any game but 4E, You might have better luck convincing him to play a game like Star Wars saga system (a very good mix of 4e and 3.x) though again I personally am done with wizards based on how they treat thier customer base,
I would recomend a game like Mutants and Masterminds, spycraft, or perhaps a licenced product that both of you can agree on like george r.r. martain's Song of Ice And Fire.Posted 20th October 2008 at 08:27 PM by Qwillion - It seems a little disingenuous to keep saying "how they treated their customer base." I know you want to include other people that you believe were harmed by WotC's business decisions. That seems to be why you use that phrase. But I would hazard a guess that you came to this decision before considering how the other consumers were treated.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you came to this decision because of how you felt that the changes affected you personally?
I have a question: Who did you intent as your audience for this justification behind your decision to not play 4E?
I guess I don't understand. Are you venting about your situation? Are you trying to tell WotC to change their decisions? Are you trying to win over others to your point of view, thereby getting more people to avoid WotC products?Posted 21st October 2008 at 12:27 AM by Grantor - Oh my gut reaction was this the day it was announced, but I have talked to others who shared my opinion, I even went farther and investigated why the descision was made. I waited a rather long time so that I was not venting my emotions but actually stating my opinion, your correct however that is not a fact I can verify with statistics.Quote:you came to this decision before considering how the other consumers were treated.
Yes and No, Yet I did come to this decision in part based on my personal experiance, but also because of the conversations I have had with folks I game with and share my gaming experiances with. However since I have not data to back this up and all evidance is anacdotal I will consceed the point and edit my statements.Quote:Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you came to this decision because of how you felt that the changes affected you personally?
People with similar opinions, and people with different opinions.Quote:Who did you intent as your audience for this justification behind your decision to not play 4E?
Let me ask you a quesiton: If the reasons for the canceling of the print version is because online is better for the future of the game, but the print magazines were always 100% profitiable with no risk to the company; Why could they not just make it online and available as part of the DDI, why did WotC have to cancel the print medium?
In a way, It makes me sad I lost a part of my hobby that I enjoyed, I look around and I see a broken fanbase, and I wonder why? Am I at fault because I am failing to support my hobby or is WotC at fault for pushing me to the side because I don't fit thier marketing strategy?Quote:Are you venting about your situation?
The only thing that will change WotC decision would be if the digitial inititative now that they are charging for it, were to fail financially, if it had less subscribers than say Dungeon and Dragon magazine combined. I sent my letter of protest to them long ago.Quote:Are you trying to tell WotC to change their decisions?
No, I think we are long past that stage as well, I just felt there was so much talk about what is wrong in the X vs. Y, I just wanted to voice a different perspective and wonder how many other like me there just my be.Quote:Are you trying to win over others to your point of view, thereby getting more people to avoid WotC products?
Yet what really makes me sad is what I percieve as a broken fanbase, and if it keeps going this way the real fear that Hasbro will come in and take over WotC.Posted 21st October 2008 at 01:10 AM by Qwillion -
Interesting.
So, if you haven't downloaded even one, and you haven't read any of the free stuff in the past year sine Dragon and Dungeon went online, WOTC has lost you because of a periodical format issue? I am not knocking your reasons, but they don't seem to stem from quality of content at all.
If you feel you represent the customer base, then more power to ya, but in truth, I've only known one or two people that upset with the transition of print to online that they stopped reading the articles completely. None have sworn off WOTC, though.Posted 21st October 2008 at 01:10 AM by catsclaw227 -
Free Market System at work. WOTC arn't the only people happy to accept your money.Posted 21st October 2008 at 02:15 AM by MichaelSomething -
XOXOPosted 21st October 2008 at 02:36 AM by Eduardo_Sauron
Updated 21st October 2008 at 02:58 AM by Qwillion (nothing of consequence) - You have a very valid point, I may very be a lone voice in the wilderness. Perhaps I am an anarchism that wants more than a pdf.Quote:that upset with the transition of print to online that they stopped reading the articles completely. None have sworn off WOTC, though.
Yet as the man says free market at work, there are plenty of companies that are offering wonderful service.
I still wonder why we could not have had both the magazine and the DDI?
I wonder how sales of the DDI is going? Will it go the way of Gleemax or Will it be as succesful as magic the gathering online?Posted 21st October 2008 at 03:06 AM by Qwillion -
I have to say I agree with the sentiments of the original poster here.
I have given up on Wizards of the Coast- and I bought all the core hard copy 3rd edition and 3.5 books. All of them, including some which are fairly crud. And all except 3 forgotten realms books (mostly because I was playing in FR at the time and wanted the GM to have some suprises up his sleeve).
So if they didn't consider me in their demographic that was a five figure accounting error. Seriously. My wife runs an audit of my books for insurance. It's a lot, every year.
Until 4th ed. I bought the core books, downloaded a couple of PDFs, visited Gleemax... and then stopped. Nope. Not for me. Didn't like losing Dragon and Dungeon mags in paper, wasn't impressed with the online version, certainly not paying for it. Didn't like the new style of DnD. And I play a lot of MMO's.
Now I play Dark Heresy- good Intellectual Property, not so good rules/system. We almost play inspite of the rules. But that seems to work well. Don't expect the rules to do anything, just GM by the seat of my pants.
My 2 cents.
So yes, I've had enough of WotC, totally dis-gruntledPosted 21st October 2008 at 05:58 AM by Brilbadr - Because you split the market and pay twice for the same thing. The magazines individually make money. DDI invidually makes money. But that's because a large group of people that bought the magazines also bought into the DDI. They might not have done it otherwise. And printing magazines costs money, just as providing an online platform.Quote:Let me ask you a quesiton: If the reasons for the canceling of the print version is because online is better for the future of the game, but the print magazines were always 100% profitiable with no risk to the company; Why could they not just make it online and available as part of the DDI, why did WotC have to cancel the print medium?
But the latter might be cheaper. And has more potential, with the online tools they are offering and want to offer in the future.
As a customer of WotC, I feel treated pretty well. I never bought the print versions of Dungeon & Dragon. Now I suddenly have access to something new for me, and something that has so far been pretty good.
And it promises to get better - a character builder, a digital game table, this sounds great to me. The worst "mistreat" I had so far is that they created the expectation (and probably believed it themselves for a time) to have it available at release time.
As a customer I was treated well, because all the books I owned so far seemed worth their money and I can see myself using a lot of the material. That wasn't true with earlier supplements. There was a lot of junk I never seriously considered using. PrCs that were useless, classes that weren't interesting, feats that were too weak, too specific, or too uninteresting, fluff I never used.Posted 21st October 2008 at 09:42 AM by Mustrum_Ridcully -
For me is just the oposite. I live half earth away from USA so paper magazines cost me 3 o 4 times more and take ages to arrive. The "star" issues do not never arrive. So for me PDFs are a terrific solution, I can have Dragon and Dungeon just in time and print the part I am going to use.Posted 21st October 2008 at 09:57 AM by Osamar - I'm the opposite of the OP, to some extent. I only bought one Dragon magazine in the past 20 years but bought most of the 1, 2nd, 3.x stuff from WotC. Losing the two magazines meant nothing to me. However, I'm fully on board with the pdf versions and continue to buy most of the 4.0 books. As for 3rd party stuff, I only bought them in limited supply, including Goodman Games stuff. I'm glad they are doing 4th edition stuff, though I have yet to buy anything from them yet.Posted 21st October 2008 at 01:29 PM by Fundin Strongarm
- Uh... what you actually said was... "Then there is their disastrous handling of the Gaming System License as the majority of my favorite 3rd party publishers are not creating content for 4th Edition."Quote:No, unfortunatlly I never said that, I wrote that after WotC offended me I stopped buying thier product and was forced to go with other publishers exclusively. I will miss products such as the Draconomicon, and the Realms, (which I was a fan and a collector of, I have every product for the realms that was ever printed).
What this means in plain English was that you must have used 3rd party publishers prior to the release of the 4e Game System License, in order for some of them to have become your favorites. And thus, when the 4e GSL was released and you discovered that those favorites of yours were not going to support 4e, you could then become a "distruntled customer". You couldn't have rejected the GSL first because of lack of favorite 3PP support before you then started going to 3PPs because they offended you. Doesn't work. Sorry.
And my comments were in direct reply to this statement of yours... so if I'm wrong, it's because you didn't explain yourself correctly.
The fact is... what you specifically wrote about how Wizards of the Coast offended you came down to two things: One, that you could no longer get Dungeon and Dragon in hard copy form... and two, that many of your favorite 3PPs were not making 4e products because of a bad GSL. That's it. That's all you wrote that offended you.
So my original statement still stands. If those two things in the change to 4e were enough to "offend" you... then there's no point in trying to keep you as a customer. As I said above... if the lack of 3PP support drove you away, you pretty much intended to spend at least some of your money outside the perview of WotC, so it isn't that big of a loss.
And as far as the magazines are concerned... if not having a glossy, full-color copy with a staple and avertisements in it to read (because apparently laser printer copies aren't good enough) is enough to keep from making the switch... then they were right to ignore your demographic. Because of ALL the reasons not to make the switch to 4e... that has to be one of the dumbest.
Naw... the change in game mechanics, the new races, the new classes, the use of powers, the weakening of feats, the wizard not being uber-leet anymore... all those things are fine...
...it's the lack of a physical magazine... a magazine that isn't even required to play the game... that makes me refuse to spend one single penny on 4th Edition!
Ugh. Some people...Posted 21st October 2008 at 05:32 PM by DEFCON 1 -
Actually, you may not be ignored after all:
Amazon.com: Dungeon Magazine Annual 2009: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement: Wizards RPG Team: Books
Looks like they may publish annual compilations.Posted 21st October 2008 at 06:05 PM by RukiTanuki
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