WotC president Greg Leeds and I!!!

Because of the recent developements with regards to WotC halting pdf sales and the ongoing complains about 4E and the treatment of original campaign settings I followed Jason Sonia's suggestion at the Paizo boards to contact Hasbro executives directly, telling them my concerns about D&D - the game I love and play for more than 20 years now.
It worked. A few hours later I got an email from Greg Leeds, who offered me talk to me directly via phone:


Dear Markus,

Hello, I am Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. Your note was sent to me and I thought we could talk by phone about your thoughts. As you know, we are not perfect but we are trying our best to create a great gaming experience for as many gamers as possible.

Of course I was surprised by that, but took the opportunity to tell him my point of view, which is certainly shared by many people if I consider countless message board postings.
Since Mr. Leeds is away for a few days we will phone next week. When I have the opportunity to talk to the president of WotC I will not use the time to complain more about the situation, but to present ideas what WotC could do to make us 3E people happy again.

Therefore I ask you: "What would you do if you were Greeg Leeds, president of WotC in the current situation?"

That means I collect as many ideas as possible from you and present them to Mr. Leeds. So please share you positive ideas at wherever you find this posting. The more people take part in this survey the better. As I hope we all will benefit from that opportunity.

Looking forward your responses here or at www.3point75.org

UPDATE:
In order to make it easier for me to file your ideas and solutions about how to pimp WotC please refer to the following topics only:

* 4E (WoW-like game not liked by many)
* Licence issues (OGL, GSL)
* Setting support (e.g. New Forgotten Realms alienating old fans)
* pdf policy
* Layoffs of fan favorite designers
* Cancellation of print magazines
* D&D Insider

Thanks.

Hey folks, Piratecat here. I was curious, so I checked with Wizards and this turns out to be absolutely true. Please respond accordingly. Thanks.

Right.

Edit: Sorry about that, not in a million years would I have thought this to be legit.

As a 3.5 fan, I think the WotC/4E ship has sailed.

I really don't have anything I'd want to say to or ask Greg Leeds at this point.

It's time to move on.

Where's Ashton? Come on, where is he? 'Cause someone is being Punk'd!

I'll try

4e is blatantly about the money and not about the game. We understand that WOTC is a company that needs to generate revenue - thats ok. What we don't like is what they did to do it.

4e is too different. Most of us would have happily bought 4e regardless of how much change it brought on, but many of us would have been Happier had it not completely made our extensive 3.5 collection obsolete. Not only did they change the rules, but they also changed the fluff...making it all worthless in todays current gaming environment. Not cool

The rule changes for 4e were too drastic and too focused on dungeon crawls. Somewhere after 1st edition but before 4th edition, roleplaying in a fantasy environment spanned much more than dungeon delving. Those games could be played without a table, mat, figures and a hundred different marks... 4e took D&D from a game of imagination into the realm of tactics. It feels like 'New Coke'... Shares the same name, but is totally different.

It should be said that as a tactical game...as a first game for New players, 4e has a lot going for it. It clearly highlights player options making it an easier experience....but to older players (30 years here), the game feels constricting. The powers DO what the powers say they do...and almost all of the deal damage. No more using great imagination with a power to yield a result your DM has to think about.

We understand the 3.5 grew out of control in certain areas. We knew it had to be fixed. But instead of fixing our game, you threw it out and started new. Boo on that. You could have opted to go along the lines of Star Wars Saga, which seemed to be an intellegent mix of what was and new...but you lept over that intellegent design into ... 4e as it stands today.

Not all has been bad - I love the 4e character builder - it's really the best character builder I've ever used. But even with the Compendium online, it pales in comparison to what you promised. I was at Gen Con 07 when you announced the game table and character visualizer and PDFs for each purchased book. I was at Winter Fantasy 08 when I saw the game table DEMOd by WOTC employees. And it looked good. Where are these promises now? In my business, you don't announce things you aren't sure you can deliver on...what happens in your business? It comes off as false pretenses to get many of us to pay prematurely for DDI.

I do like that DDI includes the two magazines, but hate that the magazines are now solely 4e. What happened to Dragon's look at the industry as a whole? You've lost something here. No longer can Dungeons and Dragons stand up to the competion (I guess) because it is too afraid to give the competion it's advertising space. Very sad.

I wish I could stop, but the transgressions are greater than that. Your product quality is shoddy - smearing ink, flimsy books, bad bindings, reused artwork. Take out the Forgotten Realms Players Guide from 3.5 and the one from 4.0 and tell me the quality is the same! The obvious love put into 3.5s book vs the clinical look of 4.0's version is startling.

I wish that some of the adventure writing would overcome these transgressions...but it doesn't. Most of the early stuff was so bad (and made so very little sense) that my players have begged me to stop buying them. They are too long, too combat oriented, horribly written and make no world sense (monsters fight til death too often...or can't hear combat in the next room too often...) that I'm no longer able to use them. I don't have time to create new adventures at my age...but thats exactly what I have to do to keep my players playing.

And how do you reward the team you assembled? You lay them off. Nothing comes as more a shock to the system as when a corporation lays off people who have been working hard for them as a layoff. I know it's tough out there, but a corporation like Hasbro couldn't have found work for these talented folks??

What does this say?? Add in the PDF fiasco and you get a company who promised many things, kept very few of them, destroyed an iconic game by making it juvinile and too focused in one aspect of our hobby, and makes decision after decision based upon the almighty dollar...instead of what's right for the hobby, the game and the gamers. I guess that's WOTCs right...but very soon it'll be our right to really hit you where it hurts by not buying those new products. I guess we won't get shiny new any more...but we have enough to play with in past versions.

Wow.

Okay, given that this is legit, is there any chance we can limit the conversation to topics that actually might receive consideration by Leeds? Going in with a rambling diatribe about 4e isn't going to do anything - it's going to result in WotC ignoring anything constructive that may be said and assuming they are dealing with a bunch of angry, irrational fans and that they are justified in ignoring anything critical that might be said.

I would ask if they would reconsider putting up the pdfs of the out-of-print books which they don't have in stock. The piracy concerns for those books are negligble and it would be seen as a gesture of goodwill towards the fans.

This is an amazing opportunity to effect some good change and demonstrate that there are fans of WotC who are reasonable, but upset. Attacking 4e is not a good use of that opportunity.

PDF policy.

I would suggest selling pdfs of old edition stuff until you have a new system in place you wish to sell them under. Removing legal sale opportunities does not eliminate the pirated copies that already exist, it just means nobody can pay you for the legal ones. There is demand for legally purchasing old edition pdfs, the work has already been done, and the costs of hosting and managing the distribution of them are borned by the pdf distributors, this seems to be pure ongoing profit, small as it is.

For newer 4e ones if you wish to avoid the instant pirating from quality pdf copies issue I would suggest delaying release of pdfs until after the period you feel is appropriate. Pirates will scan and OCR from physical books, but delaying for that transaction time will avoid the instant downloads.

If not then please explain how WotC believes pirating is hurting WotC and how removing the pdfs will benefit WotC. These do not appear clear right now.

Wishlist suggestion, reduce the price of the oop 3e pdfs and the current 4e pdfs. $20 was my personal cut off for eventually purchasing a 4e PH or MM pdf to try out the system. I wasn't buying 4e stuff for the same reason I wasn't getting exalted books, they both sounded neat but I'm happy with 3e and the pdf prices were too high to tempt me to check out a new system when there is plenty of other cheap gaming pdfs of things I am interested in.

Sigma said:

Wow.

Okay, given that this is legit, is there any chance we can limit the conversation to topics that actually might receive consideration by Leeds? Going in with a rambling diatribe about 4e isn't going to do anything - it's going to result in WotC ignoring anything constructive that may be said and assuming they are dealing with a bunch of angry, irrational fans and that they are justified in ignoring anything critical that might be said.

I would ask if they would reconsider putting up the pdfs of the out-of-print books which they don't have in stock. The piracy concerns for those books are negligble and it would be seen as a gesture of goodwill towards the fans.

This is an amazing opportunity to effect some good change and demonstrate that there are fans of WotC who are reasonable, but upset. Attacking 4e is not a good use of that opportunity.

Click to expand...

I strongly disagree. Since this is a true case scenario I can think of nothing better than a 3rd edition fan, voicing concerns.

I do not think BASHING 4e is constructive in this case, but it is possible some middle ground can be met with 3rd edition support.

I don't know what that middle ground is, but I know I feel as many do that WOTC dropped the ball with this game. Not all the gamers that used to play D&D need an introductory game or wanted to play D&D miniatures. Maybe WOTC needs to know there is a large community out there that is not in support of their move.

Mournblade94 said:

I strongly disagree. Since this is a true case scenario I can think of nothing better than a 3rd edition fan, voicing concerns.

I do not think BASHING 4e is constructive in this case, but it is possible some middle ground can be met with 3rd edition support.

I don't know what that middle ground is, but I know I feel as many do that WOTC dropped the ball with this game. Not all the gamers that used to play D&D need an introductory game or wanted to play D&D miniatures. Maybe WOTC needs to know there is a large community out there that is not in support of their move.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm sure they're totally unaware of the angry crowd that doesn't like 4e, and talking to one random member of that crowd will somehow convince them of its magnitude and importance.

It'll be a waste of time to open that can of worms and it won't change a single thing. Might as well use the opportunity to make a difference, not waste time beating the same dead horse.