D&D 4.0e officiallly announced for May, 2008

[Tharivious]

Well...WOTC is a business after all, and if this is how they feel they must appeal to the public by simplifying a complexly entertaining game, then we cannot stop them....

And it's a poorly run business, that as recent as January said that 4E wasn't even on their radar, let alone in development, when it was actually less than a year and a half from being released. They outright lied to their customer base about that. And their public relations staff is still throwing a smoke screen in the face of anyone trying to get a real answer (the dev team is trying to compensate now from what I've seen, but P.R. staff seems to have gone silent in light of pushing GenCon even further).

We can't stop them, but we can stop lining their wallets. This is a pure greed play, designed more to crush third party creators than to improve the game. They want to turn D&D into a Wuxia based action movie with spells, that's their choice, but it's not really D&D anymore, is it?

Magic the Gathering.


They overly expanded on that to the point of losing the point of anything, they did and are doing that to poor TSR's AD&D.

For once, we agree entirely on something.

I grew up on Magic: the Gathering, played it from age 11 to age 22, started in Revised and watched it grow through to the Guild block. The Tempest and Urza's Saga era was the pinnacle of the game, and since the end of the Invasion block, which technically ended the world that the game started with, they've been utterly lost trying to expand and keep the money machine moving. Since then, they've released maybe two good blocks that weren't miserably overstretched into concepts that just didn't work the way the game was meant to.

It got worse when Hasbro bought out the company, and Pokemon was put on the market. When Hasbro watched the sales of kiddie games skyrocket, the golden age was as good as dead.

 

[James V]

Na, Magic went from paper to MTGO, which they make oodles of money on. I remember the Dark, and how that killed magic, they were lucky to rebound. Try the Rav block out, it isn't so horribly boring. but I fear pbj will be bad >.<

 

[Tharivious]

Na, Magic went from paper to MTGO, which they make oodles of money on. I remember the Dark, and how that killed magic, they were lucky to rebound. Try the Rav block out, it isn't so horribly boring. but I fear pbj will be bad >.<

The Dark didn't do much damage to the game around here. We lost a few tournament regulars to MTGO, but nowhere near enough to hurt the local market. Most of us hated spending real money on digital cards, and rightly so.

And now, the Digital Initiative/Gleemax is intending to do the same with D&D - the online content that we've been getting for free for the last several years from the Wizards website will now fall under their online Dragon/Dungeon magazine subscriptions, and require fees to access. They're already displaying this with their design notes requiring a log-in to the main site database under a Guest account that will only remain free until 4E is released. Three cheers for backwards progress.

 

[Magatsu]

Heh.

I am sure we agree on alot more then just this, its just those topics are probably never touched, and ever will be, on this site.

But I have an observation, the older players I am sure have noticed as well as the younger.

Business is no longer about quality, it completely about money, not the worth in the product, the pride of the creation, or the fact that it may bring a little joy to those that it can.

Holidays, events, all commercialized. Why would mass produced entertainment be any less.

It sickens me.

 

[James V]

Well I know Randy Bueler who is a complete cheap guy, some one who works with him told me that he puts requests into the mtgo department to raise the prices, something he has no business in dealing with.

 

[Adept Mortisha]

I can't be bothered to argue; I'm dead set against a fourth edition. It's too soon, neither 3rd and certainly not 3.5 have had enough time to be so worn that we need a new game. This is greed, pure and simple. I think I'm going to bow out from buying anything else from WotC, and possibly Hasbro, ever again. Making money is a goal, but it isn't the only one. Someone's forgotten that.

 

[Khaira]

Regarding purely content - which is to say, merely information about a place, an organization, or time period - I use almost exclusively 2nd edition products.

The 2nd edition boxed Waterdeep boxed set, manufactured by TSR, and worked on by many of the old Big Name's, astoundingly trumps the 3.5 Edition City of Splendors sourcebook. In fact, the 3rd edition one was horrible ... it had your basic information, yes, but a city the size of Waterdeep shouldn't be covered in 150 pages. Steven Schend and company had 3 books, a full-size map, and various other tidbits. 3rd edition: not even close.

This is, sad to say, a common trope. This is, of course, not to mention all of the editing errors that one can find because WotC doesn't take enough time or care to go through and fix their mistakes. Of course, TSR wasn't perfect - no business is - , but at least they had the sense to keep quality in the product. At $25-$40 a product, at least they had the sense to give a buyer more quality for their dollar.

 

[Kalreil]

I am not really sure how you can make 3.5 simpler.I mean some things are hazy, but even then, I know the general way it goes, and t never takes more than five minutes to figure it out and resolve the action.I don't think this is worth a new edition. And reading something off the website says fighters get special powers baced on the weapon they use,what the hell? No, fighters take a weapon, swing it like a badass and chop things apart. You get a crap load of feats and if done right can trump most other classses, barring wizard and sorcerer at high levels.That and I hate the new logo, the 3.5 one was good I think. Now, chances are someone in my group will get the book, and who knows it might be good. Seems like a waste getting the 50+ books we have though, if they are going to be useless.Which chances are they won't, again making a whole new edition pointless.

 

[Adrie]

oh yay another version for me to dislike? time to google more 2nd edt merch for me. sorry but I can't stand 3rd edt at all... and 3.5 well yeah... I prefer the old stand by for me on which I learned on and well was raised on 2nd edt... though I will look at 4th edt to see how it looks...

 

[Tharivious]

I am not really sure how you can make 3.5 simpler.

In short:
InQuest Gamer article.
Official page for Star Wars Saga Edition RPG system
Saga Edition Wiki-page

There's how they can make 3.5 simpler. By adding Tome of Battle mechanics, and nuking iterative attacks from the system unless you take a feat. And skill points? Forget about them, you now get "trained skills" based on character level - say goodbye to customizing a jack of all trades type. Oh yes, and race might predetermine how you improve your character's stats as they level, instead of letting you pick every stat increase.

I'd link to my full synopsis on livejournal that covers all of the openly stated changes thus far, but really, it's three pages long and sprinkled with profanity. Let's just say, they're making a fairly well designed game worse by over-complicating the few relatively simple classes, and making customization less of a focus.

My biggest concern right now is what 4E means to independent game designers working under the 3.5 OGL (like me). While it will (apparently) remain open source, I'm expecting Wizards to do all they can to ensure that no third parties continue to support it so that they can pressure the customer base to move on to 4E. 4E will be OGL as well, but forcing third party publishers to adjust to a new rules set for their content is a brilliant way for WotC/Hasbro to make even more money, since it means the market will be once more flooded with poorly made third party products while the independent designers flounder around with the new system.

Eberron players will also have a grand future to look forward to. Not even three years into its run, and that material will likely be repackaged under 4E rules before new content is released, not to mention the glut of increasingly poorly thought out Forgotten Realms product that's bound to come out with the tide.

And for the record, this is the most optimistic about the matter that I've been since the announcement.