So about those "electronic" titles we were promised.

[Evenglare]

Holy crap, a lot of anger about me asking about if they had said anything about what they would do. WOW! Yeah, if a company says they will provide me with something, I'm curious on news about it. It's like wizards hates making money from me or something. I just wanted to know if they had atleast MENTIONED anything, im not demanding their whole library be up for purchase (even though most of it was before they got angry and took everything away from the pdf sites).

 

[Shemeska]

I wouldn't think that they'll put out pdfs anytime soon. More likely I expect that they'd do something integrated with the DDI, letting you view but not download previous edition content while logged in. It's not something I'd be interested in, but given WotC's past irrational hostility to pdfs (at least seemingly from their higher ups), blaming pdfs for piracy, etc I don't think they'll be willing to go that route even if the rest of the industry is and is doing rather well with them (with Post Human having the most awesome pdf policy out there).

 

[Dice4Hire]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786964634/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

Her is one of the only products I see coming out other than those mentioned above. But I am not sure what exactly it is.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The PDFs are available quite freely.

Just not legally.

Silly WotC.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[3catcircus]

I'm sure someone can do a search from a few years ago when Scott Rouse accused me of calling him a liar when I questioned WotC's approach to pdf products (but I didn't expect them to then go and pull their entire back catalog as well.)

I once again predict that unless they do a watermarked but otherwise fully unrestricted, reasonably-priced pdf approach, they'll once again fail horribly. $20+ pdf's like they previously had on 3.x/4e? People will turn to piracy to get a pdf copy of a hard-copy book they already own instead of paying 1.5x for both formats. DRM-ed pdfs? Yeah, it'll be broken within an hour of someone getting a copy. Limited to kindle and other e-reader formats? Yeah - that DRM scheme has *already* been broken, so people can make them DRM-free or turn them into pdfs to put on their laptops or tablets.

For the technically-minded, removing DRM is an annoyance. For those who choose to share with the world, it is a few minutes of their time that WotC won't be able to stop other than with lawsuits. For the rest of their potential customers - it'll make them non-customers.

 

[Elf Witch]

I was a little surprised at the anger directed at the OP question what is up with that. I too would like to know if WOTC is going to follow through with what they said everything I read made it sound like they were rethinking their stance on electronic formats for their older stuff.

Personally I think they are idiots for not doing this. It does not stop piracy at all in fact it encourages it. I have strong ethics about pirating yet I will pirate a PDF of a book I already own and will do so for things out of print if it it becomes impossible to find a copy for a reasonable price anywhere. Look at Pathfinder if you subscribe to their Adventure Paths or other subscriptions you get both a hard copy and a PDF. I was subscribed to the Adventure Paths until my finances imploded and hope to do so again one day.

People who don't think it is wrong to pirate won't stop no matter what you do so WOTC not putting anything on electronic format does not hurt them. It hurts the honest folk who are willing to pay for legal copies.

 

[Stormonu]

To me, Pathfinder has the gold standard. I can get the print copy and then the PDF at a fairly reduced price (and I've picked up the Core, Gamemastery Guide, Advanced Races, Advanced Classes, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, Bestiary 1-3 often getting the PDF first to see if it was worth getting a hardcopy for the table).

I would very much like to see 5E electronically available. But if they're going to price it in the $30+ range, I'll take a pass or just cobble together my own copy some other way. I fact, I do have a all-in-one-printer and I ain't afraid to use it (in fact, used it to cobble together a PDF green cover B3 from my personal copy).

 

[Echohawk]

I will be surprised if we don't see electronic versions of products from WotC's back-catalog become available, or start to become available, sometime in 2013.

There seems to have been a sharp increase in the number of back-catalog novels that WotC is releasing each month, in various ebook formats. So there are certainly folks at WotC focused on electronic distribution. Strategically, 2013 is probably also a good year to re-launch electronic sales of out-of-print items. Most of the announced print products for the year are reprints of old material, sales of which are likely to be boosted by easy availability of compatible adventures and accessories in electronic form.

If availability of electronic RPG products has to be linked to DDI subscriptions, I'd like to see a model where they add 5-10 new PDFs to their library each month, and being a subscriber lets you download anything currently in the library. That's how things currently works for Dragon/Dungeon content. If you pay for a one month subscription, you can download everything released up to that point, and keep your own copy of that content, if you really want to.

Of course, that model would mean that not everything out-of-print immediately becomes available again electronically, but I'm fine with that, as long as when new PDFs are added to the library each month, they are higher quality PDFs than those previously sold. There are enough products for BECMI, 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition, that releasing one or two new PDFs for each edition each month could persuade fans of any edition to see DDI as worthwhile subscription -- at least for the 2-3 years it would take to finish releasing the entire back-catalog.

 

[3catcircus]

I will be surprised if we don't see electronic versions of products from WotC's back-catalog become available, or start to become available, sometime in 2013.

There seems to have been a sharp increase in the number of back-catalog novels that WotC is releasing each month, in various ebook formats. So there are certainly folks at WotC focused on electronic distribution. Strategically, 2013 is probably also a good year to re-launch electronic sales of out-of-print items. Most of the announced print products for the year are reprints of old material, sales of which are likely to be boosted by easy availability of compatible adventures and accessories in electronic form.

If availability of electronic RPG products has to be linked to DDI subscriptions, I'd like to see a model where they add 5-10 new PDFs to their library each month, and being a subscriber lets you download anything currently in the library. That's how things currently works for Dragon/Dungeon content. If you pay for a one month subscription, you can download everything released up to that point, and keep your own copy of that content, if you really want to.

Of course, that model would mean that not everything out-of-print immediately becomes available again electronically, but I'm fine with that, as long as when new PDFs are added to the library each month, they are higher quality PDFs than those previously sold. There are enough products for BECMI, 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition, that releasing one or two new PDFs for each edition each month could persuade fans of any edition to see DDI as worthwhile subscription -- at least for the 2-3 years it would take to finish releasing the entire back-catalog.

That approach would just piss me off to no end. I've no desire to be tied to their crappy DDI and the idea of "holding back" an entire library of product that is already sitting on an idle server somewhere waiting to be made available is going to turn people off.

They certainly aren't going to "do it right" and spend the time and effort to re-master all of the OD&D/1e/2e PDFs that they previously sold via SVGames, RPGNow, DTRPG, or Paizo, so they should just quit playing games, re-authorize those guys, and wait for the modest profits to start rolling in.

The *only* way I'd ever consider PDFs tied to DDI is if the PDFs cost me *nothing* additional and were freely downloadable and saveable, because I sure wouldn't be using DDI other than as a download channel. But - we saw how well that worked with the Character Generator that used to be downloadable and modifiable before they locked it down. The same thing'll happen here too.