Glyfair said:
I seem to remember that shortly after the new community liason/manager at WotC was hired he said on the forums that there would be a big push to release and update errata.
As I've been keeping track of
Eyes of the Lich Queen errata I was wondering if this would ever be addressed.
So, I check the WotC
errata page. The last update was last June,
over a year ago.
Was the promise just smoke & mirrors? Anyone heard anything on any updates?
We have released some errata—very pressing bits—from
Drow of the Underdark and
Expedition to the Demonweb Pits since or around that original announcement. They’ve gone up as special articles on the Wizards of the Coast website.
I know what you are all thinking—it’s not enough, and you’re right.
For the last few months, a number of us from R&D, the customer service team, and the folks in organized play have been meeting and discussing our somewhat recent (which I wouldn’t say is entirely non-existent...rather it's more dysfunctional) errata process. It was our goal to kick-start it and make it useful, regular, and sustainable.
We’ve explored many avenues of gathering, reviewing, and deciding on what is useful and necessary errata. Some discussions and decisions seemed easy at first, but later we discovered hidden pitfalls and challenges. Some talks started off very heated, but in the end we found out what seemed like disagreements were actually just the pains of finding out that we really agreed, we just didn’t want to admit it at first (just like some message board conversations, eh?).
In the end, we settled on an idea for errata that is simple, straight-forward, and useful to the most number of players. It was not an easy decision to come to, and I am sure to some folks it’ll be more than a little controversial.
Basically we are not going to sweat the small stuff. We are going to prioritize errata and release it through quarterly updates on the rules as a whole organized by source. Pretty soon we are going to release a first test version that deals with some pressing issues from a variety of sources and a more detailed look at the
Magic Item Compendium.
This Fall, we are going to unleash the first update on the regular quarterly schedule, focusing on the big-button books—the one’s most of use the most—
Spell Compendium,
Player’s Handbook II, and
Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. Of course other books with large problems will also see the light of day in the update; remember our first priority is the severity of issue.
What aren’t you going to find in these documents? Nagging little math errors in stat blocks, small bits of text snafus, and those little hiccups that may be great for Web threads but can be easily sidestepped during actual play. Of course we realize those are there, we are always finding ways to limit them before they get in books (damn stat block gremlins roam the halls of WotC while we sleep…I swear to god), and the more egregious of those things will end up in the update document, but for maximum usefulness, big nagging problems are the (reluctant) stars of our errata…and we are rolling out the red carpet for them first.
I hope that at least answers your question in a general way, even if it does smack of "hurry up and wait".
