Sacrosanct
Legend
Cuz I have disposable income. 
Dragonlance What Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen cover did you get?
Far left as I got the bundle. I wasn’t expecting the different cover as I thought I’d get the Soth cover as a special cover book from the promo since it didn’t have and art showing which one. Once I got it, it’s got cool foil like secions, very nice cover!
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Steel_Wind
Legend
I find it interesting that WotC decided that they needed to break with the past, so much so that they chose not to use a very familiar trademark (the DragonLance logo) on this product on any of the multiple covers.
Their motives are debatable (and unless someone from WotC in the years to come explains it, inscrutable), but whatever the case, they made a deliberate and explicit choice to try and break from the old branding with this new DL product.
Their motives are debatable (and unless someone from WotC in the years to come explains it, inscrutable), but whatever the case, they made a deliberate and explicit choice to try and break from the old branding with this new DL product.
I believe they did it so it matched the 5e trade dress and design. I have a flair for nostalgia and would have liked to see the old design but it’s not a big deal to me they did t use a 30-40 year old design.
McDonald, coke, other much larger brands tweak/change their logos so this really isn’t an issue to me.
McDonald, coke, other much larger brands tweak/change their logos so this really isn’t an issue to me.
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Steel_Wind
Legend
Well, sure, and that is true looking at the book above on the left; no argument.
The one on the right which is pretty much Soth's Helm and that's it? No. That branding doesn't match current trade dress. That's a deliberate choice to be it's own thing.
Sacrosanct
Legend
They don’t use the original Forgotten Realms logo either, so I wouldn’t read too deeply into it.
IMO it's them learning a lesson from TSR's failures; don't brand your settings to be a distinct separate thing from the core game. You want D&D fans, not Dragonlance fans. The cover looks like a D&D game and the mechanics are all completely compatible with D&D, so any casual D&D fan will see the book and not be turned off thinking they need to be playing Dragonlance to find any value in the book.
IMO they're 100% correct in how they're approaching it.
That's true of all of their FLGS alt covers though. Arguably, people shopping at FLGS and willing to spend extra money on a book aren't exactly casual fans so the branding probably isn't as important.
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darjr
I crit!
WotC gets a lot of crap from long-time fans, but I think overall they have a much better idea of how to market and manage the game to keep it viable and healthy, which can only be a good thing. If you hate what they're doing in 5e, the nice thing is they keep a ton of old content available via DMs Guild so they're even helping keep that portion of the hobby alive. IMO unless you have an irrational axe to grind with them, it's really hard to hate how they're treating the overall brand.
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