Where's the Errata?

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
I think that there has been an intention to do a big list of errata for 3.5, but it is likely a case of WotC biting off more than it can chew.

From what it sounds like, 4E is taking up all of their staffing resources, which should not be terribly surprising. I'm sure we will see some token effort, but a real serious effort on 3X errata is not going to happen: they won't have the resources until after 4X launches, and at that point why bother?

I think the announcements were severely overly optimistic...probably because WotC has a great staff of game designers, but not so many project managers.

--Steve
 

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Eridanis

Bard 7/Mod (ret) 10/Mgr 3
Last I heard, the Spell Compendium errata was due to be released last week, but obviously it was a no-show. I'll try to find a linky...
 


Sammael

Adventurer
Jhaelen said:
Judging by my past experiences that is a good thing :)
It's a good thing only if you want the products to never get released.

I'm a software developer and I damn well know that 99.99% of software developers would never get any product out of the door without some type of project management.
 

ivocaliban

First Post
I've been considering this and I think our best chance of getting any errata may come after the official release of the Rules Compendium. As this is a book that deals mainly with clarifications and errata, it would be a sensible thing to put out a "web enhancement" containing various 3.5e errata to support the Rules Compendium." Of course, sensible and not bloodly likely may have the same meaning in this instance.
 

jodyjohnson

Adventurer
Blog entry on Errata

The most recent errata stuff I've seen was that the responsibility got moved to Greg Bisland. I believe Logan Bonner had it before and he's now on the DDM design and Tiles, etc.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13778709&postcount=3

Greg Bisland said:
Erratatouille

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

\’era-‘ta-‘twê n: a seasoned stew made of typos, mistakes, miscalculations, unforeseen problems, and incompatibility.

I met on Wednesday with Chris Tulach, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Sam, who works in customer service, to discuss my acquisition of the errata responsibilities over the next few weeks. Errata for supplements has admittedly been few and far between, but in our discussion of the upcoming months, we talked about what efforts we might take to be more consistent.

Mostly the discussion centered around my efforts to coordinate the different errata resources. The process goes something like this: each week, customer services and online productions record all the mind-boggling questions and issues that people have. Then, depending on which supplement we’re focusing on, I go online and search the forums for material that constitutes errata. I bring all the suitable material from the three resources together and we discuss it, deciding what should become official errata and what shouldn’t.

The crew has already compiled the errata for Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium and that should be available soon—we’ll be ratifying it next week. The next target will be Player’s Handbook II. Now I don’t want an onslaught of messages saying, “You printed “teh” on page 42,” but I would extend an open invitation for lists of problems or major concerns. The more information I can gather, the more thorough the errata will be.

My personal reasoning for taking on the errata responsibilities are concerned with 4th Edition. Once 4th Edition is released, the 3rd Edition errata will stop and we will focus on concerns with the present edition (which hopefully—given the amount of development and playtesting going in–will be few). As an editor, knowing the errata and the changes to rules, monsters, classes, etc., puts me at great advantage in performing my job and keeping mistakes from being repeated in future supplements.

Another factor that will change the face of errata is the implementation of the database, which plays such a central role in our management of 4 Edition. With the institution of ebooks that accompany one’s physical copy, we have the option of keeping one’s ebook updated with the latest changes, from the very small (a “+2” instead of a “+3”) to the very big (changing the text of an ability or feat). That’s not to say there still won’t be a physical copy of the errata, but we might simply compile quarterly changes made in the database into a readable format, rather than the sporadic release that now exists.

I don’t have a specific date for the release of the Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium errata, but it should be sometime soon. I know that Stephen mentioned one of the topics being addressed was runestaffs. Look for that in the coming week or two.

Tiny snippet from last week:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13979934&postcount=8

Greg Bisland said:
I did some development on the Foulspawn as part of our “Bring a Friend to Monster Development Day.”

In actuality, what I mean is that people within R&D were helping Stephen Schubert out with monster development, regardless of their actual job position. Thus even though I am but a humble editor, I got to work on the creature’s development. It's been a fun and rather random couple weeks, but as of Monday, I'll be back to editing. Still, at least I have the errata... :-/

I can imagine two likely sources of delay.

1. The web team. They've apparently had their hands full between Dragon/Dungeon launch and fire fighting on the new website

2. Prioritization of the MM and PHB over other tasks. Plus playtesting seems higher on the list over errata.
 

Khairn

First Post
I've been following this closely since a "renewed commitment to providing errata" became part of the rededication to Customer Service and communication that WotC touted after they got blasted over the magazine cancellations.

To say that their "commitment" has been pretty much of a joke is an understatement. Frankly its been embaressing. Its been 6+ months and now a new person is being given the chance to lead the effort. I know that WotC has been busy of late, but you don't announce a new initiative as part of a customer service & relations push and then abandon it.

Any companies level of customer service and communication is not measured by the spikes that are made by a focused effort, but rather by the lowest level that is deemed acceptable by that company. With WotC that level is currently pretty low.
 

sjmiller

Explorer
What I can't understand is why a small game company (read Steve Jacson Games) that has produced hundreds of items over the span of about 30 years can keep up with errata for every single product, yet WotC can't give us errata on just the products produced in the last 8 years. Add to that the fact that they are just going to give up on it in a few months, because nobody will want that old stuff after 4th edition comes out. Well, I imagine that is what they are thinking.
 

Jhaelen

First Post
Sammael said:
It's a good thing only if you want the products to never get released.

I'm a software developer and I damn well know that 99.99% of software developers would never get any product out of the door without some type of project management.
[off-topic]Well, I happen to be a software developer, as well. That's why I can tell you from personal experience that an overabundance of project managers can easily result in software projects being cancelled before a single line of code has been written.

That's what I was referring to: It's definitely preferrable to have a great staff of game designers than to have a great staff of project managers.
I didn't want to imply that there is no need for project management. I wanted to point out that without game designers there is no product.

Apparently, I belong to the 0.01% of software developers who managed to get more products out of the door after two years without a dedicated project manager than in the ten years I worked for a large company with lots of full-time project managers.
[/off-topic]


I expect we'll eventually see the errata for SC & MIC because these have already been prepared. If they release any 3E errata after that, they'll most probably be for the rules compendium. Anything else would surprise me.
 

jodyjohnson said:
The most recent errata stuff I've seen was that the responsibility got moved to Greg Bisland. I believe Logan Bonner had it before and he's now on the DDM design and Tiles, etc.

Thanks very much for the info. This is the kind of info I was looking for, although it is also the type of info that I was dreading.

It makes me very very sad to see how WotC is treating their existing customers when it comes to errata. Very sad indeed.
 

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