Way Back When...
I'll admit, if I had high speed internet, I would probably be a WoW junkie. I was a MUD junkie, where I literally spent hours doing the same things over and over again, though often I would struggle to chat and level at the same time. Back in my glory days of MUDding though, we had a good group of friends going, and eventually I even met two of the people I met there, though I haven't had contact with them since a time when they lost their internet many years ago. We predicted a long time ago MUDs with real graphics. That being said, I eventually grew bored with MUDs. Someday, in maybe three to seven years, WoW will probably experience a drop in players who have just lost that loving feeling, aside from any competitors. Though I could be wrong. The fewer people that play WoW, the fewer servers there are, which means the more condensed the remaining players are, so essentially the experience may remain the same in terms of individually visible players ad infinitum.
That being said, if the content of D&D hardcovers shrinks any more while price stays the same, especially in my new favourite setting, then what is the point? MM2 was priced at $41.95 Cdn. for around 222 pages, while Secrets of Xen'drik is around 156... for $39.95... even Frostburn, at 224, was no were near ~$60, which is what it would be for page count... I guess what I am getting at, is whether there is something wrong with shelling out that kind of money, when the two covers are almost as thick as the 160 pages...
I'm not sure if I have ever seen a breakdown of the actual costs of making a D&D hardcover... *that* is something I would be really interested in.
(Not to mention the actually costs of selling a copy of a book in the US, versus selling a copy in Canada. If a book costs $29.95 US, then I would be fine with paying $34.95, which is still more than $1.50 over the actually straight exchange, but come on, $39.95? I want some hard numbers, not this obfuscation over the reason for it.)