What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[DEFCON 1]

So, other than taking a lot of crap that they shouldn't have to, why do you think WotC shouldn't go after these customers? What reasons do you think they have for this?

I would imagine that WotC has not gone after the 3.5 crowd for several reason, most of which has been stated before, both here and on other threads.

1) Splitting the Market - they want people who get involved with D&D to concentrate on the most current version. They don't want to cause confusion between systems nor split up their own focus and time working on several different systems. If WotC felt there wasn't enough of a 3.5E market for product several years ago to warrant staying with that system, why would they think there'd be enough of a market to go back to 3.5E now?

2) Populace - I would tend to believe WotC has a pretty good idea of the numbers of people that have not made the jump from 3 to 4, both from their own book sales, plus probable sale info from companies like Paizo. And they have determined that the number of people who would come back does not justify the outlay of cash needed to get them back. Especially considering that many people (who have mentioned it in this thread) have chosen not to play 4E purely because of public relations and anger issues towards the company, not because of the game itself. So that reduces the number of previous adopters that they could get back even if they chose to try. And of those people remaining... quite a number of them wouldn't come back to WotC because they are happy with Paizo's work... which decreases the number of potential returnees even more. They've determined the populace just isn't there to warrant the time and energy spent trying to make products for them.

3) Piracy - People can claim all that they want that you can easily download all the WotC printed products you want right now, and thus there's no reason not to sell PDFs of their material (both old and new). But I would counter that with the fact that the amount of places you can get these pirated books is substantially less than the number of places you'd be able to get them if/when official WotC PDFs ever got released. If that ever occured, the amount of places you'd be able to get these products illegally would skyrocket over current numbers because of the ease that even casual downloaders / piraters would have to set these illegal copies up

And for many would-be downloaders... the decision to do so is oftentimes just how easy it is to do, and how likely you feel you'd be able to get away with it. So the more places that have pirated material available, the easier it would be to find it, the easier it would be to get, and the better the chance that the quality of product you'd get would be good. Plus, with more places offering the material, the less likely it would be that any government, regulatory or watchdog group is keeping tabs on these download sites to possibly bust people over it after time. And on top of that, the more places that offer it widens the possibility of finding sites that won't infest your company with hundreds of trojans, virues, and worms at the same time you download the product.

I know personally that I'm terrified to download a lot of stuff from the internet just because I don't trust my computer will make it out alive if I do. And I'm sure that goes through the heads of many other people, especially 'casual' downloaders, who actually consider the potential cost of downloading pirated material above and beyond just 'getting arrested'. So by WotC making it such that not having PDFs available means many fewer sites have any of their material to give out, and for those that do it's oftentimes books that have been ripped apart and then scanned (which if people really wanted that kind of quality, they could do it themselves if it really mattered that much to them)... they therefore are reducing the size of the pool of people who might possibly download pirated copies of their books.

4) Internet Sales Sites - For all we know, WotC has their products both old and new already primed and set to sell via PDF or E-book, or whatever file format makes the most sense. But then it comes down to how exactly does WotC get the products out to people?

Do they offer them to DriveThruRPG or RPGNow to sell? But what if those companies can't handle the volume or give the same customer assurances or security that WotC would demand of a store like that? Does WotC sell these files themselves? But do they have the capabilities at this time to actually be an internet store in addition to being a production game company? How much time, money, and staff would be required to set something like this up, and is the money from potential sales worth that outlay of cost at this time? Are the current ebooks like Kindle or Nook in a place at this time to be worthwhile formats to present WotC material (since images are not able to be sent through them)? Are they waiting for the iPad and other iPad style computers to grab a bigger part of the marketplace so that they CAN produce their books with all requisite imaging without having to use the PDF file format (which might be more likely to be able to be easily pirated)?

All in all... there are so many questions as to just how worthwhile it is to put their old stuff into circulation, that it's folly to make the leap to just assume it's because they are either idiots, or that WotC / Hasbro are nothing more than evil corporate suits who want nothing more than to stick it to their former customers. In truth... I suspect it's several more logical and benign reasons than that.

 

[Mark CMG]

I do want to add that if WotC at some point rereleases older versions in some electronic form (PDF or whatever), I hope they hold them to a higher standard than the 1E/2E PDF releases. Both the 3E and 4E PDFs were very high quality, but some of the older ones (primarily 1E scans) were wretched.

IIRC, Jim Butler was in charge of getting the PDF of 2E and older materials together and probably under some time constraints to do so. Much of the materials were in bad shape (and some borrowed from people's private collections, if memory serves) and scanning equipment was not what it is today. 3E and newer materials were being made at the time so the PDFs could more readily be monitored for quality (they needed to be for contemporary printing processes and other work). If the decsion came down to either using what is already done or not rereleasing the materials because starting from scratch is to costly, I'd as soon have the older ones. If they could put out a general call to people with the proper equipment and older materials to make better scans (ALA WotC putting out a list of where there are gaps in the archive or substandard PDFs of older materials and asking individuals who can help to send in their credentials), I'd love to see that sort of community-minded effort on their part. They could hire as freelancers the people with the best collections and proper equipment for peanuts or for credit with the archive to help them complete their own collections. Everyone could win by such a project but it would require WotC officials to be interested in reaching out to lapsed D&Ders and to be willing to spearhead the effort.

 

[El Mahdi]

I would imagine that WotC has not gone after the 3.5 crowd for several reason, most of which has been stated before, both here and on other threads.

1) Splitting the Market - they want people who get involved with D&D to concentrate on the most current version. They don't want to cause confusion between systems nor split up their own focus and time working on several different systems. If WotC felt there wasn't enough of a 3.5E market for product several years ago to warrant staying with that system, why would they think there'd be enough of a market to go back to 3.5E now?

2) Populace - I would tend to believe WotC has a pretty good idea of the numbers of people that have not made the jump from 3 to 4, both from their own book sales, plus probable sale info from companies like Paizo. And they have determined that the number of people who would come back does not justify the outlay of cash needed to get them back. Especially considering that many people (who have mentioned it in this thread) have chosen not to play 4E purely because of public relations and anger issues towards the company, not because of the game itself. So that reduces the number of previous adopters that they could get back even if they chose to try. And of those people remaining... quite a number of them wouldn't come back to WotC because they are happy with Paizo's work... which decreases the number of potential returnees even more. They've determined the populace just isn't there to warrant the time and energy spent trying to make products for them.

Nah...I don't buy these. We aren't talking about printing new books, or making new supplements. I agree with you, making new material and products would no longer be worthwhile. But, what we're talking about is putting up an occasional older edition article/adventure (perhaps one a month in Dungeon and Dragon rotated between past editions from OD&D to 3E), and probably entirely fan submitted. That doesn't require any WotC R&D or writing. Only editing from the Dungeon/Dragon staff. Also, DDI support in the way of a Character Builder/Enounter Builder/Compendium type of thing, I feel could be done relatively cheaply since the DDI structure is already built (programming, servers, etc.). Not to mention that DDI subs are very different than trying to sell books since it's a monthly, recurring source of revenue.

A DDI sub is what, about $10 a month? That's $120 per person, per year. Get just 100 new customers from the older edition crowd and that's an extra $12,000 dollars a year. Would it cost $12,000 dollars to set up the pages? I really don't know. But even if it did, year number 2 and every year after would be virtually pure profit (as maintenance would really be negligible...the servers are already maintained because of the 4E subs...and there would be no updates necessary like the 4E compendium). However, I'm betting they could get significantly more than just 100 extra subscribers. I just can't see why it wouldn't be worthwhile. Now, if it was a matter of they just don't have the time or resources to do this right now...that I'd understand. But "splitting the market" or lack of enough potential customers...Nope, not buying it.

Besides, isn't giving a group of potential customers nowhere to go but their own homebrews or other publishers, already "splitting the market"?

3) Piracy - People can claim all that they want that you can easily download all the WotC printed products you want right now, and thus there's no reason not to sell PDFs of their material (both old and new). But I would counter that with the fact that the amount of places you can get these pirated books is substantially less than the number of places you'd be able to get them if/when official WotC PDFs ever got released. If that ever occured, the amount of places you'd be able to get these products illegally would skyrocket over current numbers because of the ease that even casual downloaders / piraters would have to set these illegal copies up

And for many would-be downloaders... the decision to do so is oftentimes just how easy it is to do, and how likely you feel you'd be able to get away with it. So the more places that have pirated material available, the easier it would be to find it, the easier it would be to get, and the better the chance that the quality of product you'd get would be good. Plus, with more places offering the material, the less likely it would be that any government, regulatory or watchdog group is keeping tabs on these download sites to possibly bust people over it after time. And on top of that, the more places that offer it widens the possibility of finding sites that won't infest your company with hundreds of trojans, virues, and worms at the same time you download the product.

I know personally that I'm terrified to download a lot of stuff from the internet just because I don't trust my computer will make it out alive if I do. And I'm sure that goes through the heads of many other people, especially 'casual' downloaders, who actually consider the potential cost of downloading pirated material above and beyond just 'getting arrested'. So by WotC making it such that not having PDFs available means many fewer sites have any of their material to give out, and for those that do it's oftentimes books that have been ripped apart and then scanned (which if people really wanted that kind of quality, they could do it themselves if it really mattered that much to them)... they therefore are reducing the size of the pool of people who might possibly download pirated copies of their books.

All those products were already released. All the sites that hosted those pirated files are still in existence...they didn't go anywhere with WotC's ceasing to sell pdf's. Those pirated files also didn't disappear...there still out there and available to those who don't care where they come from. I can see an argument being made for not releasing any more current products in electronic format until they can figure out a way to protect them. But the ones that are already out there? Pulling old edition pdf's did not reduce the amount of places where they were available. If anything, that in of itself has already increased the amount of places now hosting those already pirated files. Like I said before, it's not just a case of closing the barn door after the horses have left, it's also refusing to open the door for the horses that have returned.

Also, anyone who thinks that anything short of an uncopyable, unhackable, electronic format is going to reduce piracy is simply kidding themselves. Piracy will not go away or shrink until then, if ever. There is no countermeasure short of an iron-clad format that ever will. And it may just be likely that such a format won't really ever be possible or feasible.

4) Internet Sales Sites - For all we know, WotC has their products both old and new already primed and set to sell via PDF or E-book, or whatever file format makes the most sense. But then it comes down to how exactly does WotC get the products out to people?

Do they offer them to DriveThruRPG or RPGNow to sell? But what if those companies can't handle the volume or give the same customer assurances or security that WotC would demand of a store like that? Does WotC sell these files themselves? But do they have the capabilities at this time to actually be an internet store in addition to being a production game company? How much time, money, and staff would be required to set something like this up, and is the money from potential sales worth that outlay of cost at this time? Are the current ebooks like Kindle or Nook in a place at this time to be worthwhile formats to present WotC material (since images are not able to be sent through them)? Are they waiting for the iPad and other iPad style computers to grab a bigger part of the marketplace so that they CAN produce their books with all requisite imaging without having to use the PDF file format (which might be more likely to be able to be easily pirated)?...

I agree with most of this. As far as RPGNow, I'm pretty sure they can handle the volume, as they did so for years before the pdf's were pulled, and for nearly a year after 4E was released (when volume was probably at it's highest). As for the rest, they are all very valid points and questions. They could definitely be factors in the situation. But, we don't know cause they ain't talkin...

 

[ST]

This looks to me like a subgroup of gamers doing identity politics.

Wizards wouldn't chase those consumers for a very simple reason. They're binding their product-purchasing decisions up in their own sense of self, of what D&D "means to them". That's an extremely difficult market to chase, and at its core, is a collection of markets of one.

Chasing a market that will purchase your product based on what it makes THEM feel like is just a hard sell. If Wizards has a marketing strategy, it's intended to efficiently maximize market share.

Heck, when I was in software, we had the experiences of having customers we actively DIDN'T want, because the after-sales cost of support were in excess of the money made. We lost money pursuing those consumers, so we stopped. (Actually, they didn't in time, and the company eventually folded, but we sure tried. )

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Also, anyone who thinks that anything short of an uncopyable, unhackable, electronic format is going to reduce piracy is simply kidding themselves. Piracy will not go away or shrink until then, if ever. There is no countermeasure short of an iron-clad format that ever will. And it may just be lilely that such a format won't really ever be possible or feasible.

Thievery has been around longer than humans have: you're not ever going to stop piracy.

However, civil and criminal prosecution on both the supply and demand side do an OK job of keeping the numbers down (this is sometimes called "The Swiss Model" in other areas of the law).

The REAL way to put a dent in piracy, though, is in ethics education, be it secular, religious or both. Those who really understand what piracy costs pretty much don't do it...or do it at such minimal levels that its not worth mentioning.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

All I know for sure is this: I would love to have access to 3E (and earlier editions) support through DDI - and I would spend good money for it. Unfortunately it doesn't exist. That's real money not going to WotC. From threads like this, I think it's pretty obvious I'm not the only one, that there's a fairly significant group of people and their money that WotC is not tapping...but could.

<snip>

I don't buy into the disgruntledness over edition changes or even campaign world changes. They both have to evolve and change in order to have anything to sell. It's silly to get angry at WotC for doing that or expecting them not to change (and some do...not all, but some). If those changes aren't to my liking, I simply don't buy the products. However, even though I don't play 4E, and don't prefer it, I have bought some 4e products (namely the core books) and occasionally mine them for ideas. I have never begrudged WotC their right to make or alter their system, nor criticized their system or campaign world changes. In truth, I've complimented 4E for many aspects of the system right here on these boards. But regardless of all that, since I no longer have a reason to visit their website, or be involved in organized play events, I have virtually no exposure to their products anymore.

So, even if they started selling older edition products in electronic format, and I stopped purposely not-buying their products because of it, I am exposed to almost zero marketing for their products. I'm not going to seek them out. If they want my money, they need to give me a reason to come to the WotC website and see their products. There are products and services that as a customer I desire...and only WotC has the ability to produce them. But they won't. I don't understand this seemingly purposeful rejection or overlooking of an entire segment of potential customers. I don't take it personally (anymore), but I still don't understand it.

QFT.

I once stated that 4Ed for me was like GURPS- a reasonably well-thought out system that I just don't happen to like much. And because of this (and like GURPS), I won't be buying 4Ed products to run a game (which I'll never do) but I will buy products to play in a game.

Because of this (and because I've always been a "Group Librarian"), besides the Core3 I own PHB 2&3, MP 1&2, AP, PP, AV 1&2, DMA, FRPG and EPG (all bought at discounts of at least 25%).

I was still buying the minis for a while. But they started looking bad...and they didn't support the full range of 4Ed PC races in anything resembling a real effort. So I stopped buying those.

In the future, I'm planning on getting DSPG. That may just wrap up 4Ed for me. I've even let my account over at WotC's forums lapse. Well...I haven't tried to access it in more than a year.

But if WotC released in-house, freelance or player-generated material for legacy games on DDI or in physical format, that might give me a reason to stay engaged with the company. If nothing else, I'd recommend it to my buddies who are more interested in legacy material than the new stuff.

 

[Verdande]

Would you please explain what you meant? I would love to run D&D (there are a lot more players available). But the amount of material and rules are daunting for me. I'd love a truly rules lite version of D&D I could play in a pick up fashion.

I would like to recommend to you the Labyrinth Lord game- its a retroclone of basic edition D&D that really is pick up and play. The rules are simple and there's not any of the tedious wargaming aspects that a lot of new roleplayers have a hard time understanding. I tried it, and I loved it.

Don't let anybody lie to you. The 4th edition of D&D simply isn't the same game as the 3rd edition. It has the same subject matter, but is an entirely new system and is not even slightly compatible with any of the other sets of rules. If you pick up a 1e book and then a 4e book, there will be no similarities. Whatsoever. Don't be fooled!

 

[Jack99]

People generate goodwill in a messageboard community by how they post.

Or how they do not post. It's one of the ways to generate goodwill, there are plenty others.

Mods (ideally) treat everyone in the community equally.

Yeah, but they don't. If you posted a storyhour here and I subsequently made a thread where I told everyone that your writing was crap and written for slightly mentally deficient people, I would be banned before I could say P-kitty. Yet WotC writers are fair game to comments like these.

Look, I am not saying people should be critical - not at all. And I also think writers/developers/designers should have a thick skin, when coming to places like this and interacting with the "fans". I do however think that a select group of people go way too far in their criticism of the products produces and way too far in the way said criticism is presented.

I don't agree that they aren't incorporating ideas because they are taking crap here (at least I think that's part of what you said)...but you are 100% right in that they do take a lot of crap that they shouldn't have to.

Snip

But anyways, as cool as ENWorld is, I don't think this place has the impact to convince WotC to not pursue a group of customers, solely because some here are blatantly insulting to them. So, other than taking a lot of crap that they shouldn't have to, why do you think WotC shouldn't go after these customers? What reasons do you think they have for this?

If the disrespect they endure is the main reason why you think they don't target these customers, then cool. I disagree with you...but it's cool. But if you think there are other reasons, I'd be interested in your point of view on this.

You must have misunderstood something. I never said that WotC did not produce stuff for prior editions because of the crap they are taking here. No, not at all.

I said that I do understand if the WotC guys do not bother to participate/read threads like this one. And this one is one of the more civil there has been on the subject. I mean, why bother answering questions if you just get a bucket of in your face every time? At some point, the false entitlement and self-righteousness permeating certain members of ENworld gets old.

As for your question - I do not know. I was pretty annoyed they pulled back the PDF's of the old editions but even more of the 4e books. Hell, I occasionally ask them about their promise of making the books available electronically. But so far, only crickets.

As for the whole 3.5 DDI. I simply think you are underestimating the cost of implementing and running 3.5 in it. They either have some analysis showing that it would cost more than it would bring in, or perhaps it shows that it would increase interest in 3.5, making 4e lose money (comparatively more than the 3.5 would bring in), or a lot of other things.

Or maybe Erik won a beer-drinking-contest over Bill and thus WotC has to stay the hell out of the 3.5/PF market

 

[Mark CMG]

If Wizards has a marketing strategy, it's intended to efficiently maximize market share.

Not selling something you already have made, to people who already know it and want it, seems to argue against this intention. WotC has cited the piracy factor but that seems to be a bugaboo that some persons in management have talked others into believing and thus influenced policy. Hopefully, with the regular management changes that seem to be inevitable, things will shift back to making the PDFs available again. They seem to already be hyping the idea that they want to win back lapsed D&Ders, now they can start proving it by simply turning the proverbial older edition PDF spigot back on.

 

[Mark CMG]

If you posted a storyhour here and I subsequently made a thread where I told everyone that your writing was crap and written for slightly mentally deficient people, I would be banned before I could say P-kitty. Yet WotC writers are fair game to comments like these.

That's untrue. If you see someone bahaving in that manner, toward any community member, whether they are a WotC employee or not, you need to report such a post.