So after 3-4 years of 4e being out on the market WOTC reprinted the original classes with all new ways/concepts of building the characters to hopefully get new players? Thats what your saying WOTC has said and/or is saying? Why not just issue updated reprints of the core products again and slap the word "Revised" in front of the titles? Would that have not been easier? Heck, I would actually buy those books.
At this point then they have wasted time and money getting nothing of value to their existing player base. I could already teach a brand new player with no RPG experience how to play 4e in a few hours and so could any of the people I have gamed with. There may be a lot of choices for characters but once you have the basics its all about common sense and personal preference from there on out.
Unless you had another point I missed my reason for being "mad" at WOTC regarding D&D still stands.
Except that your 'madness' at them is based on your own perceptions. WotC is no doubt in a much better position to understand what factors are involved in acceptance and uptake of their game system.
So lets paint a picture. They have a product which is reasonably well received amongst a segment of the existing market, all of those people who switched to 4e when it came out or since then. They see 2 things though. One is that there is a whole segment of people who continue to play 3.5 or who are playing Pathfinder, which nobody would deny is a popular game and may be as popular as 4e or at least close. Secondly they see the whole market slowly shrinking as the flow of new players into D&D (and RPGs in general) is small and doesn't replace those who 'retire' from the game. Old people also have less income and they'd rather have a younger demographic.
So, with a single product release, Essentials, they aim to kill two birds with one stone. They address some of the negative feedback they've gotten from both current players of 4e and people that stuck with 3.5/PF. Secondly that product streamlines certain aspects of the game and can be presented in a cleaner and more easily digested form which may appeal to people with less money to spend and who may be just starting. As a third feature it also addresses certain issues with the supply chain.
Thus Essentials. It is NOT aimed at you the existing dedicated 4e player. They certainly hope you'll buy it and use it as supplementary material, but they didn't design it with you in mind and don't expect it to meet specific needs you have. Being 'mad' about it is like if you owned a Ford Explorer and Ford decided to come out with a new smaller line of hybrid SUVs. You still have what you want, and they still sell what you want (and notice they still sell the PHB1 etc, it hasn't gone away and they even stated they didn't anticipate discontinuing this product).
As for a revised PHB it doesn't solve any issues for them. In fact it makes things worse. It would force them to eat an inventory of existing books. It would simply add one more SKU to the extensive 4e line, and it would also both obsolete retailer's inventory and be confusing as people wonder if the revised 4e PHB1 is what they want. It also probably wouldn't generate a huge amount of sales. My guess is something akin to these factors is what lead them to decide to cancel Heroes of Sword and Spell. Given that option isn't viable from a business perspective what would you have had them do instead of what they did do? Being mad simply seems irrational to me. WotC seems to be putting out as many products as they can manage to put out that they think will actually sell right now. Despite all the armchair quarterbacking and bitching by people if you actually take a step back and look at what they've done over the last 3 years you find they've released around 30 books in a very short period of time and created a pretty credible digital service. No product is flawless and you can with your 20/20 hindsight criticize them for certain things, but on the whole they've been rather brilliant. WotC didn't create the game industry as it is today, and they simply have to deal with the hand they've been dealt. I'd suggest everyone get off their high horses and take a look at reality.
Yes, one can play 4e without the software tools. But I wouldn'T want to, because not having a compendium makes my life as a DM an player harder. Not having a CB makes my live as player harder. WotC has published an awful amount of stuff for each class, build and regarding items and everything. Collection that among all those books requires huge amounts of time. And I like to DM 4e because it does NOT require so much time.
Surely no one forces you do quit playing 4e if the software does not work anymore. Anyone can still play it. But I don't really want to anymore at that point. It's currently nasty enough with the bad usability of the CB and to some extend also the compendium.
The 4e tools provided a real improvement to rpgs, so you could say, you'll drop back to normal again. but I don't thing other rpgs or editions of D&D have gotten such a vast amount of books you have to consider and so I think 4e in this way would not have been possible with all those tools.
It is hard to imagine any scenario where 4e would be abandoned. Consider that D&D as a property has a certain value. Hasborg could decide to free up some capital and sell it, but putting it to sleep for 5 years would just kill it, there'd be no players left and its brand recognition would be in the toilet with anyone they'd want to bring in at that point. Given that value is really in the community with D&D the options are really sell now or continue to support the game at whatever level is justified by the market.
Now, noting that the staff working on 4e has NOT been cut this year, despite Hasborg taking a beating, I'd have to conclude that they have significant product plans. In other words even if they are going to cut back on certain products and focus on other ones they're still going to be continuing the D&D product line and supporting 4e. It may not be as many products this year, we don't know, but they've got SOMETHING for all those people to do or they wouldn't be on payroll anymore.
Really the worst case scenario would be WotC spends its time spinning out more D&D-esque board games, moves DDI to more of a maintenance mode, and just puts out a small number of books or boxed sets, plus maybe the odd tile product or other accessory for a couple years. Given the fairly high DDI numbers it is hard to imagine that being shut down. If all they do is maintain it, do a low level of bug fixing and adding something now and then when a book or article comes out, then it is hard to see it not making money, certainly at anything even close to the existing subscriber base. Beyond that a sale of the game isn't totally inconceivable and who knows what would happen then. However I don't really see where there is any potential buyer out there with the deep pockets to make that attractive to them.
In short I wouldn't look for anything to change much. I think new product will be announced at DDXP and we'll see that most of this is just people's overactive imaginations combined with a modest cleanup and reworking of products due this year. It may be a slower year, but things will go forward and 4e will continue pretty much like now, albeit probably with a slightly different mix of print and digital material.
