When did WotC D&D "Jump the Shark"?

[Hussar]

And repeating claims that "all of it" is flimsy doesn't make *that* true.

There have been detailed discussions of the various sources of information. And you were involved.

There is a group that has given up on actually discussing the situation and instead wants to declare everything null without any basis for THAT claim. And I can spend a bunch of time re-presenting everything. And in another thread two weeks from now you will just again hit a reset button and act like none of this ever happened either.

I'm not going to feel obligated to restate the argument over and over. Feel completely free to declare victory over that. If that is your standard, then by your rules I declare you the winner. Congrats.

I'm going to keep calling it the way I see it.

Yes, I was involved in those threads. That's WHY I'm saying what I'm saying. You look at a bunch of anedotes, stripped of context, lacking any real substance, and claim that they are the truth. I look at the same "evidence" and say, "Y'know what? We can't really state anything with any assurance. It might be true, but, really? No one actually knows."

 

[Hussar]

I don't mean to pick, Hussar, but I'd like to make a couple comments on your post:



I would say Paizo has done more outreach in the past decade, myself, but who knows? Here's an honest question, though: Whats the feedback loop for Encounters and GW, because reaching out to customers doesn't necessarily mean listening and responding to customers. You need the loop! And if WotC is really listening to its customers, and wisely choosing which feedback to incorporate, then that can only be good for the game.

Past decade? Don't think so. Did Paizo even exist in 2001? And, while Paizo has done fantastic things reaching out to its fans, what has it done to reach out to new gamers? What has any gaming company done on the scale of D&D Encounters? Or the Library initiatives. Or giving money to registered gaming groups as WOTC did a few years back?

Are you thinking of specific publishers here, because I thought the GSL was the death knell for D&D 3PP.

In 2006, before 4e was announced, how many companies were producing 3pp D&D? 5 maybe? And that was stretching it. All the mid tier companies were almost gone (Mongoose, AEG, FFG) and other than Paizo, you had very, very little on the ground.

I think D&D was a mess at the tail end of 2e, because TSR was a mess. The game rebounded spectacularly during the 3e years, which was great to see.

Agreed. But, there were elements which facilitated that rebound that were totally outside of WOTC's control. A moribund gaming industry that hadn't seen a new big game in years (quick, name 3 releases from 1995 up to the release of 3e that made a big, lasting splash). Years of fantastic economic growth certainly didn't hurt. So on and so forth.

Interesting point, but I would think it would be more worrisome for D&D's current owner that a d20 D&D-based game is the one nipping at their heels. (If that's really happening, off course, because I have no proof of that.) And I'm not sure what you mean by "leveraged the D&D name", because Pathfinder doesn't seem to do that. What it does do is leverage past D&D editions, as did 3rd edition, 3.5, 4e, Essentials, etc etc.

Sorry, I thought the tag line on the front of the Pathfinder books was "3rd Edition THRIVES!"

Also, excellent marketing can get folks to the table, but only a solid and fun game will keep players at the table. My unsupportable anecdotal experience leads me to believe that Pathfinder will be fine down the road. But anything can happen.

In the meantime, I'll keep playing both PF and 4e.

Honestly, I think Pathfinder will be fine for years as well. I just don't think it will grow much beyond what it is now. I think they leveraged the fact that people were dissatisfied with 4e and liked 3e and drew heavily on that crowd for their fans. But, 5 years down the road, that crowd will be pretty much saturated - either they chose one game or the other (or both). But it won't grow much beyond that.

I'll be very interested to see how their new Basic book goes. I wish them all the best.

True, but if you're a corporation like Hasbro you don't think as much about return on investment as profitability. If WotC is only just making a bit over their investment I could see Hasbro wanting to allocate those resources elsewhere, unless they feel that D&D is a loss leader (which I don't think it is).

Again, I'm not denying that D&D makes WotC (and thus Hasbro) money. But the point is, I think, it is not nearly as successful as it could and should be.

This is a bit false. Large corporations ONLY think about return on investment because that's the only thing that matters as far as the shareholders are concerned. A stable ROI is a very, very valuable thing. Evergreen products are the bread and butter of any large corporation. Flash in the pan fads are expensive and wasteful because for every fad, there's a thousand ideas that flopped.

So, sure, it could be more successful. That's always true. But, at some point the company has to accept that there is an upper limit to how successful you can expect a product to be. It would be great if there were 100 million tabletop gamers out there. But, after 30 years, it's not likely to happen.

 

[Fifth Element]

This is a bit false. Large corporations ONLY think about return on investment because that's the only thing that matters as far as the shareholders are concerned. A stable ROI is a very, very valuable thing.

Indeed. Looking at profits by themselves would show a stunning lack of awareness of the context in which said profits were earned.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, I was involved in those threads. That's WHY I'm saying what I'm saying. You look at a bunch of anedotes, stripped of context, lacking any real substance, and claim that they are the truth. I look at the same "evidence" and say, "Y'know what? We can't really state anything with any assurance. It might be true, but, really? No one actually knows."

Exactly. It is like people derive these hypotheses from practically no solid information at all, and then they repeat them 1000 times and they become "the truth" backed by the solid evidence of all the threads repeating the same old unsupported hypotheses.

There's simply NO TRUTH out there, unless someone has insider information that everyone else lacks and hasn't appeared anywhere. Show me this evidence! Don't keep repeating "it exists", SHOW ME.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, still outraged after all these years

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Not happy =/= outraged, however so you may wish that it did!

Hubris will make even the acknowledgement of missteps impossible.

I am proof positive that this is not necessarily so.

 

[Henry]

There's simply NO TRUTH out there, unless someone has insider information that everyone else lacks and hasn't appeared anywhere. Show me this evidence! Don't keep repeating "it exists", SHOW ME.

The only truth I have is my anecdotal evidence which is as follows:

Last month, I bought pathfinder's Inner Sea map for twenty bucks. I just bought the PDF of Inner Sea World Guide for Pathfinder for ten bucks. I fully intend to buy Ultimate Magic in May as soon as it's shippable, and Ultimate Combat in August after that, for the total tune of about ninety to 110 bucks in a six month time span.

Contrast this with the ZERO dollars I've spent on D&D since I canceled my DDI account in November, and seeing no product on the roster that even interests me this whole year. Prior to that, the last books I bought was the two Dark Sun books, and the first essentials book, which I haven't used yet. Pathfinder is keeping my interest by putting out attractive products that pique my interest, and WotC just has not, and even canceled the products that DID interest me. WotC is taking every possible misstep to try to keep me as a customer, and for someone who was buying up 4E material like candy prior to October of 2010, that's saying a lot.

What are their missteps, from my perspective?

1. Cutting all ebook releases.
2. Replacing their existing well-done software with substandard and restrictive substitutes.
3. Hitching their wagon to the GSL instead of the OGL.
4. Supporting the essentials material to the exclusion of pre-Essentials design, rather than supplementing it with Essentials design.

I also have concerns with the direction that things like their Fortune Cards initiative is moving, but that's minor - I have no desire for any collectible aspect to RPGs, but I have no proof that this is an indicator of the future, so unless I have evidence to the contrary, as I say it's minor at best.

However, the four issues above Paizo is embracing in direct opposition to WotC, and in addition to some good solid design work and excellent idea generating material, it's the main reasons they're keeping my interest.

 

[mudbunny]

Given that his "trolling" consisted largely of legitimate concerns about the new edition, which were being made at the time it aired by fans of previous editions.....Sorry, but this was a really bad commercial, that directly targeted people who were concerned with the direction WotC was taking D&D in.

<snip>

YMMV.

shrug

Like I said. For me it was pretty clear that the ad was targeted at trolls (hence the use of a troll character), not people simply complaining.

But, one's opinions of the ads, like everything else, is subjective. I can see why you feel the way that you do, and understand it, I just don't agree with it.

(Note that this in no way means that i am dismissing your feelings.)

 

[Jeffrey]

I met my old edition
At the gamestore last night
It seemed so glad to see me
I just cried
And we talked about some old times
And we killed ourselves some owlbears
Still outraged after all these years
Oh, still outraged after all these years

​

Unnecessary.

 

[Hussar]

The only truth I have is my anecdotal evidence which is as follows:

Last month, I bought pathfinder's Inner Sea map for twenty bucks. I just bought the PDF of Inner Sea World Guide for Pathfinder for ten bucks. I fully intend to buy Ultimate Magic in May as soon as it's shippable, and Ultimate Combat in August after that, for the total tune of about ninety to 110 bucks in a six month time span.

Contrast this with the ZERO dollars I've spent on D&D since I canceled my DDI account in November, and seeing no product on the roster that even interests me this whole year. Prior to that, the last books I bought was the two Dark Sun books, and the first essentials book, which I haven't used yet. Pathfinder is keeping my interest by putting out attractive products that pique my interest, and WotC just has not, and even canceled the products that DID interest me. WotC is taking every possible misstep to try to keep me as a customer, and for someone who was buying up 4E material like candy prior to October of 2010, that's saying a lot.

What are their missteps, from my perspective?

1. Cutting all ebook releases.
2. Replacing their existing well-done software with substandard and restrictive substitutes.
3. Hitching their wagon to the GSL instead of the OGL.
4. Supporting the essentials material to the exclusion of pre-Essentials design, rather than supplementing it with Essentials design.

I also have concerns with the direction that things like their Fortune Cards initiative is moving, but that's minor - I have no desire for any collectible aspect to RPGs, but I have no proof that this is an indicator of the future, so unless I have evidence to the contrary, as I say it's minor at best.

However, the four issues above Paizo is embracing in direct opposition to WotC, and in addition to some good solid design work and excellent idea generating material, it's the main reasons they're keeping my interest.

Oh, and that's totally fair Henry. Honestly, I haven't spent a dime on 4e since buying the core 3, so, WOTC lost me as a customer a long time ago. Then again, my RPG purchasing has dropped virtually every year over the past ten years, so this is not particularly surprising.

But, while it's totally valid to say that WOTC is not catering to you, it's not really all that valid to say that you are either A) a typical consumer (you might be, but, we don't know) and B) that your habits are indicative of anything other than your personal buying habits.

Even if we get fifty people together who say that their spending habits are the same as yours, it's not really indicative of anything other than on the Internet, we can find fifty people who agree with you. There might only be 51 people out there that agree with you and we just happened to find almost all of them.

Given that people are far, far more likely to complain than to post saying, "Hey, I've got a great game and no problems", there's just so much bias in the reporting.

And, just to jump to the other side of the fence for a while, I totally agree that WOTC could be doing a lot more to engage fans. I'm really rather staggered that they are not doing so. I wonder if the orders have come down from on high after all the hooply and fruforol that surrounded the launch where any statement made by a WOTC employee was dissected down to the angstrom in the search for yet another thing to be pissed off about. I wonder if the decision was made to not engage with fans in an uncontrolled medium where anything of value just got buried under so much crap.

I think it's not a good idea. But, I wonder if they decided that the goodwill they could gain from engaging people would be just lost under the mountain of vitriol that gets spewed every time they poke their head up.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=158]Henry[/MENTION] Yeah, sure. I have nothing against it. Personally wasn't super fond of the graphic design, color choice etc. Rather wordy too. Just kind of didn't fit my style. I'd be totally happy with WotC's rules and Paizo's adventures. That was the promise that somehow was not born.

There's no other mistake WotC has ever made, except mishandling its relationship with Paizo to start with. Paizo could be doing adventures and DDI for that matter instead of WotC writing magazines, which they are OK at, but it is like their adventures, a little flat.

I think fundamentally though, PF attracts certain people, 4e attracts certain people. Probably both with be around for a long time to come. I'm having a fine time playing 4th now (well, DMing, I really can't find anyone else to DM online, lol). Have all the same players and that game has been poking along most every week. I use my existing 2e setting without changing really anything much. If you really just do what is fun, it works well.