Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
Good question. For me I like to divide the game into the rules and the adventures/setting books.
I'd say that as the edition went on, the quality of the adventures got much better (but, you might argue, it was hard to go anywhere but up). At the same time, about the time they announced the Essentials series, about the time they cancelled all of the books I was looking for, the rules quality went way down.
Obviously this is my opinion only, and I mean nothing negative towards the folks who worked on some of them ... but I just thought they were awful.
I remember wondering why the Essentials books were released in a format where you were paying for redundant material, and the class designs started to show individual tables for level advancement again.
And then the Heroes of Series started to show up and it was clear that there were a new vision behind the rules, someone who either didn't like the earlier designs, or really wasn't involved enough with them to begin with.
I know that's by no means a universal assessment, but it is mine. (snip)
Interesting.
I can certainly understand your point-of-view, even if I don't entirely agree as I quite like some of the Essentials classes.
What I found astonishing about the whole Essentials debacle was that there was no book actually called a PHB that you could point people towards. (And, yes, I realise there still was the original 4E PHB but it had so much errata that a new one really was required.) The takeover of TSR by WotC and the subsequent professional business analysis that was performed revealed very clearly that EVERYTHING had to drive sales of the PHB. The advent of DDi has not changed that.
Frankly, it was just a half-assed revised edition that, at the time, seemed to be a way to buy a few more months for the edition and which was then subsequently revealed to be exactly that: a way of stretching out the inevitable. Honestly, though, who in their right mind would publish an effectively new edition of D&D in paperback using a book size that D&D had never used before?
It made no sense at the time and makes even less sense with the benefit of hindsight.
Now as far as adventures go, I really enjoyed some of them. The last product I remember buying as a DM was Murder at Gardmore Abbey, and my group had a lot of fun with that. Similarly, I got some real use out of the Neverwinter book (as you mention).
I don't mean to harp on it, but I think the second half of the 4E lifespan was a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy where books weren't selling, so they changed them up or simply stopped releasing product. Of course that meant a reboot was coming... I'm just shocked that WotC was content to basically stop making product for a couple of years.
Yeah, the way WotC just let the line languish - thus, inter alia, destroying any goodwill from distributors and retailers - while they took three or so years to rewrite AD&D2E just shows that the tabletop RPG is not a core part of their business. You can also see that in terms of Mike Mearls job title compared to Bill Slavicsek's - Mike is far less senior - and also in the reduced headcount and publication schedule. Let the game tread water while they hope for a big win from a movie or something else that can produce real revenue and real profits from the IP.
Anyway, I am thankful that WotC took a risk and published 4E because it is my favourite edition. Now if I only I can find a way to get offline versions of the DDi tools I will be set for the rest of my gaming life!