WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Velderan]

Well, they are letting people make money off of Intellectual Property that they own. Most other companies don't allow for anything like that.

Which I can understand why. Companies like Nintendo are very protective of their IPs to ensure nothing bad or stupid is done with them ever

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, they are letting people make money off of Intellectual Property that they own. Most other companies don't allow for anything like that.

That I agree with. Viva la Guild! I just want them to open up the rest of the settings so people can feel comfortable making content. TSR's settings are the only thing WotC has that are of any value to me anymore.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Seriously?

Serious question. What do you think monetization means?

 

[Clint_L]

Yet that's what will inevitably happen, only faster than it does now.

And every update renders previous versions of what was updated obsolete.

Leading to conversations like this in about 2028:

DM: "OK, everyone's here. <lays out premise of game etc.>. So, I'd better ask which version of what books you each have?"
Player 1: "I have the Players' Handbook, brand new 2028 printing!"
Player 2: "I've got a PH as well, but it's from 2023."
Player 3: "I just look online for that stuff; (to Player 1) there's updates there newer than even your 2028 book."
Player 4: "I've got the '25 PH - yeah, it's the one they messed up on with those new classes, but it's all I've got."
DM: "So, four of you each have different versions of the same game; and mine is different again. Trying to unify them all into a single version is gonna be a pain in the d20 for me; and damned if I'll ask you all to go out and buy something you pretty much already have. Screw it - let's play something else."

This is my main complaint with today's business model: "sustained growth" is ultimately, in the end, unsustainable. Once a business is chugging along and making money, what's wrong with "sustained status quo" as a goal?

See my hypothetical conversation above. That's what it'll look like in the wild: instead of getting a different game every ten-ish years you're getting a different game every year or even sooner, despite vague nods toward backward compatibility.

No, you're not. Because it has already happened, and the game was fine. Monsters of the Multiverse revised and updated two previously published 5e books. The old material didn't suddenly become unplayable.

Your example is ridiculous. Here's what'll actually happen:

"Hey, the latest PHB has a new way for Bards to use inspiration. We using that?"
"Sure." (Or "No.")

Just as it is now:
"Hey, can I play a Mercy Monk from Tasha's?"
"Okay."

That last conversation actually happened when I rolled my last character, and somehow the game didn't break and we didn't all freak out and decide not to play D&D anymore.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, you're not. Because it has already happened, and the game was fine. Monsters of the Multiverse revised and updated two previously published 5e books. The old material didn't suddenly become unplayable.

Your example is ridiculous. Here's what'll actually happen:

"Hey, the latest PHB has a new way for Bards to use inspiration. We using that?"
"Sure." (Or "No.")

Just as it is now:
"Hey, can I play a Mercy Monk from Tasha's?"
"Okay."

That last conversation actually happened when I rolled my last character, and somehow the game didn't break and we didn't all freak out and decide not to play D&D anymore.

It's a pain though we have several ways of doing races, power creep and deliberate obsolescence.

Latest Mordenkainen book for example didn't include the previous ones Tieflinge plus theres ohb and Tasha's as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Granted it is a lot more work than the simple-minded folks at WotC going ah I guess Tiamat is Takhisis.

It's a stance that goes back to TSR and 2E.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hardcore players barely make up 10% of the playerbase and that's in a good year. Turns out, no, designing the game for just those characters is not good as the current absolutely brutal series of guild crushing raids at the moment show.

My most recent raiding group imploded after about six to eight years this expansion. I'm going into Dragonflight planning on doing LFR and the new solo arena queue (there's a vicious mount I've had my eye on for years, but getting into the rated battleground scene is incredibly hard on my server -- next-level gatekeeping).

Said hardcore players also constantly complain about wanting Raid Finder, an accessible way for people who aren't no-lifing and try-harding, to be removed.... Despite the fact Blizz have gone on record saying that raids only exist because Raid Finder gives enough numbers to make it justifiable to even do raids.

Inexplicably making LFR use Group Loot seems like a way to punish people into doing normal raiding, which presupposes that everyone doing LFR had the opportunity to do so all along.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't play Classic myself (Look, I get why people like nostalgia but frankly I do not want to relive the days of me waiting on Dalaran trade chat for 6+ hours to grab my daily heroic) but...

The thing to consider is back in the day, we were kind of stumbling about, not 100% sure of what was entirely happening. However all these decades later, we have so much theorycrafting and everything in play that its almost like a solved game. Its going to inherantly be different simply because of all that knowledge we have. See folks mis-remembering Vanilla as being super hard and apparently when Classic launched, it'd take months and months for Molten Core to be beaten, as opposed to the reality where Molten Core was basically solved content and it got done in under a week from launch. Nothing wrong with it all

Pre-Wowhead, we had Thottbot, and I remember consulting it during vanilla beta. The notion that Classic was different -- beyond the systems that created friction, many of which are being dismantled on Classic anyway -- is mostly nostalgia for players' youth.

I don't play Classic, myself -- my overall /played on WoW is already so high that I don't see going back over my old tracks yet again with Classic -- but I always felt that Cataclysm throwing out so many babies with the bathwater was a terrible decision, so I'm glad that Blizzard listened to those players and brought back the pre-Cataclysm version of the game.

Not to mention, Classic Lich King has gotten missing pieces of armor sets finally added to the game, which I hope will get ported over to retail in an upcoming patch, so everyone wins.

 

[Azzy]

It's a stance that goes back to TSR and 2E.

1e, even—in the Manual of the Planes. But your point remains.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not many people care about rest of Toril

Look, there's a fantasy Australia and the Land of Flying Monkeys on Toril, both of which have never been detailed. There should be no higher priority for WotC than both of those settings, which are both amazing in different ways.