WotC Anyone Else Tired of the Wizards Bashing?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Stupid arguments, stupidly put.

Mod Note:

That’s as clear an insult to another ENWorlder as can be. No excuses for this.

 

[mamba]

I mean, they only did that because they realized that the previous plan was not going to work and make them all the money so they took appropriate action to get back to making just really alot of money as quickly as possible. An evil empire's plans do or don't work out and then require a change in strategy. That doesn't change the intent. Evil empires can lose.

I am not sure it would not have worked. There was outrage in part of the community, sure, but I doubt it would have cost them all that much ultimately.

I think it is a bit of both, realizing that it hurts them more than they expected and realizing that it does not actually accomplish what it was supposed to.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Mankind's degeneration of empathy will always surprise me.

"We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing!"

 

[eyeheartawk]

I am not sure it would not have worked. There was outrage in part of the community, sure, but I doubt it would have cost them all that much ultimately.

I think it is a bit of both, realizing that it hurts them more than they expected and realizing that it does not actually accomplish what it was supposed to.

When Hasbro investors started to become aware of it and started asking questions, at that point the juice wasn't worth the squeeze anymore.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Don't get into parasocial relationships with corporations. It always ends poorly. Every single time.

And most streamers are chasing outrage clicks. They won't stop until either everyone stops watching them (if they have a facepalm or a thumbs down on their thumbnail, don't click on them) or WotC stops throwing them red meat. Both of those seem unlikely to happen any time soon.

 

[Hatmatter]

It has become very fashionable to trash WOC as a streamer. Particularly since a [previously unheard of streamer] posted some heavily shared videos, picked up a few thousand likes and then went back to obscurity. I too am thoroughly sick of the sniping and drama being stirred up by people with a financial interest.

TSR was raised as a comparison but nothing WOC has done in the last 10 years has even come close to the way TSR or many other companies of its time behaved. It’s ironic that WOC which voluntarily allowed the public to publish variations its IP and make millions of $$$ is being compared to a company that sued fans for sharing ideas for homebrew without profit. They are in different leagues.

80% of the complaints are based on a lack of understanding of how companies work and the other 20% are based on genuine mistakes, that anyone can make. The problem is not that WOC is the 500lb gorilla in the room. It’s that it has a legion of commentators trying to make a fast buck by pointing and shouting.

Of course the mob is fickle - no one is talking anymore about how Paizo supposedly abused their team because of course now they’re the White Knights.

A lot of this all stems from three problems… firstly everyone things they can write RPG products and therefore has opinions on how they could do it so much better. We see that time and time again with criticism.

Secondly WotC are never going to or can never comment publicly and fully on most of the stuff because they have to show restraint - something that the twitter-sphere is not constrained by, so we only ever get one side of the story and a mountain of speculation (usually from people with vested interests or an axe to grinds.

Thirdly everyone thinks that D&D is played the way they do at their table, the way they like it and therefore they have very little patience for either change or plurality of ideas.

All in all it makes for a hot mess that’s not very pretty to watch.

Very well said!

 

[MGibster]

It does seem at times like D&D has stifled creativity. Maybe now that playing RPGs is getting accepted more widely we could have some real competition. Even if I stick with D&D since it currently works for me and my players I don't see other companies innovating in new directions as a bad thing.

In some ways, I'd agree. But I do think others have made good arguments for why having a lingua franca amongst RPG players is a good thing and it's hard to deny that D&D serves this purpose. When explaining a new game to players, I frequently make comparisons to D&D, not by arguing that this game is better, but by using a common frame of reference which facilitates communication. And I think there have been a lot of excellent games released over the last 50 years which are not patterned after D&D, but none of those have the cultural footprint of the dreaded Gygax. (He's like a 30 HD monster.)

 

[TheSword]

Now that I'm caught up on the thread, I can't believe there are so many people ok with a toy company sending hired muscle to intimidate youtubers over leaks. This is actually insane. Unless they kill the dude, people just won't care. Who cares if armed men show up to you and your wife's home to bully you? Its all show business baby! Get with it or get out of here!

Truly, society is more absurd than any fiction.

This is where the exaggeration come in. They’re effectively performing bailiff work in this case. They probably look pretty hench because you don’t knock on peoples doors (some of whom are going to be dangerous) unless you know how to handle yourself. This doesn’t mean they were sent there to beat him up. Theres no evidence that I’ve seen that they were armed, or if they were certainly not that there was any intention to use force. There’s no evidence that they went after his wife… that’s all pure hyperbole to try and make the leaker seem vulnerable and make people outraged.

Hired muscle? It’s flawed, I’m not buying it.

 

[Cadence]

Bashing feels like a thing that happens. I wish the bashing wasn't so incessantly tied to repeated hyperbole. Complaining about the hyperbole might just prolong threads on bashing.

 

[mamba]

I want to call out this post specifically.

Do you understand how undeniably screwed up it is to send the Pinkertons? This dude has stolen cards, send the police or something (not much better tbh). But sending hired muscle to scare his wife? You think its alright to just to terrorize someone in their home and their loved ones over this kind of stuff?! Are you serious????

If you get terrorized by someone telling you that you possibly are in legal trouble (and what the maximum sentence for that could be) over not returning the cards you should not have in the first place but refuse to give back, then that is on you.

First of all, you could have returned them when they contacted you, did you expect them to just go away after you tell them ‘no’?

Second, I would not have been terrorized, and neither was the guy from what I have heard of him. They had a not so friendly chat, nothing I would not shrug off. The guy never believed that legal ‘threat’ and I agree that was a stretch, so what.

If you cannot have a ‘talking to’, don’t try to play hardball.

In the end all that happened is that he returned the cards and got the ones he had actually ordered. He could have had that outcome more easily too, I am sure WotC would have preferred that.