WotC Chris Cao has left WotC

[Bravesteel25]

Yeah me too. I actually had a bunch on Steam, and I was like "Wow, cool!" when I saw them a couple of years ago, and then I checked again like a year later, intending them to upload them to my newly-made grand screenshot backup (in Google Drive), having made absolutely no changes to my PC, and no changes to Steam beyond letting it update, and suddenly GW1 has no screenshots...

On a more positive note I did manage to find some fairly early WoW screenshots and a bunch of Dark Age of Camelot ones.

DAoC! I can still hear the main theme in my head all these years later. I tried going back at one point, but I'm too spoiled by modern UI design. Sometimes you can't go home again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

DAoC! I can still hear the main theme in my head all these years later. I tried going back at one point, but I'm too spoiled by modern UI design. Sometimes you can't go home again.

Even if you can get past the UI and the game design and so on, the people you played with aren't there anymore. That's the real no going home for me. Sadly I lost touch with most of the Riddle of Iron crew from Gaheris, which is where I spent a lot of my time.

 

[aiouh]

Yeah, I sold about $800.00 worth a year ago. I am probably back to another $1k worth of stuff that I know I am not going to be interested in, otherwise I have my couple of decks that are designed to be solid, but high variance, so I can kick off games in the odd-event that I actually want to play MtG again. Budgetwise (& I am a DM on a VTT even), but DnD has been a drop-in-the-bucket compared to MtG. The price volatility on that game makes me think we have got to be nearing the "collector's bubble" that MtG players always assure me that the game is "bubble-proof", even though all the signs show an imminent collapse IMO.

Yeah MtG collectibility inflation is nuts. They might be printing money hand over fist selling to whales right now, but I don't see the market absorbing these cards long term once people check out when playing becomes secondary to collecting. I'd rather be in stocks or gold right now.

Like who is this even for? A 2022 serialized foil reprint of a 1994 common? Who collects modern foils except for the fact that it is artifically made rare?

Funnily also enough totally styled on the previous "investible" super rare Inventions card. At this point cards are not collectible because they mean something to people and as a byproduct of people loving the game, its because WotC already made them expensive to begin with. Which is why I seriously loathe the physical game nowadays.

If you think these chase rares subsidize normal play, think again.
This has not been the case, playing the game competitively has never been as expensive as it is now.

I can't accurately predict or pick out the exact mechanisms at play here, but as someone who used to be really invested in the game, something aint right.

 

[tetrasodium]

It sounds like a variance of "cognitive loading" or "materials retention" in education

They look like very interconnected things yea. Don't get me wrong, Miller's law is very much a thing with tons of related of research, it's using the findings as justification for a particular flavor of simplicity like capping players at 8 abilities through the extreme expansion of what falls under the short term working memory it covers.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, I sold about $800.00 worth a year ago.

A guy in my group financed a few years' worth of trips to Gen Con (for himself, not for the entire group) by selling M:tG cards at the convention.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Waiting on the D&D is dying video.

We only get those on days that end with “y”.

 

[Zardnaar]

We only get those on days that end with “y”.

I thought that was stupidity on internet?

 

[Electrik Wizard]

Ben Riggs shared that Chris Cao has left WotC.

I only just heard about this through some tangentially related news. I'd have thought this would be bigger, a lot of things blamed on people like Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams were (at least allegedly) down to this guy.

Even if only half the rumours about him are true he's a scumbag of epic proportions who should never have been involved with D&D in the first place.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd have thought this would be bigger, a lot of things blamed on people like Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams were (at least allegedly) down to this guy.

It seems like those allegations never found a lot of purchase, because they occurred at the same time as the OGL 2.0 crisis (and came out as part of it), and whilst, frankly, I believe them, I'm not sure him going will make a lot of difference.

That said, him, Crawford, and Perkins going all at about the same time, and Bilsland and presumably others coming in seems like it will make some pretty significant difference, though for good or ill we shall see. We probably won't feel the results of those changes for 2+ years given the pipeline of WotC products of course.

 

[Scribe]

I only just heard about this through some tangentially related news. I'd have thought this would be bigger, a lot of things blamed on people like Chris Cocks and Cynthia Williams were (at least allegedly) down to this guy.

Even if only half the rumours about him are true he's a scumbag of epic proportions who should never have been involved with D&D in the first place.

Really seems like this guy was able to dodge becoming the Main Character.