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Didn't find it in the news so I make this post to tell what the title says.

I disagree with Monte Cook. Levels, classes, feats are excellent mechanics for monsters and NPCs. But, ultimately, for players not so much. In fact history proves otherwise. Player levels have created a lot of balance problems in every edition (except perhaps 4th) due to the new spells...

Well Mike Mearls tries to give reasons for dropping 4e and any focused design to various elements beyond those of broader appeal to tabletop roleplaying gamers. The Ravenloft game was D&D's effort of direct marketing to board games as a seperate product line of the roleplaying product line and...

It makes a lot of sense. Many people complained about 4e's board game tactical gameplay drawing a lot of time and focus to play it out. Of course for many others this has been a lot of fun and so they like 4e a lot. But beyond this group of people that like 4e it is not for every tabletop...

If you read the interview, Mearls clearly says that they did not focus 4e on the strengths of a tabletop rpg but tried to incorporate other trends of gaming, specifically board games. Hardly a month ago I posted a thread in the general discussion forum, asking readers to discuss on the...

There are three different ways I see. Each character class supports one combat role of the following: Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader Each character class is a striker with one secondary combat role among the following: Defender, Controller, Leader. Each character class has all combat...

Don't be so sure about that. The OGL should rather depend on Wotc's CEO decisions and its legal team.

Christ. That's a lot of money... I wonder if they would or could ever recover these with their current revenue of DDI subscriptions (of course DDI would have its operational and developmental costs still for what we know it is still in beta and aspires to grow in functionality).

How much does software teams cost (a usual normal-a usual high)? Are they paid by month?

Yeah, but one can see how these money were used to fuel the production pipeline. Books and audio CDs are tangible, as are their production methods and its costs. Still what we are talking about here is development of digital tools. Costs can vary so much. Is there some method to control the...

Could it be that the original company representative takes his share of whores and ale, especially if he can find a way to hide it and blame the money loss somewhere else? It is conspiracy-theorizing but are there any solid control mechanisms that something like this does not happen? I am...

I wonder where these money ended. Can someone that has experience with this kind of business present us with a plausible scenario?

What I am talking about is a phenomenon that hobby businesses are aware of. Joe Goodman, some year ago, put an excellent description of it regarding D&D. RyanD, in the OP of this thread refers to it as the boom & bust cycles. Also, if I remember correctly it was again Ryan that described this...

I do not agree. IMO, the main reasons were: - 3.xe was a big commercial success. Most 3e fans were convinced to transition to 3.5e and re-purchased the game after three years. They could not be so easily re-convinced to re-purchase the game after another 3-4 years. - The biggest reason is the...

What Ryan is describing seems a rather hopeless future for D&D. I do not know if it is actually true... but boy is it depressing. So, if I were Wotc here is what I would try to do: Publish 5e core as: 1 player's box product that costs 29$, deals with classes from level 1 to level 10, includes...

By what Ryan is saying it seems more difficult to see a 5e happen. If it does happen, it would rather mean that 4e's failure was not such a dramatic one.

Definitely, 3.xe being published under the OGL has had some positive effects for Wotc, as it has also had some negative effects for Wotc. It is not that the OGL can be only good or only bad. Now, one has to weight how much positive, how much negative that was, balance them out and make an...

This is true. But it is not true that 3.xe was a success because it was under the OGL. After all, as many people suggest, Wotc did not support the OGL beyond the core books and arcana unearthed. No. This is your suggestion but it does not follow from any facts that it might also be true. After...

It does not ignore any factor. My point was not that pre-orders are important for financial success. My point was that the OGL is not an important thing for financial success as fans do not think it makes the product more valuable for them, since they are equally willing to buy the product if...

Huh? It means that fans want to buy the game no matter if it is OGL or not (4e was not an OGL game). Now, of course, as you say, fans will stay with the game only if it is good enough, especially if there is some competitor around. But this is a different matter. To put it another way: it does...