D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 is the REAL reason everyone is angry

[Vigilance]

Star Wars revised didn't stop people from guzzling down SW Saga like it was the finest of fortified wines.

3.5 similarly will not stop folks from beating down the doors to get 4e.

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

"I'm surprised it took this long for someone to ask that. It's going to come at some point. It's a long ways away. You'll get an announcement when that happens, but it's a long ways away. We have a lot of good stuff coming out through 2008."

From this sites news page.

I tried to post this last night but couldn't because of high traffic so here goes...

It is this statement that was IMO misleading. The context of the last two sentences means at least to me that through 2008 the good stuff was going to be 3.5e. Thus any announcement of 4e would be made in 2008 and come out in 2009. Sorry I didn't realize that 'good stuff' meant 4e and 'a long ways away' for the announcement meant 6 months. I better look up what the definition of the word 'is' is so I know what it means.

 

[RFisher]

But they did do this. They replaced OS 9 and its predecessors with OS X.

The big difference is that I can't imagine ever changing my mind about OS 9 being horribly obsolete as I did with classic D&D.

...but then, I don't know that I could've predicted my change of mind about classic D&D... Nah!

Can we drop the Apple analogies now? I feel bad for starting it

Sorry. (^_^)

 

[RFisher]

Plus, WotC is a For Profit business. For the love of Pony, what did you think they'd do? live off the millions generated by continued sales of 3.5?

But did they ever live off the profit generated by 3.5? Hasn't D&D always been the icing for Wizards and never the bread & butter?

 

[ShinHakkaider]

So, if I'm reading this correctly, you would have wanted a pre-announcement that they were working on 4e, and that it would be announced at GenCon 2007.

I don't know, sometimes people have to deliver news that can't be portioned out in smaller bits. If they had done a pre-announcement, people would be pissed that it was taking them so long to deliver the new edition. And some people would be pissed that they didn't pre-announce the pre-announcement.

I think this was ok. 4e is still lots of months off, and that is plenty of "warning" for me.

/M

No what I would have preferred is that when they were asked about it all those times for them to either have said "Yes, we're working on a new edition, but it's not going to be ready for a while" or We can't discuss whether or not we're working on a new edition or not".

But I do see what you're getting at and I respect your viewpoint, it's entirely rational.

 

[green slime]

As people keep saying, most RPGs have new editions more often than (A)D&D. Ten or eight years isn't the usual time between editions; it's exceptional.

And as SHARK noted, they don't have the anything like the support or supplemental products DnD does. Therefore the total investment made redundant is much lower, and therefore more acceptable.

Its not a question of whether I can afford to reinvest in 4e. The question is do I (or SHARK) have the energy and will to do so?

WotC is fighting a losing battle against CRPGs & MMORGs. Alienating faithful customers in what may very well be a vain attempt to draw in new young blood is dangerous. Does anyone really believe 4e is going to be a revival along the lines of what occured with 3e?

Good luck.

 

[Shadeydm]

Does anyone really believe 4e is going to be a revival along the lines of what occured with 3e?

Good luck.

Well, its pretty clear the folks over at WotC/Hasbro think so. Personally I am not so sure.

 

[Midknightsun]

But did they ever live off the profit generated by 3.5? Hasn't D&D always been the icing for Wizards and never the bread & butter?

Yes, its been pretty clear that D&D is not their big money maker, but that doesn't mean they don't want it to be so (or at least better), or that they've resigned themselves to that. Besides, I see very little MORE that 3.5 coulda put out that would have really sold enough to even pay for the investment. It had met its peak limit, despite what some said about the particular setting book #50, or race book #75 that they thought was essential to their collections, and therefore had to be made. Companies For Profit have a tendency to cut programs that show a consistent loss in. . . .profit. Maybe WotC is trying to revitalize the line to keep from getting the axe by Hasbro. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I can't fault them for this at all. They are not our mother, they are a business that is trying to sustain itself. Apparently, their number crunchers came to the conclusion that a new edition would help boost sales, that it was worth the potential loss of some customers (which almost always happens in a changeover) and so that's what they went for. I really am having a hard time with the perception that D&D is supposed to be some kind of charity business, really, they can't sustain like that and not have D&D eyed up for the chopping block. Welcome to capitalism. It aint always pretty, but its what we got.

 

[RFisher]

Companies For Profit have a tendency to cut programs that show a consistent loss in. . . .profit. Maybe WotC is trying to revitalize the line to keep from getting the axe by Hasbro.

The fact is that Wizards doesn't have to put out a new D&D supplement every month or a new D&D edition every 5 years or so to keep D&D from losing money. They don't have to do it to keep the company as a whole from losing money. As long as the D&D products that are in print are making a profit, Hasbro doesn't need to axe it.

Yes, they are for-profit, & yes, they are free to try to maximize the profits from their product lines as they think is best, but that doesn't mean that the path they've choosen really is the best or only way to maximize the product line's or the company's profits.

The for-profit point really doesn't make a case for anything. I'm not sure anyone around here is against Wizards making a profit. We can, however, have different opinions on how best they could go about doing so.

 

[Glyfair]

I tried to post this last night but couldn't because of high traffic so here goes...

I took me forever to get it posted.

I will note that looking up these quotes have convinced me that the "D&D eXperience" is a bad name for the convention. It's nearly impossible to find the exact quotes made about it because 99% of the results deal with "my D&D experience has been..."

I still haven't been able to find out the exact words and who said "All major announcements about D&D will be made at the D&D Experience."