Devyn said:
I mean no disrespect, but do you actually believe that WotC won't try to turn their customers into a money machine?
I see how my statement can be misinterpreted. I meant "Money Making Machine" like how WoW or other MMORPG where players get hooked into a game, and have to continue to pay $15/month in order to play. If you stop paying $15/month, you lose all previous investment in the game, which is a strong incentive to keep paying. Whereas D&D will continue to have books and other hardcopy materials that cannot be lost if one were to stop paying the monthly fee.
While WotC will try to turn a profit, they are not going to go out of their way to extort money from their customers through excessive monthly charges. There are other successful RPG companies out there. If WotC were to extort money out of thier customer base, people will just move on to something else.
If I wanted to turn D&D into a money making machine I would do the following:
1) Get rid of the ODL and SRD. Everyone must use my D&D products.
2) Link all physical materials through an online "Book-License Key". Books can no longer be shared, traded, pirated etc. since they are useless if the License key is registered online.
3) The physical copies of books only contain about 1/2 of the useful material. the other half is online. One is useless without the other.
4) The online system provides a lot of content weekly, but you have to unlock content by buying books. e.g. You cannot roll a mage character unless you buy the "Total Mage" book.
5) The online system has a high monthly fee, say e.g. $15/month.
With the above system, I've got my players locked in. They need to keep buying books to get the "good" content, but have to keep paying a monthly fee in order to be able to use it.
It is certainly possible to provide great online content that suppliments the books without locking players in, and I think WotC is going to do exactly that.
