7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[Greatwyrm]

See how fans come together and are understanding when WOTC actually does try to engage?

I've been gone for a while. Is Mike Mearls ruining everything again?

 

[Mark CMG]

Here we have WOTC being forthcoming and explaining why we don't have a conversion document. Fair enough, (. . .)

"Fair enough" that a division of a multi-billion dollar, international corporation leaves something sitting on someone's desk for four months because the employee can't make it to work? That's not what I called a reasonable explanation. You seem to conflate being transparent with not being expected to operate competently.

 

[BryonD]

Quote Originally Posted by Ruin Explorer View Post
I'm not really seeing people asking for a "rapid release schedule".

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...t-Big-Reveal-quot-Coming/page30#ixzz3UhLD4jZa

I do. Most folks don't seem to be asking for a return to the full volume of the 2E - 4E era, but certainly a more rapid release than we are getting now.

So you are saying that anything above what we are seeing now meets the definition of "rapid"?
You have changed "rapid" to "more rapid". But if you are honestly disputing his statement then your "more rapid" is more absolute than relative.

Or are you just defining the center as the extreme?

Seriously, there are ZERO anticipated splats. If you think ZERO is the right number, then cool, say so. But please engage the chorus of calls for "something" on a fair and reasonable basis.

 

[BryonD]

See how fans come together and are understanding when WOTC actually does try to engage?

Track record is important. They really need to establish a run of where they "engage" in ways that don't involve dropping the ball.

The request is just "say something.... anything, just speak." There is a (apparently unreasonable) expectation of treating customers like people that should be catered to.

The whole company is bottle-necked by ONE GUY with zero contingency even in the case of an extended absence?



5E is awesome. I personally don't care anymore about the conversation tools.
But, sheesh, give us something to applaud.
If the DMG was the end of the good run, just say that even.

 

[chriton227]

"Fair enough" that a division of a multi-billion dollar, international corporation leaves something sitting on someone's desk for four months because the employee can't make it to work? That's not what I called a reasonable explanation. You seem to conflate being transparent with not being expected to operate competently.

Maybe because in the overall scheme of things for a multi-billion dollar international company, approving a giveaway document for a small product line for a small division is a low priority, especially if the primary purpose of that document is to allow people to use stuff they already own instead of purchasing new products when they are brought to market? Only someone who really understands the D&D customers and the long term positive impacts of a conversion document would understand the value and need to prioritize the document, and I wouldn't expect the vast majority of the staff at Hasbro to have that level of understanding of such a niche brand.

 

[Mark CMG]

Maybe because in the overall scheme of things for a multi-billion dollar international company, approving a giveaway document for a small product line for a small division is a low priority, especially if the primary purpose of that document is to allow people to use stuff they already own instead of purchasing new products when they are brought to market? Only someone who really understands the D&D customers and the long term positive impacts of a conversion document would understand the value and need to prioritize the document, and I wouldn't expect the vast majority of the staff at Hasbro to have that level of understanding of such a niche brand.

That's what I would call a fascinating level of transparency, if that was their explanation but they said someone is out of the office and no one is covering that aspect of his job. I suppose one might take it to imply what you have posted rather than that they have cut their staff to the bone and can't free up someone else to cover for the person out of the office. You're right that we don't know what truly is happening in their offices or what the situation truly is. All we do know is what they told us and that they obviously think their customer base would think the explanation is adequate. I certainly can't believe they'd give us such an explanation if they thought it would produce a backlash.

 

[chriton227]

The whole company is bottle-necked by ONE GUY with zero contingency even in the case of an extended absence?

One freebie product being held up doesn't equate to "the whole company is bottle-necked", and that sort of intentional hyperbole does nothing but muddy the discussion and undermine your position. In the last month the EE Players Companion came out, the mass combat Unearthed Arcana was posted, they processed the results of their first feedback survey and put together the second survey, posted several other announcements and minor articles on their website (I count 21 postings total in the last month), had some of the WotC staff do a live game at PAX East (effectively a marketing appearance), and I'm sure they spent a fair amount of effort prepping for their presentations at the GAMA Trade Show this week. Looking forward all signs still point to Princes of the Apocalypse still releasing in 3 weeks. That doesn't sound too bad to me for a product division that only has a little over a dozen staff, especially if you consider that the list was only what is visible to the public and doesn't include anything they aren't ready to talk about yet or any of the boring day-to-day time consuming things that go on behind the scenes at any company.

Track record is important. They really need to establish a run of where they "engage" in ways that don't involve dropping the ball.

The request is just "say something.... anything, just speak." There is a (apparently unreasonable) expectation of treating customers like people that should be catered to.

So which is it? Do you want them to only engage when they have something to say that isn't "dropping the ball" like an announcement of a product delay, or do you want them to "say something.... anything, just speak"? Unless I am completely misunderstanding what you wrote, it sounds to me like like you are asking them to do two contradictory things, to only give good news but then to also say anything.

One lesson that just about every successful business learns at some point is that there are some customers that are not worth catering to, whether it is because of unreasonable demands, an excessive amount of your employees time they consume relative to their purchases, unnecessary stress the particular customer inflicts upon your staff through their attitude, or even that the customer's presence drives off other customers. The customers here on EN World complaining about WotC's engagement amount to a very small portion of their overall customer base (a couple dozen people at most out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of tabletop gamers), and if WotC doesn't think the folks complaining here are representative of their broader customer base they may have decided that the demands of this particular subset of the customer base aren't worth catering to.

 

[Shasarak]

Personally I think it explains why Chris ended up producing 7 years of stories - no one was there to tell him to stop! =;0)

 

[BryonD]

One freebie product being held up doesn't equate to "the whole company is bottle-necked", and that sort of intentional hyperbole does nothing but muddy the discussion

For the topic at hand they "one freebie product" but the whole company (apparently) can't move it along because of one person. This is the definition of "bottle-necked, when a large system is stopped by one small gateway.

So which is it? Do you want them to only engage when they have something to say that isn't "dropping the ball" like an announcement of a product delay, or do you want them to "say something.... anything, just speak"? Unless I am completely misunderstanding what you wrote, it sounds to me like like you are asking them to do two contradictory things, to only give good news but then to also say anything.

It isn't an either or. Who says it is an either or? In my opinion, if they want good feedback they need to BOTH communicate and succeed at doing things. I'm sorry of you find that not reasonable.

One lesson that just about every successful business learns at some point is that there are some customers that are not worth catering to, whether it is because of unreasonable demands, an excessive amount of your employees time they consume relative to their purchases, unnecessary stress the particular customer inflicts upon your staff through their attitude, or even that the customer's presence drives off other customers. The customers here on EN World complaining about WotC's engagement amount to a very small portion of their overall customer base (a couple dozen people at most out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of tabletop gamers), and if WotC doesn't think the folks complaining here are representative of their broader customer base they may have decided that the demands of this particular subset of the customer base aren't worth catering to.

Ah yes, the ever popular, we don't need you "you're fired" response.

Good luck with that.

If you want to pretend that a couple dozen people have zero representation of the overall market, you are fooling yourself.
It is funny that half the replies I get are about how my predictions of WotC losing fans is wrong and the other half (mostly from the same people) are about how outrageous it is that fans are not more patient with WotC.


One lesson that consistently successful business people learn is you have to go the extra mile to make customers happy.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

That's what I would call a fascinating level of transparency, if that was their explanation but they said someone is out of the office and no one is covering that aspect of his job. I suppose one might take it to imply what you have posted rather than that they have cut their staff to the bone and can't free up someone else to cover for the person out of the office. You're right that we don't know what truly is happening in their offices or what the situation truly is. All we do know is what they told us and that they obviously think their customer base would think the explanation is adequate. I certainly can't believe they'd give us such an explanation if they thought it would produce a backlash.

Why isn't the explanation adequate in your eyes? There's eight people working on D&D, and the one who was in charge of the conversion docs isn't going to be able to do it for a couple of months. How much more detail do they need to go into? What situation is "truly is happening in their offices" that you're uncertain of, besides the obvious, that there's a very small team working on D&D stuff right now?