Mike Mearls just asked on twitter what panels we'd like to see at GenCon.
My reply: I want to see apologies and mass resignations from the DDi team.
I would add the resignation of the invisible D&D Brand Manager as well. What is going on at Wizards at the moment is a disaster. The last six months or more have seen them destroy all the early work they'd done with the DDi, and been amazingly incompetent in replacing it.
You mean the character builder *still* can't print to A4 paper?
The monster builder ignores the new Essentials mathematics? And can't build monsters in any case?
There's hardly been an original article or adventure in Dragon/Dungeon that hasn't been a preview in the last several months? (EDIT: *This might not be true; however, it feels that way and adventure support is certainly well down.)
This is beyond pathetic.
There are good things coming out of Wizards, but the U-turn they made on their release strategy, which has left its established customers with no products to buy for months now, hints at massive trouble within the company. I'm wondering now how much of it is due to Bill Slavicsek.
The release of D&D Essentials presaged a massive change at the company as to how it dealt with D&D. It's far more compatible with 4E than the 3.5e revision, but it did add in a few interesting wrinkles to the system, especially with the new rarity system for magic items. Unfortunately, no sooner had it been released than the Powers That Be at Wizards changed their mind again about the future direction of D&D. Just after spending a lot of time and money working out a new direction for D&D (Essentials), they changed their mind.
This actually derailed the integration of Essentials into 4e, particularly with the loss of Heroes of Sword and Spell and (more significant from my point of view) Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium. More significant? Yes, because I would have expected it to give lots of common and rare items, which we're currently missing in the system. The new magic item system in Essentials? Doesn't work without the information from this book. I'm also a DM, so player options don't mean as much to me.
Meanwhile, on the DDi side of things, Essentials "broke" the character builder and monster builder. Rather than spending time fixing them, Wizards decided to rewrite them as online versions. In itself, this isn't a bad idea: there are definite upsides to having online version (not always for the customer, but there are times I'm willing to sacrifice a little for the right reasons).
Unfortunately, this was given to what must be one of the most underresourced and/or incompetent departments at Wizards. I can't tell from the outside whether the programmers misjudged how difficult it would be (or lied about it), or whether they weren't given the resources in the first place. Either way, it's given us this cascading disaster that is the DDi online tools. To be fair, the character builder is mostly operational - several months late, but anyway - but it can be seen from the release of the new monster "builder" that they learned absolutely *nothing* from the disastrous release of the online Character Builder.
The DDi team seem to be working on too many projects, some of which are completely irrelevant to a large segment of their customers. So, you've got a Virtual Table. And the Monster Builder works with it. That's very nice. Does absolutely nothing for me... and it seems to be taking a lot of attention from the tools I actually need.
The biggest "wins" for D&D in the last six months have been the two boardgames: Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. They're both a lot of fun, provide a great introduction to the mechanics and themes of D&D, and also show the ability of the designers to learn: Wrath is much better than Ravenloft.
Essentials has some great design in it, but it's handicapped by the sudden redirection of what Wizards are doing.
There are some things I'm looking forward to online: the material from Heroes of Sword and Spell appearing in Dragon magazine is some such. I really, really hope the magic items start appearing soon as well.
I really feel that support for D&D 4E is currently stuck in limbo, and despite good design work, there's a lot of other departments at Wizards not pulling their weight.
My reply: I want to see apologies and mass resignations from the DDi team.
I would add the resignation of the invisible D&D Brand Manager as well. What is going on at Wizards at the moment is a disaster. The last six months or more have seen them destroy all the early work they'd done with the DDi, and been amazingly incompetent in replacing it.
You mean the character builder *still* can't print to A4 paper?
The monster builder ignores the new Essentials mathematics? And can't build monsters in any case?
There's hardly been an original article or adventure in Dragon/Dungeon that hasn't been a preview in the last several months? (EDIT: *This might not be true; however, it feels that way and adventure support is certainly well down.)
This is beyond pathetic.
There are good things coming out of Wizards, but the U-turn they made on their release strategy, which has left its established customers with no products to buy for months now, hints at massive trouble within the company. I'm wondering now how much of it is due to Bill Slavicsek.
The release of D&D Essentials presaged a massive change at the company as to how it dealt with D&D. It's far more compatible with 4E than the 3.5e revision, but it did add in a few interesting wrinkles to the system, especially with the new rarity system for magic items. Unfortunately, no sooner had it been released than the Powers That Be at Wizards changed their mind again about the future direction of D&D. Just after spending a lot of time and money working out a new direction for D&D (Essentials), they changed their mind.
This actually derailed the integration of Essentials into 4e, particularly with the loss of Heroes of Sword and Spell and (more significant from my point of view) Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium. More significant? Yes, because I would have expected it to give lots of common and rare items, which we're currently missing in the system. The new magic item system in Essentials? Doesn't work without the information from this book. I'm also a DM, so player options don't mean as much to me.
Meanwhile, on the DDi side of things, Essentials "broke" the character builder and monster builder. Rather than spending time fixing them, Wizards decided to rewrite them as online versions. In itself, this isn't a bad idea: there are definite upsides to having online version (not always for the customer, but there are times I'm willing to sacrifice a little for the right reasons).
Unfortunately, this was given to what must be one of the most underresourced and/or incompetent departments at Wizards. I can't tell from the outside whether the programmers misjudged how difficult it would be (or lied about it), or whether they weren't given the resources in the first place. Either way, it's given us this cascading disaster that is the DDi online tools. To be fair, the character builder is mostly operational - several months late, but anyway - but it can be seen from the release of the new monster "builder" that they learned absolutely *nothing* from the disastrous release of the online Character Builder.
The DDi team seem to be working on too many projects, some of which are completely irrelevant to a large segment of their customers. So, you've got a Virtual Table. And the Monster Builder works with it. That's very nice. Does absolutely nothing for me... and it seems to be taking a lot of attention from the tools I actually need.
The biggest "wins" for D&D in the last six months have been the two boardgames: Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. They're both a lot of fun, provide a great introduction to the mechanics and themes of D&D, and also show the ability of the designers to learn: Wrath is much better than Ravenloft.
Essentials has some great design in it, but it's handicapped by the sudden redirection of what Wizards are doing.
There are some things I'm looking forward to online: the material from Heroes of Sword and Spell appearing in Dragon magazine is some such. I really, really hope the magic items start appearing soon as well.
I really feel that support for D&D 4E is currently stuck in limbo, and despite good design work, there's a lot of other departments at Wizards not pulling their weight.
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