Can Wizards turn around their D&D support?

[Jhaelen]

Aside from that, further analysis of the current situation with D&D leads me to believe that Wizards now think that D&D is unsustainable as a purely printed game.

If that's true, I hope they'll sell the license to a different publisher.

 

[Falstaff]

If that's true, I hope they'll sell the license to a different publisher.

Kenzer!

 

[Blue]

Aside from that, further analysis of the current situation with D&D leads me to believe that Wizards now think that D&D is unsustainable as a purely printed game. It needs the Virtual Table (and mostly online support) to survive.

I don't take issue with that view; I can well see where it comes from.

In some ways I think they shot themselves in the foot in terms of printed books. From where I'm sitting now I can look over the see the bookshelf+ full of 3.5 hardcovers I purchased from WotC. A good foot of ti is the white bindings of Forgotten Realms books, some other campaigns, lots of complete books, monster manuals, etc. A few of the 3.0 splatbooks as well, though most of my 3.0 stuff was long given away.

My 4ed stuff is such a small collection next to it. Three setting books covering three settings (I don't run them so only have the player-oriented ones). Very few planes/undead/dragon/etc expansions (though some were very good - love reading The Plane Above). Various Core and Power books, but not all of them since I can get it from DDI. And DDI is the big point of having less books; did I want to spend money on hardcover books or an electronic subscription to them? With the rash of errata we used to have, the subscription made more sense. But if tomorrow they came out with 5e and cancelled DDI, I would be hard pressed to continue the games I play because of it.

I can easily believe WotC doesn't think D&D can be supported as a purely printed game. Because looking at my choices as a microcosm, I spend a lot less on printed material than I did for earlier editions, mostly because of their non-printed offering: DDI.

So I still purchase some, but more ones where I'm looking for the flavor. For crunch I have DDI. With the lack of publication there isn't anything more I could purchase anyway, though with a few notable exceptions Dragon and Dungeon haven't been filling that gap so my DDI subscription fee is basically just "you still get access to the compendium".

 

[ggroy]

But if tomorrow they came out with 5e and cancelled DDI, I would be hard pressed to continue the games I play because of it.

From a cynical point of view, perhaps this is intentional (especially with the change to the web only DDI character builder).

A possible underlying motivation is when a 5E comes along, they can remove the web only 4E DDI character builder immediately and replace it with a new web only 5E version. Anybody who still wants to play 4E, will have to resort to using either the unsupported "ancient" offline 4E DDI character builder or go back to doing character creation by "hand" from the 4E rulebooks.

 

[TerraDave]

no one has mentioned fortune cards yet...

As I have posted seemingly hundreds of times, what WotC has been doing for a while has been a little confusing, or just confused. But now, they might actually be turning a corner.

They seem to be working through issues with the CB. I expect they will do the same with the VT and the, albeit currently ridiculous, MB.

Given the vast number books already released for 4E, a slowdown in printed product made sense. Previews for HoS look good. And of course, DDI reduces the need for many of the kinds of products they were releasing.

I even think online dungeon and dragon have been, slowly, recovering from a very low low.

And my own game is going fine, and its looks to be for months, maybe even years, to come.

Its feels funny, but I am actually sort of optimistic about 4E.

 

[MrMyth]

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.

So, just to be clear - since, a bit under a year ago, they replaced several key positions on the DDI team, leading to a transition in what DDI had to offer that was "a disaster", and is only now starting to bear fruit... you would like to see them again replace the DDI team so that we can go through this same thing a year from now?

Yeah, that seems a terrible idea.

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 isn't remotely true. They've actually had a good number of interesting and original articles overall, and what few adventures they've had, have been good ones. The problem has been quantity, not quality - the severe reduction in page count and number (and size) of adventures.

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.

Largely in agreement here that those books would have been key to fully supporting Essentials. But I think you may have misjudged the cause of the abrupt drop in content production...

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.

Last year, the D&D team split into two components. One side focusing on the RPG itself, the other focusing on expanding the brand - on stuff like the board games.

That is where resources have been devoted to. It isn't that DDI is hogging all the resources - I think it is indeed understaffed and has bit off more than it can handle. And I suspect that, in the long run, expanding the tools available will be a winning strategy.

But the reason we've seen a slowdown in book content and game support is that half their design staff have switched over to these tangential projects like the board games.

Projects that, thus far, seem pretty successful.

Now, I agree that WotC needs to get a bit of focus and get things back on track. But I think that the meandering of the line and the issues with DDI have developed out of seperate situations.

Basically, you can't in one breath applaud them for the success of the board games while also blaming other departments for not pulling their weight. Those other departments aren't pulling their weight because half their design staff got shifted to the board game division.

Once again, I think they do need to get their new act together. I think DDI is... slowly... on its way there. I think better communication remains what is needed most of all.

As for the main line? I dunno. I definitely miss the Magic Emperium. I don't particularly miss the Heroes of Sword and Spell - as a whole, I think the book wouldn't have done well. But I do miss the part of it that would have addressed multiclassing for Essentials - something that I think they can more easily present online.

I think they do have some cool upcoming products - Heroes of Shadow and the Shadowfell Boxed Set. Just... not sure what is coming beyond that. I think that will really be the key - when we see some new announcements of new products. That will show if they have truly found a new focus, or are still just milling about and trying to figure out where to go from here.

 

[mudbunny]

Just reading what Trevor Kidd said here. It seems very likely that his superiors are going to be very unhappy with him.

What do you think the chances are that Trevor posted this without getting authorization first?

 

[Almacov]

I'm looking forward to their physical products.
While on one hand, I would have liked DDI to still be meaningful to me, I'm more glad to be rid of the cost, I think.
It's just not worth it, and this way my cash is going towards stuff I'll still have around in a decade.
To be honest, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of paying for digital content to begin with, and the current pacing of physical product releases is much more in line with my expendable cash regardless, so WotC's current situation isn't really phasing me so much.

And hey, even if they weren't producing any product I was interested in, I could just produce my own.

Yours truly,
Voracious consumer turned dispassionate and apathetic.
Quite comfortably apathetic.

 

[MerricB]

What do you think the chances are that Trevor posted this without getting authorization first?

Sadly, I wouldn't have a clue.

What I do know is that Trevor Kidd posted that the Character Builder would allow us to create monsters, and in the post I reference, he admits he was in error: it doesn't.

From the broadcast from a couple of days ago:
On March 22, Wizards of the Coast will begin rolling out the new web-based Adventure Tools for D&D Insider, starting with the launch of the brand new D&D Monster Builder. Creating new monsters, customizing existing ones and building your adventures will be easier than ever before. On launch day, just log in to your D&D Insider account, click on the Adventure Tools button and give the new Monster Builder a try.

It then goes on to list "Additional Features". Not "The Features it has", but "Additional Features". As in, things it does *in addition* to allowing you to create monsters.

Which part of that says "Oh, you can't create monsters." Why, none of it! It explicitly states "Creating new monsters, customizing existing ones and building your adventures will be easier than ever before."

It would be really nice if we had a Monster Builder which allowed us to build monsters with the revised damage values from MM3 and the July 2010 update. You know, eight months ago.

 

[ggroy]

Let's look on the bright side.

Perhaps by the time 5E comes around, the character builder, monster builder, and virtual table will be completely integrated.

Knowing what they know now, perhaps 5E will be designed and developed with a character builder, monster builder, and virtual table from the very beginning.

Various new rules could be tested in such an integrated virtual table, with actual people or a computer program, to see whether such new rules function as intended. A computer program could be written to try out many possible combinations in combat, to see which ones are overpowered or underpowered.