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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2632993" data-attributes="member: 26473">If both WotC and third-party publishers suffer from similar problems in production values, then WotC's work is merely equally mediocre - either way, Mr. Ryan's claim rings false.And if WotC's work gets scrutinized a little harder than anyone else's, well that's the burden of publishing under the most influential brand name (Dungeons and Dragons, not Wizards of the Coast) in the history of roleplaying games.After I posted last night I had to drive to Home Depot to buy a new faucet aerator for the kitchen sink and I was thinking about this while I was driving. My first reaction on reading Mr. Ryan's quote was, "Wow, how incredibly arrogant!" In retrospect I think my reaction, while genuine, was a bit unfair.I can respect that fact that Mr. Ryan takes pride in his work. What struck me wrong was that it seemed to be offered up as ineluctable fact rather than personal opinion - while conceding that this was a comment from an online chat transcript, not a press release, my experience tells me that Mr. Ryan is where he is because of his ability (among many others) to carefully tender the company line, so I'm less inclined to see this as an offhand comment. Had Mr. Ryan said, "I believe that we make the best hardcover sourcebooks," I know my reaction would've been different.The other reason I think I had such a strong reaction is that, like Henry mentioned, I find so much of what comes from WotC to be inferior to the work from other publishers, and that seems to grow more and more each year. For me, the words "best" and "WotC" exist only in some sort of Bizarro World, at least if we're talking about the things that matter most to me as a gamer: slick glossy pages and well-stitched bindings are nice, and WotC's economy of scale certainly makes it a leader in the physical production of books, but at the end of the day a black-and-white .pdf with really solid rules and tons of inspiring ideas is "best" from where I sit.What is "best" for me are the things that make my games fun to play, and in this regard there are far, far more misses than hits from WotC. In the past two years I've purchased  two WotC books (out of a total of five, by the way) that made me say, "Wow, this is great!" (Frostburn and d20 Apocalypse). Otherwise I find their products to range from the simply mediocre to the laughably bad.(Oh, and production values? I haven't seen anything from WotC that can touch Green Ronin's The Nocturnals sourcebook. Best. Gaming Book. Ever.)Finally, I think it's too easy to dismiss ENWorlders as being some sort of anti-WotC elite. Certainly most ENWorlders are pretty dedicated, but I think that participation in an online community of gamers improves the ability to make critical evaluations - for example, I know that time spent here and on other bulletin boards improved my knowledge of how the mechanics function in d20, so that I can make more informed choices about the products I see and buy (or don't, as the case may be). If there's a tendency to be more critical of WotC, perhaps it comes from the fact that the posters on ENWorld tend to be a bit more knowledgeable than other gamers.</blockquote>

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