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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6299641" data-attributes="member: 6667193">First off, please quit parsing individual sentences like that; it's really, really, really annoying and tends to miss the greater points being made. Second, WotC has been saying, and for that matter, doing, the same thing since they released 3rd edition; the issue isn't whether or not they are lying but whether or not they can actually pull it off successfully. If they can pull it off this time, great, but until they do, the table top rpg is still the functional center of the brand. Novels, while they have some tie ins, are not seen by the vast majority of people as the same brand, and will continue to operate in their own universe until WotC successfully creates something that can serve as a bridge; if the D&D brand were to suddenly collapse tomorrow, Salvatore could still make a comfortable living off of Drizzt. Boardgames, given time, could develop into something big enough to move the rpg away from the center, but it isn't there right now. My problem with your posts is that they ignore that this isn't the first time that WotC has tried all of this. That doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to fail this time, but it does mean that a lot of the assumptions you are making about the automatic success of all of these other products are as bad as those who assume that because of past history, they will fail again. My concern is that there are a lot of variables involved, and WotC has not shown a very good understanding of how to manage and limit the variables in the past; that part I don't really see them changing much on. They do seem to have learned at least a bit from 4E's problems, and that gives me reason to actually watch and pay attention instead of completely writing their efforts off, but whether they have learned enough remains to be seen. Ultimately, to me at least, WotC is at a point where making assumptions of any kind, either good or bad, simply isn't wise; they could go either way within the span of a blink. They are trying to catch lightning in a bottle, the same way they have been their entire ownership of the IP, and while they have yet to have the lightning hit them instead, they didn't understand how to handle the closest thing they got to getting it in the bottle, the OGL, and neither you nor I truly know if they have the people and experience needed to get the bottle even that close again and if they do, how to handle it. Having products in production means nothing; it's where the rubber hits the road that matters, and WotC has not had a good track record of that to this point. I truly hope that they finally prove their doubters wrong, but until they do, assuming that this new round of multimedia products will take off just because they are bound to get lucky eventually seems as dangerous a bet as assuming that they will automatically fail.</blockquote>

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