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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4339433" data-attributes="member: 13892">The only problem is that, while you may personally dislike most of the decisions that you allude to, almost all of them proved to be good business decisions (with the possible exception of discontinuing Dungeon and Dragon mags in print). Let's run down that list: • Outsourcing Dragon and Dungeon? Paizo made Dungeon and Dragon both more popular than they had been for a very, very, long time. In retrospect, this seems like a good call to me, if not a great call. • Dump Greyhawk? As the default setting? Sure. It wasn't exactly selling the core books, after all. When was the last time that you heard a total newcomer to RPGs say "I think we should play D&D because Greyhawk is the default setting!" (alternately, when was the last time that you heard anybody say this)? Dumping it as a 'Living' D&D 3x campaign? Again, that seems like a smart decision given that they're no longer going to support D&D 3x. • Lay off most of the people who made 3rd edition a success? Probably not the best choice, but in the current economic recession WotC is only one of hundreds of companies implementing layoffs or firing staff in order to keep their doors open. Does it suck? Sure. Was it an economic necessity? Most likely, yes -- which makes it a good business decision. • Release a half edition just three years after the new edition's launch? Well, as many people revolted against this decision, even more people went out and bought the D&D 3.5 core books -- which makes this another pretty good business decision on the part of WotC. • Randomized miniatures? These have been wildly popular since day one, even spawning an entirely new collector's market that persists even today. For the record, I hate them, too -- but I also realize that I'm in the minority. • Kill off the magazines entirely? An obviously bad decision in my eyes, given that the replacement is still not working as advertised. They should have kept the print mags in production at least until the DDI was 100% operational. • Release 4th edition after just eight years after the last edition change? FIf sales of 3x and many third party products hadn't started tanking in 2006 and continued to decline with relatively few exceptions, I'd agree that this was a pretty bad idea. But they did. This makes the release of a new edition not just a great idea but one of the only things that would have generated enough new public interest to keep the game from dying completely. • Effectively end open gaming?While I intensely dislike the new GSL, I understand why it happened the way that it happened. There was a lot of 3rd party crap published under the OGL. Wholesalers raised hell about it, retailers raised hell about it, and consumers raised hell about it. WotC listened and implemented some honest to god QC -- sadly, this meant a more restrictive license, though the tradeoff will probably make everybody but publishers happy in the long term. So, by my estimation, you have one really bad decision on that whole list, four likely good decisions, and three fantastic decisions. That's not quite the track record of Horrible Business that many people make it out to be.</blockquote>

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