Dear Wizards, I no longer have a clue what you're doing

[Korgoth]

This year for Christmas Hasbro laid off the fans. Sorry, mate.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This year for Christmas Hasbro laid off the fans. Sorry, mate.

lol. Could be. I'd XP you but apparently I've been overly generous of late...

 

[blalien]

I'm withholding judgement for a few months. If all the canned content appears online and Wizards announces some new books to flesh out the schedule, I will be pleased. If they don't do one or both of those things, then I'll start agreeing with this apocalyptic talk.

For now, I just wish Wizards would be more honest. Either give us a real schedule for 2011 or tell us that they're having difficulties. Tell us what the worst-case and best-case scenarios are. Tell us if we might see a permanent trend to online content, or if 4th edition is really in decline.

 

[Iron Sky]

Our group pretty much bailed at around the Dark Sun/Essentials border for most of the reasons the OP mentioned.

We're playing a Dark Sun game at the moment and its great, but I have a feeling it might be our last 4e game. I was thinking of running a 4e game once the Dark Sun game was over, but it seems wizards has gone from the game getting better and better every month to... not so much.

I think much of the appeal of the game was seeing how it would improve next, what the next errata would fix. I'll pay to ride in a taxi that's going to the destination I want to arrive at, not one that's taking me further away from it.

 

[Dice4Hire]

lol. Could be. I'd XP you but apparently I've been overly generous of late...

Blame Gary.

 

[Zaran]

I believe that the only way their stategy would work well is as follows:

1) All the content they planned on printing in books is rolled into DDI.

2) DDI users get access to every bit of D & D by having a current account. And I mean everything (DMG tables, Rare Items, XP Charts)

3) They don't get greedy and start charging extra for DDI

4) (and this is one I think they will fail on) They actually produce good content! Whether it's Dungeon, Dragon, or other game aid.

If they can do this, and this might be their plan, I think it will work great because they easily can get 100 dollars a year from every dnd household out there which I'm sure isn't what was happening last year.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm withholding judgement for a few months. If all the canned content appears online and Wizards announces some new books to flesh out the schedule, I will be pleased. If they don't do one or both of those things, then I'll start agreeing with this apocalyptic talk.

For now, I just wish Wizards would be more honest. Either give us a real schedule for 2011 or tell us that they're having difficulties. Tell us what the worst-case and best-case scenarios are. Tell us if we might see a permanent trend to online content, or if 4th edition is really in decline.

Sadly, I don't think we can expect this of them. While it would be nice to know and perhaps useful for the fans, what possible benefit could WotC gain from announcing, "Yeah, the D&D line is going down the drain and we don't know how long we can keep it going?" That would only undercut sales further and make it harder to get financing if they need it (and I'll bet they do).

Rule one of being a corporation is never publicly admit to being in trouble. If forced to release numbers that show your business declining, move heaven and earth to find a way to spin them positively, or at least make a credible claim that "We've had some trouble in the past, but we have a bold new strategy going forward that's going to fix everything."

 

[gourdcaptain]

I can't agree with the first part of your post, but the rest is spot on.

Could you trim that quote down?

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Personally, I think someone in charge at WotC LIKES the publicity all the rampant speculation about their decisions generates. As Brendan Behan said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary."

What utter nonsense. Tell that to Toyota, whose sales plummeted after the whole failing brakes issue became public knowledge.

I could think of dozens of other examples, but why bother? It should be self-evident that there is such a thing as bad publicity and companies try to avoid it like the plague.

Whether WotC is suffering bad publicity right now is another issue, but it seems like perhaps they are.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I posted my thoughts on Wizard's actions on my blog.