Does Wizards want Greyhawk to fail?

[Glyfair]

Hrm, do we know that for sure? I know we're theorizing about it a lot in the 4E forum, but my understanding was not more than one setting being heavily focused on in a given year, not a guaranteed one new setting per year.

The quotes I saw were 1 setting per year. They were filtered though, so it might not be 100% accurate. I don't remember seeing anything posted by someone official.

Edit: Here is the thread that seems to have started it.

A 4e Forgotten Realms will be the first setting book released, and I believe that is scheduled for next August. Chris Perkins was pretty vague when I asked directly what they were going to do with Ravenloft, Dragonlance and Eberron. It seemed like the plan would be to roll out one new setting each year. He even teased me that Greyhawk could be one of those. But I think that was just because I admitted to being an old-school Greyhawk gamer.

We know that Eberron's timeline will be brought forward 2 years (from James Wyatt at the Eberron seminar). I doubt they would do this without a 4E release of the setting. That pretty much sets the first two years.

 

[Shadeydm]

My gut feeling is that WotC will never give GH the treatment it deserves. I think the only hope for the setting would be it getting licensed to a third party. I wonder if Paizo would even be interested anymore now that they are establishing thier own setting. The release timing for EttRoGH and 4E couldn't have been worse IMO.

 

[BluSponge]

That's an odd thing to say. FR is not the default setting of 4e.
We know for sure Eberron and FR will get campaign settings books. FR is just the first.

Secondly, FR is hardly new, having been around since the '70s.

The quote was taken from the LG Cancelled thread.

For what it's worth, at the Gencon RPGA Q&A session (which I followed peripherally as I was looking for the rat that stole my dice bag) people were asking endless variations on "well, why not have both LG and LFR", and after running out of PR platitudes about making things even better and taking things to the next level, the guy who (I think) was the WotC rep finally visibly lost his patience and said, point blank, "Because we want people to play 4th edition, and the 4th edition is Forgotten Realms."

Granted, its not a first hand quote, but its strong enough rope to hang WotC by in my book.

Tom

 

[heirodule]

Back when Eberron was being previewed at Winter Fantasy, Greyhawk was called a "Legacy Setting", in comparison to eberron which was designed for 3.5 from the start. In computer software, the legacy system is the system that you have to keep maintaining even though its outmoded, and the system you hope to soon replace after conversion.

Greyhawk didn't have some of the default play assumptions that 3.5 did. We see this in LG's now acceptance of Kobold PCs and the default assumptions of the world. Won't kobolds be killed on sight in Keoland, and turned away at the gate in the City of Greyhawk? Well, if they are, then its not much fun to play one. Or you retcon it to say that "it has always been this way".

So they've been viewing Greyhawk as some kind of albatross for a while.

Also, Greyhawk doesn't sell teh novels.

 

[Khairn]

Want it to fail ? No

But are they willing to put any effort into it succeeding? No as well.

 

[TheYeti1775]

The quote was taken from the LG Cancelled thread.



Granted, its not a first hand quote, but its strong enough rope to hang WotC by in my book.

Tom

Originally Posted by mmu1
For what it's worth, at the Gencon RPGA Q&A session (which I followed peripherally as I was looking for the rat that stole my dice bag) people were asking endless variations on "well, why not have both LG and LFR", and after running out of PR platitudes about making things even better and taking things to the next level, the guy who (I think) was the WotC rep finally visibly lost his patience and said, point blank, "Because we want people to play 4th edition, and the 4th edition is Forgotten Realms."

Why don't you just ask Scott R. or Mike L. about that straight up? We know they read these boards.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm with jdrakeh. I believe WotC actually really wanted Greyhawk to succeed. They've bent over backwards to put stuff out for it because they like it, and perhaps they've listened to the more shrill voices on the internet that led them to believe that the market in general wanted it.

Then I suspect the early Greyhawk products simply didn't sell like the FR products, or even the Eberron products, and they've had to quietly scale way back. Then when they read threads like this that accuse them of some conspiracy and trying to keep Greyhawk down, they probably laugh bitterly at the irony.

But that's all speculation. Still, it's what I believe.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Greyhawk was already dead when WotC took over. If they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have revived it in 2nd edition, wouldn't have made it the core setting of 3rd edition, wouldn't have set up Living Greyhawk, and wouldn't have published Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk.

If WotC wanted the setting to fail, it would have been as easy as leaving it dead. As it is, they've supported it more than any other D&D setting except for the Forgotten Realms and Eberron.

 

[heirodule]

If they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have revived it in 2nd edition, wouldn't have made it the core setting of 3rd edition, wouldn't have set up Living Greyhawk

Erik Mona worked at WOTC during all of that, and the 2nd edition revival was pre-hasbro. LG was also set up under Adkison watch.

Neither Erik Mona nor Adkison were at WOTC when it was described as a legacy setting.

 

[jdrakeh]

Were they? Then why was the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer the first 3E product to sell out? IIRC, it was announced to be sold out even before they made a second printing of the PHB (not surprising due to different print runs).

WotC sold all of their copies early. I was able to locate new copies of the book on the shelves of multiple game stores fairly easily until 2004 or so. The problem with a publisher reporting something as "sold out" is that every sale is considered, including those to wholesale warehouses and retailers. That a publisher's warehouse stock is depleted doesn't necessarily speak to the ultimate commerical appeal of a product