Dragon 427 posted and Upcoming Hiatus

[Warunsun]

Second, sticking to 4E was contrary to business interests.

While I can understand their choice here I don't think it will be welcomed by the D&D community. It is therefore another disappointment and contrary to their future business interests. This is probably a choice made in advance of the annual Christmas layoffs so they can focus the smaller team on the work that needs to be done. Such a focus, while potentially a good thing, still will not feel like a good move by consumers.

 

[pemerton]

You're thinking too short term. The point is to lock those people into the new ecosystem. It starts with the PHB, yes, but they want to sell other 5E products ... and potentially get them to subscribe to whatever the 5E DDI-equivalent will be. WOTC won't get that if they can't wean them off of 4E without losing them in the process.

I'm assuming that there won't be separate subscriptions for 4e and Next - that subscribers will be paying for access to the whole D&D library, whatever exactly that ends up being.

 

[DaveMage]

I'm assuming that there won't be separate subscriptions for 4e and Next - that subscribers will be paying for access to the whole D&D library, whatever exactly that ends up being.

Actually, what would have been really cool was a tool that supported all editions. They almost had a piece of that if they could have gotten the game table to work. That would seem to (ultimately) be the best way to go to cast the widest net possible.

 

[Hussar]

So they're stopping the articles, which in turn means no work whatsover will be done for the tools; they we're doing updates for the sparse contents of Dungeon and Dragon anyway.

So we don't have a release announcement for D&DN.

Let's see what the December lay-offs will bring this year.

With this turn of eventy I#m extremely sceptical right now. There are so many signs of a project dying...

What December layoffs? There weren't any last year AFAIK. Were there any the year before?

 

[Morrus]

What December layoffs? There weren't any last year AFAIK. Were there any the year before?

Bill Slavicsek, Michelle Carter, Rich Baker, Stephen Schubert, Steve Winter. They're the "famous" names; there were, of course, others.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Ex-WotC-Employees

 

[Mika]

As I see it, they are making it easy for us to decide whether we want to try out D&D Next months in advance of its release. We will have the final public playtest package, which will enable us to judge the quality of the product itself (since supposedly the official release will primarily "clean up the math"). Then we will have the way they transition away from 4E as a guide to what to expect when they switch over to 6th edition. Based on the way they shut down 3E, I do not have a lot of confidence about the way they handle edition transitions -- and 4E is a much harder game system for somebody to take on as their own, given that it is not Open Game Content as most of 3E was.

 

[Jhaelen]

I wonder what effect this will have on subscription rates.

They'll go down - at least by one (me).

 

[Rabbitbait]

I'm sure there are some others for whom the magazines were the actual draw to DDI (and not the three online tools)... but I would suspect they are in the vast minority. So long as the tools are still available and I still am running a 4E game that uses them... my subscription is worthwhile.

Agreed. The tools are my main drawcard and there are plenty of adventures in the archives. I just wish they'd index them so that I can find an appropriate one for level and theme without having to go through every magazine to find it.

 

[Lindeloef]

On Enworld you find a thread where renau1g was so kind to make an index for them
Here is the link to said thread

 

[jodyjohnson]

While Dungeon 219 does speak of the Hiatus, it doesn't give any more specific information worth quoting.

He does include the same info from Trevor Kidd's WotC forum post: last DDI update in Feb., eZines will continue to be available, and tools will remain online.

The issue has the last 4e Epic adventure and the last Encounters reprint.