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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5270759" data-attributes="member: 32164">The one place where I think the WotC guys might be alright on this one is that I think the &quot;Weapons Grade Nostalgia&quot; aspect of the Red Box has pulled Mearls, Thompson, and the rest of the gang somewhat out of &quot;game developer mode&quot; and put them back into &quot;wide-eyed kid with new toy&quot; mode.While that could be slightly problematic, as long as they remember their job, aiming to recapture the approachable nature of the old set is very wise. THe other thing that so many here seem to gloss over is that the original Red Box came out 27 years ago! The gamers who were wide-eyed 10-year-olds then might have wide-eyed 10-year-olds of their own NOW. Which means that former players whose intro to D&amp;D was the Mentzer Red Box (or any other D&amp;D boxed set) are going to look at this and go...&quot;A modern version of Dungeons &amp; Dragons? Screw another video game! THAT is what my kid needs!&quot;The intro they read on the Totally Rad Show shows that the designers get it. Their pitch is that anyone who's ever played an online RPG such as &quot;Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age or games like these,&quot; should have &quot;some idea of what Dungeons &amp; Dragons is about.&quot; So the idea is that the box appeals to the parents who used to play D&amp;D &quot;back when,&quot; and the target audience inside is both them and their kids. And WotC's pitch is that D&amp;D was the inspiration for all the games that followed.Will it tempt kids away from computer games or re-attract old gamers? Only time will tell.(As an aside: I can speak to the WoW thing directly; I know the person who was the top &quot;story guy&quot; at Blizzard when they created it. He freely admits that WoW started as &quot;let's put D&amp;D online&quot; combined with his own &quot;unique approach&quot; to a setting.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 5270759, member: 32164"] The one place where I think the WotC guys might be alright on this one is that I think the "Weapons Grade Nostalgia" aspect of the Red Box has pulled Mearls, Thompson, and the rest of the gang somewhat out of "game developer mode" and put them back into "wide-eyed kid with new toy" mode. While that could be slightly problematic, as long as they remember their job, aiming to recapture the approachable nature of the old set is very wise. THe other thing that so many here seem to gloss over is that the original Red Box came out 27 years ago! The gamers who were wide-eyed 10-year-olds then might have wide-eyed 10-year-olds of their own NOW. Which means that former players whose intro to D&D was the Mentzer Red Box (or any other D&D boxed set) are going to look at this and go..."A modern version of [I]Dungeons & Dragons[/I]? Screw another video game! THAT is what my kid needs!" The intro they read on the Totally Rad Show shows that the designers get it. Their pitch is that anyone who's ever played an online RPG such as "[I]Neverwinter Nights[/I], [I]Final Fantasy[/I], [I]The Legend of Zelda[/I], [I]World of Warcraft[/I], [I]Dragon Age[/I] or games like these," should have "some idea of what [I]Dungeons & Dragons[/I] is about." So the idea is that the box appeals to the parents who used to play D&D "back when," and the target audience inside is both them [I]and their kids[/I]. And WotC's pitch is that D&D was the inspiration for all the games that followed. Will it tempt kids away from computer games or re-attract old gamers? Only time will tell. (As an aside: I can speak to the WoW thing directly; I know the person who was the top "story guy" at Blizzard when they created it. He freely admits that WoW started as "let's put D&D online" combined with his own "unique approach" to a setting.) [/QUOTE]

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