Fate of WotC Closed Content?

[GuardianLurker]

d20 is officially D-E-A-D dead.

3.0 and 3.5 are officially OOP.

The OGL lives on.

Right. Which is why I posted my original musing.

Anybody who's decided to stick to 3.x isn't going to be part of the 4e market. So offering OGL licenses for their OOP products doesn't hurt WotC - they weren't going to get 3.x diehards' money anyway. Heck, by licensing the right to republish those 3.x books as OGL to another company or companies (like Paizo, say), WotC could even turn their OOP backlog into free money.

Strip out the PI, and WotC can still mine the old 3.x stuff for ideas when printing the splatbooks for 4e. The mechanics are so different that barring the PI, there wouldn't be anyway to relate the two.

To tell the truth, I've never understood why game companies (of all stripes) don't rent out their "abandoned back catalog" products. It doesn't really hurt them, and the secondary market generated can even get them some halo sales. I understand why the companies drop products - they're no longer profitable - but if a different company thinks it can make a go on the old product, and it won't hurt your sales, why not let them? Maybe they'll be right. Maybe they'll be wrong. But either way, it doesn't hurt the original company at all.

 

[Morrus]

I agree Wizards will want to bury all of 3.0/3.5/d20/OGL as soon as possible, creating as few options as possible to their 4E upgrade offer.

Yup.

 

[Lizard]

Right. Which is why I posted my original musing.

Anybody who's decided to stick to 3.x isn't going to be part of the 4e market. So offering OGL licenses for their OOP products doesn't hurt WotC - they weren't going to get 3.x diehards' money anyway.

This is incorrect.

It's not a 100% boolean issue of "I will/will not move to 4e". One of the factors getting people to switch to 4e once their current games have expired is the perception of 3e as a "dead" system. If there are people making support products for 3e, the game seems "alive" and people have one less reason to switch. If there was a sudden flood of new "official" OGL material for companies to base their products off, this would only increase the number of people staying with 3e who might have otherwise switched to 4e. WOTC has no reason to release anything new to the OGL, and if there was any way they could "un open" the SRD, they would do so in a heartbeat.

 

[Nadaka]

We (the d20 modern community) were told that every book in the D20 modern line would eventually be added to the d20 modern SRD, and told that much of it was ready and waiting for the web staff to add links, and writing staff was hard at work in getting the rest ready.

We later found out that this was a lie. And all those resources had been dedicated to 4e all along.

 

[carmachu]

To tell the truth, I've never understood why game companies (of all stripes) don't rent out their "abandoned back catalog" products. It doesn't really hurt them, and the secondary market generated can even get them some halo sales. I understand why the companies drop products - they're no longer profitable - but if a different company thinks it can make a go on the old product, and it won't hurt your sales, why not let them? Maybe they'll be right. Maybe they'll be wrong. But either way, it doesn't hurt the original company at all.

If their renting out their old stuff, they feel its not pushing the new one. If their is no support for the old stuff, customers are forced to move to the new edition.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

If their is no support for the old stuff, customers are forced to move to the new edition.

Or try to snapup whats kleft from 3rd edition before supplies run out and when they do the consumer can just buy used material. Or move on to third party products made for 3rd edition (I'm looking at Pathfinder).

 

[Angellis_ater]

We (the d20 modern community) were told that every book in the D20 modern line would eventually be added to the d20 modern SRD, and told that much of it was ready and waiting for the web staff to add links, and writing staff was hard at work in getting the rest ready.

We later found out that this was a lie. And all those resources had been dedicated to 4e all along.

Any links to these promises? I would be interested in reading what they said.

 

[Nadaka]

Any links to these promises? I would be interested in reading what they said.

sorry, gleemax is being its usual self. IE I can't log in to search for a lot of the data.

THe relevant issues are the production of D20 Spectaculars, project Javelin adventure path and the failure to deliver bullet points or any web content after 2006.

Welcome to the latest installment of Bullet Points. I'm Owen K.C. Stephens. Every two weeks (or as close to that as we can manage), I answer questions about rules from the d20 Modern line of games and give advice about rules issues.

Note that there were two more bullet points before the end of 2006, then nothing for 2 years.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/article/20051213a
Project Javelin was a full length adventure path with the first 3 or more adventures written and submitted. The authors of this adventure path is a poster here on ENWorld, he might be able to provide better information.

I am not 100% sure, but I think Rich Redmans Grim Frequency adventure series was also cut short.

D20 Spectaculars d20 modern superhero supplement was fully written and edited AFAIK, and a week before it goes to print it is canceled with little or no explanaition as to why.

Plus there is the issue where additional material was said to be on its way to the MSRD. But once again, most of the posts by WotC employees are on gleemax (that is virtually unaccessable) or the wizards archives (that are difficult to search).

 

[Angellis_ater]

Thank you! Once you have a chance I'd love some of those gleemax links too, before it disappears forever,