Fourth Edition largely unavailable at Amazon.com

[GX.Sigma]

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Very interesting. I wonder if this'll have any mechanical updates. I hope the new cover means it has all-new art, since the "recycled 4e Monster Manual art on blank white backgrounds" aesthetic of the 2012 edition is pretty bad.

 

[Oryan77]

I have a ton of 4e books listed on my website for sale that have sat in my inventory since the day they were released. I thought the prices were as good or better than what Amazon sold them for. I stopped stocking 4e books because nobody was buying them.

 

[fjw70]

In my experience the DDI tools made the 4e books irrelevant for many 4e players. I am the only 4e player that I know that actually bought the 4e books.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Did dndclassics used to have the DMG, PhB, and MM for the various editions?

DriveThruRPG.com had the 3,5e and 4e Core books for sale until after PHB2 came out and the PDF hit the torrents within a day. Shortly thereafter the PDFs were pulled and the lawsuit filed.

As part of the 1e and 2e Premium reprints they created OEF of those 2 editions per Chris Perkins at one of the Fall 2013 Con panels. If they release to DnDClassics they should be excellent quality.

 

[the Jester]

I went by my local B&N yesterday. They had a couple Players Handbooks, a Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, one of the ... Power books and I think something else, a total of about 6 or 7 hardbacks.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Interestingly, the Dungeon! Board Game is listed as being re-released on June 17, 2014. So a new June product is being listed but I can't be sure if this is accurate. It would make sense as a bolstering product for 5th edition. Sundering novel #6 is also due in June 2014.

I'm fascinated by them re-releasing Dungeon! again with new art so soon. We've gotten good use out of it in my house, and I've bought a copy for my brother's family as well.

If the re-released version has better playing pieces (cardboard standees just don't do it for us, in a world with Reaper Bones or the plastic minis in our Talisman game), I'd be strongly tempted. I also would be in favor or a less 4E dungeonpunk aesthetic -- nothing wrong with that art style, but I've been playing Dungeon! since the 1970s and would like something a bit more timeless.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In my experience the DDI tools made the 4e books irrelevant for many 4e players. I am the only 4e player that I know that actually bought the 4e books.

Of course, if the online character builder is ever removed, it would also make playing 4E very hard for many players. Suddenly you don't have the source books the powers come from, and have to organize it all yourself?

I hope that this doesn't happen anytime soon, but it remains a constant worry for me.

 

[KarinsDad]

Of course, if the online character builder is ever removed, it would also make playing 4E very hard for many players. Suddenly you don't have the source books the powers come from, and have to organize it all yourself?

I hope that this doesn't happen anytime soon, but it remains a constant worry for me.

No doubt.

Personally, I think that as long as people are willing to pay for the 4E DDI, WotC should support it. Even a thousand people would be $7000 a month, which should be enough to support a few dedicated servers. Most of the rest of the IT infrastructure would be used for 5E, so it's not as if they have many additional costs. In fact, they could even have the 4E software/databases on the same servers as the 5E and then the costs are very low.

The issue I see is that 4E will start to compete with 5E. In order to generate book/adventure sales for 5E (even if 5E has a similar DDI system), they might shut down 4E DDI to encourage people to migrate to 5E.

 

[Jhaelen]

In order to generate book/adventure sales for 5E (even if 5E has a similar DDI system), they might shut down 4E DDI to encourage people to migrate to 5E.

Well, should they ever feel they'd have to do that, it would speak volumes of the quality of 5e!

 

[delericho]

Personally, I think that as long as people are willing to pay for the 4E DDI, WotC should support it. Even a thousand people would be $7000 a month, which should be enough to support a few dedicated servers.

My guess would be that they'll keep the 4e tools going as long as those costs are indeed negligible. However, there will inevitably come a day when they need to migrate the servers to a not-quite-compatible OS, or they need to replace the servers, or whatever.

And on that day it simply won't be worth spending any money to set up backwards compatibility, and so the 4e tools will be retired.

Unless, of course, they do decide that they want to 'force' people to upgrade, and so they switch off the 4e tools as a matter of policy. But given WotC's recent conversion to at least nominally supporting all editions, I don't currently expect that.