WotC How new Wizards of the Coast head John Hight turned around World of Warcraft

[I'm A Banana]

That depends. I know we have a lot of people here who buy everything that WotC puts out for 5E, but is that a representative sample?

If the majority of D&D buyers buy all of the stuff and want things that hew toward a Forgotten Realms-ish vibe, then yes, experimentation would probably hurt sales.

On the other hand, if the majority of D&D customers actually don't do that, and WotC is currently mostly catering to a plurality that likes its current offerings, then trying new things to sell to those other people are worthwhile.

I think it's worth noting that the $1 million Kickstarter club has plenty of 5E material on it, and very little of it looks like what WotC produces in-house. The question is how well that would sell compared to, say, "Hey, kids, let's adventure a week's journey away from Waterdeep" campaign #14.

I actually see it as quite the opposite.

The majority of D&D players don't buy all the stuff. They buy the core rules and maybe some big supplements that clearly fit (maybe they support popular archetypes that aren't common enough to be core, for instance).

Experimentation doesn't produce new sales much in D&D because experimental supplements (like 3e's Magic of Incarnum or 4e's Hammerfast) don't have an automatic home in a lot of campaigns. They're not part of the games that people are already running. Their games don't need the new experimental thing. Rather, their games need rules for things that are already expected in their games.

The $1 million Kickstarter club for 5e includes a lot of low-hanging fruit. Dungeons of Drakkenheim is a Dark Fantasy setting. Flee, Mortals! and Heliana's Guide are variant Monster Manuals. Strongholds & Followers is a supplement for a thing D&D heroes often do. They are very well done, but I wouldn't call them exactly "experimental." Heck, there's a good segment of "bringing back the past" in things like Strongholds & Followers and Flee, Mortals!

Which is why these can count as "big supplements." They're playing in WotC's blind spots, supporting things that people have in their games already (monsters, PC strongholds, dark fantasy vibes, etc.) that WotC can't or won't make, but they're not doing much that's actually risking alienation or asking audiences to accept something new.

I think experimentation is something that is a big risk under a purchase model. A product for purchase needs to convince you that it's worth it to purchase (and most experiments won't do that). Under a subscription model, where everyone is contractually obligated to give you $10 this month regardless of what you do, it makes more sense.

 

[Mistwell]

Given the mishandling of beloved settings like Planescape, Spelljammer, FR, DL, Ravenlift, etc..., I will have to disagree with you on WotC being good at listening to fans.

I'd say a majority of fans are very happy with how they handled Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms and Planescape.

[Edit - I see I am late to this part of the discussion]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Experimentation doesn't produce new sales much in D&D because experimental supplements (like 3e's Magic of Incarnum or 4e's Hammerfast) don't have an automatic home in a lot of campaigns. They're not part of the games that people are already running. Their games don't need the new experimental thing. Rather, their games need rules for things that are already expected in their games.

You're using a very narrow idea of what experimentation means. It's not just new rules modules, but different tones or themes that WotC doesn't traditionally use.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight is experimental. Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel is as well. Compare to Obojima or Ryoko's on the $1 million Kickstarter list.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You're using a very narrow idea of what experimentation means. It's not just new rules modules, but different tones or themes that WotC doesn't traditionally use.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight is experimental. Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel is as well. Compare to Obojima or Ryoko's on the $1 million Kickstarter list.

When I think "experimental," I think, "new and with a high risk of failure" which includes things like selling a classic version of an ongoing MMORPG. The things Hight did with WoW were novel and innovative and risky and could've flopped in a big way. There wasn't an obvious market demand. Things like Obojima and Ryoko's aren't so risky - they're just addressing a need WotC is overlooking for one reason or another. They're a modern take on some themes that D&D keeps returning to, and so has some pent up demand for.

Cuz the meat of my point is that subscription models are not so linked to demand as standalone products (it is, after all, one of the reasons companies and their investors really love subscription models - it takes effort to stop buying them). It's much easier for an actual experiment to flop when you're not subscribed to it.

If all you want is the demand WotC is overlooking, then it's a safe bet some of those are coming, in various forms. Fall 2025 would be an interesting time to revisit one of these theme. But that's not exactly the innovation that Hight's brought elsewhere. Which, y'know, maybe that's not really appropriate for WotC, which is fine, too.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You're using a very narrow idea of what experimentation means. It's not just new rules modules, but different tones or themes that WotC doesn't traditionally use.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight is experimental. Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel is as well. Compare to Obojima or Ryoko's on the $1 million Kickstarter list.

Stryxhaven and Book of Many Things were the most experimental products made for 5e (to date). The fact that they were not successful tells you everything you need to know about WotC's wariness about experimentation.

 

[mamba]

When I think "experimental," I think, "new and with a high risk of failure" which includes things like selling a classic version of an ongoing MMORPG.

that was not high risk, WoW fans had been asking for that for years, that was not just him having a hunch… and they had the code already too…

 

[Echohawk]

Stryxhaven and Book of Many Things were the most experimental products made for 5e (to date). The fact that they were not successful tells you everything you need to know about WotC's wariness about experimentation.

Citation needed! What is the evidence that those two books weren't successful?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You're using a very narrow idea of what experimentation means. It's not just new rules modules, but different tones or themes that WotC doesn't traditionally use.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight is experimental. Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel is as well. Compare to Obojima or Ryoko's on the $1 million Kickstarter list.

I guess the thing is, that's grading on a curve to a degree so extreme it doesn't really feel like it's experimentation in any meaningful sense of the word.

In no other edition of D&D would either Wild or Radiant be considered "experimental". They would be run of the mill products. Comparing either to Obojima/Ryoko does 5E no favours here - both are vastly more daring and contain far more in the way of new and unusual concepts and rules. Radiant Citadel is the more "experimental" of the two 5E examples, and it's just "What if the hub for some adventures was somewhat diverse and the writers of the adventures were linked to the cultures they were describing (rather than a buncha white dudes)?". Most of the actual adventures themselves are pretty bog-standard tales, just with a perspective that's more favourable to and comprehending of the cultures involved, and less "Look at this exotic and mysterious culture!" like it would definitely have in 1E, probably 2E, maybe 3E.

I think it could be argued that the notion of using MtG settings as D&D settings was an experiment, clearly one WotC considered successful enough to repeat.

The only thing 5E has really shown much interest in experimenting with is the format of the books, and so far this has largely been to our detriment. Specifically the actual "experiments" I've seen with 5E boil down to:

1) Doing settings as one big adventure with some setting details - Strixhaven and Dragonlance - I don't think either was entirely successful, but not really because of the concept, but rather the specific implementation.

2) Doing settings as three separate hardbacks which cost way more, and simultaneously massively increasing the size of the "adventure" part of the product. I would say this was unsuccessful with Spelljammer - which took the additional step of not even having a starting adventure, what you're given is essentially the part 2 of an adventure that came out on Beyond! That's er... experimentation, for sure. Manipulation too! Planescape was more successful but I think a lot of people would agree that less adventure and more setting would have been preferable.

I guess there's a third experiment - attempting to add a boardgame to substitute for/supplement the mechanics from an adventure - we saw this with the Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn boardgame. This was clearly a failure, given that the boardgame ended up in Ollie's really surprisingly soon (even if it didn't sell well, it feels like WotC just dumped it a bit fast).

None of these are particularly impressive experiments, and none of them are really directed at giving the players something they asked for, or something genuinely new/interesting. That's not a critique, necessarily, but it does I think make it easy to suggest 5E has been probably the least experimental edition of D&D, even behind 4E. 2E would be the most, followed by 3E.

 

[Teemu]

Only in the loosest possible sense. If you split the D&D druid into a dedicated shapeshifter and a dedicated nature magician, you get a very rough and very underpowered approximation of the WoW druid and shaman. You’d have to ramp up the D&D class dramatically to approach the versatility of the WoW classes. As one example, the WoW druid has effectively infinite wildshapes within the limitation of its few predefined forms.

Sure but like of course the details will be different. The WoW mage is a mage like the D&D wizard and sorcerer and thematically they share the same role, but the actual spells and how they're used are different. The D&D warlock and the WoW warlock share the same thematic niche but the actual details aren't identical. Yet still, we would say that both games allow you to play the warlock, the mage who uses dark powers, and you have the wizard/sorcerer/mage who is the default magic user who wields a variety of spells. The same way both games have the nature mage, the druid/shaman, and in D&D the druid covers the thematic niche of both the druid and the shaman as they appear in WoW.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When I think "experimental," I think, "new and with a high risk of failure" which includes things like selling a classic version of an ongoing MMORPG. The things Hight did with WoW were novel and innovative and risky and could've flopped in a big way. There wasn't an obvious market demand. Things like Obojima and Ryoko's aren't so risky - they're just addressing a need WotC is overlooking for one reason or another. They're a modern take on some themes that D&D keeps returning to, and so has some pent up demand for.

that was not high risk, WoW fans had been asking for that for years, that was not just him having a hunch… and they had the code already too…

WoW Classic was definitely not high risk for two reasons:

1) It was something other MMORPGs had been doing for literally decades. Dark Age of Camelot put out what was essentially "Classic" rules-set for servers after a very divisive expansion, all the way back in 2005/6, for example, and many other MMORPGs have similar, and did long before WoW.

2) There was clear demand, both from fans saying there was, but perhaps more importantly, as demonstrated by countless unofficial Classic servers being run on code that accidentally got released many years ago.

Further, as @mamba says, Blizzard had retained the actual code, and didn't even suggest they might do that until they'd checked that they had that code.

On top of all this, WoW Classic:

A) Did not require a separate purchase.

B) Required you to have a subscription to Retail WoW.

So what was the big risk? I can't see any at all. It wasn't a new concept - it was an old one - and the risk of failure was low. Worst case scenario they lost some development hours and had to shut down a bunch of Classic servers in a few years, but Blizzard long-ago made clear that those costs are relatively low for them, and if they got a rise in subscriptions at all from this, that'd be highly profitable - and it seemed near certain they would (and of course they did).

So you're off-the-mark there, I'm afraid.

The actual risks WoW has taken whilst under Hight are:

A) Developing Dragonflight, which was a very different WoW expansion to all previous ones, with a significantly lighter tone, an heavy emphasis on an new flying mechanic, that had it sucked, could have sunk the entire expansion, and a significantly more generous approach to itemisation, catch-ups, and so on, as compared to previous version of the game (which was considered risky because a lot of people thought it would lead to players getting bored quickly - that didn't happen).

B) Developing the WoW Classic Season of Discovery, which was a set of WoW Classic servers with a time-gated approach to levelling - i.e. until X date, you can only get to level Y (and re-levelled raids dungeons etc. to compliment that), and more importantly, a ton of new abilities, which didn't exist in Classic and don't exist in Retail WoW, allowing things like letting Warlocks tank, Mages heal, and so on.

C) Developing Plunderstorm and Pandaria Remix, both experimental, time-limited ways to play Retail WoW. Plunderstorm was a full on battle royale which was barely WoW at all beyond using the models/controls/interface, and which ran for a couple of months. It was fairly popular. Pandaria Remix was a much more elaborate thing, where they completely changed WoW's loot mechanics, and had players level up and play solely in a sort of turbo-charged (re: gain of XP, rep, etc.) version of Pandaria, acting as a way to rapidly level and gear up characters, but also producing some interesting/semi-challenging WoW content with mostly just mechanics tweaks (which are insanely cheaper than new art/animations/sound etc.). It also locked those characters into this special version of Pandaria until like, tomorrow. It ran for three months.