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

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hmmm so regular DnD DLCs reframing rules for different styles of play and revisiting old settings, hmmm

That's sort of been their basis for new settings for a while now -- "does this add a new flavor to 5E?"

Turn that up several notches and stop worrying about whether something fits into traditional D&D at all. Give us Gamma World, give us a GoBots RPG, give us a Clue-themed book on successfully running mysteries in D&D.

 

[Scribe]

My wife, who played a holy priest in vanilla, is still infamous in my server's PvP circles because a switch just flipped in her brain when battlegrounds were introduced. Crazy/hardcore.

Vanilla priests were the best griefers in the game.

We had a priest, she hated PvP, and then our server went full on toxic between raid groups with dispelling buffs and she snapped. Nobody was as sweaty as she was in terms of getting the opposing raid groups tanks debuffed.

 

[Dire Bare]

Interesting piece over on Polygon.





It's probably not going to be a one-to-one carryover of lessons, but if Hight applies the same strategy of letting WotC games get more experimental, more creative and not worry about having a singular monolithic success that all customers have to buy into, that sounds like a very good thing to me.

One thing I'd like to see . . . that I don't think we will . . . is all of the classic material from the White Box through 4E available and fully supported on D&D Beyond. In the tools, web format books, and "remastered" PDFs.

That would rock.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One thing I'd like to see . . . that I don't think we will . . . is all of the classic material from the White Box through 4E available and fully supported on D&D Beyond. In the tools, web format books, and "remastered" PDFs.

That would rock.

That feels pretty labor-intensive. I think there's probably a chance they could explicitly throw open the door to DMs Guild supporting all the pre-5E lines, though, which is a very easy thing for them to do.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I think the PvP and battle royale nature of Plunderstorm were probably a big curveball for many existing WoW players, including the largely chill pet collector community, who suddenly felt compelled to go get curb-stomped in PvP for new pets.

That was me, except for mounts. It wasn't horrifically bad or anything, just not something I'd go out of my way to do otherwise. Thankfully, it was easy to gain a level or two a day with a pretty short time commitment.

And yeah, Remix was a huge hit. I'm hoping they do one of these at the end of every expansion.

It has been really, really fun, especially once you're just totally overpowered. I was running heroic dungeons just for the bronze with my gnome death knight, and I was literally just causing the mobs to one-shot suicide against my fire shield. One of the other people in the group said I should have named the gnome "Big Hurts." I'm also glad it put some focus on the very unjustly maligned MoP expansion, in which so many people just quit ahead of time because "Hur hur, kung-fu pandas" without giving it any shot at all.

I also hope they do it again as TWW is running out its clock.

 

[Dire Bare]

That feels pretty labor-intensive. I think there's probably a chance they could explicitly throw open the door to DMs Guild supporting all the pre-5E lines, though, which is a very easy thing for them to do.

Yes . . . which is why I won't be holding my breath.

But . . . offering full support for classic books could build customer confidence in purchasing NEW books on D&D Beyond. We've had folks in this thread still salty (rightly so) about losing access to their 4E digital investment, this pushback would (mostly) disappear.

And . . . that's a lot of titles! They should all be available as individual book purchases (micro-transactions?), but it would strengthen a full-on subscription option. Pay $15/month and get full access to current AND classic titles! And maybe earn points (meta-currency) towards purchasing individual titles permanently.

If WotC could make a recurring subscription model exciting . . . like Hight did for WoW . . . that could be a significant source of revenue in this new digital age.

But in my dream scenario, all titles would still be available for individual digital purchase in multiple formats (web, PDF, EPUB) and also in POD (print-on-demand). And yes, open all that up on the DM's Guild! All the editions, all the settings!

Labor intensive, yes. But forward-thinking and franchise-building.

Yeah, it's not going to happen, I know.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That was me, except for mounts. It wasn't horrifically bad or anything, just not something I'd go out of my way to do otherwise. Thankfully, it was easy to gain a level or two a day with a pretty short time commitment.

Yeah, the "right" way to do it was just to do the daily quest and log off. Maximum amount of reward in the minimum of time. The folks who decided to bang their face against the wall over and over the first weekend were voluntarily making themselves miserable.

Once I realized how good the daily reward bonus was, I'd hop on, play until I got that, complete that game, and logged off. Got everything done well before the end.

 

[overgeeked]

That might be really cool. Or he might be brought to heel by Hasbro’s corporate culture.

Here’s to hoping Dark Sun and Mystara return.

 

[Argyle King]

Hmmm so regular DnD DLCs reframing rules for different styles of play and revisiting old settings, hmmm

Back during the 5th Edition playtest, I had thought that was the idea behind a modular ruleset. There would be a basic "core," and then different settings and modules could alter that to introduce other concepts.

So, something like Birthright might introduce mass combat; Ravenloft would include fear, horror, and related rules; Greyhawk might go more OSR and Sword & Sorcery; etc.

It would be cool if that happened. There were a lot of great ideas involved in the original 5e playtests. I wish more of them had made it into the final version of the game.

 

[el-remmen]

A fully multi-edition integrated 3D VTT where you can toggle on and off things like the 1E grappling rules or 3E encumbrance.