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

[Henadic Theologian]

That is possible.

I would, based on what Crawford and particularly Perkins have said, think that it's unlikely this was something they were told to do from above, but I can't rule it out. What probably did come from above was the sudden change in timeline, where they were saying "Oh yeah we're going to iterate a bunch" and then later "Yeah will give you bits of the DMG and MM to test", and then neither of those things really happened. But we know where the whole 70%-feedback-loop deal came from and that was Mike Mearls, and it was chosen specifically because Mearls wanted to get lapsed players back in and to keep them. I suspect were he still in charge he might have taken a different approach to 2024, and that Crawford/Perkins retained it because they didn't really know what else to do.


That's not the impression I've got from the actual 5E setting books. Like, VRGTR for example, the setting info is just rushed. It doesn't feel "slim and useful" to me, as much as "Holy hell we've got to cover a lot because we're only ever getting one book, so every single nation has to be covered, which means it's going to be real light for all of them because of the page count!".


The "somehow" is because it absolutely did happen in 2E, 3E, 4E, and with Eberron, 5E. That's er... quite a lot of decades and again Eberron shows it isn't an impossibility in 5E. I don't think anyone actually expects everything from every book, or even most things from most books to be covered - I've never seen that opinion from an actual poster, rather than attributed to nebulous "people" who don't actually exist. What people have expressed a desire for is books more similar to 2E/3E/5E Eberron in terms of the amount of setting info.

Also, I'd say it's worth noting that 5E Eberron probably supports a new DM coming to the setting rather better than say, 5E Planescape, or 5E Ravenloft.

I do think one of the problems is that WotC are doing "one book and done" for settings that were never intended to operate that way. Especially as WotC has reduced the page counts compared to earlier releases, and insisted on including increasingly large adventures and bestiaries in the setting books (despite increasing the price by far more than inflation).

It didn't help that a good chunk of the book was devoted towards stuff like how to do your own domains, leaving less space for the rest.

 

[Aldarc]

It didn't help that a good chunk of the book was devoted towards stuff like how to do your own domains, leaving less space for the rest.

Curious how much of "the rest" was content in the original Ravenloft Campaign Book for 2E? If I bought the original Ravenlfot Campaign Book for 2E, would I have the full setting or would there be setting content left out or added later?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Curious how much of "the rest" was content in the original Ravenloft Campaign Book for 2E? If I bought the original Ravenlfot Campaign Book for 2E, would I have the full setting or would there be setting content left out or added later?

I don't own it so all my complaints are third hand.

 

[mamba]

Curious how much of "the rest" was content in the original Ravenloft Campaign Book for 2E? If I bought the original Ravenlfot Campaign Book for 2E, would I have the full setting or would there be setting content left out or added later?

it is a safe bet during 2e that more stuff was added later

 

[FrogReaver]

So we finally have proof that Wotc really wants d&d to be WOW-ified

 

[Teemu]

So we finally have proof that Wotc really wants d&d to be WOW-ified

They've literally added Power Word Fortify, one of the most iconic priest spells in WoW, to D&D in the new PHB!

(Let's not talk about how WoW took like over half of its identity from D&D...)

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Seriously, I wouldn't be too surprised if WotC published a new ed. of Warcraft d20.

 

[Incenjucar]

Look at the different difference in the amount of ratings, the 5e stuff could be all WotC employees or folks with little experience in the settings, there is literally a difference of 202 ratings between 2e and 5e Planescape, which only got 3 reviews.

That being said, Ravenloft 5e is nowhere near as bad as the other 2, it's problem is mostly tossing the core, which bothered alot if Ravenloft fans, and messes up some domains according RL fans. Some domains did kick ass however, so it's in-between the good setting books and the terrible ones.

The Ravenloft book gets a lot of praise. I haven't actually seen any praise for the PS books other than "It's fine I guess." It's a C+ product at best. Editing was pretty good at least. The indie version was much better and far, far more comprehensive.

 

[JDR]

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. But the basic idea of "let's take these existing assets and do something fun and crazy with them" was a great idea.

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

I enjoyed Remix alot and I also hope they do it with other past expansions. I don't pvp but I tried Plunderstorm and hated it.

 

[overgeeked]

Also, here’s to hoping we get martials who rock and something approaching class balance. That would be a welcome change for D&D.