Rykion said:
Wow. D&D 4e was announced at GenCon almost a year before release. WotC has given us all kinds of info on their website including a race write up and a class write up. They had demo games at the D&D Experience. There are demos at game stores leading up to 4e release. Keep on the Shadowfell comes out 2 weeks before the main books. It's still more than 2 months until release and anyone at ENworld has access to all they need to run basic 4e games thanks to info from the D&D Experience. I think WotC is doing a real bang up job keeping 4e and the basics of the rules a secret.
Admittedly, WotC has shown two things very well: monsters and first-level play.
Outside of that, though, there's been almost nothing. Seeing a couple dozen paragon-tier wizard powers was cool, that really gave an idea of what to expect from that class without rendering the wizard entry in the PHB obsolete. But why can't they do more stuff like that? We know next-to-nothing about rituals, multiclassing, paragon paths, epic destinies, character advancement, skill challenges and out-of-combat abilities, the warlord, dragonborn, high-level martial stuff, etc. These are major parts of the game that we just don't know much about, and it's keeping a lot of hardcore fans from really jumping on board.
And you can try and say that since we're here talking about the game, that obviously shows their marketing is working. But that's not true. We'd be here talking about the game regardless because we're hardcore D&D fans like that.
I understand that the big mainstream push shouldn't be happening yet. But a lot of video game developers have become very good at building a hardcore fan base for their games in order to build word-of-mouth and a little buzz, so that when they do go all-out with their mainstream push, they've already got some momentum. WotC isn't doing that, though, and I can't help but think of that as a missed opportunity (and not to mention poor fan-service).
