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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 369577" data-attributes="member: 6390">I voted Yes, and I have my reasons....  The Splatbooks:  Are a mixture of completely useless, slightly usefull, and usefull.  One of the things I do become slightly irritated about is the fact that many of the contents of the splatbooks were posted on the internet on non-WotC boards over a year before the various books came back.  The Splatbooks are in my possession, but my players don't really enjoy them, and don't really use them.  Sword and Fist did not really provide that much for fighter, nor did Defenders of the Faith really provide interesting material for Clerics and Paladins.  That's just my opinions.  I bought them, I'm stuck with them, but I think a much better job could have been done on them.  The Core Books:  Excellent work, but there are some typos, which is to be expected, and some things were dropped (Tremorsense and Engulf in the MM's Special Abilities section)  Very good for my money, and gave me a lot of hope.  The Modules:  Yawn.  Not very good in my opinion.  Even Return to the Elemental Temple of Evil was not that good in my opinion, but then, I left modules behind because they need major revision to fit into my campaign world and provide a challenge to my PC's.  Additional materials (Ie: Deities and Demigods, Epic Level Handbook, Strongbuilder's Guidebook)  I know that these are supposed to be bland mechanics books, not edge of my sheet thrillers.  Stronghold Builders Guidebook is OK, but the Castle Guide (the old 2E bluebook) was much better.  But let's face it, a lot of material was covered regarding kingdoms and royalty, which people at the time felt had no place in a book about building castles.  My problem with Hasbro/WotC is not in the products themselves, but in the way they are handled, and thier website.  I know, many of you have no problem navigating that site, but guess what, I only go there about once or twice a month, and it's confusing and a welter of broken or misplaced links.  The message board is slow and clunky, at best.  E-Tools was a pile of garbage.  For $29, I'd drive the 3 hours to Seattle, go to WotC itself, and demand my money back in person.  It was falsley blown up, and reminds me of the old DM's Toolkits made by SSI about 20 years ago.  They could have made e-tools run on a commodore-64 and it would be the same.  I think that Hasbro is mismanaging WotC on a business level.  They are still under the impression that gamers are like other people who buy toys.  Most of Hasbro's target demographic don't know how to read or write yet, and if they can, are not aware that you can write in and complain about the way the product is made.  They do not realize the level of intelligence it takes to play this game, and the fact that gamers are some of the most opinionated people on the internet and in real life.  So they think that they can cut a lot out of the WotC budget, to "streamline" it and drop a lot of the excess fat.  That's not going to work.  Hasbro makes crap games.  Let's face it.  I have bought some of their video games, and the most innovation I've seen was thier Star-Wars Monopoly.  In the field of board games and many toys, they are the undisputed master.  They do not understand that WotC uses artists in a different manner than Hasbro toys.  The artwork on Monopoly and the other board games has not changed in 50 years, and they can get away with substandard art.  You put that same art on a gaming product, and then expect to be able to use the same 4 pieces of art on every product, the gaming community will tear you up.  Hasbro bought up WotC, not to get ahold of D&D 3E, but rather to lay thier hands on Pokemon an Tragic the Splattering.  By doing that, they grabbed ahold of the majority of the trading card game market.  D&D was just a plus.  I believe Hasbro is mismanaging WotC, mainly because thier experiences in handling game producing companies lies in a totally different field, but the board of directors can't see that.  But at the same time, I can remember a time when Hasbro publically denounced AD&D as a game that was corrupting the youth of America, so perhaps this mismanagement is not accidental.</blockquote>

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