Latest Wizards Cover Botch

[Aeolius]

I still prefer "Crosstides", myself, or perhaps "Glub, Glub, Glub"

 

[nothing to see here]

It's almost certainly a marketing decision. The sameway 'dumbing down' Coex Anathema to Lords of Madness was a marketing decision.

When you're a niche product as it is, you cannot exactly afford to lose sales do to pretentious titles (even 'mildly' pretentious ones)...you want your entire audience, from 14 year olds on up to get an idea of what the book contains.

My guess (and it is only a guess, albeit one based on experience in other creative sectors) is that, during the development process, the design team (i.e. the 'creatives') were given the opportunity to come up with an evocative title for the product. But at best, such a title would be a talented person working on a hunch.

Marketers have much better resources at their disposal. And if some survey or focus group somewhere determined that the title of a piece would, in anyway, be a detriment to sales...they will push to have it changed. As is their job.

The real issue here is timimg. The proces I outlined above happens all the time in other creative sectors...just that it happens behind closed doors. It borders on incompetence to release a title in your catalogue only to change 'midstream'.

 

[Gez]

I prefer Stormwrack, myself. Evocative of 'Spiritwrack'. Maelstrom is just pedestrian, the kind of title I'd expect from someone who just saw it in his 'Word a Day' disctionary and thinks its some exotic word that no one else has heard before.

I weep for you poor Americans. I learned that word when I was six from reading Jules Verne's 20 000 leagues under the sea...

The trademark issue is maybe the correct explanation. Can one trademark a common noun like maelstrom, no matter how pedestrian it looks? An invented word like Stormwrack is maybe easier to double-lock under IP thingies. :\

Still, I find it a dumb name for a book. Sounds more fit to be a Scarred Lands dragon than an environment sourcebook.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I weep for you poor Americans. I learned that word when I was six from reading Jules Verne's 20 000 leagues under the sea...

Same here. However, it is a fairly obscure word.

 

[diaglo]

they perhaps don't want to confuse it with an OoP product TSR released years ago.

 

[Jupp]

Wrack is a perfectly correct word, at least in German where it means about the same as..uhm....Wreck in English

 

[diaglo]

one of the spelljammer novels was something or other with Maelstrom in the title.

and also for D&D... M1 Into the Maelstrom

 

[DragonLancer]

I liked the previous titled, it was the nick of an old PC of mine

Not that Stormwreck is a bad name, but are they short of ideas at WotC? Sandstorm, stormwreck... Why not froststorm the first one then? I think the idea behind the titles was to evoke hazards of the books' environment, and maybe Maelstrom is too exotic for average gamers to know (pffft...), but it's not always storms everywhere. I'd have preferred even Whirlpool or simply Shipwreck.

I thought the desert book should be called Sunburn, just to go with Frostburn.

I think the titles are spells in the books themselves. Frostburn is a spell in that book, so I imagine that Sandstorm and Stormwrack are the same. Maelstrom was probably just the working title for the book.

 

[Numion]

IMO this one of the complaints that are made just because it's WotC. Stormwrack isn't 'dumbed down', but it's just cool to call decisions you wouldn't have made 'dumbing down'.

I don't get how stormwrack is any less intelligent than maelstrom. Does that make me dumb, perhaps?

 

[Gez]

Yes!

I just find, as I already said, that I find Stormwrack sounds goofy, while Maelstrom is mightily fine. That's all.