Mearls announces end of Legends & Lore & New D&D Columns in 2015!

WotC's Mike Mearls has announced the end of the long-running Legends & Lore column, which was used during D&D Next playtesting to showcase ideas and concepts, and the start of the previously announced series of articles called Unearthed Arcana, "a monthly look at the art of tabletop RPG game design featuring insights into our philosophy, and examples of new and variant material to use at your table."

Additionally, series called Campaign Notebooks and Sage Advice will be launched. Sage Advice follows the old format of years past, and will be manned by Jeremy Crawford as he answers your rules questions. Campaign Notebooks will feature Chris Perkins and others -- "insights into D&D and tips for your games taken directly from the campaigns of Dungeon Masters here at Wizards."

 

[Joe Liker]

Have they announced an official collected errata/clarifications page yet?

That should take precedence over any of this stuff.

 

[Morrus]

Have they announced an official collected errata/clarifications page yet?

The books aren't even out yet. The DMG releases officially tomorrow (Tuesday 9th). I don't think they're in the habit of announcing errata before they release the book!

 

[Astrosicebear]

They don't exactly have the writing staff to do more.
And why pay Mike Shae or Bill Cavalier to do something for the WotC site when you can just leave them alone and they'll do it for free on their own website?

Wouldnt have to pay them for simply linking articles. But WOTC would never drive traffic from their own site, so hire columnists...the cost is so minimal for pageviews.

 

[Boarstorm]

Wouldnt have to pay them for simply linking articles. But WOTC would never drive traffic from their own site, so hire columnists...the cost is so minimal for pageviews.

Why do they need pageviews?

They have no ads on their site with which to generate click-income.

 

[Astrosicebear]

And also... no mention of Dungeon or Dragon....

 

[Astrosicebear]

Why do they need pageviews?

They have no ads on their site with which to generate click-income.

Generate brand interest, attract new players, and retain old customers.

I'd be interested to know the metrics from the 3E days where there was decent and good content every day(remember those cartography articles, the side treks, villains, etc), and in 4E with subscription based content.

 

[Jester David]

Jeez, dude. Maybe a little patience? You don't have to have everything right now, y'know! You just got 3 enormous core rulebooks!

Patience is good, but being told to wait again and again for two years gets kinda old. I had to take a break from D&D speculation a few months back because I grew tired and burnt out from the whole process.
I'm not anxious for more "your articles are in another castle, Mario" for 2015 where they have an initial teaser article, then a couple weeks later the kender, and a couple weeks after that Battlesystem, and so on, as they slowly drag out releasing content they decided wasn't good enough for the books.

The D&D website is pretty much a giant black hole at the moment. I get all my news from here. And all my interaction with the WotC staff from Twitter. The site could go offline for a week before anyone would really notice. Even the web enhancements for the MM and DMG weren't really mentioned on their news site, if you can even find the articles buried at the bottom of the page. It's desperately needed content and a reason to exist for months.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I'm satisfied with the once a month schedule. It will give me time to digest the new material, and gives the team time to come up with something good. It also fits nicely with the no system bloat philosophy we've seen so far. If something had to come out every week I suspect that filler articles would eventually start to show up just to meet the quota.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Why do they need pageviews?

They have no ads on their site with which to generate click-income.

To appease the suits at Hasbro, maybe.

 

[Boarstorm]

@astrosicebear

I would argue that the official web site doesn't do much for any of those three concerns. Oh, it certainly HELPS, I'm sure, but I'm dubious as to cost (both in money and time)/benefit.

In my mind, it's kind-of like the official website for Frito-Lay. They have to have one because it's expected. But the percentage of people who visit versus the total number of consumers who use the product is infinitesimally small... I presume. That's in no way backed up by any evidence whatsoever.

That said, I would certainly welcome daily content on par with Wizards' M:tG side of things.