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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thedungeondelver" data-source="post: 5485362" data-attributes="member: 34865">For the sake of this reply, I'll stick to verdana.this timeI don't agree with the tone of what Mr. Mearls is saying in his article.  I remember that back in...good lord, 2008?  Anyway what I said was:BUT: IIRC when I wrote that Wizards of the Coast hadn't interdicted and shut down PDF sales.  The options were still there to get your hands on the PDFs quickly and easily.I don't doubt that.  I'm asking for that PDF avenue back.  It'd give a lot more oomph to what Mr. Mearls is saying.Eh.  That's a personal nuance thing, but jesus christ: go back and watch the videos.  NO MINIATURES EVER EXISTED BEFORE 4E. LOOK AT THOSE CLODS.  ERASERS. WHICH ONE IS THE TROLL.  HA HA HA.  I'm pissed that they're entirely disingenuous about it.  I'm pissed that - let me put it this way.  This isn't like Coke stopping real coke (there's a whole history behind classic Coke and so on I won't go in to here) or Chevy not selling the Bel Air any more or anything like that.  In those cases, the manufacturer (Coca-Cola, General Motors) made the thing and sent the thing to the shop or dealership and you bought it.  When the companies in question decided to stop making the thing you like, it's not like you could demand they start the production lines up again.This is not like that.  This is like: GM gives the blueprints to a company that starts stamping out '57 Bel Aires and Coke gives the formula to a local bottling company and they start selling Coke.  GM never has to run a factory (indeed the onus is on the reseller to keep the factory - or in the case of PDFs, the server - open) or anything.  This is GM saying "Whoa whoa whoa, our cars are being stolen?  Psh, shut it down, third party company!  Quit making money and giving us money!"Their advertising was mean spirited.  "People who drove bel airs were IDIOTS!  HA!  Back then they didn't know what a steering wheel was!  Look at them!"The sour grapes analogy doesn't apply here; I'm not looking longingly at something I can't reach and saying "Well, it's probably not quality anyway."  I could, tomorrow...hell, in between words here I could pause and go sign up for DDI and get the core books and etcetera.  It's not sour grapes for me to say "Stop doing what you're doing and loosen your grip on old D&D."I've never been part of the larger D&D community, 4e has no appeal to me, the how's and why's of that are beyond the scope of my thesis.  4e has no cachet with me, I have no desire to detail why, for it is edition warlike.They won't, and I don't expect them to, and I don't want them to.  D&D is theirs.  ALL D&D is theirs.  Here we've come full circle.  In my original post I said "Folks who say 'get over it' and 'play what D&D you like' certainly have a point" because that's all you're really in a position to do.  I don't expect anything more, really.  Okay!  Message received!  Thanks for listening and stopping to reply to me...but - and this is key - when the public face of Wizards of the Coast says "it's all D&D" and he absolutely has the pull with the company as the brand manager to say "hey you know what, if I'm going to go out there with with a 'let's all play under the big tent message' maybe we can actually, you know, make it a big tent" and won't, or won't indicate that they can or ever will, then "it's all D&D" from the offices of WotC is hollow and cynical.And that's what I'm saying.YOU telling me to shut up and play whatever D&D, player to player, that's one matter.  HIM telling me to shut up and play whatever D&D and then not backing it up, that's onerous.  WotC denied themselves money and made it more appealing to people to pirate their stuff.  How dumb was that?I don't want, and I don't expect official OD&D, AD&D, AD&D2, 3e and all 11 versions of Basic D&D and on and on to be supported by WotC.  I said back in 2008 I didn't want or expect that.  I said in my post that I didn't want or expect them to pack up, move back to Lake Geneva and start selling AD&D hardbacks.  But what I said back in 2008 was in the shadow of ease of access.  I want that ease of access returned.  Then the tent is truly big enough again for everyone and not in some sorta-kinda way.</blockquote>

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