Couple of thoughts--
Mods Don't Make Money: Hoowee. WotC didn't make mods for so long because they didn't make enough money. There's a big difference. One bucket, many buckets, who cares? You're still catching the same amount of rain. And that wasn't enough of a profit margin for WotC. They aren't "loss leaders"--they pay for themselves. Many times over. They just don't bring down the amount of revenue WotC was looking for. The product simply didn't pull in the millions of dollars that, at that time, Hasbro and WotC expected from their efforts. I call that greed. And too many companies have demonstrated that the small profit margin is just fine for them. And now, WotC has come around since their subsequent products haven't done as well, and think they can mop up filling a gap that they themselves defined years ago as being sub-par. This is a classic "eating crow" moment, folks.
RPGA and WotC: Make no mistake--RPGA is simply a marketing tool from WotC's perspective. It didn't used to be that way, but now it is. It doesn't "cost" money for RPGA to exist--WotC employs less than a handful of RPGA employees, and all the writing and campaign coordinating is done by volunteers. Those RPGA/WotC employees are paperpushers and beancounters--the heart of the RPGA really has nothing to do with WotC at all, and exists on a level of stupefying volunteerism that is tantamount to a miracle. WotC doesn't deserve any credit for the success of RPGA--that was hard-earned by coordinators totally outside the realm of WotC. And RPGA has demonstrated the dire need for adventures for players, as they produce over 250 adventures each year, written by avid players that believe in what they're doing (some might say a little too much sometimes...). If anything, WotC's decision to publish mods is a result of finally waking up and coming to the party a little too late...
Dungeon Magazine: By far the best value a DM could hope for. Which is too bad, because with WotC publishing adventures, young DMs will glom onto their products and push Dungeon aside. It's bound to suffer as a result.
Size and Type of Adventures: Personally, I don't want huge adventures. I find it hard to sustain interest in an adventure after an evening's entertainment. Taking a few months to complete a dungeon just seems to smack of hack'n'slash to me... Now a story arc that is a result of a campaign setting or multiple adventures is something different. But endless mods turn me off. The regular size is just right, thank-you very much. As far as categorizing the type of mods--well, where do you draw the line? And how do you systemize categorization in a method that everyone will find understandable and acceptable? How do you set definitions as to what "role-playing intensive" means? Or "Dungeon Crawl" for that matter? Too wishy-washy to work, IMO...
Campaign-specific Adventures: It must be fairly obvious by now that "Uber-ron" is now the penultimate setting for WotC. It's their baby, their cash-cow, their answer to everything everyone wanted. It seems to have been deemed a great success. Now why would they want to invest money into publishing adventures for anything else when they know they will have an almost guaranteed sales success story with their shiney new setting? The FR setting has been pushed aside by those looking for something different (and frankly at this point it's practically impossible to start any new home group without plunking down major cash for a complete picture of the setting through setting-specific sourcebooks anyway). Greyhawk has been given to RPGA. You won't see any adventures or books or anything for that. Unless they launch another setting (yeah right), it's almost a given that any potential adventures will be Uber-ron-centric.
While I applaud WotC for finally waking up and realizing that their numerous sourcebooks of rules were starting to break the backs of their DMs (without which no gaming could happen) and catering too much to players that were looking for the next shiney new trick (and don't know how to play the game beyond min/maxing and powergaming), I also feel like this simply smaks of another marketing ploy to exploit a segment of the market that apparently wasn't worth their time in the past. And now that they've convinced everyone else not to publish adventures, and WotC needs the money, they'll lower themselves to "filling a gap in the market".
Sorry if this is negative, but please remember WotC doesn't do anything without being compelled to by profit. They're a business, and as so many people have so often pointed out before, that's apparently what business is for in the contemporary era. Before we "celebrate" this as a wonderful thing, take a moment to think about why they're really doing it. Before you foist over your hard earned money, think about the dozens of other d20 companies that are putting out adventures as well, and realize they can't afford to be driven by profit margins--their products have to be quality in order to sell at all nowdays. When 3.0 first came out that wasn't the case, and we had poor products all over the place. But now anyone can do an adventure, and the only thing that seperates the good from the bad is the belief in the product by the company that puts it out.
I'm not sure I'm willing to believe that WotC believes in their product any more than the amount of profit it generates for them.
And in relation to adventures, that worries me.
My two coppers.
Coreyartus
Ah. The joys of fear and despair from players. Makes me shiver with joy.
