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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 5428614" data-attributes="member: 9225">They've failed to build a long term D&D miniatures business for a decade. This is due to multiple dumb ideas, and following instead of leading trends. They blew it. This is abandonment. Expect content to drop to blog-length items that are either cut from books or wrung out of house creators in their spare time. Beyond sales consideration, the D&D business may be in a holding pattern because there's a management-level change in the offing. They're close enough. There's really only an intro version of 4e, and a full version of 4e with some changes in classes and applied errata.  Being able to download the major assets of a subscription-based service and then cancel was a business problem. This is a solution. Since next generation browsing is designed to support offline web applications, this position will get to be a more and more awkward one.  They'll fail. WotC can't simultaneously pander to an aging fanbase with retro references and attempt to engineer its preferences to something that'll supply a steady stream of cash. If a company needs to throw a party and set the rules to sell something, it's already failed. They'll also fail. WotC still believes D&D is a brand identity of its own to extend and exploit, but D&D's value lies in its worlds, and WotC lacks the institutional competence to create worlds, or even make its existing worlds more interesting. Listen: When you go to D&D's page, who do you think that's trying to target at this point? Is it old fans or new? Ironic or serious? It's a goddamn mess. Nobody who really rocks out to old Erol Otus art cares that much about 4e. The site has an interview with a fantasy author who kind of played D&D once and grabbed random identifiable crap about it for his wizard novel. This is a brand collapsing under its legacy, and its management long ago banished the process and talent necessary to keep it fresh.Remember when you all cheered that D&D wasn't going to be helmed by "frustrated novelists" any more? That it wouldn't have all those confusing worlds, so that you could go "back to the dungeon."You reap what you sow.D&D is now meaningless to the average person because it has collapsed into a pit of game design refinement and self-referentiality that you'd be hard-pressed to make anyone care about unless they have at least a decade of play under their belts -- and anyone with that much time can choose an older edition.Creative content based in real story worlds that goes beyond systems is what could have kept D&D fresh, current and relevant, but as you can see WotC is cutting back on even the *possibility* of improvement here.The mistake made back in 2000 was assuming that the entire process of working with story worlds was bad, when it truth, a particular way of doing it through short term, event driven, closed story arcs was the problem. It wasn't an RPG problem, either. It was an issue for Marvel, DC, Star Wars and Star Trek. It was a large scale cultural trend that got mistaken for an indictment on an entire process that was not only useful, but which RPG developers had particular skill at working with.And Nerath is weak sauce. You know it.</blockquote>

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