D&D 5E OK WotC, I've had just about enough of this...

[HobbitFan]

One advantage of not releasing any info is that they are retraining everyone to focus in on what we're currently playing, rather than worrying about what's ahead in three, six, twelve months time. The books have been out less than six months... so no one's been able to play everything in them in every combination yet. So by not announcing stuff for the future and making us so focused on all that upcoming stuff... we have no choice but to just delve even deeper in what we already have. *That's* how they teach us to get off the splat train... to make us continually just think about and re-use all the stuff in the books we already have.

Do we need another Rogue sub-class yet? Nope. Not unless we've already played campaigns with several Thieves, Assassins, and Arcane Tricksters in them already. So why announce a new Rogue sub-class in a book nine months from now that'll just draw our attention away from the three we already have?

"All his life has he looked away... to the future-- to the horizon. Never his mind on WHERE - HE- WAS! Hmm? What he was doing! Hmph!"

-Yoda

That's an interesting notion DefCon1 but I don't think that's something they are setting out to do. There're not educating the game public about a new paradigm or anything. If your theory were true WOTC would be talking about all the cool stuff you could do right now with what's out.
They're not saying anything about anything. It's not just silence about future plans...it's a blanket silence.
It's weird...

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

One of the things I suspect they're doing is a wait-and-see. In previous editions, they were always rushing forward; 3E suffered for this a bit due to them rushing out 3.5 revisions in 3E books, and I heard the end of the 3.5 product line started to rush in some 4E stuff.

This time around, I think they're taking the approach of releasing a few products, then watching how they're doing. It's a lessened release schedule, but it allows them to be far more reactive to the fanbase and to better gauge how well some products are working out. It also allows them to more easily identify any weaknesses in how they're handling things.

Also, they're still releasing a lot of old material, so it's possible most of their staff is busy with scanning old books.

 

[HobbitFan]

I agree that part of it is them taking a wait-and-see approach.
That's a partial explanantion....there has to more to all the silence then them wiaitng to see how fans respond.

Or, maybe not.....I don't know.
It is starting to get a little frustrating in that they will soon start losing the goodwill generated by 5E's launch if they don't at least start talking.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

What exactly are people expecting to hear, and how far in advance do you expect to hear it?

I.e., what if Trevor Kidd from WotC were to respond to this thread and say, "I asked Mike, and he asked his boss, and I've been given permission to list all of our 2015 products for you: The deluxe DM screen on January, Princes of the Apocalypse and accompanying Adventurer's Handbook in March, and Alice in Wonderland Inspired Campaign and accompanying player's option book in month." and that's it?

Why are we insisting on more product release information when the upcoming product they have announced hasn't come out yet?

 

[HobbitFan]

Trickstar Spirit: Sure, we have information from internet sources that Princes of the Apocalypse is coming out. Wizards hasn't talked about that themselves or even said its coming out yet. We know all this stuff from other sources other than WOTC that's how bad their communication is.
That's part of the issue.

 

[Staffan]

Why are we insisting on more product release information when the upcoming product they have announced hasn't come out yet?

Because we enjoy speculation. This whole website started out 15 years ago as a place to discuss the tidbits learned about D&D 3rd edition, and discuss the articles posted about it, and such. It's been a month now since anything new of substance happened on the D&D website - ironically, that new thing was an article about the upcoming article series coming in the new year, and then nothing.

I do think the current production rate is a bit low - I see what they're trying to do, I just don't agree with it. I don't want or need a Pathfinder-ish level of support (5 products per month, or whatever they're up to), but one book a month sounds about right.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

Because we enjoy speculation. This whole website started out 15 years ago as a place to discuss the tidbits learned about D&D 3rd edition, and discuss the articles posted about it, and such. It's been a month now since anything new of substance happened on the D&D website - ironically, that new thing was an article about the upcoming article series coming in the new year, and then nothing.

I do think the current production rate is a bit low - I see what they're trying to do, I just don't agree with it. I don't want or need a Pathfinder-ish level of support (5 products per month, or whatever they're up to), but one book a month sounds about right.

Right, and there's nothing wrong with speculation, I've done plenty of it myself the last few years. The problem is that people are taking speculative assumption as facts and building further assumptions on them. People are agonizing about the fact that we've only been told about four new books so far, and are completely neglecting the possibility that those may be the only WotC products coming out this year.

Now I myself do think that they're going to come out with more than that, but honestly how far in advance do we really expect to hear about them, a full 12 months? My point is if Wizards knows they want to put out a currently unannounced book (a campaign setting sourcebook, say) in November of 2015, we're not going to hear about it for a few more months.

If that book was scheduled for May, I'd expect we'd have heard about it by now. So really, there's the Occam's Razor answer - Wizards aren't announcing their next product because it's not coming out for several more months yet and we will eventually hear about it closer to it's release date.

They've told us they're aiming for a much slower schedule this time around. Why is any of this a surprise to people?

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's an interesting notion DefCon1 but I don't think that's something they are setting out to do. There're not educating the game public about a new paradigm or anything. If your theory were true WOTC would be talking about all the cool stuff you could do right now with what's out.
They're not saying anything about anything. It's not just silence about future plans...it's a blanket silence.
It's weird...

Of course they're educating us. They're teaching us not to expect the same weekly info dump we got all through 4E. They're teaching us that they'll talk about stuff when it's ready to talk about.

Why do we need things to talk about anyway? Don't you have your own games to focus on? Why are you forsaking your own games to desperately talk about products you won't see in six to twelve months time? Or why not talk about products we already have? I mean after all... Rise of Tiamat just came out, but I haven't seen much discussion about it at all. Why not talk about that?

The one thing that WotC *is* getting by being silent is a lot less bitching and moaning. I mean heck... the caterwauling about Princes of the Apocalypse... a product we still have practically no information on and all complaints are basically about the boilerplate and what they *think* is going to be in it... is already greater than most of the other products we could talk about now. Why would WotC want to announce another product even further down the line when they aren't ready to give specifics, just so that people here could whine even longer about it?

 

[Reynard]

And the reason they will never do it is because it's not good business. If it was, TSR might not have gone under.
!

It is not 1995 anymore. It was the cost of printing all those settings and supplements that killed TSR. There is still overhead for creative, to be sure, but awotC could produce multiple settings and release electronically and POD if they wanted. Hell, they could release 2E books with updated stats for 5e and make a lot of money. Gamers are, by and large, lazier than they are cheap and would, I think, be willing to re-buy material they already own simply to avoid having to do the conversions themselves -- and, they tend to be willing to pay for "official" even when there is a perfectly serviceable "free but fan generated" right in front of them.

 

[pukunui]

It is not 1995 anymore. It was the cost of printing all those settings and supplements that killed TSR. There is still overhead for creative, to be sure, but awotC could produce multiple settings and release electronically and POD if they wanted. Hell, they could release 2E books with updated stats for 5e and make a lot of money. Gamers are, by and large, lazier than they are cheap and would, I think, be willing to re-buy material they already own simply to avoid having to do the conversions themselves -- and, they tend to be willing to pay for "official" even when there is a perfectly serviceable "free but fan generated" right in front of them.

Sure. But WotC has made it pretty clear that they're only going to give us the basics (in some cases quite literally) now and we, the fans, are expected to fill in the gaps.

Case in point: I tweeted the devs about how Venomfang and Gundren had no RP info in the Starter Set adventure. Their reply was something along the lines of "Sounds like something for the fans to do!"

As I mentioned before, 5e is the "DIY Edition" of D&D. I don't think WotC will bother updating all the old stuff because they know there are fans out there who will do it themselves. What they might do, though, is provide a space for those dedicated fans to share their updated content with the other, lazier fans - Mearls has hinted at something like that before. I think an officially sanctioned online marketplace for fanmade 5e content would be great.