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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6605069" data-attributes="member: 22424">Paizo are indeed great, but it took them a whole lot of effort (and therefore cost them a lot) to get to that point.It's also worth noting that Paizo are also not perfect, and there is a double standard at work. In March/April, Paizo's shipment of subscriptions has been delayed significantly. The reason for the delay was completely beyond their control (something to do with a port shutdown). However, unlike most times when this occurs, there was not an email to subscribers about it. Instead, I found out by digging into their message boards and tracking down a post that explained what was going on. That's not their usual level of communication, and is a failure on their part.But... partly because this is very much an outlier (again, there is usually an email if there's a delay), and partly because Paizo's message boards are populated by their fans, the reaction to all of this amounted to "oh well."Contrast this with the reaction when WotC tell us the conversion documents are delayed due to jury duty. Again, a factor completely beyond their control, but here they were open and honest, and we didn't have to go digging for the information (admittedly because Morrus did it for us). Yet WotC were blasted for it - how could they not have enough people for someone to pick up the slack; how could they possibly release 5e without the conversion documents all ready to go; and, indeed, there were questions raised about whether this was even the real reason.So, yeah... I'm a fan of Paizo, and I'm even more of a fan of the way they do things. And, in general, I think Paizo are well ahead of WotC when it comes to engaging with their fans and with communications generally. But that doesn't mean that they're perfect - and it doesn't mean the overwhelmingly negative reactions to WotC's communications are fair. (And in the face of that unfairness, is it any wonder they choose to disengage?)Good communications are hard, and expensive to achieve. Given their skeleton crew, and given also the corporate pressures from Hasbro about how communications are to be handled (such as, for example, never talking about a product that hasn't been announced - even if the details have already been leaked), they probably can't communicate better without tasking a dedicated person with it, and thus delaying... whatever it is they're actually working on.It's not impossible, of course. Back in 2006 or so, WotC did have a generally good relationship with their fans (although there were always significant numbers of doubters - even as far back as the OGL, which some people thought was a massive IP-grab on their part!). They had it before, and they could have it again. But it would be really hard, really costly, and probably take several years to even start getting traction. I can't say I blame them for asking if it's worth the effort.</blockquote>

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