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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6663184" data-attributes="member: 37579">But the policy of not announcing things until they were ready has been in place since 2011 or so, when they slowed down announcing products and stopped with the big GenCon reveals. It's not new. And yet they felt comfortable to repeatedly say the OGL was coming and even give a rough date.And they want every product announcement to be a big marketing event. Small things like the OGL likely won't be any more than Dragon+ was a big deal, or the HTML version of the Basic Rules on the website. You're just making excuses for WotC at this point. I get defending them to some extent: WotC gets a lot of flack and criticism they don't deserve. I'll defend a lot of what they do. Like the conversion guide. They said they were in the works and gave no deadline but were still able to explain the delay with a reasonable excuse. I'll accept that and defend the delay. Because stuff like that happens. And I'm cool with cancelled products, even ones I desperately wanted, such as the planned stand-alone Ravenloft RPG for Oct 2011 that was cancelled and justified (albeit briefly). If something isn't working or the quality is not up to snuff I'd rather they cancel than release.But this is not one of those times. It's not something they're unready to announce. They did announce it. And gave a loose timeline of when and how. Now they've not only moved away from discussing when to not discussing it at all, meaning something has changed. And that's something they should discuss with the fans. That's something they need to explain. Really, it's a lot like when they cancelled the Adventurer's Handbook without a reason and just dismissed concerns with a "you can't cancel a product that wasn't announced." It's insulting. It's insulting that they think the fanbase cannot handle the truth or being talked to like adults, that they have to keep this stuff a secret or we'll lose all faith. I get that they're part of a publicly traded company and there's some things they just cannot discuss. But other publicly traded companies are still able to discuss success and failures with their audience, as silence generates concern for the product line and the efficacy of the management. And the role D&D plays in the stock of Hasbro is pretty much non-existent. And there are ways of spinning things to make them not seem as bad. People really want an OGL. It would solve a lot of fan complaints regarding the lack of content and take pressure off WotC. It would take some attention off Pathfinder as the small publishers move to support 5e. It would encourage new 3PP to emerge and focus on 5e and allow existing ones to reach a new audience. And it would help fans feel safe in posting their homebrew content and settings online without worry of a takedown notice. But if WotC doesn't feel it's in their interests to release one, that's fine too. They don't owe us a licence. But tell us so we can stop waiting and publishers can stop sitting on books. Ignoring the issue isn't being to make it go away or make people stop asking. Heck, people still bring up the failure of the 3e Character Builder and the 4e Virtual Tabletop. And there were reasonable, understandable reasons for the failures of both. This could easily be the failure people remember 5e for over the next decade.</blockquote>

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