Rate WotC as a company

[Lord Xtheth]

I feel that as a company, WoTC is doing a good job. They released books, they plan on supporting their product line, and they're still stating that they want to stick to their promices.

Now in the terms of Selling versus buying. Wizards has made a few promices that it has yet to live up to, mostly to do with the on line content and DDI. I personally assume its because they didn't want to hire a programmer who knows what he's doing for far too much money an hour. Thats not nessisarily a bad thing on its own. If they have guys that know "enough to get the product going" then I'll be happy. As it stands now, it doesn't seem like they have that.

As a consumer of their product. One they were supposed to deliver some months ago I haven't even seen any kind of update beyond their faulty compendium service.

I would love to see somthing along the lines of maybe a progress report, or a "Don't worry guys, we're still working on this, all we want is *insert function X* "

Quality is another issue. I agree that the currant 4e print and paper quality is in the toilet. This also isn't nessisarily a bad thing. It just means they found a good, cheap source of printing. Probably saving them a couple bucks every book. However sacrificing quality product in lieu of a bigger (paycheck, car, pool, house, or whatever) isn't much of a good plan especially with an entire series of product lines rely on said methods.

If you look at things like minis however. I mean the minis are beautiful, well painted, and all around nice to own.

I give wizards an E for effort. Needs improvement.

 

[CountPopeula]

I said 4. I just wanted to mention that while WotC may be mishandling D&D (and I feel that they are), I think they're doing a really good job with Magic and Star Wars minis, and overall, they're not so bad.

They just haven't figured out how to make the RPG department profitable enough to suit them, so while they do, they're squeezing the market in all the wrong ways. Probably just to see what will stick.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I have the perspective of having worked there up until about four years ago and all I can say is that I would have honestly rated them a full-on 6, without exaggeration, at one point in time. They are not what they once were, they will never again be what they once were, and that saddens me.

But hey, I'm putting my money on a different horse now and I think it's performance will end up surprising people.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

I went with a 2. It’s not so much the quality of 4e, or even of the paper stock, but it's WoTC’s cynical attempts to monetize it (ie. milk us for all we’re worth) that’s turning me off the company. Things like deliberately leaving out iconic races, classes and monsters from the core books in order to sell splat books later; the move of magic items from the “DM space” to the “player space” along with the vending machine nature of magic item creation, effectively turning magic item books into Ikea catalogues for players; the now absolute requirement for minis and dungeon tiles. There’s also the crappiness of the new GSL, which will stifle innovation from other companies.

I may be naïve in asking for some kind of purity in design, but it seems to me the accountants had a little too much say in 4e’s final shape. Even though I like many things about 4e, this seemingly new level of cynicism from WoTC leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Fippy_Darkpaw]

4E: 6
D+D Website: 0 (it is slow as hell, buggy, and down more than it is up)

 

[Crothian]

4

They seem to be doing just fine despite an overly rabid fan base.

 

[Jack99]

I gave them a 6, because for me, it is all about the system, and D&D is my game of choice for almost 20 years (yeah yeah, I know, it wasn't WotC 20 years ago) and WotC has done an awesome job with my hobby.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people are pissed about the DDI and all their other failures, but to me, that's just small potatoes. If the game sucked, nothing else would matter, because I wouldn't play D&D and thus be a customer of WotC.

I also find it extremely amusing, that people who live in a capitalistic modern society, complain that a company treats it's competitors, no matter how small or big, harshly. This does not enter my evaluation either. Again, it's about the game for me, and as long as WotC doesn't use sweat-shops or sacrifice children on some altar in Renton, I frankly couldn't care less.

It's all about the game.

PS: Obviously, if you hate 4e and hated 3.x/Pathfinder, I can see why you wouldn't be too fond of WotC

Cheers

 

[Sammael]

My vote was a "two." Not quite a one yet, but seeing as how I've spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on WotC products in the past years, I feel I have a right to say that the company has gone downhill. The quality of their products has grown progressively worse, to the point where their products are physically inferior to the others on the market, yet the prices have consistently gone up. As a large company, their margin of profit is much larger than that of smaller companies (because of the sheer volume of items sold), so I feel the only reason for this behavior is their monopolistic position on the market (particularly the pre-painted plastic minis market). Recently revealed miniatures are crap, and it's as if they don't even give a damn anymore. I feel sorry for Peter Lee, since I know how much he cares, but the company as a whole is letting the minis go down the drain (as if they hadn't learned anything from Dreamblade).

To top that, I positively loathe the direction they chose to take with the Forgotten Realms (and I own the vast majority of FR RPG products produced in the past eight years), 4E is not a system I want to run or play (tried it), and their virally marketted DDI is vaporware. Unless they do something very fast, they've lost me as a customer.

 

[wedgeski]

I gave them a 4/5.

To be honest, I couldn't care less about the GSL, about who has been "slapped in the face by it", about who's brother feels "betrayed", about whether a $10 product didn't live up to expectations, about whether DDI is working or whether Gleemax is stable, about the races that were dropped from core, or whatever.

Wizards have one responsbility as far as I'm concerned, and that is to create a great game, and support it during its lifetime. To me, 4E is a *great* game. The two adventures so far have been variously good and excellent. The upcoming splats look great. The talent at work on them all is second to none. All the other stuff -- game table, character builder, Gleemax, whatever -- is a distant second to the facilitation of playing a face-to-face game with a solid set of rules and a steady flow of new stuff to snap into my game. It's impossible to feel 'let down' because I don't invest my time in a personal relationship with a game company, and I don't buy stuff that's sub-par or that I don't have any interest in.

 

[physicscarp]

I gave them a 5/6.

I think that they continue to put out enjoyable products that I want to use in my games. I've read more WotC products that I've purchased in the past two years cover to cover than I have from other companies. And while DDI isn't live yet, I like how much free material Wizards has always made available to fans on their website, including the newest versions of Dragon and Dungeon. Given all of that though, they aren't perfect, and I think that they have made a few mistakes. In particular, I'd rather see a microtransaction model for DDI rather than a subscription fee, and I feel that some of the transition product (Races & Classes, Worlds & Monsters, etc.) were shoddy and more of a need for revenue rather than servicing the customers needs.