Rate WotC as a company

[Darrin Drader]

Rating their products isn't exactly rating them as a company, now is it...

I don't care whether or not you like their products - the fact is, as a subsidiary of a publically-held company, WotC needs to have a management house-cleaning because they've been doing a rotten job.

Management change won't fix the real problem, which is the company that owns them.

My guess is that WotC wanted to have a a larger marketing campaign for 4E. Hasbro wouldn't give them the budget.

Hasbro wanted more sales throughout the life of the new edition. The only way to deliver that is to release an incomplete version of the game.

Hasbro wanted to invest less money into the products themselves. WotC goes to a cheaper printer that happens to have problems with the ink.

Etc. Etc.

The problem isn't WotC. The WotC I knew didn't treat it's customers this way. The problem is Hasbro.

 

[Treebore]

After getting good customer service from companies like Paizo, Green Ronin, Goodman Games, and Troll Lord Games, WOTC definitely rates below "good".

 

[racoffin]

Management change won't fix the real problem, which is the company that owns them.

My guess is that WotC wanted to have a a larger marketing campaign for 4E. Hasbro wouldn't give them the budget.

Hasbro wanted more sales throughout the life of the new edition. The only way to deliver that is to release an incomplete version of the game.

Hasbro wanted to invest less money into the products themselves. WotC goes to a cheaper printer that happens to have problems with the ink.

Etc. Etc.

The problem isn't WotC. The WotC I knew didn't treat it's customers this way. The problem is Hasbro.

Exactly. It feels/looks like a suit somewhere up the chain in Hasbro has a vision of how D&D can make more money for the company and is "suggesting" all sorts of changes that have moved the game into another direction.

Put boobies on the dragon people. Dragons sell and boobies sell, so dragon boobies will sell twice as good right?

My complaints/problems with WOTC don't come from the products; rather, my problem is the general attitude being presented, the attitude that it doesn't matter if you piss off X number of customers with radical changes, because Y number of new customers will make it all worthwhile.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Etc. Etc.

The problem isn't WotC. The WotC I knew didn't treat it's customers this way. The problem is Hasbro.

Did Hasbro tell WotC to release a Character Sheet product with only 4 sheets?

 

[Orius]

6. Character sheets that are free online being packaged and sold for $9.99. No effort whatsoever on their part went into this product.

That sounds utterly silly, though I thnk it's more a matter of WotC holding on to old game traditions they no longer need than greed. After all, 1e and 2e had packaged character sheetes, it was 3e where WotC started offering free .pdf sheets on the website, making the packaged ones irrelevant. The only people I can think of who would have a use for them would be people who don't have useful internet access or can print .pdfs.

Anyway, I'll have to give WotC a 3/5, all based on D&D, since I'm not into their other products. They did a pretty decent job with D&D after they bought it, even if I don't like the way they flavor the game. However, some of the negative things I've been reading doesn't sound good. Things like bad proofreading, the continuing problems with stuff like Gleemax/DDI and so on. I'll agree this sounds more like some braindead Hasbro suit higher up than anyone at WotC, since the people who work on the game seem to know what they're doing. It's coming off as more big company incompetance which seems to be the increasing norm these days in just about everything.

 

[sjmiller]

Congratulations to Jack99 for possible being the only sane person on this thread.

<whining voice> Hey, come on, I gave a calm, balanced, sane, and rational reason for my middle of the road rating! Don't I count?</whining voice>

 

[PlatinumWarlock]

Difficult question, but one worth asking. (Voted "4", by the way)

As a company, I feel that WotC tends to want to do everything possible with the D&D brand, and get sidetracked as they do it, which tends towards hit or miss production.

A constant stream of books--what, 3-5 products per month, every month!--is a lot to ask of any gaming company, and the WotC product line has been consistently solid throughout their run on D&D. Yes, some books were better than others, but we regularly get full color, hardback books, with generally balanced quality rules...not toob ad.

While I was really pleased with the result of 4e, the secrecy surrounding its original announcement really torked me off...luckily, I was able to donate most of my 3.5e books to my college's library, so that other gamers could use them.

Moving Dungeon and Dragon online originally seemed like a good idea to me, as I do spend a lot of time online, but without a quality printer, I can't print out any of the articles--particularly the adventures. That said, the frequency of the articles has definitively gone down, which leads me to believe that the online initiative is even more off-schedule than they may be letting on. Same can be said for GleeMax.

All said, though, I feel like the D&D brand team are a bunch of guys who really love D&D. They put up with a ton of crap that people in no other industry deal with.

I think about something that Mike Mearls did at Origins this year--on the opening day, Wednesday, the 4e game I was in was overbooked--we had at least 5 people trying to buy in on generics. He arrived to chat briefly with the Amorphous Blob Games people, and saw the predicament....and just sat down and threw together a game like it was nothing. On a day that he was undeniably busy--he was a Guest of Honor this year--and could have been doing any number of other things, he chose to run game for people that he owed nothing to. That speaks of good character to me, and if WotC has people like him on board, I know they can't be the "heartless corporation" so many people insinuate.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I gotta admit, as mad/sad/etc I was about everything that happened last year, I gotta be realistic about WotC. I give them a 3. They are no better or worse then other "weasel filled" companies (to use the Scott Adams definition of the term weasel). Some employees are good, some are not as good. They appear to have departments that do not always work together. I would go onto list more but someone would take my comments would be taken as an attack and they are not meant as such (and yes I did type them out and try to find a way to edit it so that no one could take them as an attack, but was unable to find a way).

So Wizards, despite it all, I'd call the company "average."

 

[Kzach]

There have been comments in regards to why someone would be annoyed at a company for their practices, policies or products. The argument, "Don't like it, don't buy it," is a common one and in many instances I would agree with that.

However, to those people who feel that any sort of resentment or ill-feelings are misplaced or silly, I'd ask them to consider the following.

WotC is the undisputed king of our hobby. Love or loathe, they are the biggest and most successful. They have control over the oldest brand-name available in the industry and that carries with it a lot of weight. But it also carries a lot of responsibility.

They are the primary ambassadors of our hobby. But I ask you this: if you were nurturing a new player, someone who was completely new to RPG's, would you send them to Gleemax, or WotC's D&D website, or would you send them here?

Personally, I'd tell them flat out not to touch Gleemax or WotC's D&D site with a 100-ft. set of arms. I'd send them here, without hesitation or thought on the matter.

When a site run by volunteers is a better option than the primary industry leader's own website, don't you feel there is something wrong? That's not to disparage people here, but the simple fact is that they have far greater resources at their disposal, and yet ENW is still the better website and the better forum with the better posters and moderators.

And that is indicative of many things that have to do with WotC at the moment. That is only one example of many. The decisions WotC make don't just affect them as a company, they affect the hobby itself, and thus affect all of us who involve ourselves in it. That's the responsibility they bear as being the top dog. And therefore, they should be held accountable for their actions.

I think 4e is awesome, I love it. I'm a Mearl's fanboy and have in the past bought his stuff sight unseen because I know I'll love it. I think Wyatt and Heinsoo and the rest of the team are really talented designers. There is a lot of promise in 4e and I can see myself playing this system for years, whereas even at the very beginning, I had problems with 1e/2e and 3e and every other system I've tried.

But as a company, WotC has really let me down. The website, Gleemax, DDI, PDF costs, no errata on DM screen, 4 page character sheet sales, crappy paper in modules, non-durable ink and warping books, the GSL delay, the GSL itself, all have a negative impact on the hobby itself, not just us as consumers.

 

[Samuel Leming]

They gets a two.

I'll skip the redundancy of reiterating what others have said, but WotC would be better served by acting more like a neighbor and less like a landlord.

Sam