Smudges - All Core books

[Orci]

My books are fine...

 

[Jack Colby]

This is REALLY disappointing to read. My copies are still in the mail, but I confess that I'm starting to dread seeing what shape they are in.

Same here.

And if this is indicative of the quality level WotC is comfortable with accepting for 4E, I won't be getting anything past the core.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Wavy pages are caused by humidity in the paper. Mine are wavy too but when i talked with the product engineer and quality assurance managers about this they said it would settle out and flatten.

As for the paper stock and ink, the ink and paper are the same as we used in 3.5. The smudging can happen and it depends on many factors including the oils and acidity of your hands. We do test for this stuff through our QA process and we found the inks and paper durability was within normal tolerances (but obviously is a bummer if it happens to your books). I have tried the smudge test on books here at my desk (PHBs and KotSF) with my own hands and not had a problem. Could be my body chemistry is fine with the books although the oils on my hands don't like the inks on my car's buttons and several of them that I use often (like the radio on/off ) have smeared ink now.

Other issues like uncut pages, double prints, etc are quality problems and should be returned to the store or contact our CS department about an exchange.

It goes with out saying as with any purchase keep your receipt. You FLGS and our CS team will likely need that.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Ta for the reply Scott, my pages are wavy here in low humidity NZ but they had to come across the pacific in a planes hold. But I have been reading them solid for the last 4 days and no smudges. So I am impressed with the look and feel and will press 'em flat under some weights to flatten them if they don't do it themselves.
However the KotS pages are thin, and smudged from only a couple of read throughs. I'd hate to see the state after I play it. If H2 is anything like as bad I won't be buying any more modules.

 

[mflayermonk]

Local game store purchase

Bottom part of some pages is starting to fall out already

 

[Xect]

Slightly wavy pages here. There's a single instance of a few smudged letters that I've been able to find (store handling, maybe), but I haven't been able to smudge it myself. So either it was wet ink that has dried now, or my hands are insufficiently toxic

 

[Cadfan]

I wish I could sweat acid like everyone else...

Minor page waviness only. Only noticeable if you look at the books from the sides.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I wish I could sweat acid like everyone else....

I started playing trumpet in 5th grade. By the end of 9th grade the poor thing had absolutely no brass left anywhere that my hands touched on a regular basis, and the metal underneath the brass layer was beginning to pit.

My books, thus far, are fine.

DS

 

[MinionOfCthulhu]

Every copy of the PHB (and possibly the other two books, but I didn't check) that my LGS got in had creases in the pages. I managed to find one with only a single creased page. The quality seems pretty poor compared to 3.x.

 

[tallyrand]

<---Mentions old AD&D Unearthed Arcana then wanders off muttering under his breath and feeling old.