Kudos to Paizo for the frank explanation of the reasons for the current state of the Dungeon.
I would, however, wish to give my oppinion as a long time reader of Dungeon as to its present and possible future use for me.
First of all, Polyhedron is entirely useless to me.
While I admit that in principle it would be possible to come up with the small d20 game that would appeal to me, fact is that that has not happened yet. I have not even been able to salvage a single piece of crunch from out of any of them for my dnd game and not for the lack of trying.
I understand that there are people who love "Poly" and who would hate to see it die but I do not see what that has to do with me and Dungeon. It very much feels like someone told me that from here on they will be attaching the 30 pages of "Maxim" to my "Economist" and charging me for it so that the "Maxim" does not have to fold. In a word I continue to value "Dungeon" by the same yardstick I always did and that is a number and quality of the adventures it contains.
Secondly, I do not care about colour. Actualy I do a bit: I have slight preference for the black and white print. In the black and white days maps were clearer and, to my mind at least, illustrations better. The interior of the magazine also had more dignified feel to it.
Thirdly and most importantly the quantity of the usefull text and particularly usefull text per dollar is on a steady downwards path.
In the late days of 2nd edittion (issue 75 for example - August/September 1999) dungeon had 70 pages of usefull text, that is adventures excluding letters, advertisments, subscription offers and other gunk. It also read very easily as all the gunk was concetrated either in the very front or the very back of the magazine. It also sold for very affordable $6.50 Canadian.
The modern day magazine (issues 98 and 99) sell for 10$ Canadian and have 45 and 40 pages of usefull text (adventures) respectively. In adition there is way more gunk in the middle of the magazine including the highly intrusive cardboard full page advertisement for the book club right in the middle of the adventure, practicaly impossible to rip out without ruining the magazine.
It should be noted that in the mean time Canadian dollar gained about 10% in value with respect to the American and that the inflation was significantly less then 5% anually for the entire period.
In other words, I am paying 40% more (inflation and exchange rate adjusted, 20% more for the american price) for the 40% less usefull content.
Now Dungeon was so staggeringly good magazine in '99 that even with this reduction by the factor of 2.3 in the price per content ratio it is still (marginaly) worthwile. The fact is however that it has hit the bottom of the worthwile bracket and is, with issue 99, starting to dip under it.
Now, it is possible that the WotC was losing money on Dungeon and that it was simply impossible to maintan that quality at that price (even adjusted for inflation) but it is kind of hard to believe that the drop by factor of 2.3 was needed.
What looks way more likely to me is that the series of decisions which all looked as a good idea at the time: Go with colour, add Polyhedron, add more advertisments etc... added up to increasing the production cost while detracting or not increasing the value of the magazine to the cumulative effect of virtualy destroying what used to be the best deal in gaming.
I suggest that going back to the scheme of '99 and before (Simplier binding, black and white, dump "Poly"...) is the way to preserve the magazine, otherwise I am affraid it is on its way to the vicious circle of declining readership and diminishing quality.
I, for one, who have missed only two issues since 1994, am not very far from giving up on it.
