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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 5767827" data-attributes="member: 59506">As to inferiority: I would think that a game made by the leader in the industry, that purposely and officially excludes certain types of gamer styles, officially disparages and marginilizes those styles, and did this profusively throughout it's mechanics and products, as well as throughout it's marketing and the games release, is by definition making an inferior game. The industry leader, the 800 lb. Gorrilla, making a game and marketing it in a way that alienates a majority of it's potential customer base... A game designed with a narrow style focus (and by default, a narrow customer focus), but being marketed with an expectation of broad acceptance... Absolute Foolishness. From a business standpoint, Exclusiveness (at least without an exclusive pricepoint), is Inferior to Inclusiveness. A game that can be all things to all gamers, and excites the majority of it's potential customer base, is quite obviously superior to one that doesn't. If they had made that game, and treated their potential customers in that manner, I highly doubt we would have seen problems on the magnitude of what happened...problems that continue to plague WotC.  As to whether it's silly for people to be offended or not: people were, and James (and WotC at large) could have avoided it completely with a little forethought and reason. Whether one believes such offense is reasonable is moot. Nobody is going to change human nature by extolling how much these offended readers shouldn't feel this way. If one wants to be successful in marketing a new product, then one must acknowledge and work with such factors as this...or suffer the blowback (as WotC undeniably has).  As to whether it was bad advice or not: the release of the last D&D edition has shown us that predominantly, people come into the game by being introduced by those who already play. Also, most groups tend to play the system that their GM prefers. Putting advice in the DMG, that quite obviously signals to GM's that if you don't play by this specific style you are not going to like this game, was beyond foolish. Turning off the majority of the people that are going to be selling this game to their groups... I find that actually goes beyond simply calling it bad advice, and takes it into the realm of foolishness, arrogance, and fiscal suicide.  As to moving on: that seems to be exactly what the majority of the fan/customer base did.  Hopefully, the new class at WotC has learned from the mistakes of the past and their predecessors, when designing and releasing the new edition.   P.S.: I think it's also important to note for the subject of this discussion, that James Wyatt's quote did not occur in a vacuum. It occured in an environment where:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the game was being marketed by criticizing that which came before it (alienating customers that liked what came before it)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">customers were being told that their feedback as concerns products (specifically including high res, unlabled maps in adventures) were silly and they really didn't want it or need it (alienating customers that initially bought in to 4E and DDI, but when treated like this told WotC to get stuffed)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">pdf's of older editions were pulled with a voiced explanation that customers simply couldn't be trusted to not pirate, and generated suspicion that they were pulled as a business decision to make 4E the only game in town</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(and finally) in an environment where promises were made as to DDI support of the game that did not materialize when promised, and to a large extent still hasn't materialized</li> </ul>That quote was not an isolated incident. And I feel offense at it wasn't just reasonable and justified, but should have been expected.</blockquote>

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