The guy who leaked the Core Books was a:

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You know how it is when you're planning an elaborate surprise for somebody? You've got something you know they'll just love, and you've got a bunch of buddies helping you make it be exactly perfect? You've maybe dropped a few hints at the person you're going to surprise, to get them excited? And they start asking you for details, and you have a handful of hints to share, one at a time, to keep the anticipation up? And then, about a week before surprise time, one of the guys who was helping you out spills the beans?

The guy who leaked the Core Books was that guy.

Criminal? What the heck do I know, I'm no lawyer.

A big jerk? Oh yeah.

This is a perfect description.

I really enjoyed reading the 3 weekly excerpts and the following amount of discussions. Speculating, interpreting, defending, criticisizing, all that was great fun.

But now, the forum looks like a battlefield with dozens of short threads discussing some minor detail. The anticipation is down, the depth of discussion is gone. There are people that still wait for their books, people that have them, people that have some PDFs, and the whole community has reached a different quality of heterogeneity. We had F4nbois vs H4ters with doubters and interested in the middle. Now we have those that have info, those that have stolen info, and people that would like to no more, but don't know if they should, because rightfully, they would have had the answers in their hand at June 6, together with everyone else.

I don't care if it helps sales now, or hurts them. I don't care if it's illegal to download the PDFs, or if it's even immoral. I don't care if this guy will be fired, have to pay a fine, or will be hanged out dry at his FLGS. The fact is that he has killed some of the anticipation, and the focus.

I hope that the negative side effects will stop once the books are released, since basically everyone will have the same information then, but the expectation/anticipation thing will stay cheapened.

 

[N0Man]

These 2 choices are pretty lame. You really need more options here. I can't really vote either. I imagine WotC thinks he's a douche. I think he's an idiot.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Here's another bullet in your theory that this was marketing: the Monster Manual is the wrong file, was still full of errors, and has stuff that never made it to final print.

blam.

Is there another dead horse I can beat around here?

Oooh! That's interesting to hear! Perhaps some complaints I've heard about the MM are going away! That's cool!

Cheers, LT.

 

[AZRogue]

The guy who leaked the pdfs is a jerk for the simple fact that he violated the trust placed in him. Whether it turns out to be good for WotC or not isn't even a factor for consideration; it would just mean that there was no damage caused.

If you violate someone's trust then you're a jerk, IMO. The guy doesn't smother babies, but he's not friggin Robin Hood, for goodness sake.

 

[Tervin]

Hero,

Everything that makes D&D a success is heroic.

And please stop referring to it as theft and the person as a thief. It has nothing to do with theft. You might as well call him (or her) as terrorist or a pedophile. Even if you disapprove of the action, we can still be correct in the discussion about it.

This.

Especially the bit about theft. I honestly can't take arguments against Internet piracy seriously when people call it stealing.

Even considering that the files might have mistakes in them - still clearly good for D&D. I do understand and respect that WotC employees cannot agree that the leak is a good thing. It would surprise me if they were even allowed to do that if they wanted to. Tell you the truth, I would forbid that if I was their boss.

Tomorrow I will try and convince a few more friends to order books, and of course I will point them towards those PDFs as a marketing device. (In my hometown we no longer have a FLGS where they would want to go and have a peek. Sad to say that, as the old store was - together with Oldtimer's old store - among the first and best in the country.)

 

[fnwc]

There is no option in your poll for "employee doing his job."

I suspect the leak was from someone in marketing at WotC, delivering a leak to generate buzz around the product.

You really need to put your tinfoil hat back on.

 

[mudbunny]

So, now I'm wondering: did anyone actually get their hands on books early, or were they all downloading the books and claiming they were physical copies?

Chapters.ca has shipped my DMG (got it friday) and my PHB (should get it monday)

 

[malraux]

The worst possible thing to leak, really? I think that leaking the economical information of every single citizen would be worse. I may be wrong.

Ok, clearly I meant the worst possible bit of IP within WotC.

 

[Cadfan]

Scott, I was being a bit silly when I suggested earlier in this thread that WotC had put the PDFs out there on purpose. There's no need to shoot down a goofy conspiracy theory. However, I'm curious to know if you would also shoot down the poll (elsewhere in this forum) which shows a net gain of purchases from the leak. It appears that for every 10 people who canceled orders because of the PDFs, another 45 people placed new orders because of the PDFs. That's a net gain of 35 sales per 450 votes.

Can you see day-to-day orders on Amazon or in your own processing systems? Do you see a slight uptick? Or did sales just bottom out?

I can shoot it down, and I'm not even Scott Rouse.

Watch:

The idea that people will read the early leak pdfs then order 4e when they otherwise would not requires that these same people would NOT have read the actual players handbook and then bought it. It implies that leaked pdfs have a unique ability to convince people of the quality of their contents, a quality not possessed by actual books. It also implies that early leaks do more for sales than later leaks by fans who scanned the files.

All of that is of course absurd.

 

[xechnao]

Here's another bullet in your theory that this was marketing: the Monster Manual is the wrong file, was still full of errors, and has stuff that never made it to final print.

blam.

Is there another dead horse I can beat around here?

But how is this a bullet? It can still very well be an alpha promotion, like Pathfinder say. And MM is the most dependant on the numeric details btw.