NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steven Winter" data-source="post: 7658819" data-attributes="member: 6686829">Wizards' crippling disadvantage is that it can't come to grips with the digital age. The company is terrified of digital piracy -- and not without good reason. Digital piracy of D&D products during the 4E years hit staggering, mind-boggling levels. WotC doesn't buy the standard arguments that piracy is a victimless crime or that it doesn't equate to a huge loss of revenue. Neither do I, for that matter, and neither should you. It comes down to a question of how much theft you're willing to live with in return for the gain; or in more practical terms, at what point does rampant piracy not only wipe out your electronic profit but start cutting into physical sales? Wizards made a decision a few years ago to set the bar pretty high on that question. That decision definitely hurts them in terms of online market presence. Whether it hurts or helps their bottom line, I'm in no position to say.The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store. The fact that you can't buy D&D products at the D&D website -- can't, in fact, even find a link to a third-party online store -- is an outgrowth of Wizards' devotion to 20th-century distribution methods and brick-and-mortar stores. Wizards.com will direct you to a "nearby" store where you probably (maybe) can buy whatever books they happen to have in stock, assuming you have access to transportation and the place isn't 200 miles away. Organized Play is another effort to get people into stores. It's a well run, laudable program, but it's still battling upstream against the prevailing current of online shopping, a trend that Wizards seems intent on dealing with by sticking its fingers in its ears and singing "Summer of '69" at the top of its lungs. OK, that's not really fair. I know there are people inside Wizards who struggle with this issue, who've been working toward a new approach to digital products for 5E for years. But until we see it, and see it work, 5E will be stuck behind the 8-Ball. Steve</blockquote>

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