Why doesn't WotC license older editions?

[Mistwell]

They don't have to ... I'm presuming it. That's the standard that I as a consumer require of WotC for me to consider them to be acting in good faith.

But, I'm not suggesting that they provide the same degree of support. Simply allowing sales of support material might be sufficient. I tend to require providing some way for the publication of supporting material.

I will note that a lot of the 3.5E web content is still available, so there is some support.

Now, forbidding others from providing support, through the 4E GSL, that to me is major bad faith.

If I may make an analogy: When you buy a car, a part of the value that you might be looking for is a healthy supply of parts and the ability to get service through a network of dealers.

If your manufacturer goes out of business, then you will expect that to be disrupted.

When new models are produced, you expect the available support and parts to be lessened, but not to disappear.

But, what if when a new model were produced, the manufacturer required the dealers to wholly cease to provide spare parts for the older model? And, the manufacturer required that any third party parts sellers to cease sales of any earlier parts, before being included in the new parts supply chain?

I think you are wrong. Car manufacturers support supplies and parts for a while after they discontinue a model, but it isn't indefinite. At some point, they end that support as well. All companies eventually end all support for discontinued products. You can vary the amount of time they continue support, but you cannot really expect indefinite support for discontinued products.

 

[Glyfair]

But, what if when a new model were produced, the manufacturer required the dealers to wholly cease to provide spare parts for the older model? And, the manufacturer required that any third party parts sellers to cease sales of any earlier parts, before being included in the new parts supply chain?

But that's not what happened. "Dealers" can provide spare parts (I honestly don't see what a dealer is in this analogy, it would have been WotC stores, I assume the FLGS, etc).

The third party parts sellers can provide parts, even when being in the new supply chain, but have to have them labeled as part of a different line.

Sure, it has restrictions, but not as many as you put on there.

 

[M.L. Martin]

If you look through old stuff from SR / Dragon, you'll see that it was not always thus. There was stuff for other companies' games, stuff for multiple editions of the D&D game, stuff for other TSR products, all kinds of crazy stuff. You even had articles like the famous "Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery" for combining D&D with your WWII miniatures (which of course you have... at least you surely have Germans!).

Something to note, related to this:

The last published article in DRAGON for AD&D 1E was in DRAGON #169, May 1991--two years after 2nd Edition's launch. That's a significant difference from WotC's model of a complete and total changeover when a new edition hits.

 

[Mouseferatu]

They don't have to ... I'm presuming it. That's the standard that I as a consumer require of WotC for me to consider them to be acting in good faith.

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but your personal presumptions are neither binding nor, in this case, reasonable.

When you buy a book from a company, that is the end of any legal or moral obligation between you and the company. You paid for a product, and you received that product. As long as said product is complete and not rendered somehow unusable through internal error, the company owes you nothing more, and you have the right to expect nothing more. If the company advertises forthcoming books, then "good faith" means they produce what they said they would produce. It does not mean they produce anything they didn't say they would produce.

Anything else--including continued support beyond what's advertised--is gravy. You might have expected it, but that doesn't mean the company is acting in bad faith, in any reasonable definition of the term, not to provide it.

And the "spare parts" for cars metaphor is faulty. If you can't get parts for the car, it stops working. The game doesn't stop working without extended support; it works exactly as well as it did the day you bought it. Further support beyond what's promised/advertised is the equivalent of demanding upgrades from the dealer--and not essential upgrades, but cosmetic ones, because you're bored of the car only doing what it did when you purchased it. And that's an entirely different thing--and something that few dealers or mechanics ever guarantee.

I strongly disagree. At the peak of D&D's popularity you 2-3 separate versions of D&D available (Classic and AD&D 1e, and at times the OD&D OCE box).

It might have been the peak of popularity--I've heard otherwise, regarding total numbers of gamers, but we won't get into "dueling anecdotes" --but was it the peak of profitability? I would argue that it was not. TSR was woefully mismanaged, and people from WotC and TSR both have said in so many words that part of what drove TSR into the ground--not all of it, by any means, but a large part of it--was them trying to market too many variant lines to the gaming audience. Campaign settings are usually trotted forth as the primary culprit, but the existence of multiple simultaneous "branches" of D&D was certainly involved.

Again, I'd love it if this wasn't the case. I'd like a full-fledged, complete BECMI-equivalent game for 4E. But it's not likely to happen, and as much as I might wish otherwise, there are good reasons for that.

 

[mhensley]

I'm glad that they haven't. Because now we have OGL versions of most older editions that are completely out of their control.

 

[darjr]

The car part analogy falls apart in other ways.

If you want to make an AD&D compatible part, you can, as long as you don't violate copyright or trademarks, your golden.

Am I wrong?

 

[Nymrohd]

I find it funny how people feel that companies always have disproportionate moral obligations to their clients, while never considering they should have some form of moral obligation to said providers. Everyone is always out to get us and we should exploit every single legal loophole we can find to get what we want is a sad mentality.

 

[tomBitonti]

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but your personal presumptions are neither binding nor, in this case, reasonable.

I never said they were binding. But, WotC's failure to meet them has left then with 80% less revenue from me over the past year (and looking forward). And, they chill any goodwill that I can provide in WotC's benefit (in this case, simply word of mouth endorsement.)

Let's say you bring out your ball to play. After a while, you are loosing, and take your ball home. It's your ball, and that's your right to do. Then the next day, you bring out your ball again, and I choose not to play with you. I'm allowed to do that, too. I think I'm reasonable to tell you that you cannot expect me to play with you if you just take your ball home when you start loosing.

When you buy a book from a company, that is the end of any legal or moral obligation between you and the company. You paid for a product, and you received that product. As long as said product is complete and not rendered somehow unusable through internal error, the company owes you nothing more, and you have the right to expect nothing more. If the company advertises forthcoming books, then "good faith" means they produce what they said they would produce. It does not mean they produce anything they didn't say they would produce.

Anything else--including continued support beyond what's advertised--is gravy. You might have expected it, but that doesn't mean the company is acting in bad faith, in any reasonable definition of the term, not to provide it.

I'll have to disagree. There are a lot of intangibles that a company has no legal requirement to provide, but nevertheless will have an impact on the standing of that company, and generally whether they will be a successful company.

And the "spare parts" for cars metaphor is faulty. If you can't get parts for the car, it stops working. The game doesn't stop working without extended support; it works exactly as well as it did the day you bought it. Further support beyond what's promised/advertised is the equivalent of demanding upgrades from the dealer--and not essential upgrades, but cosmetic ones, because you're bored of the car only doing what it did when you purchased it. And that's an entirely different thing--and something that few dealers or mechanics ever guarantee.

I think that is a too narrow view of what constitutes "the game". "The game" includes a community, and that may very well stop working (for the version of the game that I prefer to play). Also, the game requires a particular collaborative effort between me and the product. That is inherent in the game being (in one of it's forms) a role playing game. If my creative input to the game is chilled, then the game also may very well stop working.

 

[Umbran]

Let's say you bring out your ball to play. After a while, you are loosing, and take your ball home. It's your ball, and that's your right to do. Then the next day, you bring out your ball again, and I choose not to play with you. I'm allowed to do that, too. I think I'm reasonable to tell you that you cannot expect me to play with you if you just take your ball home when you start loosing.

Interesting. Question - does the fact that (at least as far as I am aware) no other game company provides such support for older games keep you from buying their products, too? White Wolf isn't licensing the original World Of Darkness games, for example. Do you similarly shun all their products?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Re: TSR, Profitability, and "Dueling Product Lines"

I suspect that the separate AD&D and D&D lines were not a significant factor in TSR's financial problems. I think things like "warehouses full of Dragon Dice" and similar poor business decisions (over-production of this or that product, too many resources squandered on failed lines like Buck Rodgers, etc) were the real source of the problem.

Without access to the actual data, it's all guesswork, though.

Re: WotC supporting older editions

First, I think it's awesome that WotC sells PDFs of some of the old stuff. I wish some of the scans were better, and I wish that more were available (e.g. where are the 1981 Basic & Expert books?), but I'm grateful they are legally available at all.

Second, I'd love to see some of the older books in print -- even on a print-on-demand basis.

Beyond that, though, I don't particular care about "support" (i.e. new modules, adventures, and supplements) from WotC for older editions. Frankly, I think the hobbyist community is more "in tune" with the preferences of those who play out-of-print D&D (especially the older TSR editions), and can provide better material than WotC would.