Why has WotC stopped posting on ENWorld?

[Scrivener of Doom]

To be fair they do not post on their own forums either.

Ben Kenobi's description of Mos Eisley springs to mind when you mention the WotC forums....

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Once upon a time...

I used to be one of Trevor's minions on the community management team under the username crazy_monkey1956. One of my weekly tasks was to pilfer Q&A questions from EN World and the WotC forums for Rodney's weekly-ish D&D Next Q&A column.

So, at least until March when I was laid off, there was definitely a lurking presence here.

 

[DDNFan]

In 4E you could still poke around blogs and stuff to get "scoops", and some of them posted here more often. And well, there where more of them...

But yes, please watch the Q&A Video. It can be a little hard to hear, but they call out ENWorld as the source of questions. Not their own boards.

And they still post here once in a while, as do their associates, like that guy from baldman games. You just have to look out for it.

A representative sample of what goes on in the Wotc forums :

"I hate D&D next! Not only that, but it's too expensive! Why can't it be more like 4th edition??!?!?!?!"

 

[DDNFan]

Ben Kenobi's description of Mos Eisley springs to mind when you mention the WotC forums....

I was thinking the exact same thing.

The reason is of course the lack of moderation. They've allowed the haters there to drive out any sane discussion of the game.

The mods allowed it to be overrun with negativity with people who:

a) have no interest in either buying it or playing it (some there don't even play D&D at all, yet post dozens of times per day),
b) hate the classic D&D game and thus 5th ed which is reviving that playstyle,
c) hate those who like it and get away with calling them terrorists without getting banned,
d) want everyone to know it they own that place. I mentioned how I didn't enjoy 4th ed once and 4-5 people demanded that I apologize, then proceeded to attack me viciously. The mods did nothing. I suspect that's because they play favorites, and actually are 4vengers themselves. It's the only rational explanation.

Some of the mods there even insulted Mike Mearls on his own company's website. Customer relations is one area where Wizards is sorely lacking. Instead of walking on eggshells to avoid infuriating the bridge dwellers, they could instead give out warnings. The system they have there is so cowardly and geared towards "spite reporting".

They are totally clueless on how to run a message board. To call that place a community is like calling gangland in south-central LA a community. "There's a community? All this time living in New York, and I never knew there was a community" -Seinfeld.

You can only have a community if you have things in common. Actually if one were being honest, the community there is a community of D&D Next haters and whiners, and the moderators let it happen and continue to let it happen. It costs Hasbro money too, since casual customers get driven away after getting attacked by the resident trolls-with-immunity-because-the-mods-agree-with-them.

If I were Mike Mearls, I would fire the community managers there. They are incompetent and don't deserve their jobs. Ban people if you have to, ban IPs if you have to. But 90% of the hate you see on the forum there is by people with thousands of posts.

The only explanation for them having that high a post count yet still posting hate day in, day out, is because the "community managers" are incompetent at actually managing communities, and don't realize their "hands off" technique of deleting posts or threads don't actually achieve anything.

The closest analogy I could give of their board moderation are pushover parents, who tell their bully kids to go in a time out, then give them cake two minutes later. Or punish them by sending them to their room, which has a big screen TV and internet and a PS4. It's basically a website overrun with spoiled children who are calling all the shots because their parents are spineless and incompetent.

 

[Ahnehnois]

FWIW, WotC was not always this toxic community of hate. Their forums used to be filled with people who had something worth saying, and generally did so in a reasonable way. Those days are long over now, of course.

 

[DM Howard]

FWIW, WotC was not always this toxic community of hate. Their forums used to be filled with people who had something worth saying, and generally did so in a reasonable way. Those days are long over now, of course.

Indeed. I think part of it was the transition and follow-up from 3.5 to 4th Edition. I think the toxicity got so bad because all across the internet, and even on these very forums there were elements that were saying that those who enjoyed 4th Edition were wrong and "weren't true D&D fans" whatever that means. Much of it was never truly said, but often implied, so I get why it got so bad, but two wrongs certainly don't make a right, but alas tis the internet.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

We should not take this as an opportunity to continue to talk about how bad WotC forums are. Let us stick to the topic at hand, please.

 

[Morrus]

Things got pretty unpleasant here, too, when 4E came out. Things have gotten a lot better here in the past few years, though. Edition warring seems to be less tolerated everywhere - folks are just tired of it.

 

[tsadkiel]

Things got pretty unpleasant here, too, when 4E came out. Things have gotten a lot better here in the past few years, though. Edition warring seems to be less tolerated everywhere - folks are just tired of it.

That is true - I wandered away from ENWorld about the time 4E came out, and I'm just returning now. it is much better.

 

[DDNFan]

Things got pretty unpleasant here, too, when 4E came out. Things have gotten a lot better here in the past few years, though. Edition warring seems to be less tolerated everywhere - folks are just tired of it.

I believe edition warring will subside even further, when people grudgingly admit they are having more fun with the new game than their old favorites.

This is why I think Basic D&D taking a lowest common denominator approach and calling that Core is the right way forward. You tailor the game by adding the options you like to it, rather than telling others to take out the stuff out that they don't. Rather than "everything is core, if you don't like such and such, tough, you're a fossil" attitude, which was infuriating.

Replacing Vancian casting, or things like Hit Dice, is an exception here. I would be curious to try the optional rules from the DMG, but I don't expect them to be very well balanced or tested vs vancian which is Core.

It's too bad that Hit Dice seem to be deeply ingrained into the game, I could see that as a problem to remove as more and more things build upon it and assume it's there.