Will 2011 be the last year of Wizards D&D?

[filthgrinder]

Getting shelf space in the Target toy section is like renting a downtown storefront - you pay high rent in exchange for visibility.

Just for accuracy, the Red Box was never in Target's toy section. The Red Box was in the "collectibles" section. This is a separate location from the toy section. The standard Target layout has this section up front near the check out lines. Normally dividing the check out lanes from the start of Health and Beauty, but your local Target layout may be different. This section houses "collectible" products, such as Sports trading cards, Twilight trading cards, Magic, Yu-gi-oh, "silly bands", and other such products. (Yu-gi-oh also normally has an end-cap in the toy section, For awhile Star Wars minis also had a toy section end-cap at the board game section).

But, it's apart from the toy section. If you wandered down the board game aisle of a Target, you wouldn't see the red box, but if you wandered by the collectibles section, you should have seen the product.

 

[filthgrinder]

The one thing I don't like about WoTC however, is how...I don't want to say greedy..because that's not true...but...they really wanted to rake a lot of money out of D&D fans. I liked 3e (or 3.5e) where all I needed was PHB, MM, and DMG. But now you have 3 PHBs, 3 MM, 2 DMG, and they TONS of other books, like the Ebberon campaign guide, and Dark sun campaign guide, and they have some other books that I think they just made to make some more $$$, and that I believe that they changed and made a few minor "mistakes" on purpose so they could go: "Oh hey! We have a problem, let's make a new $35 - $40 book that covers and solves that problem."

Just to introduce some facts into the discussion... according to wiki, Monster Manual V (yes, V for 5) was published in July '07 for 3.5.
Player's Handbook 2 for 3.5 was published in '06
Dungeon Master's Guide 2 for 3.5 was in '05
So that's 9 books to 8...
If you talk about additional books and campaign settings... That's all optional stuff and I like options, so I'd wish they put out most books, but that's me. I think two books a campaign setting is far more ideal than the glut of Forgotten Realms books that appeared in the 3.x era.

Anyways, what does this all mean. WotC is a company. They exist to make money. They make money by selling books and accessories. In order to due this they need to make new products for people to buy. The consumer than makes an assessment of these products and if they should buy them or not.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

This is the best thread because people have suggested that TSR wasn't in it for the money.

Guys the newest edition of D&D, I dislike it!

Clearly everyone at WotC should personally feel shame!

I mean, come the hell on. TSR was run by someone that literally hated you - yes, you - personally, but somehow WotC deserves all the ill will because oh god you don't like the product? Yeah, we should go back to the days of the D&D owners just suing their own fans, that was way better.

Edit: Also, the 4e book load is like 1/10th of the garbage TSR pumped out. We've gone past rose colored glasses and are now firmly in the land of blinders.

 

[catastrophic]

But, if people don't exaggerate, how will they be able to claim the sky is falling?

It should be quite easy for them in a few months when 5e launches in the new 'Blue Box' that doubles as a planetary-scale atmospheric imploder!!!!! That's right, WOTC is plotting to steal all of our air, so that only people with a Fifth Edition box set are able to breathe!!!

 

[ScottSa]

I'm not the OP, but my "premise" when I refreshed the thread wasn't that D&D is "failing" so much as "not succeeding". I don't think D&D will completely implode until the '80s and '90s cohorts start physically dying out. But on the other hand, I don't think anything we've seen from 4e sales has been representative of anything but the "entrenched community that will buy anything that says 'D&D core rules' on the cover and looks like a Gygax-era hardback in some way" fetishists. New people come in when there's a rules reboot, people might somehow be intrigued by "D&D-in-a-box" rather than "D&D-in-weird-thin-textbook-form", etc. etc., but the past 2.5 years haven't reignited the fad in any serious "game-changing" way. I was asking about the Walmart/Red Box thing as a way of testing that premise.

 

[Windjammer]

I must say, in light of recent events (the Ampersand column on Jan 13) this thread reads a lot different then when Merric posted it a month ago.

The sentiments expressed in this OP, and its earlier companion, were a lot more indicative of what's going on than Merric got credit for.

I'm not usually one for thread necromancy (not even short term ones), but remembering this thread earlier today I realized how short lived memory is in forum discussions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it is a couple weeks too soon to make any real judgments on that. Wait and see what happens at DDXP. WotC IS very quiet right now about their plans, but there's nothing really odd about that, they have a huge high profile PR smash right around the corner. So far they've done kinda pretty much what you'd expect in that situation, which is say little except "come to DDXP and see what we have in store". If what they have in store at DDXP is a big fat nothing, then one might begin to ask questions about how much interest they really have in pushing D&D. So far they haven't laid anyone off and are continuing to work on a number of known products, and will almost certainly announce new ones that presumably are taking the place of ones that were canceled or delayed indefinitely.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think it is a couple weeks too soon to make any real judgments on that. Wait and see what happens at DDXP. WotC IS very quiet right now about their plans, but there's nothing really odd about that, they have a huge high profile PR smash right around the corner. So far they've done kinda pretty much what you'd expect in that situation, which is say little except "come to DDXP and see what we have in store". If what they have in store at DDXP is a big fat nothing, then one might begin to ask questions about how much interest they really have in pushing D&D. So far they haven't laid anyone off and are continuing to work on a number of known products, and will almost certainly announce new ones that presumably are taking the place of ones that were canceled or delayed indefinitely.

I spent the winter vacation asking people to wait till the week of the 9th to hear announcements, but forgot about DDXP. I'll wait for then to see what WOTC is doing.

 

[Aegeri]

Let's just hope they are doing something.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I honestly think that if WoTC is going to continue making D&D, they need to get as far away from books as possible.

More miniatures, tiles, board games, and things that lead you online to the DDI.

But then again, I think they need to make the DDI free as the character creator part and charge people for access to things like Dragon, Dungeon, VTT, etc... Getting people to make character to play your game should be something you want to encourage as much as possible, especially when you're going to be pulling that data to see what they're doing. Making a beta product and charging the customer for it while misleading them for months as to whats going on on the other hand...

yeah, I'm going to pretty much stay right there.