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

[Umbran]

The new red box was marketed and sold as the introductory product to the essentials line.

"Introduction to" does not imply "compatible or useful with".

If you bill a thing as an introduction, I expect it to be vastly oversimplified to get some basic concepts across, and I don't expect many of the details to transfer over in to actual practice.

The product was incompatible with other essentials materials. Simple and utter fail.

If people buy the Red Box, and then go on to buy Essentials products, then it is a success, despite your declarations of failure. Market reality trumps armchair critique, pretty much always.

 

[Aegeri]

Out of curiosity, where did this "Incompatible" nonsense come from? Most of the rules are inherently the same, though there are some differences. Most of the red box is fully applicable to later DnD. The core rules are still the same for example. Some of the powers and I think the rogue build isn't, but this doesn't mean it is totally incompatible: That's just wrong.

 

[Riley]

With several other rounds of layoffs during the year, and some resignations, I'm not so sure that they can lay off anyone else and still function. There's lots of speculation that they're seriously understaffed in the D&D area, and if so it really wouldn't surprise me if there aren't any layoffs this year for Xmas because staff seems to be so lean already.

Does this mean that the title of ENWorld Optimist should pass to Shemeska?

 

[Windjammer]

To me it's easy to compare WotC to other companies for "what to do" and "what not to do". But it seems to me that a lot of what generates the "what not to do" sentiment in WotC over other companies is because they're doing more than the other companies and attempting more challenges than other companies.

The deficiencies of the CB aside, it's a monumental program that works with a huge library and from what I've seen something that other companies haven't even attempted. Why not embrace the innovation they're attempting and give them a chance to make it excellent instead of villifying it for not being perfect?

Ah, but this is where things got off the wrong foot in the WotC apologia on page 1 by Lancealot straight away.

You see, the whole point of MerricB's post is not to say how lousy WotC is compared to other companies. His point is (and here his history as an enthusiastic supporter of them in the past must be seen as implied) how lousy WotC behaved in 2010 as opposed to the great company they were in previous years.

The Character Builder is a case in point. Your appeal to how we should all be greatful to WotC putting out a semi-functional CB, given that other companies have not even attempted to offer likewise, nicely avoids the elephant in the room: WotC replaced their own functional CB with one that didn't perform nearly as adequately. THAT is the issue. Not WotC vs. others. It's WotC vs. themselves.

And then WotC can easily be seen as looking rather poorly compared to what they pulled off in previous years. They are in that sense competing against their past self. The Pathfinder RPG is nothing if not the perfect illustration of WotC competing against their own past, a past they left behind for better or ill. Paizo is nothing if not a very successful effort to mimic a very successful WotC of the past.

And even with that said - the question to ask is still not whether WotC in 2010 is preferable (or not) to other companies in 2010 like Paizo. The question remains, and always has been, whether 2010 was a good year for WotC itself when measured against their past achievements.

May I add how there's nothing new to this perception. Perspective people, perspective!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Does this mean that the title of ENWorld Optimist should pass to Shemeska?

There's only one way to settle this:

THUNDERDOME!

 

[MrMyth]

Ah, but this is where things got off the wrong foot in the WotC apologia on page 1 by Lancealot straight away.

You see, the whole point of MerricB's post is not to say how lousy WotC is compared to other companies. His point is (and here his history as an enthusiastic supporter of them in the past must be seen as implied) how lousy WotC behaved in 2010 as opposed to the great company they were in previous years.

Except.... Lancelot's post gave a number of reasons on how things WotC did in 2010 worked just fine. I think that's been a lot of the argument here - not just that WotC is 'too big to fall', but that 2010 was not nearly the disaster some are claiming, and featured some big winners - MM3, Dark Sun, Gamma World.

Do you really need to dismiss his entire post as "the WotC apologia", rather than respond to the numerous decent points he actually makes?

Honestly, even when comparing them to past years, I don't think WotC is in any danger. With DDI... yeah, they bungled the CB launch. But the VTT Beta is a pretty big step forward at the same time, and while I'd certainly rate their digital performance as higher in 2009... what about the year before, when they completely flubbed the launch of DDI itself?

That didn't sink the company. A smaller mistep, later in the process, seems unlikely to do the same.

 

[Aegeri]

I really think that DDI has been an endless source of disappointment for me this year, but I will not argue that 2010 has had the best books in 4E thus far. Psionic Power completely made me do a 180 on psionics, by just being a plain awesome book. MM3 has set the standard of monster books in 4E. Demonomicon is fantastic and one of the best books adding epic tier antagonists/scenarios into 4E. Dark Sun is the best of their campaign settings and absolutely brilliant. Gamma World is an amazing and truly different feeling game that I really love.

DDI does not ruin an entire year: It merely sours it.

 

[Dausuul]

And then WotC can easily be seen as looking rather poorly compared to what they pulled off in previous years.

Do you remember the release of 3.5E? That was a naked money grab, much worse than anything they've done recently, and it happened in 2003. In somewhat more recent history, there was the utter failure that was DDM 2, the Gleemax fiasco, the Pulling of the PDFs, and so forth.

Their missteps on the character builder are quite minor by comparison with some of the foul-ups they've pulled in past years. Not only that, but we are seeing a lot of new and innovative stuff on both the design front (Essentials) and the digital one (the Virtual Tabletop beta, a product that most of us had long since dismissed as vaporware).

 

[ExploderWizard]

"Introduction to" does not imply "compatible or useful with".

If you bill a thing as an introduction, I expect it to be vastly oversimplified to get some basic concepts across, and I don't expect many of the details to transfer over in to actual practice.

Really? Is that what they are spinning what we used to call a half-assed effort into these days?

I don't believe the red box needed to include all the essentials material or provide support for more levels of play. If advertised as part of a product line though, then I DO expect the content to be compatible with the rest of the line. If that is an unreasonable expectation then the gaming industry truly has gone downhill a great deal.

If people buy the Red Box, and then go on to buy Essentials products, then it is a success, despite your declarations of failure. Market reality trumps armchair critique, pretty much always.

Sure, sales are all that matter after all. If WOTC had been up front with the "not really compatible or useful with" aspect of their introductory product, how might that have affected sales?

 

[MerricB]

I miss Scott Rouse.