D&D 4E Will 4E be announced at D&D Experience?

[MerricB]

I think the first real sign of 4E has occurred: No new core rules supplements in the latter half of 2007. (The last is Complete Champion in May). After that, a couple of Eberron supplements that may have a few feats/prestige classes in them, and then the "Rules Compendium"... at a lower price as well (US$26.95)

So, I rather think that 4E will be now announced for release at D&D Experience 2008.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Hmm - more consideration: if it doesn't get announced at D&D XP, it'll be at Gen Con for bigger exposure. Possibly. When is Gen Con again?

 

[Sammael]

Yes. The adventure overload, loads of filler products, no real new supplements for FR (a history book can hardly be called new), and a wrap-up adventure path for FR all point to a reset coming soon.

I think 4E will be published in June of 2008. Until then, the last few 3.x releases will probably be: Spell Compendium II, Dungeon Tiles XYZ, a couple of minor adventures (with one probably being an apocalyptic way to wrap up people's 3.x campaigns, as seen before). Oh, and a two-volume Feat Compendium (January/May).

 

[Sammael]

Hmm - more consideration: if it doesn't get announced at D&D XP, it'll be at Gen Con for bigger exposure. Possibly. When is Gen Con again?

I am fairly sure that one of the WotC employees said that they won't be making any big announcements at GenCon again.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'm not convinced that 4E will be so soon. Theres still plenty of material left for WotC to do before they do 4E.

 

[Sammael]

I'm not convinced that 4E will be so soon. Theres still plenty of material left for WotC to do before they do 4E.

Why aren't they making that material, then? We have the entire 2007 product line in front of us. What do we see?

• Miniature support products (edition-independent)
• LOADS of adventures, mostly cashing in on the whole nostalgia thing
• A drow product (they always sell, and they needed a tie in with Night Below DDM set)
• Only one real new rules supplement (Complete Champion) which was originally supposed to be published earlier and had to be moved down the schedule because of the lack of product slots
• A magic item compilation
• A rules compilation
• A history comilation for FR
• An apocalyptic FR adventure path trilogy (remember the Time of Troubles trilogy?)

 

[delericho]

Surely there must be a "Complete Warrior II"? My guess is that that has somehow been missed from the schedule, because it's a strange oversight if not.

I don't expect an announcement of 4e yet; I'm still betting on a GenCon 2007 announcement for a GenCon 2008 release. And I'm hoping for a feat compendium before the release of 4e (in some ways, I feel that that would nicely 'finish' 3e for me).

 

[Rasyr]

Amazing! Back in 2003 when I started mentioning my belief that 4E will be released in either 2006 or 2008 (depending upon whether or not they just cut short the one 5 year development cycle (2008) or reduced it to a 3 year development cycle (2006)), many folks called me a doom-sayer and such.

Yet, in the past year, a lot of other have begun also saying 2008, even Merric!!!!

My goodness, the world must be going to end....

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I expect to see the news of 4E at D&D Experience, since Wizards has already said they'll moving their announcements there. Still, I believe this will be a bad move.

As far as I know, everyone is quite happy with 3E, and I believe that was not the case with AD&D 2E, where all my groups were already playing with the rules in the Player's Options books and everybody was screaming for a revision of the system.

Anyway, unless they manage to come up with a really good revision of the rules, the chances that I'll be moving my games forward to a 4E is very low. Things I'd like to see in the 4E (like less focus on tactical combat and characters being more important than their magic items) won't happen anyway, so I stick to the version of the rules I've already put a lot of money into.

Cheers,

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Anyway, unless they manage to come up with a really good revision of the rules, the chances that I'll be moving my games forward to a 4E is very low.

WotC knows that everyone says that, but then they run out and buy the new edition. We may gripe about it, but we still do it. The people still playing 3E over 3.5 are just like the people still playing AD&D or 2E: a dying breed. Significant numbers of people can cling to a previous edition for a while, but eventually the balance tips too far in favour of just biting the bullet and converting, and that's exactly what eventually happens.