WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Charlaquin]

I note, there's some lovely writeups on how SpaceX manages Elon. They put significant time and effort into keeping him distracted and making sure to present decisions so he'll proclaim the thing the actual competent people already figured out and started doing. When this doesn't work, it's a problem. They're having a great time of this because he's been out of their hair for weeks.

Yup, because he isn’t really a leader. He’s a mascot. He has a large enough and obsessive enough following that simply having his name tied to something increases its perceived value. Or at least, that has been the case. With the complete bungling of Twitter, it’s possible that enough people will realize what a clown he actually is to make his association with a brand no longer an unambiguous positive. We can at least hope.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

When it comes to setting products they should be focused on hardcore fans and quality, that doesn't mean you don't have beginner and other products to appeal new fans/casuals, the setting books are where appealing to the hardcore fans is most important, because that buzz and excitement is what will draw the casuals to them. It's still not an all or nothing situation, but at minimum the settings have to be functional and not doing things to needlessly pissing off hardcore fans (like breaking up Ravenlofts Core was completely needless anatognising Ravenloft fans).

Considering most “hardcore gamers” who can remember the original settings (settings that WotC has made available again with print on demand, which is AMAZING) seem to be homebrewing at this point (ie not as interested in buying new product) because they haven’t had new adventures in years, I think WotCs efforts would be largely wasted in doing this.

DMsGuild exists. Older settings are becoming available for publishing again, Baker has made a killing doing his own stuff for Eberron again. Why not write those adventures and supplements yourself for the “hardcore gamers” and get that skrillah WotC seems to be missing out on?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Yup, because he isn’t really a leader. He’s a mascot. He has a large enough and obsessive enough following that simply having his name tied to something increases its perceived value. Or at least, that has been the case. With the complete bungling of Twitter, it’s possible that enough people will realize what a clown he actually is to make his association with a brand no longer an unambiguous positive. We can at least hope.

Yes, pre-Twitter, it was at least possible to pretend that Musk was a great businessman, if you didn’t look to closely.

I mean, even then, you’re still wondering how a person who is supposedly running three businesses has time to tweet around the clock, but still. Now, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t really “running” Tesla or SpaceX, and that when he actually runs things, he’s a pretty lousy manager and a worse businessman.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes, pre-Twitter, it was at least possible to pretend that Musk was a great businessman, if you didn’t look to closely.

I mean, even then, you’re still wondering how a person who is supposedly running three businesses has time to tweet around the clock, but still. Now, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t really “running” Tesla or SpaceX, and that when he actually runs things, he’s a pretty lousy manager and a worse businessman.

He however is an excellent case study on why YOU NEED SLEEP TO LIVE.

Before he started self-destructing (years ago), he was super proud of how little sleeping he did and how much of a grindbro he was. This is what happens to your faculties and your faculty when you don't sleep.

 

[Zardnaar]

If Twitter goes down can it take Facebook with it? Pretty please?

Zuckerborg, Musk mano a Mano. Celebrity Deathmatch 2022.

 

[Mallus]

Zuckerborg, Musk mano a Mano. Celebrity Deathmatch 2022.

Why am I picturing this as a scene from Tron?

(if Tron had a budget of 44 billion dollars but looked as good as Second Life)

 

[Mecheon]

When it comes to setting products they should be focused on hardcore fans and quality, that doesn't mean you don't have beginner and other products to appeal new fans/casuals, the setting books are where appealing to the hardcore fans is most important, because that buzz and excitement is what will draw the casuals to them. It's still not an all or nothing situation, but at minimum the settings have to be functional and not doing things to needlessly pissing off hardcore fans (like breaking up Ravenlofts Core was completely needless anatognising Ravenloft fans).

Y'know, I'm gonna dig into this. As a Warcraft fan, casual v hardcore is something that comes up a lot. And, due to Warcraft being, y'know, a video game, we got numbers!

Hardcore players barely make up 10% of the playerbase and that's in a good year. Turns out, no, designing the game for just those characters is not good as the current absolutely brutal series of guild crushing raids at the moment show. Said hardcore players also constantly complain about wanting Raid Finder, an accessible way for people who aren't no-lifing and try-harding, to be removed.... Despite the fact Blizz have gone on record saying that raids only exist because Raid Finder gives enough numbers to make it justifiable to even do raids.

So, due to this history, please forgive me whenever my view on folks saying "Just focus on the hardcores" I kind of am a bit skeptical. A lot skeptical, I'd argue,

I'd instead argue what WotC need to do is put more meat onto these barebones products they're releasing so as to inspire people to be more excited. Stuff like Kobold Press, or heck, even the setting books for Pathfinder, are certainly not developed for the hardcore in mind but instead remain accessible, and they're miles ahead of what WotC's doing

Also on Ravenloft, what do you actually get for keeping the Core? Because from what I see, you get an inability to easily slot in new things and being tied to a setting system that mashed together a bunch of seperate micro-settings that were designed to be played seperately in the first place. The Core may have been historic but it wasn't necessarily a good idea to even begin with

 

[Scribe]

So, due to this history, please forgive me whenever my view on folks saying "Just focus on the hardcores" I kind of am a bit skeptical.

Did you play Classic, or have a view on what Classic Vanilla did to subscriptions and how players engaged with the content differently compared to how we played it originally?

 

[Mecheon]

Did you play Classic, or have a view on what Classic Vanilla did to subscriptions and how players engaged with the content differently compared to how we played it originally?

I don't play Classic myself (Look, I get why people like nostalgia but frankly I do not want to relive the days of me waiting on Dalaran trade chat for 6+ hours to grab my daily heroic) but...

The thing to consider is back in the day, we were kind of stumbling about, not 100% sure of what was entirely happening. However all these decades later, we have so much theorycrafting and everything in play that its almost like a solved game. Its going to inherantly be different simply because of all that knowledge we have. See folks mis-remembering Vanilla as being super hard and apparently when Classic launched, it'd take months and months for Molten Core to be beaten, as opposed to the reality where Molten Core was basically solved content and it got done in under a week from launch. Nothing wrong with it all

Given this is going on with Shadowlands at the moment, frankly I think Classic is keeping subs up given Shadowland's.... "A really poor take on Planescape"-ness it has going

Mind, my favourite thing on MMOs like this is FFXI and its whole "Face these directions when crafting on specific days" ideas. Because, turns out none of they were actually real and folks just believed they were for decades until someone did some data testing

 

[Scribe]

I don't play Classic myself (Look, I get why people like nostalgia but frankly I do not want to relive the days of me waiting on Dalaran trade chat for 6+ hours to grab my daily heroic) but...

The thing to consider is back in the day, we were kind of stumbling about, not 100% sure of what was entirely happening. However all these decades later, we have so much theorycrafting and everything in play that its almost like a solved game. Its going to inherantly be different simply because of all that knowledge we have. See folks mis-remembering Vanilla as being super hard and apparently when Classic launched, it'd take months and months for Molten Core to be beaten, as opposed to the reality where Molten Core was basically solved content and it got done in under a week from launch. Nothing wrong with it all

Given this is going on with Shadowlands at the moment, frankly I think Classic is keeping subs up given Shadowland's.... "A really poor take on Planescape"-ness it has going

Mind, my favourite thing on MMOs like this is FFXI and its whole "Face these directions when crafting on specific days" ideas. Because, turns out none of they were actually real and folks just believed they were for decades until someone did some data testing

The reason I ask, is I agree. OG Vanilla, man so many of us were really really bad at the game, and most of us were 'casual' in our approach. Fast forward to pre-release of Classic, and people were saying it was so much tougher, and thats why we all looked and played like fools.

But that wasnt it at all.

We then jumped in, and my god the degeneracy was unleashed, and I participated in it and the 'default' behavior, become what I would call 'hardcore'.

There was no need for it, but we did it anyway. Honor grinds, minmax behavior, speed runs, the works. I played with a lot of the first GM/HWL grinders on my realm, and it was really unhealthy.

That said? It was really really really fun, and the realm was ALIVE for the first 3 or 4 phases of content, and I think its largely because it was so 'hardcore' not by design, but because thats what people could do with the sandbox we were given.