WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[AdmundfortGeographer]

A Muskhelmed D&D would probably have no print products at all, and possibly no products from WotC.

And only things that reward shareholders by being obviously profitable, not marginally hopefully profitable despite a history otherwise.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If Magic is failing, then that probably means that WotC management will look to D&D to make up for the lost revenue. Prepare for monetization!

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

So, you want the game to go bankrupt and then to be bought out again.

They could get bought by an heir to the Smith Literary Trust [1] and start pushing Gray Lensman products on the market. I would honestly very much like for that to happen.

[1] an organization that I have no reason to think actually exists

 

[Aldarc]

The question is why did they stop doing what worked?

Maybe they were encouraged to cater to the hardcore fans who wanted older Gen X settings rather than the settings the current casual audience would actually find interesting.

 

[SkidAce]

They could get bought by an heir to the Smith Literary Trust [1] and start pushing Gray Lensman products on the market. I would honestly very much like for that to happen.

[1] an organization that I have no reason to think actually exists

Quoted for E E Doc Smith, Lensman reference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, you want the game to go bankrupt and then to be bought out again. That will not work out in the long run.

I want a lot of content for D&D.

 

[MoonSong]

Thing is, the reserve list probably saved the game at the time, and didnt harm it after. The only format the game is played competitively at all (by anyone not a high roller) is Legacy.

The damage has all be done in recent (5 years?) history.

The damage has been visible in the recent years, but it has been brewing over time. Again, not questioning the need for something like the RL, but the RL itself wasn't the best of options. Just a 10-15 moratorium on reprints would have done the trick without hurting the playability too much. That is more or less the time it took for type 1 to get unreachable and forced modern to be a thing, and ten years after that, we have now pioneer because modern itself has gotten unreachable. Just five years would have done the trick.

 

[MoonSong]

You missed killing the pro tour.

Now that I think of it, I also forgot about stickers...

 

[Malmuria]

Maybe they were encouraged to cater to the hardcore fans who wanted older Gen X settings rather than the settings the current casual audience would actually find interesting.

Only for the hardcore fans to be like, "no, not like that"

 

[Clint_L]

WotC's leadership "failed" their way to 5e exponentially enlarging D&D's player base and cultural footprint. But those levels of growth were always unsustainable, so now they are trying to engineer a soft landing, unlike the crashes that have plagued D&D in the past.

Previously, this is when TSR/WotC would have announced a whole new edition to try to get the hardcore base to replace all their books and thus infuse some fast cash into sales. But they are trying something new, now, which is to engineer a shift to a D&D culture that is perennial, where they can put out, say, a new PHB without it signalling that everyone needs to replace all their stuff...or maybe quit the game (or just stick with the old version, which from a WotC perspective is more or less like quitting the game).

All of which is to say that I think it's a little early to argue that WotC's leadership has failed.