WoTC products, going downhill?

[dpetroc]

I went with steeply downhill. The last few books I've looked at -- Dungeonscape, Cityscape, Drow -- were not worth the money. I don't buy adventures, so those don't figure in to my thinking, but even looking at the Expedition to... series, I was very, very, very underwhelmed.

I've heard good things about SWSE, but I don't play SW so I can't judge it. The last thing I want to read is another book about useless feats or prestige classes. One person's opinion, but after MMIV it seems WotC is content to put out material that doesn't have a ton of originality. Makes me think that they've really run their course for D&D.

 

[diaglo]

i stopped buying from WotC

what more can i say?

 

[Mercule]

About the same. Which is to say some are stellar, some are good, some mediocre, and some varying degrees of not-so-good.

The fact that you list ToB as the shining beacon means that we're unlikely to agree on what constitutes "good". ToB was a good book, and very interesting. It hasn't revolutionized anything in my game, though. The reserve feats in Complete Mage have done more -- and the warmage only has one of those.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Not so much going downhill, as winding down for you know what.

Soon we'll be going the 2nd edition route and being offered things like The Complete Forest Gnome Cook Handbook or what have you…

 

[Bagpuss]

Saga Edition Star Wars to me shows the general downhill slant. While a great book at first look, once you get into the rules you see just how sloppy they have been with the play-testing and editing. The Errata (released and official from the forums) runs to 7 pages in 10pt font. There are serious problems with both Starship combat and normal melee combat, where they have over simplified to the point of breaking things (Bantha Rush is just one example).

A little bit of extra effort and this would have been a killer product, unfortunately it just looks rushed now.

 

[Flynn]

I voted for slightly downhill. Star Wars Saga Edition clearly is the exception that proves the rule, but aside from the compilation books (Magic Item Compendium, etc.), I haven't been interested in a WOTC product in a long time until SW Saga came out. The newer books appear to be getting further and further out of whack with the core rules, and the new options don't thrill me because they somewhat invalidate the core choices. Too much to keep up with, and nothing really to help the DM manage the massive influx of new rules, options, etc.

It's definitely a player's market, which makes sense (there are more players than DMs), but with all the new options that have come out, the DM is becoming a dying breed due to burnout caused by not at least putting some attention in the DM's direction.

However, even as a player, I'm just not interested in a lot of the newer products. (Again, SW Saga is the exception that proved the rule to me.)

My Two Coppers,
Flynn

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Uphill slightly. They have had great books (Star Wars Saga, MIC, PH2) and they've had some that weren't all that great (Expeditions). There have been more that I have liked than didn't.

 

[Deset Gled]

Some stuff is better, some stuff is worse. Some stuff manages to be both at the same time.

Take the Spell Compendium, for example. From a player's standpoint, this is one of the best things in the world. Quick reference to a wide variety of spells from a wide number of places. When you need to look up the details of what a spell does in the middle of a game, there is simply no better product.

From a design standpoint, though, the SC is a piece of crap. It contains "stealth" errata; lots of spells were changed, but it doesn't tell you which one or how they were changed. And it doesn't tell you the original source of the spell, so you can't easily check the reprinted version vs. the original version unless you already know where it came from. It has also had terrible after-market support; it contains numerous errors (typos, editing, and other mistakes), but has no errata of its own. Finally, despite some spell updates, it still contains some of the worst-of-the-worst spells that simply should never have been printed, like Melf's Unicorn Arrow.

Of course, not all books manage to cover the spectrum of brilliance and foolishness at the same time. There are a number of products that are quite good, and a number that are bad. Some are balanced, some are blatant power creep (MIC, I'm looking at you). Some have great flavor, some have good mechanics.

Overall, are these releases getting better or worse? Personally, my view of the situtation is tainted by the extreme lack of errata and the increase in stealth updates that have made their way into WotC products as of late. IMO, bad after market support can kill the best product. So overall, I'd have to vote for a downhill trend.

 

[HeinorNY]

I think it's going downward, but voted "Falling off a cliff" because I'm a pessimist

Saga Edition Star Wars to me shows the general downhill slant. While a great book at first look, once you get into the rules you see just how sloppy they have been with the play-testing and editing. The Errata (released and official from the forums) runs to 7 pages in 10pt font. There are serious problems with both Starship combat and normal melee combat, where they have over simplified to the point of breaking things (Bantha Rush is just one example).

A little bit of extra effort and this would have been a killer product, unfortunately it just looks rushed now.

That's the same feel I have when saw the book. After all that hype passed over (a lot of people is still blindly hyped) I could see the problems. Although most of the changes were good intentioned and some new additions were very creative, the overall execution was poor and compromised the product.
The release of 3rd edition marked a period of very high standard quality books released by WOTC for the RPG industry. But time goes by, the minds behind the original project are gone (BTW, I consider the retirement of Monte Cook the official end of the D20 system "golden age", with all due respect to the others great game designers), they care even less about the quality of their books and rely much more on fanboyism and board's reasoning to explain the "design phylosophies" behind their miserable rules and every book they release now just looks crapier than the previous.
And if the 4th edition follows this path, and I'm not talking about the "design concepts" behind SWSE, but its sloppy execution, then I can't expect too much for the future of D&D.

 

[Xath]

The biggest gripe I have with WotC right now is a serious lack of new art. 90% of saga edition art was just taken from previous books and reprinted. In alot of the new D&D books, they've started to take art from other 3.5 books and just relabel it.