The advantage that strategy guides and this book will have over the internet info, is that they are readily available on the shelves of your local bookstores, ready to be picked up and skimmed through and possibly purchased alongside the PH / video game it's 'advertising'. I mean, that's really what all these things are... easily-digested information that will give folks who either have no idea, or only a slight idea of what it is it's going on about, giving a better idication whether it is something worth picking up.
So in that regard... the Player's Strategy Guide doesn't need to be (nor should it be) an overly-intensive and nitpicky guide to CharOp... because it would just confuse the folks who have little to no idea about D&D right now, who are just leafing through the book at the local Border's on a whim. By using a new, different and cartoony art style, celebrity commentaries, and 'wowza' ideas about character generation... they're hoping to snag new players who have no as yet picked up the 4E game.
The advertizing for the game will be right there on the bookstore shelf... as opposed to being buried inside a website messageboard that the non-players wouldn't be going to anyway.
First of all, if the goal is to snag new players, why is it called a "Strategy Guide?" Shouldn't it be called "Welcome to D&D" or something? I don't know about you, but I don't generally go leafing through strategy guides to games I don't play.
Second, the
description sounds like the book is going to be full of build advice - in fact, it outright says it's about optimizing your character.
Third, and most importantly, I'm not talking about newbie-level advice versus advanced-level optimization. There's advice that's simple and accessible... and then there's advice that's just
bad, and it's quite common to try to excuse the latter by claiming it's the former.
Published strategy guides often give bad advice, because they're written by the designers*, who tend to get the game they
meant to make confused with the game they
did make. Furthermore, they have a natural reluctance to see/acknowledge the stinkers in the design. It takes gumption to publicly admit that some of the stuff you published is bad (even though some of it always is), and it takes finesse to state such a thing without narking off your customers.
[size=-2]*Or they're written by an outside firm, whose writers have never played the game and rely on whatever the designers tell them.[/size]
