WotC WotC Winter 2026 D&D Community Survey

[DarkCrisis]

“Do you trust WotC to do right by you”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust any for-profit company. Corps are not your friends.”

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

“Do you trust WotC to do right by you”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust any for-profit company. Corps are not your friends.”

I'm not sure what they're supposed to do with this. Go non-profit to please you?

 

[darjr]

We have the numbers from last year from a WotC talk. D&D in total sold each 29 million in the first and 2nd year of 5E. Which is absolutely god awfull, because 3.5 sold 25 at the end of its life and we know that 3, 3.5 and 4 had way stronger sales in the beginning.


Mike Mearls LITERALLY had to compare the 5e sales with the only year where not a single new D&D product was released to make the numbers look good "we doubled the numbers" yes compared to a year with nothing.


Also what does sound better? "We have to delay DMG because its not ready" or "omg we sold so much more than we estimated that we have to print the other book later"?


Here is the post linked in which the yearly numbers of the sales were given D&D 4E - WotC, DDI, 4E, and Hasbro: Some History


We have the numbers we dont need to believe marketing anymore. Even in the linked interview you can hear that in 2013 WotC was close to losing D&D, so of course they make their Marketing in 2014 sound like 5E is a huge success.


Also Mearls of course want to make it look like his work did well, he is profiting from people thinking that 5E did well from the beginning, that sounds better than "the lead designer of the 2 least successfull half versions of D&D"

The numbers Ryan Dancy gave in that article, D&D being $25-30 million were for the best it can do, only minus the computer games, which I believe was still true in 2014. The $29 million Ben Riggs states for the release of 5e. Also the PHB didn't come out until August of 2014.

They also had trouble keeping the PHB in stock that first year. This Amazon rank chart is, I think, a good proxy for that, the rank would dip drastically when Amazon ran out of books. We watched it at the time, with Amazon posting the "not in stock" verbiage.

It wasn't public knowledge that WotC was going to license D&D to Fantasy Flight so I don't see how that would change their marketing?

And saying they delayed the DMG because it wasn't done is nice to say but proof would be better. I think @Alphastream had stated he'd seen or gotten a complete DMG at GenCon in 2014.

Edit: correction for the numbers vis a vis the brand vs the books. Also not sell, license, to Fantasy Flight Games.

 

[Lanefan]

“Do you trust WotC to do right by you”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust any for-profit company. Corps are not your friends.”

The question isn't so much "Do [we] trust WotC to do right by [us}?", it's "Do we trust WotC to do right by the game in general?"; and to that, other than their brief period of ownership before Hasbro bought them out, the answer is a somewhat reluctant "No."

 

[Remathilis]

Playtest should include stress test, meaning the bolded is exactly what you want people to do: try to break the system. If they succeed, then there's a design flaw somewhere that you need to fix or a loophole you need to plug.

I'm not arguing necessarily against that, but there is a lot of "play testing" that doesn't actually involve any playing playing just theoycrafting and assumptions based on it.

 

[Remathilis]

“Do you trust WotC to do right by you”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust any for-profit company. Corps are not your friends.”

What non-profit game are you playing? I assume something like Basic Fantasy who releases all there rules for free and changes pod print rates at-cost and never see a dime of profit unless you donate so them.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I'm not sure what they're supposed to do with this. Go non-profit to please you?

The question isn't so much "Do [we] trust WotC to do right by [us}?", it's "Do we trust WotC to do right by the game in general?"; and to that, other than their brief period of ownership before Hasbro bought them out, the answer is a somewhat reluctant "No."

What non-profit game are you playing? I assume something like Basic Fantasy who releases all there rules for free and changes pod print rates at-cost and never see a dime of profit unless you donate so them.

Im not saying they shouldnt earn money, I'm not an idiot and I know how the world works. But I also know a Corp is in it for the bottom line and not for players happiness / whats best for the consumer. Yes, both can happen but at the end of the day money comes first. That's the real world.

 

[sevenbastard]

I'm a little confused by this comment. I was playtesting 5.5e for more than a year and they solicited tons of feedback from us. To give one specific example, they radically revamped the first iteration of monk after it was soundly rejected.

They were putting out a new unearthed arcana specifically for 5.5e very regularly as part of a public playtest, and the feedback surveys were extremely detailed and time consuming. They also got many thousands of replies to the surveys. As well, they did lengthy internal playtesting. Are you under the impression that 5.5e was not playtested?

Maybe i should have been more clear

I am suggesting they could have done a full playtest of the game like they did with 5e versus a series of individual playtest packets like they did in 5.5.

In 2012 They gave me the whole game and a module to run at once and let me see how things interact.

In 2023 they did it piece by piece, use this class with the old rules and try it all disjointed.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm not sure it matters at this point. Almost everyone involved in 5.5 is gone. I'm curious to see what the new team does, about two years from now.

I suggested it appeared they had no roadmap, given they released a starter set with no follow-up. I also said if they ever team up with Rowling, I'm out.

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe i should have been more clear

I am suggesting they could have done a full playtest of the game like they did with 5e versus a series of individual playtest packets like they did in 5.5.

In 2012 They gave me the whole game and a module to run at once and let me see how things interact.

In 2023 they did it piece by piece, use this class with the old rules and try it all disjointed.

But, the part you mentioned, the current Stealth rules...were put out in packets quite early...?

They had a running Rules Glossary that included all the rules changes if you used it with the 2014 Core, and it includes the Invisible Condition, Hide Action...the whole thing. Across multiple iterations.