The mistake here was not communicating it in advance.
I see the functional sense of the change. As we lean into D&D 2024 releases, we should all expect WotC to focus on the new products and stop selling the old (PHB, DMG, MM) as they are outdated. They can do that without taking away from those of us who have purchased things (as demonstrated by existing legacy content). Someone coming to the site to buy a PHB will be offered the 2024 version when it's time.
I have no problems with this move. It makes sense, calms chaos ("What PHB am I supposed to buy? Why is this hard? I'm new and confused!"), is easy to maintain (2014 books go into Legacy) and isn't complex.
The problem, and it's the only one here, is that it wasn't communicated in advance. This was easy to communicate in advance. Hell, it would drive a little wave of purchases from people who want to get the individual bits of some books, etc. It would be a "last chance!" opportunity that would be easy to tell people about and make bean counters happy.
Just doing it? Bad planning.
FWIW: My career has been in video games and online communities. When I say this could have been better, I mean that professionally. That noted we will all survive, and this will be resolved.
Further, there is time to reverse this. Consider it OGL 2. Management has not forgotten how that went, and allegedly a lot of the people that screamed actually came back. So why not float this balloon out there before the 6e rollout, and if the fallout is really bad, there will be data to extrapolate whether the profit will be higher with the old model compared to the new model.
Ignoring the nonsensical idea that WotC is using this as a trial balloon for a product that is probably a decade or so away and has not even started development, it should be noted that Wizards is particularly vulnerable to pressure at this time. Cinthya Williams just stepped down as President of Wizards of the Coast, with her retirement date set as April 26, 2024. Wizards is in a bit of a leadership vacuum right now--which often is a good time for customers to make their voices heard. If folks can convince the new leadership (when determined--it does not appear anyone has been appointed to the position yet) that this was a financial and PR mistake, then, perhaps, the new leadership might be willing to reverse the change and blame things on their predecessors, winning some goodwill for both the company and themselves in the process.
Again, not super optimistic anything could change--but there has been such low faith in the leadership at Wizards for quite some time, it would be nice if whoever takes over starts off on the right foot by fixing the final mistake of their predecessor.
Seriously? You think this new business model was dreamed up overnight? Hasbro leadership would have been brought into this decision. This was not some super secret project launched just by williams. The coding alone would take months and involve way more than one guy. And yeah, 5e is winding down in sales. Why not test a new model when impact is the lowest, as opposed to the 6e PHB in Sept.
Sigh. I never said it was a secret project, never said it was hidden from leadership, never said it would not take a team to implement this. What I did say? Changes in leadership are a great time for the new leaders to undo mistakes of their predecessors - they get the ability to blame it on the outgoing person (even if the rest of the team might still be intact) and thus establish themselves both as a leader and as a community-facing member of the D&D team. This makes now a great time for folks to have their voices heard - when someone else takes over, they are not going to want their early days marred by a player insurgency and are likely amenable to taking action to reassure players their leadership might be different than the distrust that has existed for quite some time.
As for your comments on 6e--this thread discusses a real issue and one that deserves to be talked about with respect and intelligence. We get it - you keep calling the 2024 5e update 6e because you REALLY want the update to fail (and I think many of us know what your true motivation behind this desire for failure is). But it is not 6e and you know it is not 6e. Your continued insistence on calling it 6e devalues the real conversation that is happening here--your factually wrong, conspiratorial posting make the rest of us, who actually do care about the future of this game, look bad.
The mistake here was not communicating it in advance.
I see the functional sense of the change. As we lean into D&D 2024 releases, we should all expect WotC to focus on the new products and stop selling the old (PHB, DMG, MM) as they are outdated. They can do that without taking away from those of us who have purchased things (as demonstrated by existing legacy content). Someone coming to the site to buy a PHB will be offered the 2024 version when it's time.
I have no problems with this move. It makes sense, calms chaos ("What PHB am I supposed to buy? Why is this hard? I'm new and confused!"), is easy to maintain (2014 books go into Legacy) and isn't complex.
The problem, and it's the only one here, is that it wasn't communicated in advance. This was easy to communicate in advance. Hell, it would drive a little wave of purchases from people who want to get the individual bits of some books, etc. It would be a "last chance!" opportunity that would be easy to tell people about and make bean counters happy.
Just doing it? Bad planning.
FWIW: My career has been in video games and online communities. When I say this could have been better, I mean that professionally. That noted we will all survive, and this will be resolved.
Your post seems somewhat incoherent with the thread. Your post seems to be about putting the core rules into legacy - the thread is complaining about the withdrawal of a key selling feature of the website - piecemeal purchases.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Further, there is time to reverse this. Consider it OGL 2. Management has not forgotten how that went, and allegedly a lot of the people that screamed actually came back. So why not float this balloon out there before the 6e rollout, and if the fallout is really bad, there will be data to extrapolate whether the profit will be higher with the old model compared to the new model.
Ignoring the nonsensical idea that WotC is using this as a trial balloon for a product that is probably a decade or so away and has not even started development, it should be noted that Wizards is particularly vulnerable to pressure at this time. Cinthya Williams just stepped down as President of Wizards of the Coast, with her retirement date set as April 26, 2024. Wizards is in a bit of a leadership vacuum right now--which often is a good time for customers to make their voices heard. If folks can convince the new leadership (when determined--it does not appear anyone has been appointed to the position yet) that this was a financial and PR mistake, then, perhaps, the new leadership might be willing to reverse the change and blame things on their predecessors, winning some goodwill for both the company and themselves in the process.
Again, not super optimistic anything could change--but there has been such low faith in the leadership at Wizards for quite some time, it would be nice if whoever takes over starts off on the right foot by fixing the final mistake of their predecessor.
Seriously? You think this new business model was dreamed up overnight? Hasbro leadership would have been brought into this decision. This was not some super secret project launched just by williams. The coding alone would take months and involve way more than one guy. And yeah, 5e is winding down in sales. Why not test a new model when impact is the lowest, as opposed to the 6e PHB in Sept.
Sigh. I never said it was a secret project, never said it was hidden from leadership, never said it would not take a team to implement this. What I did say? Changes in leadership are a great time for the new leaders to undo mistakes of their predecessors - they get the ability to blame it on the outgoing person (even if the rest of the team might still be intact) and thus establish themselves both as a leader and as a community-facing member of the D&D team. This makes now a great time for folks to have their voices heard - when someone else takes over, they are not going to want their early days marred by a player insurgency and are likely amenable to taking action to reassure players their leadership might be different than the distrust that has existed for quite some time.
As for your comments on 6e--this thread discusses a real issue and one that deserves to be talked about with respect and intelligence. We get it - you keep calling the 2024 5e update 6e because you REALLY want the update to fail (and I think many of us know what your true motivation behind this desire for failure is). But it is not 6e and you know it is not 6e. Your continued insistence on calling it 6e devalues the real conversation that is happening here--your factually wrong, conspiratorial posting make the rest of us, who actually do care about the future of this game, look bad.
Blaming the outgoing person isn't the sign of a good leader. In fact, any leader who uses blame vs. accountability is likely not a good leader. Embracing blame as a go-to tool to establish a new relationship with players means setting your baseline as a manipulative relationship with players vs. a collaborative and transparent one. I know which of the two I prefer, but to each their own.
As a player who liked to buy individual races and classes this is a bummer. I'm not buying a $30 book for $5 of content i want to use. Scummy practices and I hope to see this rolled back after the reactions they are receiving.
I am only upset for those who piecemeal their purchases. They do not get the chance to think about it and then buy the whole book they now only have half of.
This is one of the reasons I have always wished they would make a second web sight for all the new rules and leave the old stuff alone on these forums. That way we do not have mixed messages about new and old rules all on the same forum. They could have also kept selling the old digital content to those who wanted it. Piecemeal or not. They could have also allowed a third party to print the 5E old rules with NO changes.(and taken a percentage of that cash).
But its looking more and more like they are dropping all support for 5E and going with the new content exclusively. Trying to force a change and new purchases on the players and DM's.
I can personally live with my 5E physical copies of the core three. And as other players move to the new content i will buy up their old books at a steep discount.
As a player who liked to buy individual races and classes this is a bummer. I'm not buying a $30 book for $5 of content i want to use. Scummy practices and I hope to see this rolled back after the reactions they are receiving.
So that means you have an elastic demand to price. Others may have an inelastic demand. wotc is tracking all of these data points, and in total they will either mean greater sales or less sales overall of 5e material. And that data can be used to see if this new model is used for 6e. Setting price points is a tricky business.
Your post seems somewhat incoherent with the thread. Your post seems to be about putting the core rules into legacy - the thread is complaining about the withdrawal of a key selling feature of the website - piecemeal purchases.
Correct. I'm showing the future, where all of it is unavailable. Step one is to remove it piecemeal. Step two is to move things to legacy. It's relevant because this single subtopic is just that—a subtopic.
There's a larger picture that should be easy to anticipate as the new books come out. This discussion should factor that in.
You can't even see a list of items, races, feats, monsters... anymore, just a count of how many are in the books. Though we do get several pictures of the covers for physical books not sure how helpful that is for a digital purchase?
This does not bode well for quality content, more like riding a brand into the ground for profits.
You have to buy it to see what is in it, we promise you will like it!
This does not bode well for quality content, more like riding a brand into the ground for profits.
And that's the thing. They're chasing profits, even if it undermines long term viability. The piecemeal options were chasing people like me who bought a part of XGtE because I needed one bit..then got tempted into buying the whole lot later. My wallet has gotten a whole lot harder to access. The thing is, what is it that they're going to do next in the name of squeezing more profits?
Will I be happy to continue to invest in DDB then?
How much money will I have wasted in the mean time if not?
Perhaps WotC and DDB need to remind me why I should buy their products.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I used to buy my friends piecemeal subclasses, magic items and races from the books as small gifts. I have bought the same ones I own a few times over. Sucks I can't do that anymore. More importantly, not telling us this change was coming is really not cool. At least telling us, I would have most likely bought the rest of the books I only partially owned, as well as my friends in the same situation. Guess what now? Just not buying anything anymore. so stupid and insulting.
I’ve bought piecemeal and can confirm the option is gone.
Not worried though, when the OGL debacle went down I started backing up and updating offline digital content, so I covered my rear.
No surprise here on whats going on. Hasbro/WotC has made and are making some very piss-poor decisions with the D&D side of things, and considering the lack of communication or really any idea publicly of a new edition getting ready to launch, the start of the end may be beginning.
Now, before the nay-sayers and whatnot chime in, seriously look at how they ( the company) has handled recent events ( the OGL coups was roughly 18 months ago ). Piss poor PR handling, movie profit is probably a trickle considering box office numbers put it at just a hair over even, subs might have rebounded but I highly doubt they fully recovered, D&D sector has been a dead beholder dragging their bottom line down like a ship taking on water, upper management jumping ship at a really convenient time, and now this.
At this point to me, personally it looks as though they are probably going to start changing over to the new version and are going to start the site transition to the new crap.
Hell not gonna lie, I wouldn’t doubt they are going to turn this place into a legacy site, keep it running for a year after new release, then ether have everyone move to a new site ( with new TOS and policies that ppl will debate ) with the ability to transfer old site data, or they simply expect ppl to flat out throw money at them to get their D&D gaming fix knowing there’s enough individuals who will do so without so much as blinking.
I’ll keep what I got, which thank god I decided to wait and shop around, spent 40$ on about what is and was at the time the sensible thing to buy, and have ZERO interest in the crap that has or will be produced.
Now to sit back, crack an ice cold brewage, toss some dice, and sit back and watch the cluster-fÂĄ<k that might yet still be salvaged, but I have little faith it will.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
10 printf "BYTE my shinny Metal A$$" ;
20 GOTO 10
30 MEMBER DATE(DD/MM/YYYY) : 11/09/2019, MEMBER NAME : "MaximusCathril"
Now, before the nay-sayers and whatnot chime in, seriously look at how they ( the company) has handled recent events ( the OGL coups was roughly 18 months ago ). Piss poor PR handling, movie profit is probably a trickle considering box office numbers put it at just a hair over even, subs might have rebounded but I highly doubt they fully recovered, D&D sector has been a dead beholder dragging their bottom line down like a ship taking on water, upper management jumping ship at a really convenient time, and now this.
I expect this is both worse for the game than the OGL thing… and will get far less attention. The OGL issue got a lot of press and fanfare, and a number of people cancelled their memberships… but more people subscribed during that time period than cancelled - the losses were less than the regular growth of the game. Further, you look at things like the OGL survey vs the OneD&D surveys, and the OGL survey numbers were far, far eclipsed by the number of people excitedly responding to a poll about the game’s future.
But the OGL thing was flashy and unique and thus got media attention - which forced Wizards to respond to the vocal minority who were making it an issue. A company changing its pricing model is hardly that interesting of a story - so, while this might cause more actual effect on the community than the relatively minor OGL issue, I doubt it will get the same level of attention in the general media that resulted in Wizards backtracking over the OGL.
Now, before the nay-sayers and whatnot chime in, seriously look at how they ( the company) has handled recent events ( the OGL coups was roughly 18 months ago ). Piss poor PR handling, movie profit is probably a trickle considering box office numbers put it at just a hair over even, subs might have rebounded but I highly doubt they fully recovered, D&D sector has been a dead beholder dragging their bottom line down like a ship taking on water, upper management jumping ship at a really convenient time, and now this.
I expect this is both worse for the game than the OGL thing… and will get far less attention. The OGL issue got a lot of press and fanfare, and a number of people cancelled their memberships… but more people subscribed during that time period than cancelled - the losses were less than the regular growth of the game. Further, you look at things like the OGL survey vs the OneD&D surveys, and the OGL survey numbers were far, far eclipsed by the number of people excitedly responding to a poll about the game’s future.
But the OGL thing was flashy and unique and thus got media attention - which forced Wizards to respond to the vocal minority who were making it an issue. A company changing its pricing model is hardly that interesting of a story - so, while this might cause more actual effect on the community than the relatively minor OGL issue, I doubt it will get the same level of attention in the general media that resulted in Wizards backtracking over the OGL.
I think you're right. Since this only affects D&D players on this specific platform, I don't think enough people are going to care for this to be reversed back. Since both the bundles and the piece meal buying is gone, it seems they've done some sort of marketplace overhaul without telling us what is happening. How are they supposed to reward long time users and new users who don't want to spend too much money right away?
Unless they stop doing basic rules, it’s not like it’s that hard to dip your toe in still. And, at the end of the day, this is a for profit business venture; if their market research says they’ll make more overall with this shift, that’s what they’ll do.
Yes, you read that right. The marketplace no longer sells piecemeal options. All individual options that were purchased before you still get to keep though.
What I am not sure about is if purchasing piecemeal options before will discount the book anymore, but from what I read from other users so far, seems like you do not get the discount.
This seriously sucks big time. We got like zero announcements, zero heads up. The lack of communication is totally not cool.
But no mention of no longer getting credit towards purchase of the full book for what you have already spent on its content.
And the order history 'view' links go to an error page.
I'm no legal expert, but could there be legal issues present with that?
Before it was advertised that buying a piecemeal portion would count as a discount towards the whole if you did so later on. So purchases were made under that agreement. And taking it away would be reneging there.
Granted digital licenses have a lot of leeway and I'm sure WotC had lawyers look such a move over so I won't be surprised if it is perfectly legal. But I have to ask.
Unless they stop doing basic rules, it’s not like it’s that hard to dip your toe in still. And, at the end of the day, this is a for profit business venture; if their market research says they’ll make more overall with this shift, that’s what they’ll do.
There is market research, and then there is discontinuing a "program" without notice or warning that inflicts costs the program took off of the purchase price of the whole book. This may be "business" but it is not good business.
I don't agree with no more piece meal purchases but that is not the issue, the issue is many made piecemeal purchases from books with the understanding, in writing, those purchase prices would be applied to the purchase of the full book. It may be legal (I hope not), but that doesn't make it right, it is a betrayal and it will cost them. They are banking it will be worth the cost, only time will tell.
This is a huge disappointment. I'm a teacher and I use DNDBeyond for my students, and I just can't afford to buy every book in full so they can have access to the character options. The piecemeal option was a big part of what made using DNDBeyond to manage the 5 weekly D&D classes I teach feasible. This change makes it prohibitively expensive.
Another thing that upsets me about this move is how it further squeezes out local game stores. I teach my students that it's important to support your FLGS, even if it means paying a little more than online. Even though WotC didn't provide any kind of digital redemption for in store purchases like many other game publishers, the piecemeal system at least made it so you could snag a copy at your local store and then get what you needed on DDB for a little bit more. Now you buy a physical copy or physical + digital bundle through DDB directly. This is gonna impact local stores a lot I think. It's a really crappy move, and I'm just wondering how long it will be until they start selling the exclusive FLGS covers online as part of the bundles too.
This is a huge disappointment. I'm a teacher and I use DNDBeyond for my students, and I just can't afford to buy every book in full so they can have access to the character options. The piecemeal option was a big part of what made using DNDBeyond to manage the 5 weekly D&D classes I teach feasible. This change makes it prohibitively expensive.
Another thing that upsets me about this move is how it further squeezes out local game stores. I teach my students that it's important to support your FLGS, even if it means paying a little more than online. Even though WotC didn't provide any kind of digital redemption for in store purchases like many other game publishers, the piecemeal system at least made it so you could snag a copy at your local store and then get what you needed on DDB for a little bit more. Now you buy a physical copy or physical + digital bundle through DDB directly. This is gonna impact local stores a lot I think. It's a really crappy move, and I'm just wondering how long it will be until they start selling the exclusive FLGS covers online as part of the bundles too.
To truly support FLGS, buy hard copies of the PHB, MM and DMG from them. Then play the game in person at those locations, buying their snacks. Don't use the DBB apps. Or, and this takes some real legwork and some major luck, hunt around for hard copies of older editions of D&D. Play those at your school,. your local library, or at your local gaming cafe, or even the FLGS depending on their business model.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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The mistake here was not communicating it in advance.
I see the functional sense of the change. As we lean into D&D 2024 releases, we should all expect WotC to focus on the new products and stop selling the old (PHB, DMG, MM) as they are outdated. They can do that without taking away from those of us who have purchased things (as demonstrated by existing legacy content). Someone coming to the site to buy a PHB will be offered the 2024 version when it's time.
I have no problems with this move. It makes sense, calms chaos ("What PHB am I supposed to buy? Why is this hard? I'm new and confused!"), is easy to maintain (2014 books go into Legacy) and isn't complex.
The problem, and it's the only one here, is that it wasn't communicated in advance. This was easy to communicate in advance. Hell, it would drive a little wave of purchases from people who want to get the individual bits of some books, etc. It would be a "last chance!" opportunity that would be easy to tell people about and make bean counters happy.
Just doing it? Bad planning.
FWIW: My career has been in video games and online communities. When I say this could have been better, I mean that professionally. That noted we will all survive, and this will be resolved.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
Sigh. I never said it was a secret project, never said it was hidden from leadership, never said it would not take a team to implement this. What I did say? Changes in leadership are a great time for the new leaders to undo mistakes of their predecessors - they get the ability to blame it on the outgoing person (even if the rest of the team might still be intact) and thus establish themselves both as a leader and as a community-facing member of the D&D team. This makes now a great time for folks to have their voices heard - when someone else takes over, they are not going to want their early days marred by a player insurgency and are likely amenable to taking action to reassure players their leadership might be different than the distrust that has existed for quite some time.
As for your comments on 6e--this thread discusses a real issue and one that deserves to be talked about with respect and intelligence. We get it - you keep calling the 2024 5e update 6e because you REALLY want the update to fail (and I think many of us know what your true motivation behind this desire for failure is). But it is not 6e and you know it is not 6e. Your continued insistence on calling it 6e devalues the real conversation that is happening here--your factually wrong, conspiratorial posting make the rest of us, who actually do care about the future of this game, look bad.
Your post seems somewhat incoherent with the thread. Your post seems to be about putting the core rules into legacy - the thread is complaining about the withdrawal of a key selling feature of the website - piecemeal purchases.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Blaming the outgoing person isn't the sign of a good leader. In fact, any leader who uses blame vs. accountability is likely not a good leader. Embracing blame as a go-to tool to establish a new relationship with players means setting your baseline as a manipulative relationship with players vs. a collaborative and transparent one. I know which of the two I prefer, but to each their own.
As a player who liked to buy individual races and classes this is a bummer. I'm not buying a $30 book for $5 of content i want to use. Scummy practices and I hope to see this rolled back after the reactions they are receiving.
I am only upset for those who piecemeal their purchases.
They do not get the chance to think about it and then buy the whole book they now only have half of.
This is one of the reasons I have always wished they would make a second web sight for all the new rules and leave the old stuff alone on these forums. That way we do not have mixed messages about new and old rules all on the same forum.
They could have also kept selling the old digital content to those who wanted it. Piecemeal or not. They could have also allowed a third party to print the 5E old rules with NO changes.(and taken a percentage of that cash).
But its looking more and more like they are dropping all support for 5E and going with the new content exclusively.
Trying to force a change and new purchases on the players and DM's.
I can personally live with my 5E physical copies of the core three. And as other players move to the new content i will buy up their old books at a steep discount.
So that means you have an elastic demand to price. Others may have an inelastic demand. wotc is tracking all of these data points, and in total they will either mean greater sales or less sales overall of 5e material. And that data can be used to see if this new model is used for 6e. Setting price points is a tricky business.
Correct. I'm showing the future, where all of it is unavailable. Step one is to remove it piecemeal. Step two is to move things to legacy. It's relevant because this single subtopic is just that—a subtopic.
There's a larger picture that should be easy to anticipate as the new books come out. This discussion should factor that in.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
You can't even see a list of items, races, feats, monsters... anymore, just a count of how many are in the books. Though we do get several pictures of the covers for physical books not sure how helpful that is for a digital purchase?
This does not bode well for quality content, more like riding a brand into the ground for profits.
You have to buy it to see what is in it, we promise you will like it!
Reminds me of something from March 9, 2010.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
And that's the thing. They're chasing profits, even if it undermines long term viability. The piecemeal options were chasing people like me who bought a part of XGtE because I needed one bit..then got tempted into buying the whole lot later. My wallet has gotten a whole lot harder to access. The thing is, what is it that they're going to do next in the name of squeezing more profits?
Will I be happy to continue to invest in DDB then?
How much money will I have wasted in the mean time if not?
Perhaps WotC and DDB need to remind me why I should buy their products.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
PS what's the deal with 9th March '10?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I used to buy my friends piecemeal subclasses, magic items and races from the books as small gifts. I have bought the same ones I own a few times over. Sucks I can't do that anymore. More importantly, not telling us this change was coming is really not cool. At least telling us, I would have most likely bought the rest of the books I only partially owned, as well as my friends in the same situation. Guess what now? Just not buying anything anymore. so stupid and insulting.
I’ve bought piecemeal and can confirm the option is gone.
Not worried though, when the OGL debacle went down I started backing up and updating offline digital content, so I covered my rear.
No surprise here on whats going on. Hasbro/WotC has made and are making some very piss-poor decisions with the D&D side of things, and considering the lack of communication or really any idea publicly of a new edition getting ready to launch, the start of the end may be beginning.
Now, before the nay-sayers and whatnot chime in, seriously look at how they ( the company) has handled recent events ( the OGL coups was roughly 18 months ago ). Piss poor PR handling, movie profit is probably a trickle considering box office numbers put it at just a hair over even, subs might have rebounded but I highly doubt they fully recovered, D&D sector has been a dead beholder dragging their bottom line down like a ship taking on water, upper management jumping ship at a really convenient time, and now this.
At this point to me, personally it looks as though they are probably going to start changing over to the new version and are going to start the site transition to the new crap.
Hell not gonna lie, I wouldn’t doubt they are going to turn this place into a legacy site, keep it running for a year after new release, then ether have everyone move to a new site ( with new TOS and policies that ppl will debate ) with the ability to transfer old site data, or they simply expect ppl to flat out throw money at them to get their D&D gaming fix knowing there’s enough individuals who will do so without so much as blinking.
I’ll keep what I got, which thank god I decided to wait and shop around, spent 40$ on about what is and was at the time the sensible thing to buy, and have ZERO interest in the crap that has or will be produced.
Now to sit back, crack an ice cold brewage, toss some dice, and sit back and watch the cluster-fÂĄ<k that might yet still be salvaged, but I have little faith it will.
I expect this is both worse for the game than the OGL thing… and will get far less attention. The OGL issue got a lot of press and fanfare, and a number of people cancelled their memberships… but more people subscribed during that time period than cancelled - the losses were less than the regular growth of the game. Further, you look at things like the OGL survey vs the OneD&D surveys, and the OGL survey numbers were far, far eclipsed by the number of people excitedly responding to a poll about the game’s future.
But the OGL thing was flashy and unique and thus got media attention - which forced Wizards to respond to the vocal minority who were making it an issue. A company changing its pricing model is hardly that interesting of a story - so, while this might cause more actual effect on the community than the relatively minor OGL issue, I doubt it will get the same level of attention in the general media that resulted in Wizards backtracking over the OGL.
I think you're right. Since this only affects D&D players on this specific platform, I don't think enough people are going to care for this to be reversed back. Since both the bundles and the piece meal buying is gone, it seems they've done some sort of marketplace overhaul without telling us what is happening. How are they supposed to reward long time users and new users who don't want to spend too much money right away?
Unless they stop doing basic rules, it’s not like it’s that hard to dip your toe in still. And, at the end of the day, this is a for profit business venture; if their market research says they’ll make more overall with this shift, that’s what they’ll do.
I'm no legal expert, but could there be legal issues present with that?
Before it was advertised that buying a piecemeal portion would count as a discount towards the whole if you did so later on. So purchases were made under that agreement. And taking it away would be reneging there.
Granted digital licenses have a lot of leeway and I'm sure WotC had lawyers look such a move over so I won't be surprised if it is perfectly legal. But I have to ask.
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There is market research, and then there is discontinuing a "program" without notice or warning that inflicts costs the program took off of the purchase price of the whole book. This may be "business" but it is not good business.
I don't agree with no more piece meal purchases but that is not the issue, the issue is many made piecemeal purchases from books with the understanding, in writing, those purchase prices would be applied to the purchase of the full book. It may be legal (I hope not), but that doesn't make it right, it is a betrayal and it will cost them. They are banking it will be worth the cost, only time will tell.
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This is a huge disappointment. I'm a teacher and I use DNDBeyond for my students, and I just can't afford to buy every book in full so they can have access to the character options. The piecemeal option was a big part of what made using DNDBeyond to manage the 5 weekly D&D classes I teach feasible. This change makes it prohibitively expensive.
Another thing that upsets me about this move is how it further squeezes out local game stores. I teach my students that it's important to support your FLGS, even if it means paying a little more than online. Even though WotC didn't provide any kind of digital redemption for in store purchases like many other game publishers, the piecemeal system at least made it so you could snag a copy at your local store and then get what you needed on DDB for a little bit more. Now you buy a physical copy or physical + digital bundle through DDB directly. This is gonna impact local stores a lot I think. It's a really crappy move, and I'm just wondering how long it will be until they start selling the exclusive FLGS covers online as part of the bundles too.
To truly support FLGS, buy hard copies of the PHB, MM and DMG from them. Then play the game in person at those locations, buying their snacks. Don't use the DBB apps. Or, and this takes some real legwork and some major luck, hunt around for hard copies of older editions of D&D. Play those at your school,. your local library, or at your local gaming cafe, or even the FLGS depending on their business model.