Adding my voice and opinion here. Characters need a 2014 rules toggle so that we can continue to play existing games without converting on a character by character and campaign by campaign basis. 

I was willing to give the new books a chance, I preordered the physical copies.

But I was not planning on switching mid-campaigns to the new rules. This sucks, honestly. But hey, I do trust my players and they can roll their physical dice again...

I deleted my characters apart from the 6 most important ones - and now I am going to cancel my sub. Bye.

Managing spells is something where DDB could offer massive added value, if it just worked a 100%. I've been playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and have had to deal with the fact that that class was never fully implemented in DDB with regards to spell management. That has been irritating, considering how much time has passed since those subclasses came out.

If this gets complicated even further by the update because we don't have the option to just keep playing in our current campaign as we were, I may just switch to pen and paper. Things like these that keep DDB from being able to fully replace pen and paper make it lose a lot of value, because if I'm going to have to use pen and paper anyway to some degree, I might just be better off doing everything there and skipping on the digital side. I do not think that aligns with WotC's vision for D&D.

+100. Will be cancelling subscription as soon as I've gotten my homebrew data out of here, if this change goes through is.

Making my first post to these forums to say, wowww WotC. Like, even companies like EA don't shoot themselves in the foot this bad.

Seriously, if D&D Beyond is no longer going to be a convenient, easy place to look up the original 5e content like spells and items, then what even is the point of coming back to this website, ever? What's keeping me and everyone else from going to third party sources?

How is this even remotely acceptable? The only reason I pay a subscription is for my group to have convenient access to the content I purchased.  My group's campaign has been running for 4 years, hundreds of dollars flushed because you can't be asked to add some sort of LEGACY TAG on the content I paid for?  Why must you continue to erode the trust between yourself and existing established customers for the prospect at quick cash grabbing for new players?

Why do you insist on luring players in with talk of "OneDnD" and then follow up with shattering a huge branch of support for existing content?  Let me keep and refer to my 2014 spells you nitwits.  Whoever made this decision ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Well now several of my friends and I are scrambling to make offline copies of our character sheets so we don't loose content when it goes through. I am also canceling my subscription going forward.

Some source information I bought a la carte just because I only wanted the spells. Where does that money go now? Poof? 

Boooooo

This is total crap, as someone who does not need to upgrade to the new version but still want to play D&D, this is a huge slap in the face. Turning the most classic game on the planet into live service crap is such bullshit. I'm already paying a subscription, and now I'm essentially forced to "upgrade" from the best version of the game that exists - completely ridiculous. Allow us to keep using our 5th edition rules in character creation!

What gets me pissed about this is that they already have a system in place to allow you to keep the old versions. They are implementing Legacy Tags for everything else: classes, subclasses, feats, races, etc. If something has been updated for the 2024 version, the old version is getting the Legacy tag. Surely it can't be that hard to give the 2014 Flame Tongue the Legacy tag AND give the new Flame Tongue item. Just such a backwards decision.

As many others have said, this is unacceptable business practice.  You have the legal right to do it, certainly, but it's not good customer relations to say the least.

The appropriate remedy has already been suggested by a multitude of wise posters before me; simply flag the 2014 content as Legacy and add a "Use Legacy Content" button the DDB character sheets.  

I am considering switching to PF2 and ending my DDB subscription based on this.  I'd really rather not do that.  Please reconsider and keep the legacy content available on DDB.

Quote from Baggotry >>

the HB solution doesn't even work...

This Spell cannot be shared with the community for the following reasons:

• 2014_Simulacrum is currently too similar to Simulacrum to share with the community.

If the owner of the campaign doesn't want to do this, every single player has to make their own HB copy of every spell that they want to use the 2014 version of? Cmon man

 
You are very wrong here.

That message is only for sharing to the public as a whole. You don't need to do this to use it in your own campaigns.

Homebrew you create, even if not "shared to public", will be available for you and everyone in the same campaign as you to use. No sharing or subscriptions required.

It makes it seem like an intentional shove forward and away from 2014 5E, which is pretty underhanded given all the advertising saying how they are working to make it work together. 

They better at least give partial refunds as what we paid for was access to the digital toolset for these spells and items.

I imagine there's some technical limitation as to why they can't implement the legacy thing with them, but why not tell us that? Or delay the digital toolset launch until they can reprogram it? This doesn't make any sense.

I have a subscription, have purchased a plethora of 5e books on here, and totally agree with OP. This is a move to actively remove content I’ve paid for to incentivize me to buy more things. It will have the opposite effect. This is not the way to handle the roll out of a new product line. 

fully agree. this is totally totally unacceptable. i have emailed them informing them that i plan to delete my account, process a chargeback for the stolen material i purchased, and that I plan to delete all of my homebrew, campaign creations, and encounter creations. it's not much, but that grabbed their attention. i don't have much homebrew, and i don't have any homebrew that is a focal point of the community. but other people do, and have created extensive collections that the community accesses. let's threaten that. don't just threaten to leave with your subscription money, tell them that you will delete all community content you've created. 

Anyone thinking of a class action lawsuit? I'd be interested in joining. But I guess I learned my lesson. No more digital purchases. I can't trust WOTC or Hasbro as stewards of this hobby. Should have seen it coming. 

Quote from homonaut >>

Anyone thinking of a class action lawsuit? I'd be interested in joining. But I guess I learned my lesson. No more digital purchases. I can't trust WOTC or Hasbro as stewards of this hobby. Should have seen it coming. 

 
In the terms of service you had to agree to, you acknowledged that D&D Beyond and WotC had the right to revoke access and content at any time for any reason. So, they have not done anything illegal nor have they broken their contract of sale with you. Your lawsuit won't do anything but cost you money. 

This is unacceptable. I paid for all the content and a DM subscription. I'm only able to play online. This is going to ruin the campaigns I'm in. I don't want to transition to the 2024 rules. I should be able to use the content I paid for.