http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Brandon_Rhea/Fandom_and_Curse_Media_are_joining_forces

That seems... odd. D&D Beyond seems pretty heavily tied to Twitch and Amazon. Not sure this is a good thing.

We've seen the news and staff plans to address it.  Join Badeye tomorrow with your questions!

Tweet Adam your questions! 

https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1072974374330880001

I'm not familiar with who Fandom is or what they own. (I take that back, apparently they own all those random wiki pages?) but as a DM who's brought a lot of people to this site and is also a subscriber... if they make things better then great. If they leave it alone, fine.

If they mess it all up then I think they'll be very surprised to find out how many D&D players are completely comfortable going back to just using paper and pen character sheets. It's not like the DM tools are that great at the moment. I use this site for my players and managing my players sheets (they're all new players usually), make it harder for my players and they'll stop using the site.

Having said that, maybe something good will come out of it? My hope is that at least nothing changes. I'm sure many of the developers feel the same way.

I will stay optimistic. If Amazon was welling to let them go maybe they weren't the best party to own the platform. I hope it doesn't go south. I know a lot of people rely on this to make gaming easier. Players will also flock away from products and platforms that do them dirty, so I hope you understand the situation this puts everyone in.

I bet a lot of the employees/moderators are just finding out about this as well and will not have all the answers we are looking for. I’ve been a part of a company that was sold to a different company and it was actually for the better. I can tell you that no one from DnDB will be able to guarantee us if things will get better or worse, they of course will spin it as a positive. We will see changes, some we will like and some we won’t. That would have happened with Amazon too.

Honestly, I am in the same boat with most of you. If they screw this up they will get hammered by the d&d community. In the end we as consumers have one vote, and it’s $$$. Vote with your wallet. If things get better (which I am hoping they continue to do), support DnDBeyond by purchasing what you like. If things get worse, drop your subscription and don’t purchase content. This speaks collectively louder than any words in the forum.

It’s nice to see the forums blow up and all, and feel like our voices are heard. And to a degree they are, but the top dogs making major decisions only ‘really’ care when it affects their bottom line. DnDB is not a non-profit organization, they expect to turn a profit from our business. It’s not personal, that’s just the way a business operates.  We just take it personal because we are passionate about our D&D and get upset when something negatively impacts our gaming experience.

My advice to everyone is 1) cut the moderators and employees some patience, they prob don’t know much at this point. 2) Stay positive. I really like our forum as it has stayed pretty dang positive and we don’t suffer trolls. Let’s not turn into every other forum out there that just vomits negativity at the slightest change.

Stay classy my friends

This is extremely upsetting to me. Fandom sites are absolutely awful and I would hate for their poor decisions to influence DNDB. All of their sites are plagued with auto-playing embedded videos and disruptive, slow, and insecure ads. At least with Amazon and Twitch, I expect there to be a certain level of professionalism that promotes using good, modern, and scalable cloud technologies on the infrastructure side as well as solid web development practices on the product side. There won't be much change in the short term probably, but, as someone who works in high tech and has seen their fair share of acquisitions, I can tell you that there absolutely will be some measurable level of influence after a year or so. 

As a DM, I love this site and how easy it makes character tracking for my players. However, if this transition ruins the site, I WILL leave and just use Roll20 or something entirely. You folks at DNDB are doing a great job so far and I sincerely hope this is a positive transition for you all. I just want to be firm and clear here from a customer's perspective. Please don't break our hearts. 

Not familiar with Fandom, but looking at the comments on the announcement page, all the concerns seem to centre on Curse's other properties - particularly Gameapedia. People seem worried they'll plaster Gameapedia, which appears to have been set up as a competitor to Fandom by disgruntled editors, with advertising and use slow, out of date web technologies. I've no interest in these properties, and still don't know what Futhead and Muthead actually do, so they can all die and I'd be none the wiser.

DDB is built around streamlined, response, web interfaces and a subscription model. It seems likely that the benefits will flow to the other properties, rather than the other way around. Also, integrating a wiki into the campaign manager would provide a lot of the functionality we want.

That said, fear of the unknown is natural, and it would be very easy for some suit to screw things up. But I can't imagine Adam is going to let anything happen to his baby.

One thing we have on our side is this forum. Whoever purchases Curse will have full access and incentive to see what the community's concerns are. And with Fandom being considerably smaller than freaking Amazon, it's a much smaller chain to the top. Bezos may not have even known what DDB is or does, but whoever runs Fandom will probably have less people to whom they can mitigate that responsibility.

Not a fan of Fandom. I'd call myself the opposite of a fan of Fandom. Fingers crossed on this one being set up in silos where D&D Beyond can just close the door and do their thing.

Looking forward to what this means for the site & product. Concerned about retaining key staff who have a) a passion for the product and b) history on the project.

Ultimately the users can go back to PnP easily enough.

Hoping for the best, will be watching for updates. Good luck to all involved.

Thanks for the post and addressing it on today’s dev update Adam!

As I said above, the only thing to expect is for the team to put a positive spin on things and assure us things can only get better. When has an acquired company ever said anything other than that?

So far, this team has done us right, so I for one will stay positive and continue using and enjoying the product. Am I nervous about it going downhill, sure. But until that happens I’m not going to waste my emotions on it. I see so many people stress about ‘what if this happens?’ that they don’t get as much enjoyment from what’s in front of them or what they currently have.

Me, I plan on enjoying the great thing they have created and are constantly improving. 

I think it's a bit disingenuous and honestly a little bit rude to assume that anyone fearing this change isn't enjoying the product. On the contrary, we are fearful because we genuinely love the product and don't want to see it change for the worse. I and probably many others have legitimate concerns with Fandom based on their other products/websites. We love DND Beyond too you know? And I feel like we are allowed to express our concerns when we see something bad happening as loyal customers. That's how all of this works. 

With that said, I definitely appreciate the responses from Adam both in the Reddit thread and here. I'll also try to catch the dev update later. Once again, I appreciate everyone on the DND Beyond team and will try to remain hopeful. I really do wish you all, and the entire DND community the best.

Quote from BadEye >>

Hey folks!

Dropping in to share that nothing is changing for D&D Beyond except we will have more resources at our disposal to do bigger and better things.

I popped into a Reddit thread last night and shared some more information if you want to check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/a5p5e0/fandom_formerly_known_as_wikia_just_bought_curse/

And then I'll be talking about this and answering questions during today's dev update if you can join me.

The short story is this is great news for DDB and the D&D community - I genuinely couldn't be more excited!

Thank you for the clarification. I'm hopeful, but forgive me for being skeptical.

I am really sad about this. To date there hasn't been anything positive that has come from Fandom. Pretty much everything they touch gets worse in some way, be it ads or bloat or terrible performance (all 3?). I have come to really love ddb and the thought that the single best online resource for D&D is now owned by Fandom of all places fills me with dread and loathing. I had such high hopes for the future of ddb, now that has turned into anticipation of a slow and gradual decline.

I really hope I am proven wrong and things continue to get better but I'm not expecting that to be the likely outcome.

Quote from Seath >>

I think it's a bit disingenuous and honestly a little bit rude to assume that anyone fearing this change isn't enjoying the product. On the contrary, we are fearful because we genuinely love the product and don't want to see it change for the worse. I and probably many others have legitimate concerns with Fandom based on their other products/websites. We love DND Beyond too you know? And I feel like we are allowed to express our concerns when we see something bad happening as loyal customers. That's how all of this works. 

I think you were missing my point.

What has actually changed on DDB that has you fearful? Honestly, I don’t like some of Amazon’s business practices, but that never bled over into my DDB experience or enjoyment. 

Quote from Crissair >>

What has actually changed on DDB that has you fearful? Honestly, I don’t like some of Amazon’s business practices, but that never bled over into my DDB experience or enjoyment. 

One of the key buy-in points for me was the Amazon > Twitch > Curse > DDB lineage as there was a measure of stability and security and longevity in being associated with such a large corporate chain. Fandom doesn't have any of that, which now makes the concerns of people who worried about how long DDB will be around, and thus how much return on their investment they'll see, quite a bit more legitimate.