I generally think people knew they were buying playtest content and if they didn't it wasn't for lack of communication on the part of WOTC or DNDBeyond. Personally, I saw that Wayfinder's was playtest content and decided to wait until it was done playtesting before I bought it. You'll still get something out of the book. Buying The new ebberon book will have some new stuff though there will apparently be at least some overlap (which isn't the first time books have had overlap). Either way, it seems as though you're getting pretty upset over this. You'll get the updated Artificer. You just won't get the new subclasses unlocked on DNDBeyond. If you still want to play as one of them, you still can. This stuff has been on unearthed arcana for forever. There will likely be changes, but you can find the differences online. If you really want to unlock the subclasses on here, I'm sure you can buy them individually. You probably only need the one you're playing so you're looking at what... $2?
I do understand the frustration with the artificer in Wayfinders only including one subclass. While technically WOTC never promised a given number of subclasses, only that Wayfinders would include the artificer, I absolutely understand how people feel misled/lied to about that particular issue. At least if one purchases the resources here, adding the additional subclasses—as Kendis mentions above—is possible without buying all of Rising.
What people are frustrated about, and what I completely understand, is that once November 19th hits, there would be no reason to purchase and/or own Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron. Rising from the Last War contains everything that WGtE does, as well as a plethora of additional content. There is nothing unique to Wayfarer's Guide, no reason to have spent thirty dollars on that book beyond what amounts to Early Access, and this is something Wizards of the Coast stated would not be the case. They stated that the Wayfarer's Guide would continue to have value after the release of any future Eberron books and that customers who opted to purchase it would not regret that decision when Wizards released updated books.
This appears to be directly contradicted by the information we have available, in which WGtE has about half a dozen checkmarks, while RftLW contains every single one of those checkmarks and another half-dozen or so besides. There is no content in Wayfarer's Guide that is not being reprinted in RftLW, and anyone who waited on the Wayfarer's Guide to be a bit more stable now gets to reap the benefit of buying the real Eberron book without having had to fund the public playtest a'la people who bought the Wayfarer's Guide.
This is very real and understandable frustration. I did not buy WGtE, but I'd considered doing so more than once, and one of my playgroup did buy it. I imagine that once he finds out he needs to obtain RftLW to get the actual Eberron book, which will encompass everything they put into WGtE and a great deal more besides, he's gonna feel some kind of way about that. Whether or not WGtE allows one a 'complete' Eberron gaming experience is irrelevant, really.
I'm glad I didn't buy the Wayfarer's Guide now. I shouldn't be glad of that. I should still be wondering if WGtE is worth purchasing even though I fully intend to acquire Rising, but I don't wonder that at all. Which is a sign that Wizards screwed up
There was a video linked earlier in this thread which showed a splash page showing "Contents of WGtE and E:RftLW". It showed a list of defining features of Eberron, including warforged, artificer, Dragonmarks, and the like, as well as a list of other useful things. WGtE had a bit less than half the list checked; E:RftLW had the entire list checked.
If Rising is a campaign setting and not an adventure book, there's no way they even can ship it without also shipping everything that went into the Wayfarer's Guide, because Rising will need to be a complete and standalone campaign setting. This means Wayfarer's Guide, which was also supposed to be a complete and standalone campaign setting, is left in the dust with half an artificer, no goblinoids, and about a third of the mechanical bits they're including in Rising. And absolutely nothing that isn't in Rising because WGtE fluff is Eberron fluff that is required to make a campaign setting book.
Seems a bit of a raw deal for Wayfarer's Guide purchasers, ne?
This means Wayfarer's Guide, which was also supposed to be a complete and standalone campaign setting, is left in the dust with half an artificer, no goblinoids, and about a third of the mechanical bits they're including in Rising.
Wayfarer's Guide was never meant to be a complete guide to all things Eberron though. If it was, why is Sharn the only city that has a chapter dedicated to it?
Then why did anyone buy WGtE in the first place, if everyone was supposed to actively expect it to be superseded and rendered obsolete by a more complete book?
That's the rub - not that Rising contains new content, but that WGtE does not contain anything you don't otherwise get in Rising, and thus the thirty dollars people blew on Wayfarer's Guide was a complete waste of money.
Really it's going to come down to what's in Rising before I'll know exactly how I feel about it. It's true that I can just purchase the missing sub-classes on their own. But the point is that I already paid money for them. Or I thought I had, anyway. I was told that I had. So the fact that I can kick in a few more dollars to get them is kind of besides the point.
Hell, even if the new book covers everything in Wayfinder's to the letter, and then adds more, I wouldn't be upset about that. I'm more perturbed that something I was given the impression would be included is now not going to be included.
It's not the end of the world. At my most generous I'm willing to accept that what likely happened was that they figured they'd kick out Wayfinder's and see how big of a splash it made and use that data to determine if there was enough money in it to work out a full hardback. But kicking that out meant they needed to sink at least a little money in to it. You gotta make that money back somehow. When Wayfinder's did gangbusters they really put time in to putting out a hardback and certain things got moved around.
But there's that part of me that knows that the development pipeline on content at WotC is years long and that if this were the case, we wouldn't be getting the full shebang until probably another year from now. So in all likelihood, Rising was in development mostly in parallel to Wayfinder's, and someone thought that this might be a good time to try out a new style of monetization.
If WotC had come out and said that Wayfinder's was just an alpha of Rising and that if you plopped $20 now to get $20 off the final product I would have done it without even needing a timeline. Buuuuut that's not what happened and now we're in a world of speculation about what is or isn't going to be real come November.
Now, there is the consideration here at DDB that since I already "own" all the races and all the crunchy bits that are likely to be included in Rising, then I should presumably be getting a defacto discount on what I've already paid for. If that amount even approaches the money necessary to cover adding the other Artificer sub-classes, I'll be okay. I'll still be wary about the next time WotC comes out with a "living document", but I'll be a mostly happy camper.
(I was never under the impression that Wayfinder's would or should get me a 1:1 discount on a hypothetical future Eberron book. But the marketing did make it seem like there would be very minimal overlap if they did print something in the future. And Mearls himself gave the guarantee that Artificer would be included in Wayfinder's.)
But if that discount doesn't materialize, I will be decidedly unhappy. And if I had bought a PDF or whatever from DMsGuild or some other vendor that doesn't have the monetization structure that DDB has, I would also be decidedly unhappy.
Not so unhappy to say that WotC is a bunch of slimy snakes or anything. (Though I would start to suspect.) No more than any other capitalist venture anyway. But unhappy enough to grumble about it in a forum, certainly.
It's just shady. It wouldn't have been a big deal if they weren't called out early about this exact scenario and they had to come up with partial truths to sell it.
I think the point being made is that The Wayfinder's Guide is looking to be a complete subset of the new book, containing nothing that's unique to it. This is something that was specifically asked about; something which we were assured would not be the case.
Literally no one ever said the Wayfinder’s Guide would contain rules or mechanics that wouldn’t be in any other Eberron book. Wizards always acknowledged that there would be a lot of overlap, but that the setting content and fluff would diversify it from other products. That hasn’t changed. Nothing is being removed from the Wayfinder’s Guide. In fact, the artificer is being [i]added[/i] to it. Everyone who bought it is getting exactly what they always knew they’d get. That a second book also contains additional stuff doesn’t change that.
D&D Beyond makes it easy to buy just the additional mechanics if you don’t care about the fluff. And if you DO want the fluff, that’s different between the two books, so... really not sure what anyone could possibly have to complain about.
No they literally said we wouldn't have to buy a new book.
I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong, but I don't think you HAVE to buy anything....
The end point is that: This exact scenario was asked about, and answered. Will there be a "New and Improved" hardcover that we have to purchase in addition? The Creative director said : NO. I don't think anyone was reasonably expecting to get a free copy of a hardcover book. However I do think it was entirely reasonable to expect that a Purchased product in development would be updated for the people who purchased it upon finalization. Since that's what was being said at the time.
I am honestly baffled by this. Everything promised is in or will be added to WGtE. Some stuff will be changed in Rising, and owners of WGtE will get those changes.
The fact that there’s another book that also contains a lot of the content (and specifically all of the character options) from WGtE doesn’t really change what was on offer in WGtE. No one HAS to buy Rising. And thanks to D&D Beyond’s a la carte purchase options, we are free to buy only the options in Rising that we don’t already own.
Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron was hyped as a 'Living Document', a new type of book you could buy as part of a special experiment that would be continually updated and relevant to running Eberron campaigns. They said you wouldn't need to get new books, that the Wayfarer's Guide would be everything you needed and would retain its value going forward. Essentially, they promised that Wayfarer's Guide would continue to be a valid, useful book for you.
Now they're releasing a new book which is, essentially, the Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron except it also has a bunch of extra content you DON'T get, and never will without kicking out an extra thirty/fifty dollars. The 'Living Document' is dead, everything in it has been superseded by the new Definitive Eberron Book(C). Someone who obtained Wayfarer's Guide has absolutely nothing to show for their extra thirty dollars over someone who waited and obtains Rising from the Last War, instead.
Yes, you can still run an Eberron game out of the Wayfarer's Guide and you're not "losing" anything you bought, but you were in fact bait-and-switched because the Wayfarer's Guide is no longer "the Eberron Book". It's an experiment Wizards/DDB has decided to abandon in exchange for kicking out yet another Big New Shiny hardcover, which they fully expect anyone who bought the Wayfarer's Guide to also buy because the Wayfarer's Guide is no longer a 'real' D&D book.
It's really unpleasant, and it means that Wizards' buy-in for any future 'Living Documents' is going to be drastically reduced. Because now we know - the 'Living Document' is only alive until such time as they get around to printing the actual Official Book, and then the 'Living Document' is quietly terminated and shuffled off into an unmarked grave because it's not as profitable as a big, shiny New Release.
TL;DR: you can spend thirty dollars on Rising from the Last War in two months, or you can spend thirty dollars on Rising and thirty dollars on Wayfarer's. The end result will be exactly identical, except in one case you wasted thirty bucks on a stunted Mini-Me clone of the better book that gives you absolutely nothing the Better Book doesn't.
Wayfinders Guide was never a 'real' D&D book. It was never an official document nor was it ever AL legal content. It was literally paying for playtest content that would be updated as things progressed.
Taken from the purchase page here on DNDBeyond:
The game mechanics here are usable in your campaign, but at this time they aren’t officially part of the game and aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events. These mechanics will evolve based on player feedback. This is a living document, and as these concepts are refined, this book will also be updated for free; so you will be kept up to date with any changes that are made to it.
And from the DM guild purchase page:
Playtest material includes the unique races of Eberron, the mystical dragonmarks (including greater dragonmarks and aberrant dragonmarks), and new magic items; this is a living document, and this content will evolve and be updated in response to feedback.
No where does this say that there won't be additional Eberron releases in the future or that Wayfinder's will contain all future Eberron content. I'm sorry if you felt misled but in reality every vendor of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron (that I know of) was pretty transparent.
Heh. Well, the question I pose to everyone who tells me that it's absolutely, perfectly fine for Wizards to release Rising with the entirety of Wayfarer's reprinted into it is this one, then.
"Do you think it should be allowed for Wizards to continue selling Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron after Rising goes live?"
If the answer is "no, Rising has all the same stuff, they shouldn't be able to make you pay for it twice", or "no, Wayfarer was just a public playtest, they should stop selling it when Rising goes live"...
Then why was it okay for them to sell the Wayfarer's Guide in the first place?
If the answer is "sure. They're different books", then tell me - in what way are they different books, and what value does the Wayfarer's Guide have when Rising has every single pixel of every single word of the same content, significantly more content besides, available for the exact same price?
Continual updates were never promised for Wayfinder's. What was promised was that the character options present in Wayfinder's would be updated as playtesting continued, and that the Artificer class would be added to it when it was ready. Both of those promises have been or will be kept. The fact that Wayfinder's was so successful is the reason Rising is being made; it's not some evil scheme.
Wayfinder's Guide is cheaper than Rising. Wayfinder's Guide is $20, while Rising is $50, or $30 through DDB, so it continues to be good value for people only interested in character options.
It's also been stated that not everything in Wayfinder's will be in Rising.
If you feel cheated, that's your prerogative, but don't muddy the waters with incorrect information.
Continual updates were never promised for Wayfinder's. What was promised was that the character options present in Wayfinder's would be updated as playtesting continued, and that the Artificer class would be added to it when it was ready. Both of those promises have been or will be kept. The fact that Wayfinder's was so successful is the reason Rising is being made; it's not some evil scheme.
Wayfinder's Guide is cheaper than Rising. Wayfinder's Guide is $20, while Rising is $50, or $30 through DDB, so it continues to be good value for people only interested in character options.
It's also been stated that not everything in Wayfinder's will be in Rising.
If you feel cheated, that's your prerogative, but don't muddy the waters with incorrect information.
You left out the promise that it would be worthwhile to own both of them.
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I generally think people knew they were buying playtest content and if they didn't it wasn't for lack of communication on the part of WOTC or DNDBeyond. Personally, I saw that Wayfinder's was playtest content and decided to wait until it was done playtesting before I bought it. You'll still get something out of the book. Buying The new ebberon book will have some new stuff though there will apparently be at least some overlap (which isn't the first time books have had overlap). Either way, it seems as though you're getting pretty upset over this. You'll get the updated Artificer. You just won't get the new subclasses unlocked on DNDBeyond. If you still want to play as one of them, you still can. This stuff has been on unearthed arcana for forever. There will likely be changes, but you can find the differences online. If you really want to unlock the subclasses on here, I'm sure you can buy them individually. You probably only need the one you're playing so you're looking at what... $2?
I do understand the frustration with the artificer in Wayfinders only including one subclass. While technically WOTC never promised a given number of subclasses, only that Wayfinders would include the artificer, I absolutely understand how people feel misled/lied to about that particular issue. At least if one purchases the resources here, adding the additional subclasses—as Kendis mentions above—is possible without buying all of Rising.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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What people are frustrated about, and what I completely understand, is that once November 19th hits, there would be no reason to purchase and/or own Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron. Rising from the Last War contains everything that WGtE does, as well as a plethora of additional content. There is nothing unique to Wayfarer's Guide, no reason to have spent thirty dollars on that book beyond what amounts to Early Access, and this is something Wizards of the Coast stated would not be the case. They stated that the Wayfarer's Guide would continue to have value after the release of any future Eberron books and that customers who opted to purchase it would not regret that decision when Wizards released updated books.
This appears to be directly contradicted by the information we have available, in which WGtE has about half a dozen checkmarks, while RftLW contains every single one of those checkmarks and another half-dozen or so besides. There is no content in Wayfarer's Guide that is not being reprinted in RftLW, and anyone who waited on the Wayfarer's Guide to be a bit more stable now gets to reap the benefit of buying the real Eberron book without having had to fund the public playtest a'la people who bought the Wayfarer's Guide.
This is very real and understandable frustration. I did not buy WGtE, but I'd considered doing so more than once, and one of my playgroup did buy it. I imagine that once he finds out he needs to obtain RftLW to get the actual Eberron book, which will encompass everything they put into WGtE and a great deal more besides, he's gonna feel some kind of way about that. Whether or not WGtE allows one a 'complete' Eberron gaming experience is irrelevant, really.
I'm glad I didn't buy the Wayfarer's Guide now. I shouldn't be glad of that. I should still be wondering if WGtE is worth purchasing even though I fully intend to acquire Rising, but I don't wonder that at all. Which is a sign that Wizards screwed up
Please do not contact or message me.
There are you getting the information about the complete contents of the new book?
There was a video linked earlier in this thread which showed a splash page showing "Contents of WGtE and E:RftLW". It showed a list of defining features of Eberron, including warforged, artificer, Dragonmarks, and the like, as well as a list of other useful things. WGtE had a bit less than half the list checked; E:RftLW had the entire list checked.
If Rising is a campaign setting and not an adventure book, there's no way they even can ship it without also shipping everything that went into the Wayfarer's Guide, because Rising will need to be a complete and standalone campaign setting. This means Wayfarer's Guide, which was also supposed to be a complete and standalone campaign setting, is left in the dust with half an artificer, no goblinoids, and about a third of the mechanical bits they're including in Rising. And absolutely nothing that isn't in Rising because WGtE fluff is Eberron fluff that is required to make a campaign setting book.
Seems a bit of a raw deal for Wayfarer's Guide purchasers, ne?
Please do not contact or message me.
Wayfarer's Guide was never meant to be a complete guide to all things Eberron though. If it was, why is Sharn the only city that has a chapter dedicated to it?
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Then why did anyone buy WGtE in the first place, if everyone was supposed to actively expect it to be superseded and rendered obsolete by a more complete book?
That's the rub - not that Rising contains new content, but that WGtE does not contain anything you don't otherwise get in Rising, and thus the thirty dollars people blew on Wayfarer's Guide was a complete waste of money.
Please do not contact or message me.
Really it's going to come down to what's in Rising before I'll know exactly how I feel about it. It's true that I can just purchase the missing sub-classes on their own. But the point is that I already paid money for them. Or I thought I had, anyway. I was told that I had. So the fact that I can kick in a few more dollars to get them is kind of besides the point.
Hell, even if the new book covers everything in Wayfinder's to the letter, and then adds more, I wouldn't be upset about that. I'm more perturbed that something I was given the impression would be included is now not going to be included.
It's not the end of the world. At my most generous I'm willing to accept that what likely happened was that they figured they'd kick out Wayfinder's and see how big of a splash it made and use that data to determine if there was enough money in it to work out a full hardback. But kicking that out meant they needed to sink at least a little money in to it. You gotta make that money back somehow. When Wayfinder's did gangbusters they really put time in to putting out a hardback and certain things got moved around.
But there's that part of me that knows that the development pipeline on content at WotC is years long and that if this were the case, we wouldn't be getting the full shebang until probably another year from now. So in all likelihood, Rising was in development mostly in parallel to Wayfinder's, and someone thought that this might be a good time to try out a new style of monetization.
If WotC had come out and said that Wayfinder's was just an alpha of Rising and that if you plopped $20 now to get $20 off the final product I would have done it without even needing a timeline. Buuuuut that's not what happened and now we're in a world of speculation about what is or isn't going to be real come November.
Now, there is the consideration here at DDB that since I already "own" all the races and all the crunchy bits that are likely to be included in Rising, then I should presumably be getting a defacto discount on what I've already paid for. If that amount even approaches the money necessary to cover adding the other Artificer sub-classes, I'll be okay. I'll still be wary about the next time WotC comes out with a "living document", but I'll be a mostly happy camper.
(I was never under the impression that Wayfinder's would or should get me a 1:1 discount on a hypothetical future Eberron book. But the marketing did make it seem like there would be very minimal overlap if they did print something in the future. And Mearls himself gave the guarantee that Artificer would be included in Wayfinder's.)
But if that discount doesn't materialize, I will be decidedly unhappy. And if I had bought a PDF or whatever from DMsGuild or some other vendor that doesn't have the monetization structure that DDB has, I would also be decidedly unhappy.
Not so unhappy to say that WotC is a bunch of slimy snakes or anything. (Though I would start to suspect.) No more than any other capitalist venture anyway. But unhappy enough to grumble about it in a forum, certainly.
It's just shady. It wouldn't have been a big deal if they weren't called out early about this exact scenario and they had to come up with partial truths to sell it.
I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong, but I don't think you HAVE to buy anything....
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If they want the updates to say all the artificer subclasses, they have to. (Or steal it I suppose).
The end point is that: This exact scenario was asked about, and answered. Will there be a "New and Improved" hardcover that we have to purchase in addition? The Creative director said : NO. I don't think anyone was reasonably expecting to get a free copy of a hardcover book. However I do think it was entirely reasonable to expect that a Purchased product in development would be updated for the people who purchased it upon finalization. Since that's what was being said at the time.
Is there any content currently in the e-book that will go unupdated (not counting any new content not found in it currently)?
The only stuff that won't receive an update in WGTE is:
Anything that appears in an updated form in Last War will be updated in WGTE
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I am honestly baffled by this. Everything promised is in or will be added to WGtE. Some stuff will be changed in Rising, and owners of WGtE will get those changes.
The fact that there’s another book that also contains a lot of the content (and specifically all of the character options) from WGtE doesn’t really change what was on offer in WGtE. No one HAS to buy Rising. And thanks to D&D Beyond’s a la carte purchase options, we are free to buy only the options in Rising that we don’t already own.
Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron was hyped as a 'Living Document', a new type of book you could buy as part of a special experiment that would be continually updated and relevant to running Eberron campaigns. They said you wouldn't need to get new books, that the Wayfarer's Guide would be everything you needed and would retain its value going forward. Essentially, they promised that Wayfarer's Guide would continue to be a valid, useful book for you.
Now they're releasing a new book which is, essentially, the Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron except it also has a bunch of extra content you DON'T get, and never will without kicking out an extra thirty/fifty dollars. The 'Living Document' is dead, everything in it has been superseded by the new Definitive Eberron Book(C). Someone who obtained Wayfarer's Guide has absolutely nothing to show for their extra thirty dollars over someone who waited and obtains Rising from the Last War, instead.
Yes, you can still run an Eberron game out of the Wayfarer's Guide and you're not "losing" anything you bought, but you were in fact bait-and-switched because the Wayfarer's Guide is no longer "the Eberron Book". It's an experiment Wizards/DDB has decided to abandon in exchange for kicking out yet another Big New Shiny hardcover, which they fully expect anyone who bought the Wayfarer's Guide to also buy because the Wayfarer's Guide is no longer a 'real' D&D book.
It's really unpleasant, and it means that Wizards' buy-in for any future 'Living Documents' is going to be drastically reduced. Because now we know - the 'Living Document' is only alive until such time as they get around to printing the actual Official Book, and then the 'Living Document' is quietly terminated and shuffled off into an unmarked grave because it's not as profitable as a big, shiny New Release.
TL;DR: you can spend thirty dollars on Rising from the Last War in two months, or you can spend thirty dollars on Rising and thirty dollars on Wayfarer's. The end result will be exactly identical, except in one case you wasted thirty bucks on a stunted Mini-Me clone of the better book that gives you absolutely nothing the Better Book doesn't.
Please do not contact or message me.
Wayfinders Guide was never a 'real' D&D book. It was never an official document nor was it ever AL legal content. It was literally paying for playtest content that would be updated as things progressed.
Taken from the purchase page here on DNDBeyond:
And from the DM guild purchase page:
No where does this say that there won't be additional Eberron releases in the future or that Wayfinder's will contain all future Eberron content. I'm sorry if you felt misled but in reality every vendor of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron (that I know of) was pretty transparent.
Heh. Well, the question I pose to everyone who tells me that it's absolutely, perfectly fine for Wizards to release Rising with the entirety of Wayfarer's reprinted into it is this one, then.
"Do you think it should be allowed for Wizards to continue selling Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron after Rising goes live?"
If the answer is "no, Rising has all the same stuff, they shouldn't be able to make you pay for it twice", or "no, Wayfarer was just a public playtest, they should stop selling it when Rising goes live"...
Then why was it okay for them to sell the Wayfarer's Guide in the first place?
If the answer is "sure. They're different books", then tell me - in what way are they different books, and what value does the Wayfarer's Guide have when Rising has every single pixel of every single word of the same content, significantly more content besides, available for the exact same price?
Please do not contact or message me.
Continual updates were never promised for Wayfinder's. What was promised was that the character options present in Wayfinder's would be updated as playtesting continued, and that the Artificer class would be added to it when it was ready. Both of those promises have been or will be kept. The fact that Wayfinder's was so successful is the reason Rising is being made; it's not some evil scheme.
Wayfinder's Guide is cheaper than Rising. Wayfinder's Guide is $20, while Rising is $50, or $30 through DDB, so it continues to be good value for people only interested in character options.
It's also been stated that not everything in Wayfinder's will be in Rising.
If you feel cheated, that's your prerogative, but don't muddy the waters with incorrect information.
You left out the promise that it would be worthwhile to own both of them.