I understand Wotc doesn’t have to tell us anything until it’s ready. But it does seem to be taking a while now for a new road map for official D&D content. It’s a bit disheartening.
You would have thought they could say sorry everyone we have nothing to announce just yet. We are working on a new source book & setting Book and an adventure. We want to make sure it’s the best experience so please bear with us while we work to make d&d what it should be….. but not even that….
Yeah, i get ya, it used to bother me as well. They have been silent long enough that i am not sure i would care if they broke their silence. They have also made getting things that I want to use so hard to get in in the way I would use it, that even if it is something I wanted, I know I can't get it without too many strings attached.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
It is odd. The only explanation that's really holding with me at the moment is that they're switching announcement models so that they're announcing very shortly before release to avoid what has become inevitable disappointment.
The change in leadership did hold weight previously, but it's getting rather close to the first expected release window. I'd have thought that they'd rush announcements through if they were just waiting for the new leadership.
Now I've said that, they'll probably release the schedule tomorrow lol
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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.
Probably a lesson they learned from the Eberron release. Make sure they’re books are ready to go and won’t have to push back the release because the cover warps after a few weeks
Probably a lesson they learned from the Eberron release. Make sure they’re books are ready to go and won’t have to push back the release because the cover warps after a few weeks
That doesn't logically line up as that only applies to books that have been written, published, and are sitting in a warehouse. That doesn't affect announcing anything that isn't yet even ink on paper.
Funny. I thought people disliked artificial hype trains...now people want one?
Jokes aside, I'd not go straight into conspiracy theories, & examine the facts:
-Leadership & creatives have changed -Hasbro shareholders treat Dungeons & Dragons as bad to mention during meetings -The last 7 UAs got some very unpleasant, unsupportive feedback -OGLgate & The Pinkertons incident are still on the TTRPG community's minds -Sigil's Failure -Magic:The Gathering is in the middle of a legal debacle that's eating at WotC's funding -Eberron:Forge of the Artificer debacle -The Pugilist backlash -Beyond being the victim of all of the above -The debacle over discount stacking -K-ID -Hasbto shilling for the moldy TERF Wizard franchise(It's not coming to M:TG, but it still could come to DND) etc. So them not having a big announcement is FAR more understandable. ESPECIALLY with the Magic:The Gathering lawsuit & Hasbro infecting itself with TERF mold. DND WILL die off if the moldy TERF Wizard franchise infests DND. HINT HINT.
Funny. I thought people disliked artificial hype trains...now people want one?
Jokes aside, I'd not go straight into conspiracy theories, & examine the facts:
-Leadership & creatives have changed -Hasbro shareholders treat Dungeons & Dragons as bad to mention during meetings -The last 7 UAs got some very unpleasant, unsupportive feedback -OGLgate & The Pinkertons incident are still on the TTRPG community's minds -Sigil's Failure -Magic:The Gathering is in the middle of a legal debacle that's eating at WotC's funding -Eberron:Forge of the Artificer debacle -The Pugilist backlash -Beyond being the victim of all of the above -The debacle over discount stacking -K-ID -Hasbto shilling for the moldy TERF Wizard franchise(It's not coming to M:TG, but it still could come to DND) etc. So them not having a big announcement is FAR more understandable. ESPECIALLY with the Magic:The Gathering lawsuit & Hasbro infecting itself with TERF mold. DND WILL die off if the moldy TERF Wizard franchise infests DND. HINT HINT.
Eh, the community at large barely cared about the OGL. Once again, note that the survey they did over it got a fraction of the responses playtest did. I rather doubt the Pinkertons have any more staying power outside of the segments actively looking for talking points to use. This is the first time I've heard anyone bring up Sigil in months as well, and the age verification flamed out like in like two weeks since it largely only mattered for forum users. And Pugilist isn't really a larger WotC issue- that stuff is finding a 3PP that has some interest and an owner open to licensing and then formatting webpages for it- it's not eating into much if any of the development time used for actual in-house products.
DND doesn’t usually put IP based stuff in the game (LotR 5e not withstanding) so I wouldn’t worry about that coming here. Plus why put TERF school when they already have a perfectly good Strixhaven
DND doesn’t usually put IP based stuff in the game (LotR 5e not withstanding) so I wouldn’t worry about that coming here. Plus why put TERF school when they already have a perfectly good Strixhaven
It's also an idea without much in the way of upsides. People who dislike moldy TERF wizard are going to be mad because, well, moldy TERF wizard. People who are fans of the IP are going to be mad because D&D's rules for magic are radically different and can't translate moldy TERF magic well into the Vancian spell system.
The change in leadership did hold weight previously, but it's getting rather close to the first expected release window. I'd have thought that they'd rush announcements through if they were just waiting for the new leadership.
I am honestly wondering if there are rewrites now that the new leadership is established. Not exactly uncommon for mew leadership to come in, look at a product, and say “wow, we do not want this to be our first release under our name - let’s make some changes.”
I think the next UA in rotation is the Horror subclass one - and they did just hire a few folks with backgrounds in writing horror content, often with a different spin than the generic horror Wizards tends to lean into. If ever there was a product where “I think we might do better” could come into play, I think it might be something horror themed and with the team they have been building.
Or it could just be a disaster over there due to the transition. Hoping it is more in line with the former!
The change in leadership did hold weight previously, but it's getting rather close to the first expected release window. I'd have thought that they'd rush announcements through if they were just waiting for the new leadership.
I am honestly wondering if there are rewrites now that the new leadership is established. Not exactly uncommon for mew leadership to come in, look at a product, and say “wow, we do not want this to be our first release under our name - let’s make some changes.”
I think the next UA in rotation is the Horror subclass one - and they did just hire a few folks with backgrounds in writing horror content, often with a different spin than the generic horror Wizards tends to lean into. If ever there was a product where “I think we might do better” could come into play, I think it might be something horror themed and with the team they have been building.
Or it could just be a disaster over there due to the transition. Hoping it is more in line with the former!
Given that almost every high profile new starter they've hired either worked directly for or freelanced at some point for Ghostfire Gaming, a company that specialises in horror and grim dark settings, I think you're probably not far off on the horror book
I think they are probably assessing the adoption rate of the 2024.
Historically, the way it's always worked in D&D is that at the start of a new edition cycle, there is a huge boom, the market shifts to D&D again, and people buy up everything on offer. Systematically, as an edition gets older, every new book released sells less than the previous one. This has more or less remained true for 5e with a few exceptions.
The unanticipated problem I think this new leadership is facing is that the 2024 edition did not have the "new edition" boom and books released for it may see sales closer to "end of cycle books", rather than "new cycle" books.
They are going to have to do something a lot more exciting than simply launching some new adventures or adding some sub-classes in some splash book. I don't think that is going to create the same response you might have gotten if 2024 edition of D&D was an actual new D&D. There was a lot released for 5e already so now they are effectively competing against existing content, both that they have published and the countless 3rd party publishers.
Even the core books were competing; I mean, the sentiment for example, about the monster book is that "Flee Mortals" is a far superior monster book to the official monster manual. Do you get the new Heroes of the Borderland starter set for 50 bucks, or just keep using the now basically famous and beloved MoP start kit? And if you already have one or more of the 2014 starter kits, why would you buy one of the 2024 ones? Why buy another Forgotten Realms book if you already own the one that was previously released?
The editions are not different enough that players suffer FOMO in the same way they would if the edition were actually a new game. For the consumer, this is a good thing, your old books are still good, but thats not a great thing if you're a publisher.
We'll see how they handle it, but I suspect this new leadership is recognizing they need to step up their game and that may be the cause of the delay, which I think is a good sign. The question is, how do you release something for a 10+ year old game and give players the feeling of novelty? New is exciting, but there is context there. If by new you mean "another Paladin sub-class" for a game that already has hundreds of them published... is not nearly as exciting as a new sub-class for a new system.
Every player right now that plays 5e and has a ton of books on their shelf is having the same internal dialogue when a new product is released for 5e. Do I need this? For example.. Heroes of the Borderlands? Do I need another starter set for 5e? I already have 2. Not to mention that I picked up the Goodman Games 5e interpretation of Keep on the Borderlands..?
You wouldn't have that conversation if D&D got an actual new edition of the game. Because then your craving new books and pretty much anything can be exciting... I mean, imagine we are in 6th edition era, you have an entirely new mechanic and the new starter kit for this entirely new game is a take on Keep on the Borderlands.... I promise you.. Everyone is buying that. In the same way that every player who owns 5e, has a MoP starter on their shelf. It's not even a question... You buy all the new stuff.. at that point its just FOMO driving the entire thing. But in the current 5e state. Yeah.. something new for 5e... has to be pretty bloody fresh and novel.
So far everything they have announced/released is kind of .. meh... Another Artificer for Eberron? I literally have like 4 versions in my folder already. More Forgotten Realms stuff? meh....Another Stranger Things starter set... already got one.
It's all very .. meh... Might be interesting if I didn't already have most of this stuff in some previous variant for 5e.
Even the core books were competing; I mean, the sentiment for example, about the monster book is that "Flee Mortals" is a far superior monster book to the official monster manual.
I expect there is pretty strong data to support that 2024 was widely adopted, but I think this particular line in your post does hit a bit of a nail on the head. Where a lot of the species and class changes of 2024 were clearly designed to fix longstanding 2014 problems, and then extensively play tested by the community until they received high approval ratings, the monsters just kind of came out. Sure, there were some changes to how CR was calculated (which, sidebar: D&D Beyond could not even be bothered with adding to their encounter builder), and some monsters got some improvements, we do not get anything drastically different, and got essentially more of the same. Perkins and Crawford warned us for years that D&D would become a bit stale if they remained in charge - the monster manual sort of feels like where that happened.
The new team they are putting together has some folks who have worked on third party content with some really great monster design - more powerful than official content (particularly at high levels where CR breaks down), and often with more interesting abilities than official content provides. I am kind of hoping that you might have some point in this theory and that one of the core places the new team seeks to set itself apart is on monster design.
(Sidebar 2: It amuses me how well Flee Mortals! consistently is reviewed, considering all it really doses is port over 4e monster design to 5e. Probably the single greatest example of where Wizards should have learned from 4e’s strengths when making 5e, rather than run from the 4e experiment entirely).
I highly doubt this is having any real effect on product release. For starters, the current lawsuit is focused almost exclusively on Magic, so there is likely no impact on D&D’s development team. There might be some impact on the marketing teams and higher level executives, but a lot of that kind of disruption is going to be busywork and document review that can be dumped on a couple of people, leaving the organization as a whole capable of still functioning.
Frankly, it also seems like a stupid lawsuit to begin with - though even stupid lawsuits must be answered.
Regarding your third point, considering how many game developers they have hired in the past three months. I think it is safe to say they are not giving up on first party content. It is not like they are hiring game developers to do, say, marketing.
WoTC has gotten so much flack for early release announcements then changes, or their campaigns for preorders - that I am not shocked they are not trying to drive hype 6 months out.
The biggest thing is probably the leadership change, they'll want to check in on their wants and goals for the D&D books before they finalize a release schedule. There might also be partnerships in the works that might mean changing how things are release (Like how the next UA is horror, but like it is out of season for horror to be released).
The only news I have heard is they might be dealing with Transphobic mold crone for licensing her derivative wizard school franchise that she uses to fund trying to kill my friends with.
I really hope that rumor turns out to be wrong.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
I expect there is pretty strong data to support that 2024 was widely adopted.
I don't doubt their sales of the core books, but sales and adoption are not the same thing. You can't know if you are going to like the updates to your favorite game until you buy it and try it. I mean, I know that there are a lot of "seers" out there, but I think most consumers are quite reasonable people. 4e books also sold like hot cakes, but ultimately the adoption flatlined very quickly.
There are a few benchmarks for knowing if your adoption rate is good or not, sales of follow-up books, sales of starter sets but I think the biggest, most telling one is social media coverage. You can gauge the popularity of something based on how much YouTube content there is. The thing about 2024 edition isn't even that the sentiment about the game is kind of meh, but that the coverage is really low. Many of the old channels that had previously been either exclusively or mostly 5e don't even cover it at all, and the few that are still around aren't aren't producing much.
I mean, do a search of 2024 Dungeons and Dragons, and the latest videos are from a year ago. If you do "most recent videos" it's pretty slim pickings. There is really not much to watch unless you're into watching another "D&D is dead" video.
I don't, it's not a particularly interesting time for D&D, we'll have to see how this new management bounces back and garners some attention but right now D&D is kind of .. meh....
They already confirmed that they have no plans to incorporate that IP into Magic, so I doubt they’d put it in DnD. Especially since a) they already have an official magic school setting so it would be redundant to haphazardly slap another in and b) one of the new top people on the design team is non-binary/gender fluid so they’re extremely unlikely to green light any of that author’s work here
The only news I have heard is they might be dealing with Transphobic mold crone for licensing her derivative wizard school franchise that she uses to fund trying to kill my friends with.
I really hope that rumor turns out to be wrong.
As far as I can tell, this “news” was created by a user on D&D Beyond with exactly zero real evidence to support it… and a pile of evidence against, including Wizards already twice rejecting the idea of a HP crossover. From the looks of things, after posting an acknowledgment that they created the thread purely because they were “freaking out” they deleted their thread on the topic when they realized their thread was, at best, misguided and, at worst, was pure trolling.
At the present time, the chances of this happening are so low that you really shouldn’t stress over it - and, frankly, shouldn’t even justify the conspiratorial ramblings that birthed this rumor with repitition.
I understand Wotc doesn’t have to tell us anything until it’s ready. But it does seem to be taking a while now for a new road map for official D&D content. It’s a bit disheartening.
You would have thought they could say sorry everyone we have nothing to announce just yet. We are working on a new source book & setting Book and an adventure. We want to make sure it’s the best experience so please bear with us while we work to make d&d what it should be….. but not even that….
Just Silence.
Yeah, i get ya, it used to bother me as well. They have been silent long enough that i am not sure i would care if they broke their silence.
They have also made getting things that I want to use so hard to get in in the way I would use it, that even if it is something I wanted, I know I can't get it without too many strings attached.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
It is odd. The only explanation that's really holding with me at the moment is that they're switching announcement models so that they're announcing very shortly before release to avoid what has become inevitable disappointment.
The change in leadership did hold weight previously, but it's getting rather close to the first expected release window. I'd have thought that they'd rush announcements through if they were just waiting for the new leadership.
Now I've said that, they'll probably release the schedule tomorrow lol
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.
Probably a lesson they learned from the Eberron release. Make sure they’re books are ready to go and won’t have to push back the release because the cover warps after a few weeks
That doesn't logically line up as that only applies to books that have been written, published, and are sitting in a warehouse. That doesn't affect announcing anything that isn't yet even ink on paper.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Funny. I thought people disliked artificial hype trains...now people want one?
Jokes aside, I'd not go straight into conspiracy theories, & examine the facts:
-Leadership & creatives have changed
-Hasbro shareholders treat Dungeons & Dragons as bad to mention during meetings
-The last 7 UAs got some very unpleasant, unsupportive feedback
-OGLgate & The Pinkertons incident are still on the TTRPG community's minds
-Sigil's Failure
-Magic:The Gathering is in the middle of a legal debacle that's eating at WotC's funding
-Eberron:Forge of the Artificer debacle
-The Pugilist backlash
-Beyond being the victim of all of the above
-The debacle over discount stacking
-K-ID
-Hasbto shilling for the moldy TERF Wizard franchise(It's not coming to M:TG, but it still could come to DND)
etc.
So them not having a big announcement is FAR more understandable. ESPECIALLY with the Magic:The Gathering lawsuit & Hasbro infecting itself with TERF mold. DND WILL die off if the moldy TERF Wizard franchise infests DND. HINT HINT.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I vastly prefer silence over an announcement that they have nothing to announce.
Eh, the community at large barely cared about the OGL. Once again, note that the survey they did over it got a fraction of the responses playtest did. I rather doubt the Pinkertons have any more staying power outside of the segments actively looking for talking points to use. This is the first time I've heard anyone bring up Sigil in months as well, and the age verification flamed out like in like two weeks since it largely only mattered for forum users. And Pugilist isn't really a larger WotC issue- that stuff is finding a 3PP that has some interest and an owner open to licensing and then formatting webpages for it- it's not eating into much if any of the development time used for actual in-house products.
DND doesn’t usually put IP based stuff in the game (LotR 5e not withstanding) so I wouldn’t worry about that coming here. Plus why put TERF school when they already have a perfectly good Strixhaven
It's also an idea without much in the way of upsides. People who dislike moldy TERF wizard are going to be mad because, well, moldy TERF wizard. People who are fans of the IP are going to be mad because D&D's rules for magic are radically different and can't translate moldy TERF magic well into the Vancian spell system.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I am honestly wondering if there are rewrites now that the new leadership is established. Not exactly uncommon for mew leadership to come in, look at a product, and say “wow, we do not want this to be our first release under our name - let’s make some changes.”
I think the next UA in rotation is the Horror subclass one - and they did just hire a few folks with backgrounds in writing horror content, often with a different spin than the generic horror Wizards tends to lean into. If ever there was a product where “I think we might do better” could come into play, I think it might be something horror themed and with the team they have been building.
Or it could just be a disaster over there due to the transition. Hoping it is more in line with the former!
Given that almost every high profile new starter they've hired either worked directly for or freelanced at some point for Ghostfire Gaming, a company that specialises in horror and grim dark settings, I think you're probably not far off on the horror book
I think they are probably assessing the adoption rate of the 2024.
Historically, the way it's always worked in D&D is that at the start of a new edition cycle, there is a huge boom, the market shifts to D&D again, and people buy up everything on offer. Systematically, as an edition gets older, every new book released sells less than the previous one. This has more or less remained true for 5e with a few exceptions.
The unanticipated problem I think this new leadership is facing is that the 2024 edition did not have the "new edition" boom and books released for it may see sales closer to "end of cycle books", rather than "new cycle" books.
They are going to have to do something a lot more exciting than simply launching some new adventures or adding some sub-classes in some splash book. I don't think that is going to create the same response you might have gotten if 2024 edition of D&D was an actual new D&D. There was a lot released for 5e already so now they are effectively competing against existing content, both that they have published and the countless 3rd party publishers.
Even the core books were competing; I mean, the sentiment for example, about the monster book is that "Flee Mortals" is a far superior monster book to the official monster manual. Do you get the new Heroes of the Borderland starter set for 50 bucks, or just keep using the now basically famous and beloved MoP start kit? And if you already have one or more of the 2014 starter kits, why would you buy one of the 2024 ones? Why buy another Forgotten Realms book if you already own the one that was previously released?
The editions are not different enough that players suffer FOMO in the same way they would if the edition were actually a new game. For the consumer, this is a good thing, your old books are still good, but thats not a great thing if you're a publisher.
We'll see how they handle it, but I suspect this new leadership is recognizing they need to step up their game and that may be the cause of the delay, which I think is a good sign. The question is, how do you release something for a 10+ year old game and give players the feeling of novelty? New is exciting, but there is context there. If by new you mean "another Paladin sub-class" for a game that already has hundreds of them published... is not nearly as exciting as a new sub-class for a new system.
Every player right now that plays 5e and has a ton of books on their shelf is having the same internal dialogue when a new product is released for 5e. Do I need this? For example.. Heroes of the Borderlands? Do I need another starter set for 5e? I already have 2. Not to mention that I picked up the Goodman Games 5e interpretation of Keep on the Borderlands..?
You wouldn't have that conversation if D&D got an actual new edition of the game. Because then your craving new books and pretty much anything can be exciting... I mean, imagine we are in 6th edition era, you have an entirely new mechanic and the new starter kit for this entirely new game is a take on Keep on the Borderlands.... I promise you.. Everyone is buying that. In the same way that every player who owns 5e, has a MoP starter on their shelf. It's not even a question... You buy all the new stuff.. at that point its just FOMO driving the entire thing. But in the current 5e state. Yeah.. something new for 5e... has to be pretty bloody fresh and novel.
So far everything they have announced/released is kind of .. meh... Another Artificer for Eberron? I literally have like 4 versions in my folder already. More Forgotten Realms stuff? meh....Another Stranger Things starter set... already got one.
It's all very .. meh... Might be interesting if I didn't already have most of this stuff in some previous variant for 5e.
I think that right now, they are
A) working on some secret really big thing
B) involved in some legal battle
or C) they have given up on 1st party content
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I expect there is pretty strong data to support that 2024 was widely adopted, but I think this particular line in your post does hit a bit of a nail on the head. Where a lot of the species and class changes of 2024 were clearly designed to fix longstanding 2014 problems, and then extensively play tested by the community until they received high approval ratings, the monsters just kind of came out. Sure, there were some changes to how CR was calculated (which, sidebar: D&D Beyond could not even be bothered with adding to their encounter builder), and some monsters got some improvements, we do not get anything drastically different, and got essentially more of the same. Perkins and Crawford warned us for years that D&D would become a bit stale if they remained in charge - the monster manual sort of feels like where that happened.
The new team they are putting together has some folks who have worked on third party content with some really great monster design - more powerful than official content (particularly at high levels where CR breaks down), and often with more interesting abilities than official content provides. I am kind of hoping that you might have some point in this theory and that one of the core places the new team seeks to set itself apart is on monster design.
(Sidebar 2: It amuses me how well Flee Mortals! consistently is reviewed, considering all it really doses is port over 4e monster design to 5e. Probably the single greatest example of where Wizards should have learned from 4e’s strengths when making 5e, rather than run from the 4e experiment entirely).
I highly doubt this is having any real effect on product release. For starters, the current lawsuit is focused almost exclusively on Magic, so there is likely no impact on D&D’s development team. There might be some impact on the marketing teams and higher level executives, but a lot of that kind of disruption is going to be busywork and document review that can be dumped on a couple of people, leaving the organization as a whole capable of still functioning.
Frankly, it also seems like a stupid lawsuit to begin with - though even stupid lawsuits must be answered.
Regarding your third point, considering how many game developers they have hired in the past three months. I think it is safe to say they are not giving up on first party content. It is not like they are hiring game developers to do, say, marketing.
WoTC has gotten so much flack for early release announcements then changes, or their campaigns for preorders - that I am not shocked they are not trying to drive hype 6 months out.
The biggest thing is probably the leadership change, they'll want to check in on their wants and goals for the D&D books before they finalize a release schedule. There might also be partnerships in the works that might mean changing how things are release (Like how the next UA is horror, but like it is out of season for horror to be released).
The only news I have heard is they might be dealing with Transphobic mold crone for licensing her derivative wizard school franchise that she uses to fund trying to kill my friends with.
I really hope that rumor turns out to be wrong.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
I don't doubt their sales of the core books, but sales and adoption are not the same thing. You can't know if you are going to like the updates to your favorite game until you buy it and try it. I mean, I know that there are a lot of "seers" out there, but I think most consumers are quite reasonable people. 4e books also sold like hot cakes, but ultimately the adoption flatlined very quickly.
There are a few benchmarks for knowing if your adoption rate is good or not, sales of follow-up books, sales of starter sets but I think the biggest, most telling one is social media coverage. You can gauge the popularity of something based on how much YouTube content there is. The thing about 2024 edition isn't even that the sentiment about the game is kind of meh, but that the coverage is really low. Many of the old channels that had previously been either exclusively or mostly 5e don't even cover it at all, and the few that are still around aren't aren't producing much.
I mean, do a search of 2024 Dungeons and Dragons, and the latest videos are from a year ago. If you do "most recent videos" it's pretty slim pickings. There is really not much to watch unless you're into watching another "D&D is dead" video.
I don't, it's not a particularly interesting time for D&D, we'll have to see how this new management bounces back and garners some attention but right now D&D is kind of .. meh....
They already confirmed that they have no plans to incorporate that IP into Magic, so I doubt they’d put it in DnD. Especially since a) they already have an official magic school setting so it would be redundant to haphazardly slap another in and b) one of the new top people on the design team is non-binary/gender fluid so they’re extremely unlikely to green light any of that author’s work here
As far as I can tell, this “news” was created by a user on D&D Beyond with exactly zero real evidence to support it… and a pile of evidence against, including Wizards already twice rejecting the idea of a HP crossover. From the looks of things, after posting an acknowledgment that they created the thread purely because they were “freaking out” they deleted their thread on the topic when they realized their thread was, at best, misguided and, at worst, was pure trolling.
At the present time, the chances of this happening are so low that you really shouldn’t stress over it - and, frankly, shouldn’t even justify the conspiratorial ramblings that birthed this rumor with repitition.