Its sounding really good so far. It'd be cool if the Artificer was included in the PHB though. Its been published in 2 other places, and its generally considered a core class. So put it in the core rulebook.

Compatibility in this case means being able to use features together, as there's not any inherent differences in the rules. Its the same base, and also if you don't like features, don't use them. Not to mention that this isn't final, they're probably going to do a straight read through the PHB's and make last minute edits-- as they said they're doing. Also its not exactly clear what "Compatibility" even means here, that's just my assumption.

Good stuff, thank you Michael!

No one here can rectify that. Email Hasbro.

As for the monk thing...this is a weird hill to die on.

If a person who is that obsessed over the term "ki", I must ask:

Are you someone whose attitude towards Asia is actually respectful, or part of Neo-Orientalist racism disguised as devoted passionate fandom of pop culture?

Because if you think all monks use "ki", you need to retake some history classes. And learn about actual, non-pop culture Asia and Asian history(Not just Japan:ALL of it...)from an authentic source, preferably from each and every culture Gygax smashed to pieces & mashed up into Oriental Adventures in a past edition.

Also:If it's a martial arts class, it'd be called MARTIAL ARTIST, not the Wu-Tang Clan-level inauthentic cynical pandering caricature that Mearls, Zeb, Crawford and Hasbro left in, currently being course-corrected.

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 plus they could at the very least be transparent with why they are changing the names of those details to begin with, which they have still not even attempted to do

 
They actually did explain this.  Under the old system, Monks were unique in that their core class feature (Ki) and their subclass names both reflected a singular real-world culture.  Unlike, say, Fighter, which was culturally agnostic as a class, Monks heavily implied they were supposed to be played like Eastern characters, because Eastern mythology permeated their identity. 

However, there are plenty of “monks” (martial artist combatants) in non-Eastern history and legend.  After all, pretty much every culture has their own martial arts they have developed.  By making the language for the class culturally agnostic, Wizards is trying to open the door to “hey, please come up with whatever type of martial artist you want! They do not have to be Eastern inspired (though they still can!).”

This was a change specifically designed to foster creativity, and address an issue where players saw real-world as in terminology and thought “I guess I have to play it like an Eastern martial artist, since that is what this class is 'supposed’ to be.”

 to my knowledge they never addressed this in any of their videos regarding the ua, let alone ones that involved the monk, besides ki has many other names in other cultures, discipline takes away all the uniqueness and otherworldly aspects, not to mention making the names of the subclasses all warrior, it just makes it seem more bland and forced into a singular role, a monk is not meant to be simply a warrior, sure they can fight, but being a warrior is not what defines their concept, i feel they way of part would at least be fine to stay cuz martial arts is more a philosophy than just a fighting style and they have very much deviated away from the concept without having to change the terminology back when the way of mercy monk was released, so it still just seems like they are making the mechanical side better at the cost of the other aspects of the class, and as someone who enjoys monk conceptually, this makes me feel like i am basically being screwed over, not everything is able to be purely agnostic to everything, there are limits to everything, and besides the terms they have come up with are definitely not the best they could, i could be wrong, but if it is that big a deal they could find ones that hit the same beats and themes that "ki" and "way of..." did and roll off the tongue in a similar manner, cuz a warrior of mercy monk just in terms of name sounds like an oxymoron, plus not every monk subclass even focuses on combat at least when you look into partnered and 3rd party which are in line conceptually, you make them just warriors, that is just gunna cause more inconsistencies and issues than it will fix, plus most people i know think martial arts when they think monk more than they think of any given culture, it just so happens the most often used version of the term ki is well "ki" with the popularity of the likes of dragonball

 This is an unusual hill to die on considering that you can just continue to use the old terminology if it matters that much to you. I doubt anyone at your table will stop you. Just keep playing monks the way you’ve been playing them. This change does nothing mechanically. It is solely a cultural sensitivity effort that also serves to give players more permission to do whatever they want when creating monk characters, as Caerwyn so eloquently explained.

 more so my biggest problem is more so how to my knowledge it never was discussed why they are wanting to make the change let alone being transparent about it, so i am left to just look at what too me seem unnecessary and worse sounding changes, the ki thing i can begrudgingly accept, but forcing all monks to be warriors of some sort just seems like they are trying to make it a fighter with no armor or weapons, like i am a major dragonball fan and part of what helped me easily slip into dnd 5e and dnd in general was the connections monk had to easily fill in the role of a martial arts centric class in a world of magic and warriors and even technology, just like dragonball's world, so part of me is sentimental about that easy connection it was able to make for me which lead to me falling in love with dnd over all as a whole as the years went on, plus literally nobody but a few random people here and there on this form or discord even so much as suggest that the current terminology was even remotely offensive, given literally in all other media it never once has raise any such statements to my knowledge. But again for me it is that they never came out and during any of the UA videos that i can recall, and i have watched each one, did they ever explain why they are changing the names for these terms to begin with, not to mention the names are not the most smooth, as monks are far from the only class associated with the term discipline and are not all warriors traditionally speaking

Quote from Scarletsteam >>

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 plus they could at the very least be transparent with why they are changing the names of those details to begin with, which they have still not even attempted to do

 
They actually did explain this.  Under the old system, Monks were unique in that their core class feature (Ki) and their subclass names both reflected a singular real-world culture.  Unlike, say, Fighter, which was culturally agnostic as a class, Monks heavily implied they were supposed to be played like Eastern characters, because Eastern mythology permeated their identity. 

However, there are plenty of “monks” (martial artist combatants) in non-Eastern history and legend.  After all, pretty much every culture has their own martial arts they have developed.  By making the language for the class culturally agnostic, Wizards is trying to open the door to “hey, please come up with whatever type of martial artist you want! They do not have to be Eastern inspired (though they still can!).”

This was a change specifically designed to foster creativity, and address an issue where players saw real-world as in terminology and thought “I guess I have to play it like an Eastern martial artist, since that is what this class is 'supposed’ to be.”

 to my knowledge they never addressed this in any of their videos regarding the ua, let alone ones that involved the monk, besides ki has many other names in other cultures, discipline takes away all the uniqueness and otherworldly aspects, not to mention making the names of the subclasses all warrior, it just makes it seem more bland and forced into a singular role, a monk is not meant to be simply a warrior, sure they can fight, but being a warrior is not what defines their concept, i feel they way of part would at least be fine to stay cuz martial arts is more a philosophy than just a fighting style and they have very much deviated away from the concept without having to change the terminology back when the way of mercy monk was released, so it still just seems like they are making the mechanical side better at the cost of the other aspects of the class, and as someone who enjoys monk conceptually, this makes me feel like i am basically being screwed over, not everything is able to be purely agnostic to everything, there are limits to everything, and besides the terms they have come up with are definitely not the best they could, i could be wrong, but if it is that big a deal they could find ones that hit the same beats and themes that "ki" and "way of..." did and roll off the tongue in a similar manner, cuz a warrior of mercy monk just in terms of name sounds like an oxymoron, plus not every monk subclass even focuses on combat at least when you look into partnered and 3rd party which are in line conceptually, you make them just warriors, that is just gunna cause more inconsistencies and issues than it will fix, plus most people i know think martial arts when they think monk more than they think of any given culture, it just so happens the most often used version of the term ki is well "ki" with the popularity of the likes of dragonball

 This is an unusual hill to die on considering that you can just continue to use the old terminology if it matters that much to you. I doubt anyone at your table will stop you. Just keep playing monks the way you’ve been playing them. This change does nothing mechanically. It is solely a cultural sensitivity effort that also serves to give players more permission to do whatever they want when creating monk characters, as Caerwyn so eloquently explained.

 more so my biggest problem is more so how to my knowledge it never was discussed why they are wanting to make the change let alone being transparent about it, so i am left to just look at what too me seem unnecessary and worse sounding changes, the ki thing i can begrudgingly accept, but forcing all monks to be warriors of some sort just seems like they are trying to make it a fighter with no armor or weapons, like i am a major dragonball fan and part of what helped me easily slip into dnd 5e and dnd in general was the connections monk had to easily fill in the role of a martial arts centric class in a world of magic and warriors and even technology, just like dragonball's world, so part of me is sentimental about that easy connection it was able to make for me which lead to me falling in love with dnd over all as a whole as the years went on, plus literally nobody but a few random people here and there on this form or discord even so much as suggest that the current terminology was even remotely offensive, given literally in all other media it never once has raise any such statements to my knowledge. But again for me it is that they never came out and during any of the UA videos that i can recall, and i have watched each one, did they ever explain why they are changing the names for these terms to begin with, not to mention the names are not the most smooth, as monks are far from the only class associated with the term discipline and are not all warriors traditionally speaking

 Because monks being all martial artists comes from an old racist TSR era supplement called Oriental Adventures, and that looks bad to perpetuate.

There. I spelled it out for you.

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

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 plus they could at the very least be transparent with why they are changing the names of those details to begin with, which they have still not even attempted to do

 
They actually did explain this.  Under the old system, Monks were unique in that their core class feature (Ki) and their subclass names both reflected a singular real-world culture.  Unlike, say, Fighter, which was culturally agnostic as a class, Monks heavily implied they were supposed to be played like Eastern characters, because Eastern mythology permeated their identity. 

However, there are plenty of “monks” (martial artist combatants) in non-Eastern history and legend.  After all, pretty much every culture has their own martial arts they have developed.  By making the language for the class culturally agnostic, Wizards is trying to open the door to “hey, please come up with whatever type of martial artist you want! They do not have to be Eastern inspired (though they still can!).”

This was a change specifically designed to foster creativity, and address an issue where players saw real-world as in terminology and thought “I guess I have to play it like an Eastern martial artist, since that is what this class is 'supposed’ to be.”

 to my knowledge they never addressed this in any of their videos regarding the ua, let alone ones that involved the monk, besides ki has many other names in other cultures, discipline takes away all the uniqueness and otherworldly aspects, not to mention making the names of the subclasses all warrior, it just makes it seem more bland and forced into a singular role, a monk is not meant to be simply a warrior, sure they can fight, but being a warrior is not what defines their concept, i feel they way of part would at least be fine to stay cuz martial arts is more a philosophy than just a fighting style and they have very much deviated away from the concept without having to change the terminology back when the way of mercy monk was released, so it still just seems like they are making the mechanical side better at the cost of the other aspects of the class, and as someone who enjoys monk conceptually, this makes me feel like i am basically being screwed over, not everything is able to be purely agnostic to everything, there are limits to everything, and besides the terms they have come up with are definitely not the best they could, i could be wrong, but if it is that big a deal they could find ones that hit the same beats and themes that "ki" and "way of..." did and roll off the tongue in a similar manner, cuz a warrior of mercy monk just in terms of name sounds like an oxymoron, plus not every monk subclass even focuses on combat at least when you look into partnered and 3rd party which are in line conceptually, you make them just warriors, that is just gunna cause more inconsistencies and issues than it will fix, plus most people i know think martial arts when they think monk more than they think of any given culture, it just so happens the most often used version of the term ki is well "ki" with the popularity of the likes of dragonball

 This is an unusual hill to die on considering that you can just continue to use the old terminology if it matters that much to you. I doubt anyone at your table will stop you. Just keep playing monks the way you’ve been playing them. This change does nothing mechanically. It is solely a cultural sensitivity effort that also serves to give players more permission to do whatever they want when creating monk characters, as Caerwyn so eloquently explained.

 more so my biggest problem is more so how to my knowledge it never was discussed why they are wanting to make the change let alone being transparent about it, so i am left to just look at what too me seem unnecessary and worse sounding changes, the ki thing i can begrudgingly accept, but forcing all monks to be warriors of some sort just seems like they are trying to make it a fighter with no armor or weapons, like i am a major dragonball fan and part of what helped me easily slip into dnd 5e and dnd in general was the connections monk had to easily fill in the role of a martial arts centric class in a world of magic and warriors and even technology, just like dragonball's world, so part of me is sentimental about that easy connection it was able to make for me which lead to me falling in love with dnd over all as a whole as the years went on, plus literally nobody but a few random people here and there on this form or discord even so much as suggest that the current terminology was even remotely offensive, given literally in all other media it never once has raise any such statements to my knowledge. But again for me it is that they never came out and during any of the UA videos that i can recall, and i have watched each one, did they ever explain why they are changing the names for these terms to begin with, not to mention the names are not the most smooth, as monks are far from the only class associated with the term discipline and are not all warriors traditionally speaking

 Because monks being all martial artists comes from an old racist TSR era supplement called Oriental Adventures, and that looks bad to perpetuate.

There. I spelled it out for you.

 And if that’s not enough for you, please find Daniel Kwan’s blog (he wrote The Book of Inner Alchemy from Candlekeep Mysteries and works as a cultural consultant). In a post from April 4th 2023, he talks about speaking with Jeremy Crawford during the D&D Creator Summit and asking Crawford about the monk, specifically. He quotes Crawford saying that the changes made to the monk are part of an effort to avoid Asian stereotypes (there’s more to it than that; please read the blog).

While this might not have been addressed directly in UA, it’s… not hard to see what they are doing and employ a bit of critical thinking to figure out why. Plus, Crawford HAS explained the monk changes in no uncertain terms. Hope this helps.

Let us be very, very clear on the two issues with Ki in D&D.

1. It has a chilling effect on the class.  By being inexorably tied to Asian culture - and more so now than when initially added to D&D in 1985 due to manga and anime like DBZ (which came out after Ki was already part of D&D).  That gives the impression that Monk is supposed to be the “Asian” of “Anime” class - which is the wrong impression to give.  Monk is supposed to be the martial artists class - that can be a character inspired by Asian themes, but it also can be a character inspired by other cultures.

Wizards’ data has shown this pigeonholes players into playing the “Anime Monk” due to the connotations.  That is bad game design and antithetical to D&D - D&D is supposed to be about flexibility and supposed to be about players having options to build whatever character they want.  Language which encourages a specific type of character undermines the very purpose of D&D. 

This is the stated primary reason Wizards is changing the Monk class - it is not for racism reasons, but simple, obvious, common sense game design ones. 

2. Using Ki in a game is not inherently racist - it is just a concept that has been around for a few thousand years. 

The problem occurs because the initial addition of Ki to D&D was in a racist product written by a well-known bigot. Ki normally is fine; Ki in D&D holds the taint of Gary Gygax.

Breaking that down - it is an established fact to everyone other than bigots that Gary Gygax was a bigot. From being an outspoken eugenicist (long after eugenics was disproven), to a stated belief that genocide can be “good” (done while also idolizing a military commander ordering a genocide), to saying women are “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D”, to all sorts of other nonsense, he made it very clear he was a bigot.

And he added that bigotry to the game.  Tribal human cultures he always depicted as inferior to Western European ones, and he based them on his stereotypes, rather than on any actual historical or contemporary sources.  He built an entire race, orcs, where he took away all of Tolkien’s subtext (orcs were once elves—but war can corrupt even the best of is), and replaced the anti-war messaging with “all orcs are evil because all tribal-based cultures are inferior and create violent, uneducated, and stupid societies.” 

The original book with Ki was an important book for D&D’s decrement, adding a lot of features the game still uses.  But it also was a racist product. Gygax could not be bothered to actually learn anything about actual Asian culture and history, and the entire book seems to be comprised of stereotypes, many of them rather racist stereotypes.  Hardly surprising when the main author was both a bigot and a know-it-all, who always thought his own (bigoted) views were enough, so why bother with research or reality?

That gives Ki in D&D a bit of a stain.  It was originally used in a racist product, by a racist, to further that racist’s ends of using his own stereotypes, rather than facts. This creates a system where, had Ki been used respectfully initially, it would have been perfectly fine… but it was not.  Because it was intended as part of a racist product, there is still a “hey, remember that time our game was made by a racist? We do, and we are continuing to use something he included as a stereotype as part of our game!”

This is all pretty easy to understand—Gygax wore his racism on his sleeve, the initial Ki release was based on stereotypes rather than respect for Asian culture, and that something originating in racism can carry the taint of that racism throughout the system.  

Easy to understand, except, of course, to racists, who think Gygax’s racism was a perfectly acceptable part of the game.  In fact, that is why these racists are always so active complaining about the 2024 revisions—they are gaslighting innocent players by pretending they hate the mechanics… but what they actually hate is that 2024 is finally acknowledging “Gygax was a racist; let’s remove that stain of racism.” 

Assuredly, they will try to respond to this post by denying what I said.  They will all-but-certainly ignore the non-racially-motivated, purely mechanical game-design reason for the change, and zero in on silly arguments like “Gygax was not a bigot!” (He was—his own words show this), “he did not include Ki because of a stereotype” (he absolutely did), “something starting out as racist does not mean it is always going to be racist” (more often than not, it absolutely does mean that; and it also means there is a subconscious, systemic inertia to keep stereotypes in the game, particularly if the designers forgot “this is a racist stereotype” was a design feature).  I am not going to bother responding to anyone making these silly arguments—it is not worth my time to respond to individuals with… questionable… motives in trying to deny the finally-acknowledged-by-Wizards reality that this game’s most famous founder (and others in his circle) inserted some pretty darn awful views into the game.

I am curious: will all of this be updated, and will D&D Beyond get an overhaul since I have all the books? Will I just be told sorry, all of that content is useless now, or will much of it transfer to the PHB update? 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Let us be very, very clear on the two issues with Ki in D&D.

1. It has a chilling effect on the class.  By being inexorably tied to Asian culture - and more so now than when initially added to D&D in 1985 due to manga and anime like DBZ (which came out after Ki was already part of D&D).  That gives the impression that Monk is supposed to be the “Asian” of “Anime” class - which is the wrong impression to give.  Monk is supposed to be the martial artists class - that can be a character inspired by Asian themes, but it also can be a character inspired by other cultures.

Wizards’ data has shown this pigeonholes players into playing the “Anime Monk” due to the connotations.  That is bad game design and antithetical to D&D - D&D is supposed to be about flexibility and supposed to be about players having options to build whatever character they want.  Language which encourages a specific type of character undermines the very purpose of D&D. 

This is the stated primary reason Wizards is changing the Monk class - it is not for racism reasons, but simple, obvious, common sense game design ones. 

2. Using Ki in a game is not inherently racist - it is just a concept that has been around for a few thousand years. 

The problem occurs because the initial addition of Ki to D&D was in a racist product written by a well-known bigot. Ki normally is fine; Ki in D&D holds the taint of Gary Gygax.

Breaking that down - it is an established fact to everyone other than bigots that Gary Gygax was a bigot. From being an outspoken eugenicist (long after eugenics was disproven), to a stated belief that genocide can be “good” (done while also idolizing a military commander ordering a genocide), to saying women are “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D”, to all sorts of other nonsense, he made it very clear he was a bigot.

And he added that bigotry to the game.  Tribal human cultures he always depicted as inferior to Western European ones, and he based them on his stereotypes, rather than on any actual historical or contemporary sources.  He built an entire race, orcs, where he took away all of Tolkien’s subtext (orcs were once elves—but war can corrupt even the best of is), and replaced the anti-war messaging with “all orcs are evil because all tribal-based cultures are inferior and create violent, uneducated, and stupid societies.” 

The original book with Ki was an important book for D&D’s decrement, adding a lot of features the game still uses.  But it also was a racist product. Gygax could not be bothered to actually learn anything about actual Asian culture and history, and the entire book seems to be comprised of stereotypes, many of them rather racist stereotypes.  Hardly surprising when the main author was both a bigot and a know-it-all, who always thought his own (bigoted) views were enough, so why bother with research or reality?

That gives Ki in D&D a bit of a stain.  It was originally used in a racist product, by a racist, to further that racist’s ends of using his own stereotypes, rather than facts. This creates a system where, had Ki been used respectfully initially, it would have been perfectly fine… but it was not.  Because it was intended as part of a racist product, there is still a “hey, remember that time our game was made by a racist? We do, and we are continuing to use something he included as a stereotype as part of our game!”

This is all pretty easy to understand—Gygax wore his racism on his sleeve, the initial Ki release was based on stereotypes rather than respect for Asian culture, and that something originating in racism can carry the taint of that racism throughout the system.  

Easy to understand, except, of course, to racists, who think Gygax’s racism was a perfectly acceptable part of the game.  In fact, that is why these racists are always so active complaining about the 2024 revisions—they are gaslighting innocent players by pretending they hate the mechanics… but what they actually hate is that 2024 is finally acknowledging “Gygax was a racist; let’s remove that stain of racism.” 

Assuredly, they will try to respond to this post by denying what I said.  They will all-but-certainly ignore the non-racially-motivated, purely mechanical game-design reason for the change, and zero in on silly arguments like “Gygax was not a bigot!” (He was—his own words show this), “he did not include Ki because of a stereotype” (he absolutely did), “something starting out as racist does not mean it is always going to be racist” (more often than not, it absolutely does mean that; and it also means there is a subconscious, systemic inertia to keep stereotypes in the game, particularly if the designers forgot “this is a racist stereotype” was a design feature).  I am not going to bother responding to anyone making these silly arguments—it is not worth my time to respond to individuals with… questionable… motives in trying to deny the finally-acknowledged-by-Wizards reality that this game’s most famous founder (and others in his circle) inserted some pretty darn awful views into the game.

 INB4 BigBossDuckMan calls you a virtue signaller again

No, for real, there are more "monks" than just Tibetan, Buddhist and Catholic religious ones. It's for the best that all get equal representation.

"It's tradition" is the best reason to break a tradition, after all.

"Nu Ur Racist for seeing racism" is typically followed by a denial of racism in everything but jackboots, swastikas and goosestepping-level spelled out for people, and even then people love to deny something that obvious.

If you're afraid of guilt by association, making less money and being looked down upon, maybe don't be racist?(This little line is not just directed to people in this thread, BTW)

There are people who act holier-than-thou about how "better" they are. But no one here has gone full FoxyBard. We're just saying that we understand why Ki is being dropped as a term, providing context, and trying to explain how Gygax was.

As for the Half-Races thing...they mean well, but impact>intent. They meant to eliminate in-game discrimination against "halfs" because it is mechanically unfair RAW, but over-corrected by eliminating said "halfs" except thematically, and thus failing to account for real people who are mixed race. There ARE bad faith takes out there(Mostly from pundits), tho. Removing powergaming's favorite half-elves didn't help this situation.

Quote from CaptainRelyk >>

Will we be able to continue using 2014 classes on dndbeyond? I myself prefer to play sorcerers and clerics that get their subclasses at level 1, not 3

 
No one knows for sure how things will be rolled out, but we can make a pretty good guess based on history and the design goals of the 2024 update.

Given how historically Beyond treated superseded content, and how 2024 was specifically designed to be used alongside the 2014 content in the same games, I expect the old content will be given a “Legacy” status.  Those who already own the content, or who have the content shared with them via, will have the option of choosing the legacy version of the class if they do choose.

Granted, we cannot be certain that is how things will be handled until Wizards confirms, but I think that is the safest bet.

Does this mean find familiar will become an effect?I sure hope not,will be unpopular with the group I’m gonna run.

Will this be an update to the current players handbook or will we have to purchase a new one on DND beyond

Quote from EagleEye7575 >>

Will this be an update to the current players handbook or will we have to purchase a new one on DND beyond

 It's going to be a new book. But there will also be an updated Basic / SRD, and that will be free.

This is ridiculous. “It has long been documented that folks running summons cause problems at the table” because their turns take longer and are “boring to watch”? If you want to talk about entitlement then just go look at your own post. Instead of complaining that player X’s turn is “boring” and “taking too long” like a little kid, maybe do something constructive like help the player running summons learn some effective strategies or teach them some tips for having their stat blocks ready and their turn planned? You know - TEACH them to play - instead of changing a rule. But Crawford apparently agrees with this inane plan to dumb down the game to its lowest denominator.

Quote from JaithWraith >>

This is ridiculous. “It has long been documented that folks running summons cause problems at the table” because their turns take longer and are “boring to watch”? If you want to talk about entitlement then just go look at your own post. Instead of complaining that player X’s turn is “boring” and “taking too long” like a little kid, maybe do something constructive like help the player running summons learn some effective strategies or teach them some tips for having their stat blocks ready and their turn planned? You know - TEACH them to play - instead of changing a rule. But Crawford apparently agrees with this inane plan to dumb down the game to its lowest denominator.

 
Even perfectly executed, the spells are slow—multiple monsters increases the number of attack rolls, the number of movements, etc.  No amount of teaching will change that reality—these are spells which can be slow to play even in the hands of an expert player. And most players are not expert players.

Changing the default is the right answer.  Decades of D&D have shown the “more monsters = slower play” issue exists across all levels of experience (though is worse for new players).  Wizards is giving people the best of every option with the new rules. You’ll have something that feels like conjuring, but does not give a new stat block, for people who want the flavor, but not the mechanical headache. You’ll have actual summons, but from a single stat block that players will be able to internalize, for those who want a summoned creature. And, of course, you can always use the old version of the spells—contrary to your claim that I am entitled, I will be allowing the old version and helping any players who want to use them get better… but I also am not so naive as to deny a problem that has existed across multiple editions of this game.  Nor am I so foolish as to think “but people can just learn” is a good basis for game design—when we have decades of proof that, no, they probably will not just learn. 

Crawford is not catering to the lowest denominator—he is catering to reality.  That is what he should be doing—solving problems that have existed for an age, while preserving the old systems for those who want to use them still.  Everyone wins.

Quote from Goblin2668 >>

I am curious: will all of this be updated, and will D&D Beyond get an overhaul since I have all the books? Will I just be told sorry, all of that content is useless now, or will much of it transfer to the PHB update? 

 Since d&d beyond allows you to manually update,your content will be useful but a pain to keep up to date.

Quote from PsyrenXY >>

Quote from EagleEye7575 >>

Will this be an update to the current players handbook or will we have to purchase a new one on DND beyond

 It's going to be a new book. But there will also be an updated Basic / SRD, and that will be free.

 No I think it’s just an update.

But why make new core rulebooks? Old ones are fine.

Quote from LordDothDothingtonIII >>

But why make new core rulebooks? Old ones are fine.

Yeah, but they could be improved. You expect the game to just stay the same way for all of time?