Will Wizards of the Coast go out with a bang or a whimper?

Will Wizards of the Coast go out with a bang or a whimper?

It's already whimpering.

I'm guessing more of a giant, sucking sound.

They're already killing DnD slowly but surely, so it's no bang.

5E seems pretty commercially successful from my perspective. At the very least, it's restored enthusiasm in the game across most of my tabletop circles, which is kind of too bad since I was hoping I'd be able to transition my players towards other tabletop systems.

They'll still be going strong for years with MtG. It's kind of like Blizzard with WoW. Sure they won't have the same record breaking amounts but the sheer mass of the brand will carry it much longer.

It seems like everyone hates any edition that isn't 3.x .

Neither. Even after our society has crumbled into nuclear dust, WotC will remain

5e was great when they released it, but as they add more content with the Unearthed Arcanas and published books, it's very quickly falling prey to power-creep and cluster-fuck syndrome. Instead of improving the content they already have or refining the balance of existing classes, they just keep throwing in new special snowflake classes and kitchen-sinking the game even harder.

Goddamn, how many flavors of magic do we need? There's regular bookish wizards, blood magic sorcerers, music magic bards, contract warlocks, magic from gods that somehow aren't considered flavor of warlocks, magic from worshipping trees, weeaboo martial arts magic, and soon retarded psychic-power "mystic" bullshit. Goddamn DnD, can you just pick a system for how magic works and fucking stick to it?

It's called Hasbro, WOTC hasn't existed for a number of years.

It is? disclaimer: I am a 3.5/PF fag (avare of its limits, but I always had the right groups) but I find 5ed interesting, albeit with a different appeal than 3.X stuff.
I liked the core stuff they put out and I did see many people interested again.
What is going wrong? The impression I had wotc is making money with Magic and invests few in DnD, but enough to sustain it and keeping the IP.

Am I wrong?

I think the diversity in variants is some attempt to include the character flavour that the prestige classes of 3.5 brought in, only instead of twiddling your thumbs for the first 6 levels before you meet prerequisites, you unlock thematically consistent variant abilities at level landmarks. Balance has been pretty iffy, I've seen a lot of house rule nerfs of some level one spells, such as Catapult and Ice Knife from the Elemental Evil Player's Companion.

Unearthed Arcana isn't meant to be fucking official.

>hating on psionics
Fuck off, threeaboo

>It seems like everyone hates any edition that isn't 3.x .

Everyone hates that one too. But people seem to hurl a lot less hate towards 5e than 4e got (remember how Veeky Forums basically shut down back when 4e got released, due to the non-stop shitstorms?) or even 3.5 gets these days.

Even not counting the third party classes themselves, the class balance is fucking AWFUL.

Take for example Wizard and Sorcerers.

Wizards: Get 2 spells per level, can learn more if they find spellbooks, and get a super powerful school ability. Can prepare a number of spells equal to their level + Int mod.

Sorcerers: Get one spell per level , crappy highly-situational metamagic, and a bloodline that's often worse than a wizard school. Doesn't have to prepare spells, but the wizard can literally prepare more than the sorcerer can ever learn ever because sorcs can't learn spells except by levelling up.

10/10 game design right there.

That's because the people who claimed 4e was perfect realized exactly how shit it was and stopped posting about it.

D&D 5e has done better than all editions besides AD&D at this point. The thing is, D&D isn't Wizards' main revenue source, it's MtG, by an order of magnitude, so no it's not about to die unless Hasbro decides to pull the plug themselves.

>when 4e got released
That period of time basically cemented my hatred of DnD and it's fanbase, both the 4rries and 3.pfags. Constant retarded shitslinging making any other discussion nearly impossible.

I actually had that same argument until I branched out and played sorceror not long ago.

They look weak on paper but so many spells are retardedly situational anyway that you don't even particularly need them. The ability to launch single target disabling spells or save or die spells at two targets simultaneously is fucking huge in play as is the ability to have spells happen without verbal or somatic cues (thus they have no incharacter reason outside of mind reading to be aware you are casting anything at all when it comes to counterspell). It adds up fast at making a character terrifyingly effective.

Your out put is more narrow but in many ways more dangerous by far. IT was also just a shit ton of fun to play.

I agree. Everybody should be wielding a close combat weapon. Preferably a sword. Ideally a sword I personally like. Everybody else should kill themselves.

Why is the woman in this pic laughing?

Did she start the fire or just post-traumatic hysteria?

>Wizards of the Coast
They are owned by Hasbro, those pockets are deep, worst case would be Hasbro cleans house.

Pretty sure that every edition of AD&D has done better than the previous because of increasing size of the fanbase. With a slight dip for 4e because of shitty marketing.

5e is fucking terrible, restrictive chargen. The only thing that ever made D&D past 1e any good was the loads of chargen options. Even 3.5 is better because of said options because even thought 90% of 3.5 options suck ass, you still have more than 5e. They could have easily rebuilt this in a balanced and proper way but instead they decided to fling 4e's shit onto it and forget all the good parts of 4e at the same time.

5e is a good edition, but it's really frustrating how short it fell of its potential.

Dont know, but the man in the background seems pissed and runs towards her.
Guess its not really hysteria.

I think it's a picture of her mid-crying that looks like laughter
IDK though that's just a theory

AD&D had kind of a leg up because it was in print for so long (TSR, being run by people with no business acumen, actually kept 1E in print until the 90s for the grogs who were triggered by Bard being playable at level 1 and NWP being core rather than UA)

>The only thing that ever made D&D past 1e any good was the loads of chargen options.
I'm not sure you've ever seen 1e or 2e to say that.

Revisionist history.

4e players wanted to discuss the game on its designated board. 3e players had nothing better to do but aggressively lorem ipsum 4e threads. Eerybody gave up because the moderators on Veeky Forums allowed the 3e players to dictate what discussion was or wasn't allowed.

It's the Veeky Forums equivalent of if the moderators that frequented /v/ decided that if xbox players shitposted hard enough, they would start deleting PS threads.

WotC will outlive you. Like it or not, Magic is here to stay.

D&D on the other hand has a death wish. D&D as a culture doesn't want the game to improve or change. WotC is giving the players what they want by putting very little money or effort into a subculture that has a "worse is better" mentality.

D&D is not a culture, it's a product.

And it's popular enough that WotC can make money selling reprints of old editions, which suggests that the people who are laying out USD for hard bound books don't care about whether the game is "fixed" or whether it makes "progress".

it's becoming a whithered husk of undead in thrall to hasbro. it will never die, but it will never have the vitality it once did.

D&D is pretty well defined concept in the popular zeitgeist to the point we have axis alignment threads and threads about classes and other RPG aspects popularized by D&D daily.

What you are not mentioning is that for many d&d players, it's not enough that they can play a classic game. It must also be the only game available in order for them to be completely happy. These same players often don't see the irony that whatever flavor of d&d they prefer it started on is the version that doesn't need any fixing.

Thing is that 5e actually has a great framework for chargen. Like, way better than any previous edition in regards to how well the math was done and how many mechanics are available for things to be built around. A lot of the issues that hold back concepts in previous editions don't exist anymore.

BUT WIZARDS REFUSES TO RELEASE REGULAR CONTENT FOR 5E SO WE AIN'T GOT NONE OF THAT UNLESS YOU HOMEBREW EVERYTHING.

5e is exactly what D&D should be: Baby's first RPG. It's relatively streamlined and simple, with enough semi-cosmetic options to let new players feel like they're branching out, but not enough customization or depth to do anything extremely bad or extremely good.

Wizards doesn't have the budget to do that and the D&D department basically has a skeleton crew.

It's really obvious that Hasbro acquired them for MtG first and foremost, since it's even unlike WW where CCP was sitting on the IP for their bullshit never gonna happen MMO; they're not even bothering with games besides DDO; Sword Coast Legends was absolute garbage the devs of went bankrupt after like a year of release.

>With a slight dip for 4e because of shitty marketing.
Yeah, THAT'S what was wrong with 4e.

from the Mtg side, standard right now feels like a game of whack-a-mole.

>Wizards changes the rotation schedule, making it only 3 blocks of 2 sets each
>customers complain, wizards backtrack and make it 4 blocks, meaning that Zendikar doesn't rotate out for another year
>Since they can't just wait for rotation to get rid of mistake cards, Wizards bans 3 cards from 3 different blocks right before Aether Revolt
>They forgot Felidar Guardian
>4c Saheeli Rai combo is now Tier 1 and is beating out BG constrictor

>Why is the woman in this pic laughing?

It's a "thing" now, like planking and that statue game was.

People drive up to fires, take pics/selfies of themselves laughing with the fire in the background, and then post them.

I've friends who are volunteer firemen. They've been getting one or two assholes showing up at fires to do it for the last year or so.

Let me propose a better question: What company would you most like to see purchase D&D when WoTC/Hasbro inevitably sells it to recoup losses after a particularly blundersome MTG decision? Who and what do you think could breathe new life into the old workhorse while maintaining the overall intended feel of fighting monsters and collecting riches?

That's not a complete picture. The moderators did not delete pro-4e comments at all, I don't know where you got that from. In fact Veeky Forums was almost completely unmoderated at the time.

It was a very intentional shitstorm with both sids fanning the flames. I remember multiple threads full of people admitting that they didn't even play traditional games and were just here because edition war arguments were the best trolling grounds in Veeky Forums.

I miss a lot about old Veeky Forums but I don't miss the edition wars. Never forget.

>WotC selling D&D
Not gonna happen, I could imagine Hasbro getting rid of WotC though. In a fantasy universe where MtG was somehow managed by GW people.

The premise of the question is stupid. Companies don't throw away profitable properties because of a slowdown in profit increase from another property. That's like burning cash to save on heating bills.

I'm just waiting for them to realize they can combine elements of a CCG with an RPG where a deck functions as your character, and you buy packs of cards that detail your adventures, such as what monsters you fight and what treasure you find.

The only tanning 4e did was attempting to discuss the game. You might not remember the moderators deleting adslahnit and Dragon may threads, but th at doesn't mean it didn't happen. In the end, 3e got it's way, but don't pretend that the edition wars weren't lopsided.

Are you fucking kidding me? That wouldn't even be the first time it happened to D&D.

Something better than MTG comes along or, more likely, WoTC does something boneheaded and the player base vanishes, so they offload a well known IP to keep the lights on.

>That wouldn't even be the first time it happened to D&D.
The TSR buyout was the entirety of TSR, not just the rights to AD&D

More importantly you're comparing apples and caterpillars if you think anything wizards might do with MtG is anywhere near the level of stupidity that was Dragon Dice.

>Companies don't throw away profitable properties because of a slowdown in profit increase from another property.
>Literally who is TSR?
No, but they do sell off IPs when bankruptcy or insolvency is the other option.

My first thought is Fantasy Flight. They aren't perfect, but they put a lot of work into their RPGs. Every RPG they've put out has had less problems than any WoTC edition of D&D.

>adslahnit
That wasn't because he liked 4e; that was because he was a serial troll who liked to samefag both sides of edition war threads. They didn't delete the dragon may threads because they were about 4e, they deleted his posts. It had nothing to do with 4e and everything to do with ban evasion. Pretty disingenuous to claim otherwise.

I posted in 4e's favor during that time. You're just not portraying the period accurately.

A) WotC goes balls deep into a Forgotten Realms Drizzt film. The Whole dark-skinned outsider with a heart of gold will be intended to throw a bone to critics. It will still fail because nobody knows who Drizzt is.

B) Hasbro sells WotC to Scholastic or something.

Aside from the fact that I absolutely DO think WoTC is dumb enough to do something that catastrophic to ruin Magic, I also don't think that it would have to be anything that bad. They're already losing a lot of good will with the Standard crowd and the Modern crowd is so unhappy that they've started to abandon the format, irrespective of Wizards treatment of it (which has not been good) for a meme format.

The only thing MTG has going for it is the sunk cost fallacy and the fact that they're basically the only game in town.

>Will Wizards of the Coast go out with a bang or a whimper?

Neither. WotC has two IP's that are to big to fail. D&D and MtG will not die in our lifetimes, however they will almost certainly evolve, possibly to a point where they are no longer recognizable.

Runescape digital CCG already did it.

Those threads weren't directly deleted because they were about 4e. They were deleted because dedicated trolls spammed them with Loren ipsum. Rather than ban the spammers, they Banned ads.

Ban evasion isn't a real offense by itself, It's moderation abuse. It's the same loophole as arresting somebody for nothing but resisting arrest.

I hate to tell you, but I heard people saying similar things to that during Alara. Magic is always dying.

No it's not. It's like arresting someone for breaking a restraining order. Did you miss the part where he was originally banned for constant samefag trolling?

Has the posting of the All Tomorrows pdf become some sort of oblique, Veeky Forums specific reaction image?

It was meant as more of a "pic related" kind of thing.

>Magic is always dying.
Yes, it is. And WoTC is always struggling to rebrand or reimagine it to make it sell better and it's only a matter of time before they cock it up so badly that YGO starts looking like a good idea.

White Wolf already tried this with a CCG based on Changeling called Arcadia: The Wyld Hunt.

So... kinda yes then, huh?

The original reason for his ban was "off topic posting". Either the mods were lying then or they are lying now. The former is more likely given ads character, but misinformation from the staff really didn't help the situation.

Even knowing what I know now, that doesn't change the result of what happened. Posters were sent a clear message that spamming 4e threads was acceptable. The damage was done.

You're not supposed to use all of the magic, just pick the magic appropriate to your setting.

Magic will go out with a whimper. Given all the sealed products and Chinaman fakes (ironically) and all the Cubes and EDH collections we all own, people will continue to play Magic in various forms for years to come. I have an entire warchest of Pauper decks to play competitive level league style Magic decks with friends, AND a (hilariously unbalanced) Vintage Cube to play over beer and pretzels. I can draw old friends and new into Magic with ease. We will all need to collectively not want to play it anymore for Magic to go out with a bang.

I'm sure the same can be said of DnD.

I'm not sure about Wizards. THEY might go out with a bang if they continue fucking up Standard and stop making money.

Bruh that was way past the high point of the edition war. That was after the nazi mod shit started. You're twisting the timeline something fierce.

>the Veeky Forums bubble
DnD seems to be a lot more popular than it used to be. Things like Critical Role have increased its profile to normies considerably. I've never found it easier to find a game, or get players for a party.

5e is easy as fuck to learn and is generally great for new players and that will always be more important than retaining the small, super neckbeard audience that's just going to keep playing older editions regardless.

>customers complain, wizards backtrack and make it 4 blocks, meaning that Zendikar doesn't rotate out for another year
I'm fine with this.
>Felidar Guardian
Mistakes were made.

I don't exclude the Nazi mod era from being a part of the edition wars. ( which really should have been called the edition attack. 4e players rarely if ever posted in 3e threads). There is nothing twisted about that.

She didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning.

Actually, I think 4E actually did pretty well, once you took into account the DDI subscriptions. If so, it actually performed better than previous editions.

I have no idea how 5E is doing "better" when they have so many fewer books to sell, to be honest.

It also has a much smaller team, so both the costs and revenues are lower.

MASSIVELY REPRINT THE CARDS, YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKERS!

>Eerybody gave up because the moderators on Veeky Forums allowed the 3e players to dictate what discussion was or wasn't allowed.
Speaking of revisionist history...do you really need to make things up to prove how badly 4e players tried to shill their minature wargame as "real roleplaying gamez"?

>4e players rarely if ever posted in 3e threads
That's utter bullshit. They posted their crap in threads that had absolutely nothing to do with 4e - such as threads asking what games had mechanical benefits to roleplaying (which 4e doesn't have at all).

good post

Did something happen to MTG? Because D&D really doesn't matter to WoTC

>mechanicals benefits to role playing

Out iside of setting DCs and the like, you have no idea how stupid this sounds

No, clearly the only way to play is to use every option available to overclock your character, then complain about the balance!

>threeaboos acting like 4e is more different from the previous edition than 3e was
AD&D grogs have a much, much, much better standpoint to accuse third edition of this.

That assholes.
Such things cant be forced. They all want to make another devil child meme.
Can we agree these people re like bards?

>Can we agree these people re like bards?
>t. Wizard
Bard has always been the superior adventurer

>4e players tried to shill their minature wargame as "real roleplaying gamez"?

In what was is it not? It's got about as much in that area as basically any other edition had. Stuff like if your theme makes you part of a knightly order you can get free lodging for yourself and your companions with other knights/nobility.

You cant put points into Craft: Dragon Dildo so its not a REAL rpg