Arrogance and Ignorance
Wizards of the Coast suffers these terribly when it comes to marketing DnD now. This was beginning to show itself way back at GenCon for the release of 3rd Edition. I took part in a marketing research panel with about 10 other people and 3 market research folks who had been briefed on what the product was but did not really seem to have any real knowldge of what they were working with. Their intended spin they wanted to try out on us was geared toward ten year olds for the most part. We gave our input, told them what we thought was lame (most of it) and what we thought might work.
About 6 months later to their credit the marketing was 50/50 our input and their input. However, things have been downhill since then. The dregs are now washing back with 4th Edition. However what really seems to be the problem now is that WoTC seems to think they can throw any piece of shit out there and it will stick. I am sure of of this is tied into budget and profits, they are a company after all. However Gleemax closing down in September should be of suprise to no one. They named it after an inside joke. Made it look fairly lame. It was nearly impossible to navigate. They called on folks to post to “blogs” that were nothing more than locked threads on a message board. They dropped it out on the net in a very early alpha state of development and it never got past an early beta state.
WoTC’s web efforts have never been stellar. Navigation logic and user interface are pretty much always an after thought. The new DnD insider site is not great, but it seems almost to be something. However they hyped it way too much not to have more meat on the table when they rolled it out. That was a HUGE missed oportunity they will never get back.
Now we get to the Arrogance portion of the rant. The new edition touts all of these thing sthey have brought to the table, improving the game from past editions. Marginalizing things from old editions telling you how bad they were and in reality much of the “new” stuff is just old tried and true with a spiffy new name tossed on it. “Points of Light” being the most blatant example.
Unfortunately I was interupted in this train of thought, so we’ll pause this rant and return later for part two. I’ll do a wrap up and link to some other similar thoughts at my favorite blogs.
