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The employees of WOTC deserve to get laid off due to the destruction of D&D. 4th Edition is not D&D, and I refuse to call it that. I will not waste money on it, and I will not play it. That is what I am calling 4e D&D: IT!
Absolutely unacceptable. There are many things in teh world worth your ire. A game is not one fo them.
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Well I'm not too thrilled about a lot of the aspects of 4E as well as number of other things WotC has done. I still wouln't wish for WotC employees to be laid off, even the ones who were responsible for the destruction of the Forgotten Realms. Messing with your favorite hobby isn't nearly as bad as having your income taken away from you.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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<tired rant that grew old in the first month of 4.x release>
Lefar has apparently lost respect, understanding and the ability to type rationally. Not to mention his meds.
I request he be laid off, in retribution for his inanity.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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I just had one of those 'd'oh, why didn't I think of this joke last week?' moments.
Wizards of the Coast have announced a 'new organizational' alignment; so is this going to be Lawful Good, Good, Evil, or Chaotic Evil? (I'm not sure that they can call 'unaligned' an alignment?)
And what (if anything) does this say about their organizational alignment before?
See I would have gone with Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Selfish.
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See I would have gone with Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Selfish.
I just had one of those 'd'oh, why didn't I think of this joke last week?' moments.
Wizards of the Coast have announced a 'new organizational' alignment; so is this going to be Lawful Good, Good, Evil, or Chaotic Evil? (I'm not sure that they can call 'unaligned' an alignment?)
And what (if anything) does this say about their organizational alignment before?
I'd go with neutral greedy. Seriously, as far as D&D alignements go, most corporations are lawful or neutral evil. Anything that is all about profit regarless of the cost to human beings definitely can't be good and most likely isn't neutral either.
ENWorld, I know, said there store saw a huge loss in 3E book orders after the announcement, but of course that's only anecdotal. Sorry if that came across otherwise.
Cheers! :)
Yeah, I remember when Morrus posted that on ENWorld as a prelude to one of his support drives to keep the website open. I think a bit part of the reason why the ENWorld PDFs lost their luster is the all-in mentality that ENWorld went into in regards to 4e. If Morrus could have kept things on a more neutral ground, providing an environment where pro-3e and pro-4e folks could have felt equally loved, his sales wouldn't have dropped off as much. But by pitching his tent so firmly in the 4e camp, he drove away the folks who would have bought his 3e PDFs in the last year.
-Lisa
As a former ENWorld addict, I am 100% in agreement with this assessment.
Okay, not trying to be snarky or insulting or trollish, but at a time when 4e is apparently selling pretty well, why is it that WotC is eliminating jobs? Corporate America never did make much sense to me...Organizational Announcement
Wizards Announces New Organizational Alignment
Wizards of the Coast today announced new organizational alignment to focus on key growth strategies for core brands.
"As a company, we will continue to be the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer," said Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. "Re-aligning resources ensures we achieve this goal for our most powerful brands."
While restructuring results in some job eliminations, Wizards of the Coast is actively recruiting to fill open positions in multiple areas of the company.
"Organizational change is always difficult on those impacted," said Leeds. "But we will take great care in the transition, and continue to invest in the growth of the business, specifically innovation for our Magic and Dungeons & Dragons fans."
The employees of WOTC deserve to get laid off due to the destruction of D&D. 4th Edition is not D&D, and I refuse to call it that. I will not waste money on it, and I will not play it. That is what I am calling 4e D&D: IT!
Wow. I can't stand 4e but this post blew me away. The ignorance, insensitivity, and total lack of class contained in that post is staggering, even for the Internet.
Baf...
People get laid off, people get a job, lose a job, get another job....
That's life folks, for all of us. I'm not saying it's cool or something, I say it happens, it happened to some of us and will again in the future, in any kind of industry we are.
The most important for these guys now is: do they get some kind of package, to have the time to find something else? I wouldn't count on that, and that is what sucks.
Good luck to them, and don't worry, this is USA they are living in, not Romania, so they should be settled soon.
I'd go with neutral greedy. Seriously, as far as D&D alignements go, most corporations are lawful or neutral evil. Anything that is all about profit regarless of the cost to human beings definitely can't be good and most likely isn't neutral either.See I would have gone with Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Selfish.
I just had one of those 'd'oh, why didn't I think of this joke last week?' moments.
Wizards of the Coast have announced a 'new organizational' alignment; so is this going to be Lawful Good, Good, Evil, or Chaotic Evil? (I'm not sure that they can call 'unaligned' an alignment?)
And what (if anything) does this say about their organizational alignment before?
The majority of corporations are small businesses. For example, a family that owns a laundromat. They form a corporation so that if someone falls down in their store and sues, the family can still send their kids to college. The vast majority of corporations are NOT about profit regardless of the cost to human beings. Quite the opposite. Even in large corporations, I think profit over the human cost is less prominent than you think. Yes, it exists. But this knee-jerk attitude some people seem to have that all corporations = evil does not comport with reality as I perceive it.
Edit - which is not to say that WotC isn't evil. i express no opinion on that, I was just making an observation. It's a pet peeve of mine, actually.
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Obviously I wasn't thinking of small businesses that become corporations to protect the owners from legal action. The fact is that today most large corporations do put profit above all else. Some like Enron will lie and do other unethical and illegal things to get ahead. Others will lay people off just to increase their stock price so the CEO can get a bigger bonus. Let's face it, anyone that isn't upper management is not considered a person, but an expense. If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.
If you know anyone who got the ax at Wizards, give them these instructions.
1: Get a lawyer, have him go over everything you ever signed. If you got a good severance package, you might want to put off the next step.
Meanwhile, read every issue of Knights of the Dinner Table you can get ahold of.
2: Contact Kenzer. You can PM Jolly or Dave Kenzer on the KODT boards.
3: Convince them you know what went on during the 4th edition launch. Possibly suggest how you can make the current storyline about Heidi Jackson's (Gary's widow) reorganizing Hackmaster more believeable.
I'm all about solutions, not guilt.
If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.
Right, because to be good you have to continue employing people especially if they are poor performers. Your responsibilities to your shareholders, the other employees, and the general health of your company be damned.
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weakThe employees of WOTC deserve to get laid off due to the destruction of D&D. 4th Edition is not D&D, and I refuse to call it that. I will not waste money on it, and I will not play it. That is what I am calling 4e D&D: IT!
I am a firmly in the I hate 4E realm... However, I agree with you on this CWM. That was a rude and foul thing to say.
I don't remember if I was surprised or not when I heard about 4th edition, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been.Yep - when round 2 of the 3.5 splat books strated up I knew the end was near.
This was more or less when I started thinking that Wizards was going to have to do something myself. Not only was I so burnt out on yet more options that I could not be bothered but the majority of the people on the Paizo boards seemed to be going the same way. People would ask questions about stuff from these books and no one would answer. That was not happening if you asked about something from Complete Adventurer so it was pretty clear that many of the other posters - like me just had not acquired the books. They could not be bothered.
Worse yet people were b&@%$ing about the bloat in the system. There was a strong trend toward back to basics and threads popping up about what was needed to make restricted cannon games a lot. I'd not say I new 4E was coming but it was clear that the natives were restless and they would need to do something. I think I was arguing that they needed to release more stuff along the lines of the well received Fiends books instead of more Completes, of course making 4E was the other option.
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The employees of WOTC deserve to get laid off due to the destruction of D&D. 4th Edition is not D&D, and I refuse to call it that. I will not waste money on it, and I will not play it. That is what I am calling 4e D&D: IT!
Congratulations, Leafar, you've managed to do the impossible and unite the 4E lovers and loathers. Congratulations, well done. It's quite an achievement you've pulled off here with your heartless asshatery.
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If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.Right, because to be good you have to continue employing people especially if they are poor performers. Your responsibilities to your shareholders, the other employees, and the general health of your company be damned.
I'm not talking about firing poor perfromers or bad employees. I'm talking about doing things like axing some people to artificially inflate stock prices so the CEO can get a bigger bonus or, in the case of the current sub-prime mortgage crisis, having your company give loans to people you know won't be able to pay them in a few years when thier payments go through the roof so you can show short term profit gains and get a bigger bonus. Things like that are definitely evil behavior.
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I don't remember if I was surprised or not when I heard about 4th edition, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been.Yep - when round 2 of the 3.5 splat books strated up I knew the end was near.This was more or less when I started thinking that Wizards was going to have to do something myself. Not only was I so burnt out on yet more options that I could not be bothered but the majority of the people on the Paizo boards seemed to be going the same way. People would ask questions about stuff from these books and no one would answer. That was not happening if you asked about something from Complete Adventurer so it was pretty clear that many of the other posters - like me just had not acquired the books. They could not be bothered.
Worse yet people were b~@%#ing about the bloat in the system. There was a strong trend toward back to basics and threads popping up about what was needed to make restricted cannon games a lot. I'd not say I new 4E was coming but it was clear that the natives were restless and they would need to do something. I think I was arguing that they needed to release more stuff along the lines of the well received Fiends books instead of more Completes, of course making 4E was the other option.
I knew something was up when I saw how sparse their release schedule for late '07 early '08 was.
Let's face it, anyone that isn't upper management is not considered a person, but an expense. If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.
They are not considered "expenses", the word is Resources. Believe me, I work for a multi-national company that runs other folks computer rooms, and that is the word that is used when a new project, especially one that we can bill the customer extra for, starts up, as "Please identify the resources for this project."
-- david
Papa.DRB
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Let's face it, anyone that isn't upper management is not considered a person, but an expense. If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.They are not considered "expenses", the word is Resources. Believe me, I work for a multi-national company that runs other folks computer rooms, and that is the word that is used when a new project, especially one that we can bill the customer extra for, starts up, as "Please identify the resources for this project."
-- david
Papa.DRB
I'm not talking about the terminology ued to describe employees. I'm talking about the attitude towards employess.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Worse yet people were b@@&@ing about the bloat in the system. There was a strong trend toward back to basics and threads popping up about what was needed to make restricted cannon games a lot. I'd not say I new 4E was coming but it was clear that the natives were restless and they would need to do something. I think I was arguing that they needed to release more stuff along the lines of the well received Fiends books instead of more Completes, of course making 4E was the other option.
Unfortunately, signs are that 4E will head right down this path of that 2E and 3E took, to the detriment of both editions. I prefer the sourcebook/adventure heavy approach, too much crunch is a bad thing.
"Employees are rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them."
- 211 Rule of Acquisition
I'm not talking about firing poor perfromers or bad employees. I'm talking about doing things like axing some people to artificially inflate stock prices so the CEO can get a bigger bonus or, in the case of the current sub-prime mortgage crisis, having your company give loans to people you know won't be able to pay them in a few years when thier payments go through the roof so you can show short term profit gains and get a bigger bonus. Things like that are definitely evil behavior.If they think they can save money by getting rid of some of these "expenses", then that is what they will do. That is definitely on the evil side of the alignment spectrum.Right, because to be good you have to continue employing people especially if they are poor performers. Your responsibilities to your shareholders, the other employees, and the general health of your company be damned.
Agreed.
See? We do agree on occasion. ;-)
Unfortunately, signs are that 4E will head right down this path of that 2E and 3E took, to the detriment of both editions. I prefer the sourcebook/adventure heavy approach, too much crunch is a bad thing.
For sure - I'd bet the farm on it. Then they'll release 5th Ed.
I'm not even sure if there is all that viable an alternative - at least not for Wizards. Reality is it remains to be seen if even Paizo can keep the game up in terms of adventures for 8+ years, but even if they can it'd be purely because they make truly exceptional adventures, they hone their skills at it constantly and they make adventure creation their core market. Plus they probably don't need to sell a fifth as many actual books to remain a healthy viable company.
Wizards has rule creation as their core market and, ultimately, there are only so many rules and options you can put on the table before most of us have had enough and sales start to flag. They can try and extend out that period by making more adventures but, outside of Dungeon with its 'best script out of a pile of 116 scripts' model they just don't have the talent because you don't get this kind of talent overnight. Adventure writing is - at its core - story telling and that takes a certain kind of talent, one thats not really fostered in Design and Development.
Source Books are another way to extend things and WotC has some great IP but its a slippery slope. You break up your market when you focus on specific worlds and thats not good for overall business.
In any case I'll likely not mind it when they finally give it up and go for 5th as I'll probably be ready for 5th eight years from now.
I perused some of the links here trying to determine what parts of wotc seemed to be on the block and I was reminded of one thing:
Gamers suck. From the looks of it having anything to do with customer service in this industry is like wearing a sign that reads "Lonely? Strange? Poorly medicated? Take all your frustrations out on me! I'm payed to take it!"
And this is after months of happily playing dnd with my friends. Blech.
The employees of WOTC deserve to get laid off due to the destruction of D&D. 4th Edition is not D&D, and I refuse to call it that. I will not waste money on it, and I will not play it. That is what I am calling 4e D&D: IT!
Congratulations, Leafar, you've managed to do the impossible and unite the 4E lovers and loathers. Congratulations, well done. It's quite an achievement you've pulled off here with your heartless asshatery.
ROFL. Leafer, a little class, please. You are talking about human beings.
