D&D 3.5 pdf prices

[Aristodeimos]

What the heck?!? Despite all the success WOTC is having with D&D 4E, they are still selling the D&D 3.5 pdf files on DrivethruRPG at full price. Meanwhile, ALL the 4E books are selling at substantial discount. How much longer are we going to have to wait before we see the discounts that earlier versions sell for? You can buy 1st and 2nd Edition books for about $5 each.

[hogarth]

Hey, those are rare .pdfs! They're long out of print, so the price should go up, not down.

;-)

[Hunterofthedusk]

The first day I used DriveThruRPG I got a bunch of those PDF's for free, and I mean a bunch (Rules Compendium, Dungeonscape, Dragon Magic, Draconomicon, ect.). I'm not sure why, maybe that was a super special deal that just happened to be going on for that day, or what.

But that aside, I think that WOTC will milk those for as much as they can, for as long as they can. As long as people are still buying them they will charge the same. Why fix it if it isn't broken, as the old saying goes.

EDIT: As soon as I saw that they were free I started grabbing as many as I could, just in case it was a mistake.

[Taliesin Hoyle]

Price is what you can get away with.

[A 2E Floppy-Eared Golem]

Hunterofthedusk wrote:

As soon as I saw that they were free I started grabbing as many as I could, just in case it was a mistake.

I love this. :D

[Cato Novus]

Hunterofthedusk wrote:

As soon as I saw that they were free I started grabbing as many as I could, just in case it was a mistake.

Reminds me of myself in a grocery store when they have samples. :)

[Masika]

Slightly related...

I heard that over here in the land down under that WotC sent all their copies of 3.5 that they didnt sell discounted to the land fill. They would rather throw 3.5 away than sell it.

I am amazed they are still selling any 3.5 products still. Is the player's handbook available?

[Paul Watson]

Masika wrote:

Slightly related...

I heard that over here in the land down under that WotC sent all their copies of 3.5 that they didnt sell discounted to the land fill. They would rather throw 3.5 away than sell it.

I am amazed they are still selling any 3.5 products still. Is the player's handbook available?

No. Nor the DMG or Monster Manual. They don't actually want new players to go into the game, after all.

[Patrick Curtin]

Aristodeimos wrote:

What the heck?!? Despite all the success WOTC is having with D&D 4E, they are still selling the D&D 3.5 pdf files on DrivethruRPG at full price. Meanwhile, ALL the 4E books are selling at substantial discount. How much longer are we going to have to wait before we see the discounts that earlier versions sell for? You can buy 1st and 2nd Edition books for about $5 each.

I had posted on this subject quite a while ago. I am actually surprised they even have the PDFs up at DTRPG (they were taken down for a while right after 4E debuted). I have every 3E/3.5 E WotC book (rules wise, about 50% campaign-specific stuff like FR or Eberron) in dead-tree form and I would dearly love to get them in a PDF style for my computer. I refuse to pay full price again, or use any of those 'torrentz' IP ripoff places.

Hopefully at some point WotC will relent and drop the PDF price on 3.5E books down to a more reasonable level ..like $5 a pop. I know it would make me feel a warm fuzzy towards them, something which has been a bit of a rarity these past couple of years.

[Mairkurion {tm}]

It's all a part of the secret of their success...you guys just can't see the whole plan, man.

[Aristodeimos]

Hunterofthedusk wrote:

The first day I used DriveThruRPG I got a bunch of those PDF's for free, and I mean a bunch (Rules Compendium, Dungeonscape, Dragon Magic, Draconomicon, ect.). I'm not sure why, maybe that was a super special deal that just happened to be going on for that day, or what.

I'm green with envy.

Patrick Curtin wrote:

Hopefully at some point WotC will relent and drop the PDF price on 3.5E books down to a more reasonable level ..like $5 a pop. I know it would make me feel a warm fuzzy towards them, something which has been a bit of a rarity these past couple of years.

My sentiments exactly.

[Cpt_kirstov]

Spoilered so not to make flame war:

Spoiler:

Aristodeimos wrote:

What the heck?!? Despite all the success WOTC is having with D&D 4E

I think this is where you're wrong... at least in my local. since 4th has come out the store I work at has bought 7 4E player's handbooks total, 3 of which are still on the shelf, so we've sold 2 (this is not counting the 2 that I am another employee got free so as to run worldwide game day) in that same amount of time, we've gone through 15 3.5 player's handbooks... used 3.5 PHBs go for full price plus on ebay right now, a year ago they were $15 for PHB and DMG and not selling. 4E PHB are selling for 9.99 on ebay, and usually only get one id at that.

[Matthew Morris]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Spoilered so not to make flame war: ** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

My FLGS has similar anecdotal data as well. Pathfinder does well for a non 'big name' company. 4e sales are down compared to 3.x and vendors are starting to discount the 'big three' 4x books.

[Mark Moreland]

Matthew Morris wrote:

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Spoilered so not to make flame war: ** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

This data is pretty representative of FLGSs across the country from what I've heard. The local meetup group where I run PFS has about 85% 4e players but when I asked where they got the books they always say Barnes & Noble or Borders. Never the store we play in. If the sales numbers reported by FLGSs were an actual monitor of total sales, I'd venture to guess that WotC is still selling full-price 3.5 pdfs because it's still a viable source of income that the deluge of 4e dollars isn't making insignificant. Or they could just want to squeeze every penny they can out of anyone who doesn't want to give up their old rulesset and drink the KoolAde.