Wizard's archives seems to be gone again.

[Zanos]

I could have sworn they tried that attitude in the 4e days and it blew up on them.

Mostly because 4e was dead on arrival.

[Thurbane]

Yeah, the "celebrity revival" of D&D seems to have really hitched it's wagon to 5E.

Understandable WotC don't really care about some disgruntled 3E fans any more...

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Thurbane
Yeah, the "celebrity revival" of D&D seems to have really hitched it's wagon to 5E.

What do you mean by “celebrity revival” here?

Originally Posted by Doctor Despair
Maybe someone could try to get it to blow up on r/HobbyDrama?

On second thought, after looking at this…whatever it is, it’s probably not the best place to get Wizards to take something seriously.

[Thurbane]

What do you mean by “celebrity revival” here?

Critical Role, Joe Manganiello, Satine Phoenix etc.

D&D's mainstream resurgence seems to have coincided with 5E, maybe late 4E, by my reckoning.

[Palanan]

Ah, okay. I’ve only heard of those people through references here in the Playground.

On a smaller scale, 1 For All also uses 5E, although they usually only mention mechanics in passing.

[Zanos]

Yeah, the "celebrity revival" of D&D seems to have really hitched it's wagon to 5E.

Yes, 5e is a far more friendly format to being picked up by less invested groups.

[Understandable WotC don't really care about some disgruntled 3E fans any more...

They don't even sell products for 3.5 fans. So yeah, they care so little they won't even take money from us.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes, 5e is a far more friendly format to being picked up by less invested groups.


They don't even sell products for 3.5 fans. So yeah, they care so little they won't even take money from us.

You can still buy 3e pdfs of rulebooks from DMs Guild, which is officially licensed and owned by WotC. So they do sell 3e material. And 2e material for that matter.

[Feldar]

Remove all traces of the past. There has only ever been and only ever will be 5e. All hail its eternal glorious gilded reign. It is the perfect system. It is the Sun.

Until 6E comes along...

[Thurbane]

[Elves]

Until 6E comes along...

Trust me they are never going to make any change as radical as 4e again. They got burned bad on that one.

4e was already their sort of stab at becoming mainstream (at that time, in the age of MMOs). Now that they've basically achieved that there's no reason to take risks.

[Wildstag]

There's 4e fans in the playground! At least a couple handfuls!

Trust me they are never going to make any change as radical as 4e again. They got burned bad on that one.

4e was already their sort of stab at becoming mainstream (at that time, in the age of MMOs). Now that they've basically achieved that there's no reason to take risks.

The game was never an attempt to emulate MMOs, and the aspects of it that people hated the most (at-will, encounter, and daily powers) still live on in 5e, just with different names. Encounter powers reset after a short rest and daily powers after a long rest. 5e kept those mechanics and just reworded it. The whole "controller, striker, leader, defender" was just a rewording of the AD&D-era "fighter, mage, cleric, thief". Those roles had always existed, but were reworded to provide players inspiration for playstyle.

The quote people use for the whole "IT'S CLEARLY BASED OFF OF MMORPGS" argument was about inspiration, not an intent to copy wholesale the feel of MMOs. The VTT that was supposed to ship with 4e was also intended to be like what Roll20 became, but with as much integration as 5e now has with roll20.

Collins admitted that 4th edition was influenced by MMOs but was quick to point out that the design took inspiration from many contemporary sources.

Honestly, I still think the big issue was marketing, not the actual feel of the game. Because basically every aspect of the game was direct evolution from 3e or prior mechanics and a majority of aspects have been directly carried over to 5e under a new name. It almost HAS to be the aesthetics after a certain point, and that just seems... I dunno... superficial? Anyways, I digress.

[Mechalich]

Honestly, I still think the big issue was marketing, not the actual feel of the game. Because basically every aspect of the game was direct evolution from 3e or prior mechanics and a majority of aspects have been directly carried over to 5e under a new name. It almost HAS to be the aesthetics after a certain point, and that just seems... I dunno... superficial? Anyways, I digress.

Don't forget the fluff. A very large portion of the TTRPG marketplace cares more about the fluff than the crunch (especially because tables often completely ignore a huge proportion of the crunch anyway, one of the reasons for 5e's success is that it essentially codified this as a practice), and 4e made structural changes that detonated huge chunks of the fluff, to the point that the conversion from 3e to 4e necessitated blowing apart the Forgotten Realms - by the far the most successful setting - and replacing it with something no one cared about.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
….to the point that the conversion from 3e to 4e necessitated blowing apart the Forgotten Realms - by the far the most successful setting - and replacing it with something no one cared about.

I looked through the 4E FRCS when it first came out, and what struck me was just how much fun they had nuking their own setting. I was running a campaign in the Realms at the time, and while their future timeline was mildly entertaining, I had no intention of switching over.

Also, the 4E FRCS was absolutely pathetic in terms of presentation. Maps and layout were ghastly, visual design looked like someone threw it together over a long weekend in their parents’ basement. It was a vertical drop in editorial quality compared to the 3.0 FRCS, to the point that it was just ugly to look at.

[Elves]

4e FR was the best setting WOTC ever published btw.

[H_H_F_F]

There's 4e fans in the playground! At least a couple handfuls!

The game was never an attempt to emulate MMOs, and the aspects of it that people hated the most (at-will, encounter, and daily powers) still live on in 5e, just with different names. Encounter powers reset after a short rest and daily powers after a long rest. 5e kept those mechanics and just reworded it. The whole "controller, striker, leader, defender" was just a rewording of the AD&D-era "fighter, mage, cleric, thief". Those roles had always existed, but were reworded to provide players inspiration for playstyle.

The quote people use for the whole "IT'S CLEARLY BASED OFF OF MMORPGS" argument was about inspiration, not an intent to copy wholesale the feel of MMOs. The VTT that was supposed to ship with 4e was also intended to be like what Roll20 became, but with as much integration as 5e now has with roll20.

Honestly, I still think the big issue was marketing, not the actual feel of the game. Because basically every aspect of the game was direct evolution from 3e or prior mechanics and a majority of aspects have been directly carried over to 5e under a new name. It almost HAS to be the aesthetics after a certain point, and that just seems... I dunno... superficial? Anyways, I digress.

I don't know, man. My group at the time switched to 4e. Everyone was very excited, and we were teenagers who didn't speak English and weren't envolved with the community. We gave up 4E shortly after, not because "Collins addmitted it was basically an MMO", because we didn't know or care about that. We left it because it felt like trash. The casters didn't feel like casters, the martials didn't feel like martials, and the simulationist feel was gone for all of us. Say what you will about 5E, it does not feel like that.

[Feldar]

Trust me they are never going to make any change as radical as 4e again. They got burned bad on that one.

Yeah, you may have missed my point there.

[Scots Dragon]

Don't forget the fluff. A very large portion of the TTRPG marketplace cares more about the fluff than the crunch (especially because tables often completely ignore a huge proportion of the crunch anyway, one of the reasons for 5e's success is that it essentially codified this as a practice), and 4e made structural changes that detonated huge chunks of the fluff, to the point that the conversion from 3e to 4e necessitated blowing apart the Forgotten Realms - by the far the most successful setting - and replacing it with something no one cared about.

All of this. And it wasn't just the Forgotten Realms. It was basically everything.

At the time my experience with Dungeons & Dragons didn't include a regular gaming group, so I made do with character builds, fanfiction, and other such. And I enjoyed all that through the lens of the Forgotten Realms since I'd gotten into D&D through Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights.

4e FR was the best setting WOTC ever published btw.

I think you misspelled worst. It felt like they basically geared it to appease the non-fans of the Realms who liked to loudly complain about how powerful Elminster was but also how poorly built his stat block was on the forums.

Because that's actually an important thing to worry about for representing the lore of an established setting that's been going longer than D&D has existed. /s

[SpyOne]

I don't have any personal experience with 4th edition, but what I hear from others reminds me of New Coke. Or maybe Highlander 2.

In doing market research before releasing New Coke they conducted taste tests, and in those taste tests most people preferred New Coke to the traditional Coke (now called Coke Classic). But when asked "what if this was the new flavor of Coca-Cola", ten to twenty percent of test subjects became angry. If they had previously said they liked the new cola they changed their answer, and they tried to persuade others to change their answer.

Highlander 2 may be the worst sequel ever. but I had to agree with my brother when he said it was actually a pretty good movie. "I just have no idea why they called it Highlander 2". (All subsequent Highlander sequels have pretended it doesn't exist.)

There are a lot of people saying that 4th edition was actually a good system and unfairly maligned, but many of them also say it was very different from previous editions. And they say that both as a feature and a flaw.
Maybe trying to make it "the new D&D" made a bunch of people angry, many of whom would actually have preferred it to D&D if it had been called something else.

On the main topic: that Wizards treats the content of their forums as unimportant and the people who create it worse is not in any way news to me, and probably why I haven't read anything there in over a decade. Those forums exist only to serve WotC, and the people making decisions don't see maintaining an archive as serving that purpose, despite the fact that it does. People don't visit a library every day to check the day's newspaper, they visit for the books.

[Palanan]

Looks like the archives are permanently gone this time.

Has this even been noticed anywhere else? Or was the Playground the only place with a lingering memory of the 3.5 online material?

[thorr-kan]

It was noticed on rpg.net.

A few things have shown up for sale on DriveThruRPG.com from the archives.

[Jervis]

There's 4e fans in the playground! At least a couple handfuls!

There are at least 6, no, 7 of them out there

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by thorr-kan
A few things have shown up for sale on DriveThruRPG.com from the archives.

What in particular? Are they selling them page by page, or in themed bundles? Not sure how that would work.

[redking]

Since WotC maintains infrastructure for their web based ecosystem, keeping archives up costs them nothing and gets them plenty of good will. I cannot speculate as to the reasoning behind the deletion of their archives, but it could be that WotC believes that the archives could contain (not necessarily does contain) various racist, sexist, homophobic + other -isms content, and paying a team to go review and redact archived content that doesn't make WotC any money and isn't worth the effort and expense.

[Elves]

Since WotC maintains infrastructure for their web based ecosystem, keeping archives up costs them nothing and gets them plenty of good will. I cannot speculate as to the reasoning behind the deletion of their archives, but it could be that WotC believes that the archives could contain (not necessarily does contain) various racist, sexist, homophobic + other -isms content, and paying a team to go review and redact archived content that doesn't make WotC any money and isn't worth the effort and expense.

Rather, it sounds like they want to squeeze the content for pennies:

A few things have shown up for sale on DriveThruRPG.com from the archives.

[Wildstag]

You say that with such a negative connotation when literally the last two times this happened (before now), people (myself included) have proposed the alternative of "take it down, but sell a compendium of its info".

[Troacctid]

I don't see any new items from WotC on DriveThruRPG.

[Thurbane]

As far as I know, most of the "free" short adventures were taken off the archive website a long time back, and have been available for sale at DriveThruRPG.com and similar for quite some time...

[Gemini476]

Yeah, it seems like they've just been doing this in the background for a while.

For example:
Luck of the Draw on Dungeon Masters Guild (Date Added: 2021-06-18)
Luck of the Draw on their old website, via the Internet Archive (PDF link is there, but dead)

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Thurbane
As far as I know, most of the "free" short adventures were taken off the archive website a long time back, and have been available for sale at DriveThruRPG.com and similar for quite some time..

The free modules have been gone for years, but I’m concerned with all the items and features that were still on the online archive—articles like Vicious Venues, the consolidated lists, pretty much everything that could be found here.

As I said earlier in the thread, we need to make this more visible. There’s got to be a blogger, YouTube channel, someone who could pick this up and make the case to a wider audience. At the very least, a PDF bundle of the most popular items, but a hardback in the style of the MIC would be great for those of us who cherish our gaming shelves. I'd pay for that, and I'm sure there are plenty of others who would too.

.

[Scots Dragon]

The free modules have been gone for years, but I’m concerned with all the items and features that were still on the online archive—articles like Vicious Venues, the consolidated lists, pretty much everything that could be found here.

As I said earlier in the thread, we need to make this more visible. There’s got to be a blogger, YouTube channel, someone who could pick this up and make the case to a wider audience. At the very least, a PDF bundle of the most popular items, but a hardback in the style of the MIC would be great for those of us who cherish our gaming shelves. I'd pay for that, and I'm sure there are plenty of others who would too.

.

Note that the Wayback Machine link there works so that material is still accessible.