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The Ranger power "Rapid Shot" needs to be re-written. As written it allows a Ranger to shoot every creature within weapon range.

Yeah, poor choice of wording there. It is obviously intended to mean you attack "each creature in or adjacent to a (1) square within range." But instead it sounds like it says you attack "each creature in or adjancent to a (any) square within range." Ie, it lets you create an area burst 1.

Anyway, interesting preview. Somewhat disappointed by the Ampersand itself, but mainly because it set up some false expectations at the beginning, where he said he was going to "let [us] in on a number of secret D&D goings-on known only to the Director of R&D and a small, select group of other people here at Wizards."

And then... nothing. We saw the usual covering of upcoming products, but no new info among it. And the Ranger preview, which is nice, but... the same sort of preview Ampersand normally includes, and a product only a month away. Which normally I'd have been excited about, but the talk of actual R&D secrets left me hoping we'd see something really exciting and interesting and new. Communication, as always, doesn't seem WotC's strong point.

(And just to be clear - I'm not actually complaining here! I do appreciate the Ampersand previews. Especially with the current chatter over the CB, talking about R&D secrets and then just handing along a usual preview... may not be the smartest move. I just think Bill may want to review his wording on some of these things to avoid setting up false expectations, which end up just undercutting the cool stuff he actually does hand out!)

Perhaps the fate cards were what he was referring to? I don't know.

I'm trying to remain optimistic about the changes to the game represented by Essentials, but I'm having hard time swallowing the "we're just adding new builds" arguement I keep hearing floated by WotC. Especially since they seem to go through contortions in the Essentials books to mention "other published sources" from which to take powers without actually naming them by name. Makes me feel like my 4e PHB suddenly joined the Betamax VCR and the floppy disk drive in terms of usefulness; in other words Non-Essential.

I'd feel more assured if I could play around with the Essentials builds in the CB, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen any time soon.

And fate cards? Web-based tools? I'd rather have the CB brought up-to-date.

All that to say, Bill's article did nothing to make me feel better about the overall direction 4e is taking. Or, more accurately, it did nothing to inform me about the overall direction 4e is taking. I guess, like we have been for over a month, we'll have to wait and see.