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Dec 2, 2011 -- 2:14PM, excalainen wrote:

Nov 28, 2011 -- 2:29PM, Fallen_Star_02 wrote:

Why doesn't Wizards do big splashy "Announcing..." articles for D&D books, the way they do for Magic?

Why do they let upcoming major releases appear silently on Amazon or thier product catalog?

They used to in 2008 and 2009 (the golden years of 4e to me) in the Ampersands, but in 2010 they became just sales pitches for the next month's products, and then they stopped doing them entirely.

They used to have big announcements for the year at GenCon, but after the complaints and problems with the cancelled books at the beginning of the year they switched to only announcing for six months. They could have just been vocal about books, letting people know the status of books, telling us fans instead of stealth-cancelling and waiting for people to notice. But I guess they'd rather have a non-event new product seminar, 

Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue does not include the words "Campaign" or "Setting" on the cover.  Covers might lie, but previously with Neverwinter it only lied about being a Campaign Guide when the final book said Campaign Setting (presumably because it included player options as well – note that Gloomwrought was a Campaign Guide, and did not, while Dark Sun was a Campaign Setting and did). 

Menzoberranzan includes neither on the pre-release cover. Therefore, even if it IS the August Release, to call it the 2012 Setting is disingenuous.  It seems to have more in common with Hammerfast and Vor Rukoth, to be honest. 

We had 2 Campaigns published in 2011 – Gloomwrought and Neverwinter.  Nobody said that the Setting HAD to be published in August; it's just a 3 year trend of doing so.  And then in 2011, Neverwinter followed it up, so people arbitrarily said that was the "true" Campaign Setting of the year, when really, Gloomwrought + Heroes of Shadow was just as important.  And 2011 WAS a year of mixing things up, what with releasing 2 Player's Handbook-like titles in the same year – both Heroes of Shadow and Heroes of the Feywild.   I wouldn't be surprised if they're changing their release dates entirely.  We just don't know.

In the end, Menzoberranzan just doesn't seem to fit with the clues for the 2012 setting.  But it IS a good idea to publish, as it follows on the heels of Neverwinter as a Paragon semi-sequel, and Drow and Drizzt have publishing power.  In fact, Legend of Drizzt and its various spin-offs and sequels and merchandise have probably sold more than the rest of D&D combined, sorry to say.  So publishing into that is a good way to keep the profit margin up while supporting what we already have.  But it just doesn't seem to fit any setting clues besides an August release and being a location book.

I will never buy anything to do with Forgotten realms because it's so overused it's not funny. It's just a regular setting with some locations made famous by Drizzt! No imagination whatsoever until the spellplague, which FR fans hated. Eberron is awesome, cyberpunk is the best. Why would your group think about it until you found out about that stuff? There the whole reason you would play the setting!