4th Edition D&D and Useless Wastes of Money, or: Wizards can eat my Poo

So Wizards of the Coast, the current owners of the Dungeons and Dragons game line, has just put out a new book. This book is called Wizards Presents: Races and Classes. This book costs about twenty bucks. It has no rules. It has no actual game info. All it is, is a snapshot of the possible development of the new fourth edition of D&D.

I want to take this moment to say something:

 What the in the fuck is this fucking bullshit?!? :wtf:

Seriously, I know that game publishers are hard up for money, but come on...twenty books so that die-hard gamers can get a look at the mystical process of game design? Couldn't this have been put, you know, online where it belongs? As a press release or something? Bloody hell! :confused:

Look, I've given WotC an obscene amount of money through the years, with my old Magic: The Gathering playing days when I'd get something like three or more boxes of cards per new set released, getting into D&D 3.5 (I skipped 3.0, lucky me and my lucky wallet), and even trying out the fucking Pokemon card game for five minutes.

I don't know, I'm sure this sounds bitter, but this book they've put out is of no value for the consumer. I've checked out reviews, and I've talked to some friends of mine who've been reading the god damn thing. The sucky part is that a lot of the changes they're making for 4.0 are good; I like them a lot. I've been doing world building for my usual game crew and there are some serious problems with 3.5.

Of course, there are things in 4.0 that I'm not so keen on either, and directions I wish they'd either gone in or not gone in, but that's besides the point. The point here is that Wizards is releasing a publication that's of no value to the consumer. Maybe this is a caveat emptor moment; a fool and his money will soon be parted. There's one born every second. :spend:

Hell, at least put this new info in a publication with some other useful stuff in it so fans of the system can at least get raped with a little lube, no this dry, chaffing, hateful buggering without even the pretense of usefulness.

I guess this book is useful for Wizards, in that it'll make them a couple of bucks while they bridge from 3.x to 4.0 and get some publicity for the new version (which I suppose I'm feeding right into with this rant, eh?) but I can't get over the impression that this is a real lameass greedy corporate type of move. Making a profit is fine and good, but the unmitigated gall of taking a steaming shit in your hand and trying to sell it to your loyal customer base is the height of hubris.

So no, I will not be buying this stupid book. I will encourage other people to not buy this stupid book. This whole thing is stupid. Fuck you, Wizards, for trying to get us to pay for your fucking newsletter. :fu: