[belloflostsouls.net] WotC Goes All-In On Digital+Physical Bundles. You Can't Buy Physical-Only D&D Books From WotC Anymore
[belloflostsouls.net] WotC Goes All-In On Digital+Physical Bundles. You Can't Buy Physical-Only D&D Books From WotC Anymore
Wizards of the Coast seems to no longer be selling solely physical copies of their books from their online store. Hybrid bundles are still up though.
If they're charging the price of the physical book, I'm fine with this.
From the article, "It’s also a move that comes with a price increase, especially for those who don’t pre-order the books."
Of course there's a price increase.
Apparently not:
The move comes not long after an increase in price for D&D books across the board. Physical copies run $59.95 normally, and the digital + physical bundles are $10 more, putting them around the same price as most newly released video games. The digital + physical bundles work exclusively with D&D Beyond. Meaning other platforms like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds have their own separate content they do not sell bundled together.
But they aren't giving you the pdf with it either. They're giving you access to a digitized book that they can cut off access to whenever they want to push the next edition. It's just another example of Hasbro missing the entire point of the community's complaint.
I prefer books myself but this move makes sense. A lot of people prefer a digital copy and this kills two birds with one stone.
Also, they've been trying to figure out how to bundle the digital copy with the physical books for some time. This solves the problem entirely.
You want a physical book? Buy it new and you get the digital.
Buy it used and you can buy the digital copy separately if you want it.That "problem" was solved twenty years ago. It's not a hard thing to do. They're only doing it now because they own dndbeyond now.
I've already decided not to give WotC any more money, anyway.
yeah i literally see no reason to give WOTC money at this stage.
TL;DR - At the website dndstore (dot) wizards (dot) com, you can no longer buy JUST the physical books. You must buy the bundled Physical + Digital copies for 59.95 USD. This makes a decent amount of sense from a business perspective, as WotC is all-in on a digital gaming world with D&D Beyond and all that. Physical copies of the book are (as of right now) still available on, say, Amazon for ~28 USD.
They talk about digital copies but do they work with dndbeyond or is it just some code for a pdf?
I believe that it's the dndbeyond copy based of the product description here https://dndstore.wizards.com/us/product/820931/phandelver-and-below-the-shattered-obelisk-digital-plus-physical-bundle
I don't think the prices increased for the core book bundle or the PHB/DMG but I haven't kept a close eye on those.
It's also worth noting that this shop is run via scalefast and I had some issues when I did the dragonlance preorder of getting my product on time due to scalefast.
this is ok. But I can see them eventually going digital only and then subscription based...
Seriously doubt that, they make a huge chunk of money stocking comic book stores across the world
I'm winding down this two-year campaign I've been running and then ditching 5e for some other system. I made that decision back when the whole OGL shitstorm happened. I just don't trust them to not screw around with things anymore, and, anyway, every time they come out with another UA for One D&D, I read it and get pissed off again.
So they can bundle deez nuts. I'm moving to (probably) FATE or Blades in the Dark.
Yup, I just bought (FATE based) Legends of Anglerre and it seems pretty awesome.. can't wait to run it :)