WotC WotC Removes Release Dates From Promo Images For 2024

On Friday, WotC shared a bunch of images of 2024's D&D releases, which included release dates for each book.

• 2024 Core Rulebooks (May 21st)
• Vecna: Eve of Ruin (May 21st)
• Quests from the Infinite Staircase (July 16th)
• Making of D&D (June 18th)

The images were initially shared during a panel at PAX Unplugged, and were shortly after shared widely on the official D&D social media outlets.

However, a few hours later, all those images were removed from WotC's social media, and were later replaced by images without the release dates.

Additionally, the '2024 Core Rules' image was replaced with a caption saying '2024 Player's Handbook'.

It's not clear why they were removed, whether those release dates are incorrect, or if they simply weren't supposed to be shared yet. But since we shared those images too, we should note that it's possible the dates we shared might not be set in stone. More info if and when we have it!

 

[Parmandur]

Lol. The stewards of D&D, the largest RPG publisher on the planet, a massive multimillion dollar company, couldn't proofread their slides.

It's Keystone Cops at this point.

The dates weren't on the slides, they just used the same arr for the Twitter posts. Social media intern SNAFUs are pretty run of the mill, particularly about timing.

 

[bedir than]

The dates weren't on the slides, they just used the same arr for the Twitter posts. Social media intern SNAFUs are pretty run of the mill, particularly about timing.

This is also wrong.
D&D social media is not run by interns. To run social media for a brand with a target of a billion dollars by 2026 requires a lot of experience and education.

*disclosure: I have interviewed, multiple times to work on the community and social teams for D&D. The process is not geared towards finding interns.

 

[Parmandur]

This is also wrong.
D&D social media is not run by interns. To run social media for a brand with a target of a billion dollars by 2026 requires a lot of experience and education.

*disclosure: I have interviewed, multiple times to work on the community and social teams for D&D. The process is not geared towards finding interns.

Run, no. But pushing the buttons...?

And internal miscommunication don't become less likely as organizations grow and become more sophisticated, but more common.

 

[Reynard]

The dates weren't on the slides, they just used the same arr for the Twitter posts. Social media intern SNAFUs are pretty run of the mill, particularly about timing.

So D&D has a massive event to lay out the immediate future of the brand, including release dates of the newest iteration of the core rules, and they put interns in charge?

Either you are making any possible excuse to defend WotC, or they don't care enough about their own business to put pros on the reveals. What do you think is more likely?

 

[bedir than]

My expectation is that someone at the director level or higher pointed out that they've missed enough dates during the past three+ years that promising dates this far out doesn't make sense.

 

[Parmandur]

So D&D has a massive event to lay out the immediate future of the brand, including release dates of the newest iteration of the core rules, and they put interns in charge?

Either you are making any possible excuse to defend WotC, or they don't care enough about their own business to put pros on the reveals. What do you think is more likely?

They didn't day anything about dates at the event at all. Whoever may be in charge of posting on Twitter is the only source for the dates st this tien, and those were removed. The people in charge had made the decision to not say anything about dates at the event, since they didn't, but the social media appear around have missed the memo.

My own corporate experience suggests this is fairly normal even for skilled professionals whenever any complex project is in play.

 

[Lanefan]

And internal miscommunication don't become less likely as organizations grow and become more sophisticated, but more common.

And at the same time, less excusable; particularly when - as was the case in a large company I used to work for - the miscommunication continues even after the problem* is repeatedly pointed out.

* - in this case, scheduling national events e.g. a company-wide conference call for certain times but neglecting to say what time zone the stated time applied to (there was no default - some times were auto-adjusted for local time and some were not); a big deal in a country that spans 6 time zones convering 5.5 hours.

 

[ninjayeti]

The feedback they got from the playesters on the release dates was less positive than they had hoped, so they are going to rework them and give us a new iteration of the release dates in the next packet.

 

[Reynard]

The feedback they got from the playesters on the release dates was less positive than they had hoped, so they are going to rework them and give us a new iteration of the release dates in the next packet.

What the hell do playtesters have to do with release dates?

 

[Sir Brennen]

This combined with the terrible communication for the D&D TV channel (how many on here knew it was already launched a couple of weeks ago?), whoever is handling marketing for the D&D brand should be sweating a bit about their job.