World of Warcraft for D&D

 

Wizards of the Coast finally announced the third hardback release for Dungeons and Dragons this fall.  For Realm of Champions, WotC will release the first in what the company calls D&D Gameplay Expansions:  Dungeons & Dragons World of Warcraft. Following it up in 2027 with a revised for 2024 D&D Dark Sun, Greyhawk and most surprisingly, at least to me, Star Wars.

I do not play video games so I have no idea how much popularity World of Warcraft still has but, according to my much younger and video game playing staff, currently the game is playing on the nostalgia of players from 15 to 20 years ago by rereleasing classing WoW adventures targeted at those older player but updated to take advantage of the technology available today.  This, of course, is not the first time a tabletop RPG version of Warcraft or World of Warcraft has released.  Sword & Sorcery Studios, an imprint of White Wolf Publishing, released 3.5 edition versions of both under WotC’s OGL, which sold well but not enough for Sword and Sorcery to keep them in print for more than a few years but prices on them now range from cover price to well over $100 a book so there is demand. However, the store will order far fewer copies than it will the Arcana Unleashed books. Unverses Beyond works as a collectible card product for Magic the Gathering and pulls in a lot more collectors for the sets than they do players. With a book, you can get the most important item with one purchase and it does not generate any subsequent sales like TCGs do.