Yes, they will deliver on what they promised in that panel.
What they didn't tell you is that they are able to do so this fast by taking the code from Turtle WOW, Ascension, Project Epoch, and some other Classic Plus Private Servers when they shut them down and then appropriate it to fit their own Brand Safe version of Classic Plus.
No, unlike Conquest of Azeroth, this will not use all-new classes (I could not die as a Witch Hunter tank by the time I hit 60, and I tried). No, unlike Mysteries of Azeroth, we aren't getting proper High Elves. No, unlike Project Epoch, they aren't putting in low-level transit accelerators (i.e. ground taxis across zones). None of the new zones are those from any PServer and neither are the new dungeons.
But the concepts? Oh yeah. Camping? That's from Ascension. New subzones and their placements? Many are in or near what we saw in those PServers. The remixed classic raids? Totally from Ascension. Hyjal as a zone? Already done in PServers, and as that post-Third War scenario. Adding expansion to existing factions, new Battlegrounds reflecting known flashpoints, etc. are all their versions of what these PServers already proved to work.
It's fitting, after a fashion, that this is Blizzard doing what it was already known for: taking things that work and then polishing them to a Normie-friendly sheen.
And all of it is going to come to Official D&D in the years to come thanks to Universes Beyond. This is the WOW version that is made with Official D&D in mind.
So first you play it virtually, then at your table. Enjoy what Total Memetic Domination looks like.
Maybe you shouldn't announce anything years before its purported release.
Pure vibes. Nothing of substance. Just a statement of intent, and I'm certain someone's going to get a talking to about the implications of letting a precious brownoid of uncertain provenance get the cannon fodder treatment instead of Whitey come Monday.
While this isn't a Star Citizen situation, it is a bothersome one nonetheless. RTS is not popular now, so Blizzard can't just C&D some PServer and take their code and with it their R&D. They need to deliver off entirely their own merit, and that's as lacking at Blizzard as it is in other Western AAA studios.
Consider that all of their announcements are either appropriations of others work, or "Break Glass In Case Of Emergency" releases.
Folks wanted this for decades. Only now are they getting it, and some of what's shown here echoes what's coming to Classic and is in Forever.
Furthermore, due to the crossover with Wizards of the Coast, all of this will come to Tabletop in Official D&D sooner or later- the WOW book is already up for sale.
THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE ARE NOT SEEING BECAUSE THEY CAN'T COMPREHEND SECOND ORDER EFFECTS!
This makes WOTC's annoucements at GenCon even more paradigm-shattering than I thought.
Blizzard killed Turtle WOW earlier this year, and killed Ascension last weekend (which also killed Project Epoch). That pressaged the arrival of Official Classic Plus, confirmed now.
There's a prelaunch sale going on right now on the official servers with the usual bonuses that are also usable in Retail and/or Classic servers.
This is what would get me paying Blizzard again. Retail is not only too pozzed, but the system requirements are starting to strain my machine until I can upgrade the graphics card. Classic is worthless past Wrath of the Lich King.
And, once again, Network Effects prove their worth. Blizzard OWNs the MMO Network Effect, especially within its own IP. Private Servers are now tolerated insofar as they (a) keep lapsed subscribers in the Network and (b) do the R&D that Blizzard either can't or won't do anymore because holy shit are so much of Forever's offerings exactly what the dead PServers been known for (Undead Paladins was the tell). Let them figure out what works, what new ideas hit, then C&D and shut them down to get their code to incorporate into the official game.
Wizards of the Coast would do that if they could, hence yet another reason for their pivot.
Checking in on the state of AI content creation. Skyebrows dropped this a few weeks ago.
Naysayers are going to have problems with their objections.
This took 400 hours. Check his channel. This is what he is able to do now; it is not what he could do earlier this year. The models and his own acumen have advanced so much so soon that he--and other so capable with these tools--are going to surpass the average professional going without AI assistance or tools by the end of this year.
Couple this with the sort of tools we're seeing with AI-assisted writing and publishing and we are going to see not only one-man publishing operations, but one man IP farms within a few years. The combination of Agentic AI, workflow automation, cross-platform operation, and integration with known tools or services like Stripe and Canva are going to make it possible to do all of the following entirely in-house.
Develop your own stories at speed and adjust them on a dime and bring them to market in manuscript form entirely on your own.
Produce prose, comic, audio, and visual adapations of your own material entirely in-house in multiple languages without needing outside talent.
Design and publish your own merch entirely in-house without needing to hire outside talent or maintain overhead.
Establish, administer, and update your own online storefronts by yourself without any expert coding.
Do all your own Public Relations without needing to hire an expert.
Do all of this without working 80+ per week, but closer to 20 and thus be able to maintain a healthy home and civic life- you'll be able to raise your kids and be involved in local affairs so Commies can't bend you over without you knowing.
I said that your new skillset is Project Management, not grunt work, going forward. Seeing how the tools are working, and developing fast, towards that reality will force you (and everyone else) to contend with the oncoming reality of a changed economy where no you don't have to put up with Jeets and Girlbosses and systematic discrimination in the job market and all that horseshit.
As the tools get better, and the friction involved in learning and mastering them decreases, the reason to bother with the declining institutions fades away.
It was a good time to go indie a decade ago. It's becoming a great time now, if you can afford the tools and be bothered to master them.
Last week and over last weekend, Gamza laid bare what Games Workshop is doing and why.
The TLDR is that GW is doing this:
Which means this.
This requires the infantilization of the audience, and Cult Psychology is the proven method to achieve this state.
By doing this, a successful Brand Cult (a Pop Cult) is able to get away with ridiculous things without relying on technical architecture because you make it emotionally painful to contemplate Doing It Yourself instead of swiping the card to buy the Approved Merchandise.
Couple that with deliberately and frequently unbalancing the game and creating a competitive environment--and no, you don't need a playmode of direct PVP to do this; compeititive PVE can and will do this just fine as the MMO world proved over 25 years ago--and you have what you need to create the very Pay To Win conditions we see today in so much gaming media.
Wizards of the Coast's many announced changes will have the aim of creating this effect within its own Walled Garden, and because it is already a proven business model it will succeed and part of that success will come from privledging sweaty tryhard Whales over everyone else- just as we see with 40K, MTG, World of Warcraft (Retail AND Classic alike, and spread successfully to FF14 too, via Race To World First events).
You cannot maintain a commercially viable operation in such an environment, anymore than any MMO game could after WOW hit big. The pattern, repeated across generations and across continents, proves that once this takes hold in whomever wields the Network Effect it will dominate that entire sector of the economy and culture thereafter in a positive feedback loop.
The changes are already felt; every would-be competitor to 40K and Fantasy end up having its players demonstrating the behaviors that make copying GW's moves a no-brainer, just as every MMO post-WOW ends up aping WOW sooner or later because that formula works.
You cannot avoid this now and stand a chance of winning in the commercial space. You can only go non-commercial as a glorified hobbyist or be a grifting faggot like Colville and stay in the Cargo Cult. Otherwise you have to quit the Cult entirely, abandon all pretension of being Le Hecken Game Designer, and just be a hobbyist at the Clubhouse.
Last week Future Fiction Academy dropped this video.
This is what you folks need to comprehend: AI allows ONE MAN to become a full Publishing House.
You can train a LLM to write in a specific authorial voice. You can set up Setting Bibles, Style Guides, and other authorial documents that get called up when generating copy and then the automation string executes the draft/revise process while you do higher-order operations that demand full attention to properly execute or discharge other obligations (such as looking after children or elders). You can then hit up Midjourney, Grok, etc. to generate your covers, which then plug directly into Canva to produce both ebook and print covers; you can also do this for automatic layout of manuscripts to ensure desired fonts (and font sizes, and drop-caps, etc.), generate the Table of Contents automatically, format the book for both print and ebook, etc. while you are handling the marketing and advertising- including booking podcast appearances.
This is what has OldPub freaking out; this technology cuts out all of those Crazy Cat Ladies and their Boss Bitch juniors in New York and London, killing their capacity to wage Narrative Warfare via gatekeeping and financial control. This is why there is all this performative faggotry directed at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. to make a Scarlet Letter of AI despite all online tech already incorporating it as levels these people cannot notice and do not perceive.
It's getting cheaper and cheaper to do this. It's getting easier and easier to do this. More and more tools are being made that can plug into workflows like this, either via the use of agentic AI or by hand (e.g. you generating your own art via Grok or Midjourney to insert into a layout tool). As I said previously, this forces authors into higher-value skillsets because being a copymonkey doesn't work anymore. You need to be a publisher, not a writer, and publishing means entrepreneurial business skills and acumen.
In other words:
You better learn how to sell. No AI can do that for you.
One-two of videos showing why GW is fucked and deserves it.
Yes, this will happen and sweet fuck-all will work to prevent it.
The next step will be to be able to print models with the desired color scheme imparted in the printing process, killing that tedious bitchwork that is painting the damned widgets.
This will force GW to stop being focused on pushing minis and instead focus on what their real business value is: providing secure locations to play the fucking game.
It would be nice if they also bothered to put money into producing proper fucking rules and manuals, but they won't because tri-annual edition churn has been their business model since the 1980s and they ain't stopping now even though they are in dire need of doing exactly that.
So go ahead, pirate that shit and print away. Fuck GW, and flat-out lie to them if they ask if your minis are Official Product.
We got further confirmation that everything I said Wizards of the Coast is doing to Official D&D is happening.
The former WOTC CEO is now back in control, directly running WOTC from Hasbro's C-Suite.
He can, he has, and he will again bulldoze inside opposition to his agenda and will go ahead to implement exactly what I said previously was the objective for the official game.
The AI DMs and player bots are coming. The frictionless convenience of a phone app-based business and gameplay model are coming. The legacy model of business and organization are on borrowed time. The Cargo Cult is Cooked. There is this, and there is the Clubhouse. The Cargo Cult collapses.
Many--as seen in the comments--still don't see what time it is. They can't comprehend second-order effects. They can't comprehend trends and directions. They think that they can just ignore it, not realizing that they've been coping--and failing--for decades at this point in doing so as their pool of prospects shrinks year on year depending on how frictive they are at their table.
These Dexters deserve the destruction falling upon them.
First, Roll For Combat and Yet Another Fucking Hackmaster Edition.
I am not, and never have been, a fan. It was tolerable as a joke in the comic. It is not when it's a deliberately fuckedup AD&D knockoff on the shelf wasting space and wood pulp. The best thing that could happen is for this begging episode to fail, but it won't because Cargo Cultists Gotta Cult but--like past editions--it will be collected and read, not played. Waste of time and money. Fuck these guys.
Then there's Matt Colville, whose shameless bullshitting got rightly roasted by the Oldfags.
Shameless theft of Traveller, Gamma World, Real D&D, and some of the odder Final Fantasy games is his new grift. He needs his kung-fu sealed. Do not give this faggot your time or money either. Ever.
Just play real games--just play D&D, real D&D--and forget that these lying faggots ever existed.
A One-Two for Roll For Combat. First, last week's show.
And two weeks ago.
Glickner and Derik repeatedly display that they do comprehend how fake, broken, and dumb the Cargo Cult is and yet they immediately turn about and continue to double-down on the dumb at every turn instead of acknowledging the trend and how this means that their model is on its way out. They cannot acknowledge, if not comprehend, second order effects. Neither can they perceive trends and directions.
The man behind Star Wars Theory put out a fan film that clowned on the Devil Mouse.
I am not exaggerating; compare this to what we saw out of D23 for the new season of Ahsoka and you can see that it does make Disney look poor by comparison. SWT isn't the Axanar gang; he doesn't have professional actors, costuming, practical sets, etc. and the expense that goes with it. He's made a CG fan film, but he did it right and thus it puts to mind the trailers for SWTOR that Blur did years ago- trailers that also clowned on the official live-action media.
This is what is coming.
No, Disney can't stop this- try as they might. The savvy will just lie about it, then upload it from jurisdictions that tell Disney's lawyers to pound sand to ensure that once up it stays up (even if you may need a VPN to access it).
"But Muh Copyright!" stops meaning anything when you have a global Internet and several countries that are more than happy to host this stuff Because Reasons. Couple that with the ready availability of hardware to burn things to disc, flash drives being cheaper than batteries, and all other forms of DIY distribution being available (including Torrents and FTP servers) and you have the conditions for the long-awaited Fan Coup.
Network Effects are real. Fighting within them matters. This? This demonstrates Proof Of Concept, and with it comes the test of what defines Uncle George's Space Opera now that Uncle George has abandoned his creation. You can argue that this should be spent on original creations, but then I must respond with the Enemy's words: "No one will watch it."
The people want the Brand. Now the tools are here for the people to make their own Brand media, and they will with increasing skill and frequency henceforth. Revealed Preferences are Revealed.
This is a Marketing problem pretending to be a Literary problem.
Our host is not yet aware--nevermind accepting--that Genres Are Fake And Gay.
"Fantasy" is not real--Hilary Lane blew that one open--because it's the flipside of "Science Fiction" not being real (h/t JD Cowan). What he's complaining about is generations of incompetence at Marketing a Product to Prospective Consumers.
You need Ad Men sorting this shit out, because that's what this is- a failure to sell.
Until you accept this, you will continue to flounder.
This is going to play out the same way that mass-manufactured goods trumped the local craftsman.
Normies want The Same, But Different. They want books, movies, music, etc. that are clearly within strict boundaries, but vary within those boundaries like shades of color in paint--Maroon vs. Raspberry, even though both are Red--and as we've seen in physical goods the capacity to churn out mass quantities of the same thing with quality equal to what a human craftsman can make on average always wins in competition.
Book sales prove it, supported by Kindle Unlimited page reads.
This is what the refusniks have to contend with: the Revealed Preferences of Normies have consistently shown that they prefer the mass product over the handcrafted one because, when given the choice, they choose the former over 80% of the time- usually over 90%. The hysteria over AI is just that; when they get the blind test, they choose the bot.
You won't fix this by banning it; the savvy will just lie, the cunning will go where the bots aren't banned and do it there, and you still lose because the bot masters can and will Zerg rush you to win- which is already happening. Full industrialization of literature is here, like it or not.
The only consolation to be had is that achieving the full power of this technology still requires real skill, acumen, and mastery of the craft. You need the eye, if not the hand, to make the most of what this offers. That D&D app that Jon Del Arroz made can be vibe-coded to Minimal Viable Product status, but it still needs a competent coder to go from Viable to Finished.
Most people Thing That Works and as cheap as they can get it. They don't want, and will not buy, a hand-crafted version of what is mass-manufactured and available at Walmart- just ask all the axe and knife-makers.
And the human writers that stand after AI culls the weak? They are going to be those properly conversant with the Old Masters- they are exactly the highly-skilled, well-read, and knowledge-possesed masters who can make the most of this technology.
Which is not most of those whining about it- especially in OldPub.
I look forward to see you drowned by superior bot-manufactured work, because that means we're closer to the literary analogs of Art Nouveau and Art Deco- two styles that cannot exist without mass industrialization and output.
Vidya continues to make the Cargo Cultist offering look as bad as it is.
Light No Fire in particular is a threat to Temu D&D and even to Official D&D because you have a Domain Game.
Better than others like it (Valheim, Enshrouded, Pax Dei, etc.), this threatens the Cargo Cult in particular because of--you guessed it--reduced friction compared to Cargo Cult play and it being full of fake and gay lameness.
Want to play solo? You can. Want to get the boys together? You can. Build up your own domain? You can.
Lots of what makes Vidya in general a superior alternative to Official D&D and Cargo Cultist knockoffs is here, is refined, and is going to be far easier to acquire and play (and get others to play with you) at a cheaper price compared to Cargo Cult non-gaming.
Unlimited L Works, Cargo Cultists. All the Ls. All for you. All the time.
This concept of friction needs to be seen in other contexts to grasp what Wizards of the Coast is after. Let's look next door at Blizzard Entertainment.
You can see that friction is clearly on the mind of the Dangerhairs and Remorseful Trolls at Blizzard.
While what I've embedded above is supposition, it is clearly informed supposition and likely is 80% correct given both present trends and past performance. The Retail game, the one that's all whatever it is coming out of the Political Commissar's Office there this week, is very much a disposable and seasonal game now; you play the patch, not the game, and if it weren't so loaded with Fear Of Missing Out triggers you'd be able to come and go at will (much like FF14).
The argument being made here--that the new Classic rollout is to deliberately silo the legacy audience into their own paypig pen so that Retail can become whatever the Dangerhair Brigade wants it to be without fear or shame (or expectation of shouldering the company, i.e. consequence free if a failure) is mostly correct.
What's wrong is the idea that this is where new players will go. No, that's for Retail.
Why? Retail is being made increasingly frictionless. Normies, Casuals, Tourists- they go where friction doesn't exist. That's why WOTC wants them too. Make your game piss-easy to play--Free To Play, No Scheduling Your Fun, Lots Of Pay For Convenience (that is often Pay To Win in Asian titles; they love to flex like that for some reason)--and Normies (et. al.) swarm you, but are fickle and fair-weather so you need to keep them coming back frequently with new stuff. This is the basis for the Seasonal Model: MAXIMIZED NOVELTY!
If Retail WOW goes this route, all of the things legacy players claim to hate (but, via Revealed Preferences, show that they do not) are going to be maxed out and present trends (such as AI party members) will be fully standardized such as by making their use mandatory for a first-time through an instanced content option (and it will be sold as "The Story Mode"). Crafting, gathering, etc. will be depreciated in favor of doubling-down further on Doing Stuff (dungeons, Delves, raids, PVP, etc.) that can take no more than an hour- and that's for clearing a raid, so for everything else it 30 minutes or less- often a lot less.
In Tabletop, this translates to WOTC pivoting iteratively (drawing it out over years, not all at once via an edition change) to the things I mentioned: AI DMs and party members, gameplay being based on the Encounter and not Adventures or Campaigns (and Encounters being timed at 5-10 minutes so you can do them on a smoke break at work on your phone), paid enhancements for convenience (e.g. pay to Never Fail Saving Throws), and plenty of Branded tie-ins (oh look the Ninja archetype got a new subtype thanks to the Naruto/Boruto collab, and you can adventure out of the Hidden Leaf Village now) to keep drawing in new (and luring back lapsed) players.
Frictionless Convenince means that All Content Is Always Available on the player's side. You want to play using the Newtype rules for the Psion class, have a background with the Swordmasters of Ginaz, be the daughter of Storm Shadow, and fight with a lightsaber? You can, because Restrictions Are Friction and Big Gaming doesn't want to scare the Normies.
Frictionless Convenience on the Referee's side doesn't exist because WOTC's taken the Referee out back, shoved him into the ditch, and shot him in the head. The bots do that now, and so long as what the players want is Brand Safe it's AOK! Sure, the bots can only do what WOTC allows, but most Normies won't go beyond that anyway (and never have) so this is no drawback for WOTC.
This also means that WOTC is, within a decade (maybe within five years), going to be like Blizzard in the hunting down of alternatives.
Unlike Blizzard, WOTC won't be siccing Attack Lawyers on Your Temu D&D. What they will sic them on is attempts to breach their Walled Garden, in the form of trying to make content for The Only Game That Matters, and the Temu D&D crowd will do it because with the gates to the garden being shut and a gatekeeper installed it'll be like USAID money drying up: lots of people who front like they matter are going to start closing shop or lashing out because they can't suck off WOTC's teats or eat WOTC's scraps anymore. They are also going to find out how badly they needed WOTC for acquiring customers because this new Universes Beyond scheme kills their core offering: We Have The Fantasy WOTC Doesn't.
Which brings me back to Ryan Dancey and his 1999 revelation of Network Effects.
Part-and-parcel of that revelation is that Normies don't want to waste time relearning How To D&D. That's because they see ALL of Tabletop as D&D, and every Cargo Cultist pretending to be a publisher knows it- the more honest ones confess it. (Yes, MMOs are still the same way; all of them are WOW.)
Every single difference is a point of friction. Points of friction add up to Quit Moments VERY FAST for Normies. That's why they never take up alternatives, but instead kitbash D&D into what they want- assuming they bother at all, and very few do. They instead just quit the hobby entirely, something that happened with increasing frequency over the last 50 years as competing media began being able to give them the less-frictive alternative media offerings that they wanted out of D&D but did not get. They didn't see any other Tabletop product as something other than a D&D knockoff, so they assumed that they were all the same and thus a waste of time. Oldfags did not do jack shit to dispel this mistaken notion. (They say they did, but their actions proved that they did not.)
This is why WOTC's gambit will succeed if they can figure the tech end out. Now that vibe-coding is a thing, that's far more likely to happen such that I can count on it being the case; the Dangerhairs can vibe-code to Minimum Viable Product state, hand it off to someone who knows what he's doing with code (and it will be a man, since we know there is no woman or Jeet with the skills needed available over there) to finish it as Work For Hire, and then be on call when the H-1B maintaining it inevitably fucks it up (usually by subcontracing it to his cousins back home on the downlow against company regulations and in return for kickbacks).
Yes, there will be the legacy game we know. It will be depreciated in perpetuity, siloed into its own paypig pen (because that's what buying PDFs and PODs on Drivethru is), in favor of the mobile-friendly game where you play by the Encounter and may or may not have other players in your party- like you will know or care, as you're in it for Phat Loot and whatever else counts as high status play by then and they will never listen to your pitches because they're moving between one-shotting Storm Shadow to farm for his sword, doing Ranked in Apex with the boys, stream-sniping Dr. Disrespect in Warzone for lulz, and having Netflix on a second monitor playing at 2x speed- and you want that guy (or gal, or whatever they think they are this week) to show up at a specific time and place to do the same fundamental activity, but slower? Bitch are you high?
No, you Cargo Cultists get Unlimited L Works now due to this.
There is a way out, but that means admitting Jeffro Johnson and the Bros were right about everything and you are nowhere near ready for that ego-death yet.
Therein he posted a video of himself demonstrating his use of Agentic AI. He showed the vibe-coded agent that lets him do solo play of Official D&D.
Sit with that.
This is exactly what Wizards of the Coast is pivoting towards. All of the signs, for over a year now, point this way. As WOTC is Big Corpo, this takes time to execute and not just because they have Danger-Haired Dipshits on staff. The rest of the company's operations need to be brought inline, and then the Narrative massaged to make acceptance of these changes a fait accompli.
Jon showed--not told, SHOWED--how WOTC is going to kill the Cargo Cult.
The reason? Frictionless convenience. That agent is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. It never says "No". It can add additional AI-controlled party members, run sessions wherever on the map and (once mobile-deployed) wherever you get reception, run for as long as you want, all the time.
Cargo Cult Dexters have no leverage anymore. "Not at my table" gets you kicked to the curb; the bot is always there, doesn't cheat, doesn't fuck with the rules Because Reasons, and doesn't play favorites. As Cargo Cultists deal with attrition on the regular, recruiting replacements is required; agents like this kill that deader than disco because you will NOT convince the Casuals, Tourists, and Normies that WOTC targets to put up with friction of any kind once they are aware that agents like this exist.
The Cargo Cult model dies whimpering due to this.
Only the Clubhouse, rooted on Braunstein, can compete because it doesn't try to fight WOTC on its own terms.
If you want a summary: Creators have a responsibility to protect the integrity of their work
The problem is that Copyright Law is corpo-driven, specifically driven by the Devil Mouse, and so there is only one way to achieve this objective: to use the tools of the corpo world to build the structure necessary to compel post-mortem execution of this duty of care.
Funster, being typical of men in the hobby, has no idea what that means. Most working in the corpo world don't either, not even in WOTC or Hasbro's C-Suite. Their lawyers do.
The bare minimum is an Offshore Asset Protection Trust based in the Cook Islands, Nevis, or Belize. That Trust then holds a CI or Nevis LLC; this is the operational element at the core of the structure, to which all other elements append as subsidiaries. The premium version is a Private Interest Foundation in Panama or the European Equivalent in Lietchstein, which then has a LLC within it in CI or Nevis. The purpose here is to have rock-solid protection against 1st World civil suits. These are jurisdictions and legal structures that, when properly erected, tell judges to pound sand. Principles are expensive and make enemeies, enemies that use lawfare; this structure stops that cold.
You then want a US (or UK for British or European-based operations) LLC to be the Local Office that actually does the work under contract from the Trust as Work For Hire. The Trust exercises Brand Control over the property under rules that you--as creator--establish in your lifetime, rules that survive your death and become the private law of the Trust thereafter. The canon is closed and the rules carved in stone.
The Trust then owns and enforces Trademarks, registers and renews Copyrights as they can (and enforces them), and if Patents apply those too are filed and enforced. Cook Islanda, Panama, and Liechtenstein all have mature and long-standing reputations for integrity as Trustees- CI's in particular are Licensened and Bonded, so they have real money on the line to incentivize them against doing fuckery.
In short, we can do this. It's just not cheap, easy, or convenient to do so; this structure is $30-50K to set up and about 10% annually to maintain, so it's not worth it to bother unless you've got something that is commercially successful, has been for many years, and could for many more after you're gone. George Lucas should have done this. George Martin should do this. Most in Tabletop? Not even worth trying the Temu version that's entirely domestic (Wyoming LLC held by South Dakota Trust, easily bustable by a US judge if he can hold you or your trustee in Contempt).
That is assuming that you own it. In the case of anything done for TSR or WOTC, you don't; that's Work For Hire, so they own it and as it is their property they can enshitify it if they want to and all you can do about it that means anything is to not buy it and not give any traffic to it.
Is it worth it? I'm going to wear the black hat here: if you can't afford the structure, it's not. Macris can justify doing this. Siembieda can. The Pundit? LOLno, and that goes for most in Tabletop, and quite frankly we're better off because it is so.
The technology now exists for the ambitious and the skilled to make one-man publishers of themselves. Videos (and channels) like this show you how by demonstrating the tools and their use.
This is a growing field. If you're still thinking about what Chat GPT could do six months ago, you are already out of date and wrong about everything. It is now possible for one man to draft, revise, edit, polish, and finish manuscripts at a speed which OldPub cannot match. That same man can do this multiple times per week, each one with a unique authorial voice, and yet each one will 100% hit the Revealed Preferences of the readers of that specific Product Category. He can do this while devising the covers himself, formatting the books himself, making the audiobooks himself, and even automating all of the PR work to his email list (usually via Substack) and uploading to the storefronts he uses in addition to his own author site(s).
He can, if he wants to, get to a point where he can drop a novel a week per pen-name because readers read in series and read in binges. If he wanted to space out releases he can do that too, usually by format (ebook, audio, paperback, hardcover and usually in that order).
This shift requires a different set of skills. Being a copymonkey is not enough anymore; you have to have business management skills, especially the full Public Relations suite (which includes Advertising and Marketing), which means your job is now Project Management- you're the Producer, the Publisher, and not just the grunt shitting out copy.
Jason vibe-coded Story Hacker. He's no programmer, and yet he delivered a valuable specialist tool that he offers to his members. Expect more of this going forward, especially if the pressure to cut the balls off the big models continues and thus forces the development of specialist LLMs that lack such neutering.
And if you think this doesn't apply to non-fiction work, you are already very wrong; Advertising is already wholly taken over by LLM-powered campaigns, which means Marketing already is, and as such it is already happening that other forms of non-fiction are now being done by LLM-powered production workflows overseen by human management.
Now all that needs to be done is to bring the costs down so that those with the time, but not the money, can fully exploit this potential.
Jon Del Arroz made it plain: you have to be public-facing to succeed now, which means you can't be a copymonkey- you have to be The Man In Command.
The big reason anti-AI people hate it is because they suck and the robot does what people want better, faster, and cheaper.
The authors I know who actually make a living doing it (and don't beg for their sustainance or have a patron covering their bills; I mean "does this as their 9-5" and lives off the proceeds entirely) embraced AI.
They don't just prompt a LLM. They use multiple LLMs, they tooled up an entire automation chain using those LLMs, they added agents to those automation chains to do other things (cover generation, manuscript formatting, uploading to storefronts, etc.), and through this industrialization of the process they not only can establish and sustain a unique voice but can accelerate their pace of publishing from X/Year to X/Month- an entire 12 book series per year easily, and possible to do so per quarter, per pen name.
Revealed Preferences Are Revealed, folks. They want a very specific experience from every specific product label in media; they reward with time and money those that deliver exactly what they want on the nose 100% of the time. Robots can do this far better than all but the best human writers. The lower 80% are the losers here; the upper 20% are the ones that still have a career w/o patronage of any kind.
Every author is a factory now. Factories take time to tool up, but once that's done they can mass-produce identical widgets wicked-fast and deliver them to market faster. You ain't going to John Henry your way out of this, and you ain't going to strangle it with regulation either- not when the globe is available and China doesn't give a shit about your faggot rules. Adapt or die.
Roll For Combat did a full stream before the GenCon announcement explaining Wizards' plan for Official D&D.
All of this is Officially Sanctioned (i.e. Brand Approved). All of it is Officially D&D (i.e. WOTC Approved). All of it is meant to be one giant buffet, mashed up like Super Robot Wars, all the time with all the lore and all the Known Places available All The Time.
I am not joking about the Autobot Death Knight with the +5 Buster Sword.
I am not joking about WOTC taking away table autonomy under the pretense of Brand Safety and Key Performance Indicator Improvements.
I am not joking about WOTC wielding the Network Effect to kill what remains of the commercial environment outside of their control--control, not entirely in-house; getting those others 100% dependent upon WOTC for their existence is better than being in-house--and forcing the commercial side of the hobby entirely within the Walled Garden that it owns and controls.
YOUR BUSINESS MODEL IS DEAD, RETARDS!
You can either pivot to a service-based model, quit, or go non-commercial.
WOTC took one choice from you. Soon it will take the other commercial option if you don't haul ass now, but you won't so I'm looking forward to WOTC forcing you to quit since you also don't have the balls to admit this isn't viable and just do this as a hobby.
Fuck ALL of you. You were warned. You didn't listen. The Collapse hit, and I delight in your suffering.
You were warned about Network Effects. You were warned about Revealed Preference. You were warned about the change in the commercial environment. You did not listen. You did not adapt. Now you die, and you die slowly and painfully as you bleed out over quarters or years before attrition forces you to shut down for good in a pathetic wimper. Fuck. You.
