Taking the Dungeon and Dragon out of Dungeons and Dragons
Wizards of the Coast announced this week that they would no longer be publishing their D&D magazines, Dungeon and Dragon. Gamers and fans reacted with calm understanding, and immediately went back about their daily lives with nary a fap to be heard.

Okay, lemme roll this d20 ... add my Bluff bonus ... see if they believed me ...

Shit! All right, I lied. WOTC's forums are awash in a sea of wank, as tiny violins play mournfully and shocked -- SHOCKED I TELL YOU -- gamers fly into Barbarian rages.

From the first-reaction thread:

This is just unfathomable,

When I read this it fealt like WotC had dragged my family dog into the street and shot it dead right in front of me.

My disgust for WotC is beyond words right now.

From the thread about WOTC's "damage control" statement:

WotC will never again see another dollar of mine. I remember the first Dungeon Magazine that came out. To do this to those fine magazines is a vile act that goes against any concern FOR the game of D&D. WotC has proven that they can't compete with the good adventure writers of Paizo and as a result decided to eliminate the competition. Well F U, WotC. My money follows Paizo, you guys crapped on Greyhawk and now this. I hope the big-wigs who did this all burn.

And:

As a matter of fact, I'm betting that this morning at 8 or 9 am, there was a rush meeting at the ol' board room, where someone picked out a bunch of recognizable names from previous DRAGON editorials, and said "calm these ****** off gamers down, or you're fired."

Well, your efforts didn't work. Good try, though.

Oh, and then there's Scott Rouse. Enough mud has been slung at his name, that he just HAD to weigh in as a gamer. He wants the WHOLE world to join hands and throw some dice together. Right.

Compared to Chris Perkins and Kim Mohan, you're a nobody? Dude. Compared to Reggie the Gaming Shop Owner with B.O. down the street, you're nobody. You're one of those kids from 7th grade who liked to grab my monster manual at lunch time to look at the pictures, and then giggle like a moron while you rolled my dice to see if you could roll better than you did three seconds ago.

It's cute to see you trying to defend yourself against those of us who know you're nothing but a poser. It's too late, however, to backpedal out of the stupid, STUPID statement you made about the internet being our primary source for information in the current day and age.

The wank's best similie award goes to:

Sounds a lot like the Bush administration's response in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina.

And there's this classically outraged bit of TL;DR:

WotC,

Where do I begin?

You guys messed up.

Not because you killed Dungeon & Dragon print magazines but for the simple fact you completely blew the golden rule of customer service/PR, "Thou shall not disrespect your customers."

1) You treated this tremendous/painful moment (you pick your adjective) like any other announcement on your website. As if this was just a standard thing that happens every day. Its not.

2) You did not get your people out on the message boards or chat rooms when you made this announcement to answer questions and calm down fears. You did not post up what the future will bring the salve the wounds YOU created.

3) You don't have a product in place to replace the one your are killing.
You are asking us to make a leap of faith that you, WotC, will deliver electronic content, quality electronic content that we will pay for.

Your past track record on the free stuff that you provide is not that great.
So please understand that we don't really trust you when you ask us to trust you.
Lacking something tangible to show us the you should have had a least had an outline of the vision of what we are going to get from your brave new world.

So when I see your post on the web site that speaks from on high, remembering the good old days, and not really providing a clear picture of the future...
Please understand why I don't care about your fond memories of these magazines. The remoteness of these ramblings really doesn't connect with me the customer. I don't feel sympathy for you or empathize with you. Its kind of insulting.

You guys dropped the ball. Badly. Admit it publicly and start getting some information out as to what you are going use to fill the hole that you created.

Also, get ready to take some lumps because letting this fester for nearly 24 hours was really dumb.

To give you a sense of scale to the stupid factor here. You matched TSR at its crassest with this one.

Bryan Blumklotz
27 year D&D player, Reader of Dungeon and Dragon Magazines.

Eventually, we get the inevitable calls to stop overreacting, which goes over just about as well as you'd imagine:

As for some of the people here, accept? ACCEPT? Are you serious, is that the mentality you want, if someone doesn't like something different they should just bend over and accept knowing the big-brother WotC knows what's best for them?

Between the TL;DR entitlement-whoring and rhetoric on a scale that only people who swing imaginary swords at imaginary Terrasques can muster, the lolz just keep on coming.

ETA: Fixed! Fixed, I tell you!