One, to try and make a single system to dominate all games all over the market (lining their pockets isn't wrong, business want to make money and I'm a strong supporter of capitalism). But the single system ordeal is absurd. First, said system has nowhere near the same feel or way of doing things as the system of the game that now masquerades under the D&D moniker. And second, to think that one system can work for all worlds, atmospheres, genres in also absurd.
And why would you try to make a system for "everything" that's so abnormally complex???
Two, and I think the biggest, is their refusal to acknowledge the old-school gamer market. These (so-called 'nostalgic') gamers still play and would buy and in fact demand the output of their old favorite game and yet WotC, or more appropriately Hasbro, do nothing to satisfy them. Nothing.
They hold on to the game and name and old rules and allow no one else to publish the out of print material or an approximation of same. They have not and will not make available again the things that these gamers want the most. Worst of all, there are a number of things that they have not even released as pdf for fuck's sake. Top Secret and Top Secret/S.I. come to mind. But more importantly, as per the discussion here, the Original Dungeons & Dragons rules set. Sure, you can the supplements from RPGNow and whoever, but not the Original rules.
This is turning your back on your audience, your bread and butter and ignoring them....and spitting on them to boot.
I've not bought a single thing from WotC in all these years and I never will.
I support smaller publishers for many reasons, but the main one nowadays is actually....because they are the ones that are now making the superior products.
