Wizards has produced two funny little flash movies as a preview for 4th edition. One is an interview with a beholder. The other is with a gnome (who looks very strange) and a tiefling.
The Beholder
The Tiefling and the Gnome
The Mindflayer
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Take the whore race from 3.5 and make it core in 4E. Fourth Edition, now with extra munchkin.
Fuggin hysterical. Can’t wait to get my hands on 4e already!
Not sure I dig moving the gnomes, but if it’s not too difficult to translate them from the monster manual into a player character, then that’s alright.
“I called my mom and I said guess what and she said what and I said I’m a monster ROAWR!”
Meh: I do have to admit that WoTC seems to be making DND more like WOW.
This said of course, some changes needed to happen from 2nd and I think 3.5 did a decent job of it.
Is 4E going in the right decision? I’m not sure, I feel like the story has suffered from 2 to 3.5 due to to concentration on crunch vs fluff (mechanics vs content) and that this will only increase with 4e.
Does WoTC, as a company, need to make the move to 4e … yes. They need to attract a younger crowd for their products to remain viable, people from my generation (I’m 33 BTW) will buy but WoTC sees an untapped market and so they are trying to appeal to that market.
One of the things they are also trying to do is dissacociate themselves from the typical English Fantasy setting of knights and castles. Settings like Dark Sun and, more recently, Ebberon have done a great deal for the diversity of the Tabletop RPG and I think that supporting a move to a less cookie cutter setting by implementing non style specific rules, will help.
Anyways, this is turning into a rant and that would be best in my own blog. 
This iteration of the game enhances combat and character enjoyment *in combat* there are no role-play enhancements, nothing to deepen the game I look to when MMORPGs become monotonous. This is an MMORPG on paper. Why would I do that when I can play a REAL MMORPG? The tabletop is the interaction between the DM and the players and the things you can’t get from an MMORPG. The rogue conning thr bartender out of the nights income, the paladin facing an alignment altering decision about his church. these are the things that need to be enhanced, not making sure joe munchkin can pwnzor the kobolds in combat.
what manny of you people are missing is that the role playing aspect is not somthing that wizards can control or truelly inhance, all they can do is make the game more conducive to it. the player DM relationship will always be there, and there will probably be more of because there will be less rooting through rule books. and really how will moving the gnomes hurt anything?
Awwww…I will miss gnomes…They were my favorite race to play as…I really am not overly excited by this whole 4E thing, however, those videos make me lol hard. Now I have to have them for myself.
What is it with all those ‘they are dropping the story part for the mechanic part’?
A good player and DM know that WoTC have nothing to do with storytelling. It completly the work of the DM and the players.
So if your storytelling suffered after the switch from 2nd to 3rd and so on. Don’t look at WoTC as a scapegoat look at yourself.
WoTC is only making the rule more simple so we can spend less time rolling and making cacul and more time role-playing and having fun.
thank you finally someone who understands
what roleplaying really is
While I am not a fan of 3.5 and am equally leary of 4E, these videos are fantastic. It’s always great to see things from the monsters’ point of view…and we’ve all had that party member (whether his race was human, halfling, gnome, or even kender) that reminds us of that freaky gnome! ROFLMAO
I think 4e will do a great job of streamlining combat so it wont take an hour to go through one round of combat.
and to the statements about lack of RP fluff. . .tabletop games are more fun because you can add/change things as you see fit in a situation and theres the sheer openendedness of being able to get into character- the warlord has enormous potential aswell as the paragon paths for each class.
basically if you have no imagination this will hurt you but then you probally were never interested in DnD if you lacked imagination.
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That’s cool. I wonder if I can have them on my blog, too. I reckon there will be many more Flash games as the development advances.