And I thought D&D 4th Edition cosmology was less complicated than this…

I didn't feel any one way about the great wheel, but I thought the concept of elemental planes was stupid. Here's a plane of rocks! A plane of water! A plane of…air…? As usual I like my own cosmology better than what Wizard's.

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I think the 4E cosmology is a little more difficult to picture, but it makes better conceptual sense. The great wheel was easy to picture, but was a bit arbitrary.

Personally, I think the Shadow Shadow, Bo Badow is the scariest place of all..

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well, I've only been as far as the Darkbad, but- oh, wait what?

simply put: as with everything else in 4e, its just been simplified. no longer are there 20+ different planes (ranging from those that make perfect sense to bizarre concepts), and there is no need for a complicated diagram to show you where they all are. I miss the depth of it, but not the complexity.

@wyatt

well, I forget exactly how they do it in the 3.x cosmology, but in my setting the primary elemental plains (earth, water, air) each have some of the element from the other planes, so that the plane of earth has tunnels of air and "underground" rivers, and the planes of air has floating chucks of land and enough moisture for precipitation (etc. with plane of water). Basically enough to make them inhabitable, which people go and colonize them as soon as they are able.

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I'm mostly agnostic about it; I've always used my own twist on the cosmology anyway.

However, I do think the Astral Sea is possibly the best otherplanar conceit ever in the history of D&D. Wild pirate-era sea with spelljammer galleons and mysterious creatures from the great astral deep beats out silver cords and color pools any day.

I kinda like the new cosmology, but I grew up with The Great Wheel and it's hard to ditch 20+ years of gaming history like that. There are elements of the new one I like, especially how easy to grasp it is, but at times it feels lacking or too simplistic. I don't have an issue using it, but I have a feeling it will drift towards a merging of the old and new one as time goes by.

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I think they should simplify it even further and just have the Astral Plane be the catch all. All older planes from the great wheel are merely demiplanes floating in the Astral Sea.