3.5 is here to stay

I should probably preface this by saying that I run 4e exclusively. So I'm not a hater. In fact, I find the My system is better than your system posts just a the tiniest bit annnnnoiiiiing.

I thought that 4e was going to replace 3.5. It wasn't a thought out thought. It was just something that I assumed.

I think that, alongside some large percentage of the EnWorld population, I fell into the trap of thinking that history would repeat itself with this edition shift without really thinking about how prior edition shifts were different from this one.

To my mind
3.0 replaced 2nd ed.
3.5 replaced 3.0.

So, in a sense, it's natural to have assumed that there would be some sort of massive wrenching transformation; 3.5 would stop and 4e would begin.

Of course that was never going to happen.

2nd edition was basically dead (along with TSR) when 3.0 came out. I hadn't played the game in years. Nobody I know played it. Even people who did had radically altered the game.

3.0 -> 3.5 also wasn't a no brainer.
Before 3.5 came out I had around 27 house rules for the 3.0 game I ran.

Afterward? Around 7.

Now, I lived on EnWorld, so I was fairly plugged into the consensus. Most of my house rules were related to "known problems"; but that was a feature of the 3.0 -> 3.5 shift. It addressed a lot of known problems. It was, quite litterally, an evolution. Almost like a big patch for WoW.

Unlike 2nd edition 3.5 was alive and kicking when WotC sent out 4e. A -lot- of people are running 3.5 games (or some variation thereof).

And unlike the 3.0 -> 3.5 shift 4e is radically different.

Those changes appeal to me. I'd stopped running 3.5 because I don't have the sort of free time as 30 year old married person than I did as a 20 year old single.

I'd already bought Arkham Horror precisely because it offered something close to an evening of roleplaying without the hours and hours of prep time.
I'd already tried WoW because I wanted to game and couldn't manage to get together with people to do it in real time (and I still can't but that's another problem).

So the evolution of DnD into the 4e space is, in a sense, an evolution into a space that I was already in.

I think I was so happy about 4e because I couldn't run 3.5 anymore and it felt like WotC decided to create a new game for me.

But 3.5 isn't going to go anywhere. I'm not really sure that Pathfinder is going to "replace" it (even more weird little rules and powers?) but maybe that's what the space is looking for...