Changeover Poll

A very interesting thread. From what I have seen, there is a large part of the ENWorld base (the oldschool posters) who haven't embraced 4E for whatever reason. The majority of posters that I tend to agree with who have been around here since the beginning seem to have not changed over. I made that comment a few months ago (it may have been the last poll) where you had all of these posters with mult-thousand post counts who had not gone to 4E.

Frankly, I don't think that's a good sign for WotC.

For me, with all of it's flaws, I voted "gone to 4E, not looking back." I know that 4E isn't exactly the game I was looking for, but the horror of running my last higher level 3X game means I'll never be going back. When I ran Shackled City and the combat at the temple of Wee Jas took me over a month to run in weekly sessions, and the players were referring to it as a siege, I knew the edition had hit the wall for me. For those whose mileage varies, more power to you.

--Steve

Dannyalcatraz said:

More accurately, 4Ed is failing in the marketplace to convert the established base. From its sales numbers, its doing just fine as a RPG product in and of itself on the force of sales to converts and new blood.

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This may not be true. While the Core Rulebooks (that is, the PHB, DMG, and MM) seem to be selling well, it wasn't that long ago that Chris Pramas said that some people in the book retail industry told him that 4E splatbooks were selling the way 3.5E splatbooks did in their last year on the market.

Splatbooks are always going to be slow sellers in comparison to the Core books- they're aimed more at DMs and completists, with a smattering of those interested in EXACTLY what the splatbook is modeling.

The Core 3 is where you really need to look at sales figures to analyze the health of the game and what trends are in developing.

Zustiur said:

I'd argue:
(5) While not being unfriendly to 4E, ENWorld is still a community that formed based on the love of 3E, and that love still holds a lot of us.

This site was created due to 3E, and it stands to reason that many of the people who frequent it are of the appropriate personality/game style/whatever that would continue to prefer 3E rather than something as different as 4E.

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Are there any messageboards that are as sympathetic and supportive of 4e as ENWorld was for 3e in the beginning?

If there is any indication that the posting population of ENWorld is NOT representative of the gaming populace in general, its this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-enworlder-how-long-have-you-been-gaming.html

However, to know for sure, someone would have to find and post some actual demographics for the hobby. Right now, we have nothing to compare it to, AFAIK.

The group I'm in was playing Castles & Crusades when 4th Edition came out, and had been for almost two years, so we were all on the sidelines during the initial phases. Several of us, including both DMs, bought the core 4th Edition books out of curiosity and read them. When the Castles & Crusades game ended, no one was even remotely interested in playing 4th. I think one fellow in the group did some one shots, but the rest of us, no. But we'd read the books and read the forums, and discussed it amongst ourselves.

When the new game began, the fellow who took the DMing reins decided to stick with 3.x, and we couldn't be happier.

Dannyalcatraz said:

If there is any indication that the posting population of ENWorld is NOT representative of the gaming populace in general, its this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-enworlder-how-long-have-you-been-gaming.html

However, to know for sure, someone would have to find and post some actual demographics for the hobby. Right now, we have nothing to compare it to, AFAIK.

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I think what that poll shows is that ENWorlders tend to be the very committed, long-time gamers, dedicated to this hobby, with loads of experience in gaming. By and large, not many part-time, casual, or newbie gamers here.

I wonder if the hardcore gamers are too important a demographic to ignore... can 4e succeed by targeting mainly new or casual gamers instead of those most dedicated to the hobby?

So, if the grognerds of gaming don't seem to care for 4e, is that because it's focused on attracting new gamers instead? Is it because all these old gamers already have established campaigns with years, even decades of play, and 4e went too far from previous editions to make switching over easy? (vast differences in spells and abilities, missing races and classes, etc). I can't speak for everyone, but that was our case... years invested in the campaign and characters, and several of the characters were untranslatable to 4e, so we've stuck with 3.5.

I am not sure why this poll result (or any of the others) surprises anyone.

WoTC set out to ignore their existing customer base ( the "Old guard", mean age 30+ according to WoTC; represented strongly on ENWorld), in order to try to hook younger people into playing D&D (not well represented here yet and probably intimidated by the rancour that sometimes accompanies edition wars on this thread, hence are effectively lurkers).

The goal of bringing in new blood was/is obviously a great idea; the execution IMHO disasterously mismanaged and ill concieved. I wonder how many new gamers they actually have invested in D&D?

That 4E has fractured the old guard is still disputed, but it seems very clear to me that this fracture is real and significant. I think this is a serious miscalculation on WoTC's part but they clearly expected some loss of the old-timers, though perhaps not to the degree they have got now.

I think with hindsight, this ignoring the old guard will rank as one of the stupidest mistakes WoTC have ever made with respect to D&D; especially when Ryan Dancey once pointed out that the only effective competitor that D&D would ever have to reckon with was a previous edition of the game.

In this light, the handling of the GSL with the resulting Paizo debacle seems incomprehensibly arrogant. WoTC simply don't seem to realise that they/3PPs put out so much material under the aegis of 3.5/OGL that the old guard don't need them anymore. Such old guard already have a lifetime supply of material and so will have to be enticed back to D&D, possibly with a new edition.

Samurai said:

I wonder if the hardcore gamers are too important a demographic to ignore... can 4e succeed by targeting mainly new or casual gamers instead of those most dedicated to the hobby?

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Personally, I don't think we should have been, but I do think the game can succeed on the basis of new blood. 4Ed Core is outselling previous editions. At the very least, that's an indicator that it should do at least as well as the next most successful games other than 3.5 out there- your HERO, GURPS, WoD and the like.

Is it because all these old gamers already have established campaigns with years, even decades of play, and 4e went too far from previous editions to make switching over easy? (vast differences in spells and abilities, missing races and classes, etc). I can't speak for everyone, but that was our case... years invested in the campaign and characters, and several of the characters were untranslatable to 4e, so we've stuck with 3.5.

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That was a MAJOR factor in the decision for both of my game groups to ignore 4Ed. I'm the only person in either group who bought the 4Ed Core 3.

707 votes.

Changeover: 31%
No Changeover: 58%
Partial Changeover: 11%

Option 6 voters: 30%