Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

Jan van Leyden · Jul 10, 2011

Aberzanzorax said:
However, what about their past behavior makes you think they would, in fact, do this? In psychology, we have a saying (we, who are the primary people who develop personality tests, do "profiles" for law enforcement, etc. etc.)... "the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior."

As a German I don't know the exact wording, but how about: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by negligence or dumbness?

Aberzanzorax said:
I remember WotC trying to quash 3e in just about every way they could. I'm going to be suprised no matter what when 5e comes out in regard to how they treat their 4e material. Either they'll try to destroy it, or they'll keep it going...either would be a surprise to me in a sense (based upon the right or smart thing to do versus what they've done in the past, and I'm worried they'll do in the future).

Between cutting all pdfs, the "poison pill" of the GSL (both formats/revisions of it), their behavior regarding 3e when 4e came out, and other miscellaneous factors, I certainly wouldn't bet confidently on continued support of 4e (or even continued existence of 4e web support that already exists, to be more clear). It is my hope that they surprise me with excellence, but I'm only about 50/50 in terms of betting that it won't be clamping down and drowning 4e in favor of 5e.

As I see it WotC has removed their 3e stuff from the market, terminated all licenses to external companies and decided not to use the OGL anymore. The first two parts are pretty reasonable, while the OGL affair had not effect on any other party.

The GSL fiasco I see no believable explanation for; the whole affair looked very amateurish.

The withdrawal of PDFs happened one year ago, didn't it? So it happened two years after the introduction of 4e. The reason could be the one they gave, and gullible guy that I am, I'm ready to believe them (probably because I'm not hurt by this decision).

Aberzanzorax said:
My sincere best wishes to all 4e players that WotC is wise enough to continue to support 4e needs in the future. I know they didn't break into my house and take away my 3e books...but in a sense, 4e players will really have lost a major function/pillar of 4e support if the character builder (and other support) is removed/unavailable. This is especially true for 4e players who don't buy the books, and rely on the char builder for their needs.

Doing so would actually kill my trust in WotC as a company. I wouldn't feel betrayed or lied to, but I would take my further business elsewhere.

Hooper · Jul 11, 2011

Absolutely. As many have said, competition brings with it better content. Lets just hope that WotC goes the WWF/E route and not the "can we create another nWo?" route.

TheAuldGrump · Jul 11, 2011

Jan van Leyden said:
As a German I don't know the exact wording, but how about: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by negligence or dumbness?

Hanlon's Razor - 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' He may have been paraphrasing Napoleon, who may have said 'Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence'

The Auld Grump

carmachu · Jul 11, 2011

Dannager said:
I find it to be true. WotC is the only company providing official digital support at the level I'm talking about. Plenty of other companies provide a bit of digital support. That will, on the whole, increase as time goes on.

It's interesting, though: look at what companies like Paizo are doing for online support now, and look at what WotC was doing for online support 5-10 years ago. The similarities are striking.

You realize of course, Paizo has stated repeatedly, that they wont be giving up the print version, right?

Now granted they said that today, 10 years from now anything can change. But currently no their not that similar in philosophy.

darjr · Jul 11, 2011

Still, WotC isn't out of the book business. Unless something has changed. You can't have all the rules to D&D 4e unless you buy a book or two and/or a boxed set. Or have those gone up on DDI in the compendium? Barring piracy, that is.

TheAuldGrump · Jul 11, 2011

Jan van Leyden said:
As a German I don't know the exact wording, but how about: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by negligence or dumbness?

As I see it WotC has removed their 3e stuff from the market, terminated all licenses to external companies and decided not to use the OGL anymore. The first two parts are pretty reasonable, while the OGL affair had not effect on any other party.

The GSL fiasco I see no believable explanation for; the whole affair looked very amateurish.

The withdrawal of PDFs happened one year ago, didn't it? So it happened two years after the introduction of 4e. The reason could be the one they gave, and gullible guy that I am, I'm ready to believe them (probably because I'm not hurt by this decision).

They ended the PDFs in April of 2009, 4e was a bit under a year old.

Terminating licenses may have been reasonable, but fueled the annoyance with the company, especially since support for, say, Dragonlance, has been lacking completely, and most settings are not exactly getting burried beneath supporting material.

But, in all, yes, I agree that it was not malice, just some confused flailing at a time when calm composure would have been better suited for their purposes.

In part there were corporate decisions, and in part there was an over worked design team - the same folks who would have created the SRD for the game were also trying to nail down the system itself at that same time.

The Auld Grump, but really, they were taken over by beamed communications on channel 1, which is why I am wearing a tin foil hat.... That way the Illuminati can't use their mind control lasers on me!

Dannager · Jul 11, 2011

carmachu said:
You realize of course, Paizo has stated repeatedly, that they wont be giving up the print version, right?

Now granted they said that today, 10 years from now anything can change. But currently no their not that similar in philosophy.

The Paizo of today is offering a digital platform that is on par with what we saw out of WotC 5-10 years ago.

In fact, the first signs of Paizo stepping out of this shadow came this week with the release of their own pair of iOS apps.

Dannager · Jul 11, 2011

darjr said:
Still, WotC isn't out of the book business. Unless something has changed. You can't have all the rules to D&D 4e unless you buy a book or two and/or a boxed set. Or have those gone up on DDI in the compendium? Barring piracy, that is.

Nope, they still count on at least one book sale as an entry point into the hobby. Past that, though, the hope seems to be that at some point the customer will make the transition from using books to using their digital service, whether as an addition or a replacement.

carmachu · Jul 11, 2011

Dannager said:
The Paizo of today is offering a digital platform that is on par with what we saw out of WotC 5-10 years ago.

In fact, the first signs of Paizo stepping out of this shadow came this week with the release of their own pair of iOS apps.

Of course. However, Paizo has also stated that the print version arent ever going away. Unlike what WotC appears to be doing, or at least attempting(game table I'm looking at you).

JoeGKushner · Jul 11, 2011

The important thing is that WoTC is going to have a PDF solution "soon".

Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

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