Precisely, and this is the realistic problem with the whole project. People who like 4e still have 4e to play; why should they switch to another version of the game less to their liking?
The goal, which Mearls has said repeatedly, is to have a game you can play exactly as you like -- you're own personal edition of D&D. I love 4e. Why would I switch to 5e? Because 5e may offer me the opportunity to include everything I love about 4e, minus the things I don't like about 4e, plus the things I like about earlier editions.
Upon reflection, I'm not even sure what 5e could bring to the table to "unify the community." Because of the modular approach, we'll all still be playing different games anyway; what's going to make us give up what we've got to return to a brand that doesn't represent what we want?
Look, no one's saying anyone has to play a game they don't want to play. Jesus, that's the whole point of D&DN and its modularity. The goal, in the end, is to provide a system that can give a widest possible swath of fans what they want, and increase revenue for WotC. What is possibly wrong with that?
Well we seem to all agree that 5E needs both the 3.5E and 4E communities, but nobody wants to admit that 5E needs to do what it needs to do to make each side happy, because people seem to think that 4e fans getting what they want means the 3.5E fans get screwed and vice versa.
I, for one, am getting quite tired of conversations being framed so that if 5e doesn't do something the 4e way, it perforce is going to do it the 3e way, and badly broken 3e at that. There are other editions aside from 3e, many of which avoided 3e excesses, and there are other, as yet untried solutions to certain issues beyond what 4e did.
One could interpret my words in that fashion, but I don't see it that way. My issue with the 5E design team as a whole and Monte in particular was that from everything they've said about 5E until recently, they have no clue what a 4E fan wants. I fully believe they want to please 4E fans, but in their apparent ignorance they'll screw it up by focusing on things they think we want(like tactical combat) and fail to deliver what we really want(balanced rules that work, a focus on cinematic action). I don't believe they are intentionally screwing me over, I think they're misguided on what makes 4E special to the people who enjoy it and will ruin it by bringing back old stuff out of ignorance as opposed to malice.
Please don't speak for all 4e fans. We don't all like the same things about 4e, and nor all at the same degree. And I say this as someone who's never even played 3e, and cou
In addition, I see a lot of people with a genuine hatred of 4E, and want to see all traces of it removed or at least as little of it as possible in 5E. As a 4E fan, I can accept that there will need to be some compromises made, but I don't see how you can please people who want 4E surgically removed from D&D and make a game the 4E community can accept.
If someone honestly wants 4e surgically removed from 5e, then 5e is
not for them. The modularity and proposed wide appeal of 5e is not targeted at the hard-core extreme Edition Warriors. It's goal is not to make a single game, and playstyle that will magically unite all of the D&D fanbase. It's goal is to be pliable so that each table can play the kind of D&D they want. If someone won't play it because it's not an exact replica of 4e, it's not for them. If someone won't play because it has elements of 4e in it, it's not for them. It's for the rest of us, the silent masses that like bits of all D&D, and play our chosen editions not because they perfectly represent our ideal D&D, but because they are the closest of all the choices.
During the course of #s 1-6 saw a lot of people freaking out in response to what they were previewing, including a large number of 4E fans, and following that they seem to have backed off their original tone. A great example for this was the outcry following the announcement that Vancian magic would be core to 5E, which after an outcry they started saying there would be alternatives to Vancian magic in 5e.
This is not even true. In the very first seminar when they announced that Vancian magic was back, they
immediately followed that up with saying at-will magic would be available, and that alternative magic modules would be available.
