Lots of selective memory in this post.
No kidding. I'm not going to argue, because Tony was part of those conversations, so to take the position he's taken on this lets me know there's no point, because I won't have to spend days looking up old forum posts to show things everyone else here already knows, and since he knows it too but still is disagreeing, then what's the point? No amount of evidence would change a person's mind if they already know now but still argue a false position. Those of us around back in 2012/13 are more than aware of the number of 4e fans who were very upset and engaged in edition warring. One popular unnamed rpg forum that had their mod staff all be unapologetic 4e fans who encouraged edition warring against any other edition but banned you if you criticized 4e just about blew up in indignation and fury when WoTC announced another edition. Posts were all over the place by 4e fans who said WoTC betrayed them. Most warlord threads
to this day turn into edition warring pretty quickly. How many times did how many people keep saying "I get it, you hate 5e, so why do you keep posting over and over about how much you hate it on a 5e forum?" How many times did how many people say "WoTC isn't fracturing the player base, you still have your books and can still play 4e, right?"
That lasted for years, and still occasionally comes up. Just because it's not as bad as it once was doesn't mean it didn't happen and 4e fans were the most willing to accept 5e. That's rubbish. More likely, it's not as bad because people who said they hated 5e and would try to sabotage WoTC no longer post here (like Halloween Jack, Chocolate something or other, and Polar something off the top of my head). I don't think fans of any edition are more willing or accepting of 5e than any other. Maybe the OSR fans because they've gone so long being officially unsupported that they had no expectations of being officially back in the mix so to them, after ignoring 3e and 4e (literally over a decade), what would one new edition mean? We all long ago came to the acceptance that we'd just stick with our current stuff. Something 3e fans were getting used to, and 4e fans had a hard time dealing with because they never dealt with it before. But anyway, yeah, I don't need to tell anyone that there was plenty of edition warring and anger back in 2012-2014 from 4e fans. Which makes them like 1e fans in 1989, TSR fans in 2000, and 3e fans in 2008. Big shocker. (that's sarcasm). I'm guessing it will be the same for 5e fans when 6e comes out.
But I will link to one post, because I think it turned out to be pretty prophetic of the discussion that followed,
made by [MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] back in 2013, specifically:
"Player in Nebraska today: "If Next doesn't include the Warlord as a class, then I'm not switching to the game when it comes out!!! They've lost me as a customer!"
Cut to same player 3 years from now: "I can't find anyone to play non-Essentials 4E with me in my area!"
*Edit
Although, I did chuckle at this post. Not to pick on derron, because I've been wrong on my predictions as well, but it's pretty funny in hindsite:
"5E will fail pretty hard imo.
To get people to convert (and ignoring the people who always play the newest edition) 5E has to be an improvement over what the people play now. And it is imo pretty obvious that what 3E, PF and 4E players consider improvement is most of the time diametrically opposed.
Also with all their "game to unite editions" marketing going on 5E seems to go more for a "It is not as quite bad as the edition you do not like" feeling which will please no one.
I would be surprised if 5E even makes the same money as 4E did, let alone what Hasbro expects from it to let it live."