As Matt Forbeck pointed out on Twitter, WotC has owned D&D for 24 years since it purchased TSR in 1997. TSR created D&D in 1974, 23 years before WotC bought it.
Brand matters a whole lot, definitely. A lot of the time, to outsiders, any RPG is D&D, like any adhesive bandage is a Band-Aid.
Also, people have a loyalty to the brand. Back when I got back into gaming with 4e, I tried to get people to play Castles & Crusades instead. Despite it being essentially just another version of D&D (and one that would've felt more in line with our past experiences with the game), people wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons specifically.
#1, 2, and 3 are probably going to be in the game going forward if we get Edition #6...
But what happens when #4 is gone (it is slowly transforming now, doing away with evil Orcs, Trolls, etc) and the races are changing to things uncommon in fantasy, though they can be found in some places (Dragonborn, Drow, Tieflings...etc).
Do you think your idea on this will remain?
#5 probably may stay, though if a shift to a stronger emphasis on levelling at endpoints by the DM decision rather than by XP could change that up.
You have to go one further: people need to be dissatisfied with the current product before they even look for alternatives. So long as DnD is fun enough and lets people do what they want with the game, they'll stick with it. This is the advantage of 5e's broad (not universal but broad) design. Most people are having fun with it, so they don't even research other options.It's not enough to merely mimic the design of the market leader, people have to perceive that you are offering an objectively better product to make a switch worth the trouble.
You have to go one further: people need to be dissatisfied with the current product before they even look for alternatives. So long as DnD is fun enough and lets people do what they want with the game, they'll stick with it.
One of 4e's issues is that it didn't scratch the itch for a lot of existing players, because it's such a focused game. There were a lot of people who tried to play 4e like they played 3e and it just didn't work. So they looked around, found Pathfinder, and made the switch.
Something similar, I think, happened with White Wolf and 2e (more rules didn't help tell the stories those players were interested in), although to a lesser degree.
Nah, it’s not unique to “the d20 ecosystem”. I can point to numerous other systems that have changed through their lifetimes, though usually also with a change of publisher - and usually by a 3rd edition, of all things*. Star Wars, Star Trek, Gamma World, Deadlands, Legends of the Five Rings, World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy, Twilight 2000, 40K (tabletop & RPG), Shadowsun, “Cortex” - just to name a few.The idea that "new edition = new system" isn't totally unique to WotC D&D, but it is, I think, fairly rare outside of the d20 ecosystem. And D&D players are, I think, uniquely used to the idea. (Which works out conveniently well for a company that, I'm sure, would like very much to sell you a new set of core rulebooks at least every decade or so.)
A bit might just be people love D&D but not RPGs.
I'll play other RPGs but it's mostly a waste of time and money trying to run them.
In effect that means you don't play other RPGs it's just to hard getting players.
I can say I have run across a number of people who will happily play other RPGs, but wouldn’t touch D&D. Mostly White Wolfers.
I live only a couple hours from New Orleans, so there was a bigger crowd of WW players in the area. I could tell some tales of the rivalries between the Werewolf and Vampire players, let me tell you. The weirdest were the "panty raids" - the LARP players from one group would sneak into the other group's games and abduct players or props. Then there was the whole IHOP affair...That is because in the 90's, White Wolf players got the rep of being elitist snobs who looked down on all other RPGs. Maybe that was a big city thing, or a West Coast thing, because all the people I played the Storyteller games with also enjoyed other games, including D&D.