Just because they are the second biggest company that publishes in the tabletop roleplaying game industry doesn't mean the revenue streams they get from publishing in the said industry are second only to WOTC. Nor does it mean they are poised to move into the number one position should the number one player get out of the industry.
Your statements are technically correct, but irrelevant.
When I say "second-biggest company in the roleplaying industry" I don't mean "company with the second-largest employee roster" or "company with the second-most valuable assets". I mean that White Wolf's games, collectively, occupy the number 2 position of sales, after Wizards of the Coast's
Dungeons & Dragons line.
Yeah, White Wolf has over a half-dozen games being published at any one time to hold onto that spot, but so what? Wizards of the Coast also publishes a lot more books for
D&D than White Wolf publishes for any one of their games, and collectively White Wolf's annual releases are pretty close in number to Wizards of the Coast's
D&D releases. I think it's hard to honestly argue that their revenue stream from publishing roleplaying games
isn't second place behind Wizards of the Coast.
Now, I don't think that White Wolf would become as big a juggernaut as Wizards of the Coast if the latter were to eject itself from the roleplaying market. The reason Wizards of the Coast is on top is because of
D&D; whoever publishes
D&D, unless they do an absolutely awful job handling the property (I'm talking Palladium Books-level incompetence, here) will probably be on top for the foreseeable future.
If Wizards of the Coast quit publishing roleplaying games
and kept the D&D brand to itself, thus basically destroying the game (and that's a big "as if!" from me, for the record), then I think what would probably happen is that a) a bunch of people who play only
D&D would probably quit gaming; b) a bunch of people who play only
D&D will find themselves an alternative system; c) over time some more-or-less recognisable successor to
D&D as the major single fantasy system played by gamers will emerge, but d) in a scenario where
D&D-only gamers are forced to either quit or seek an alternative, I don't see any compelling reason why an actual
D&D derivative would become their game of choice.
Certainly I think
Pathfinder would pick up some people, but probably fewer than you might imagine simply because we're in the post-Third Edition era; going from
D&D to
Pathfinder because the former was cancelled is a much more attractive proposition when the
D&D you're leaving is closer (as was Third Edition) to the new game. If Fourth Edition
D&D were shut down tomorrow, I wouldn't go to
Pathfinder; I also suspect that most people who reject Fourth Edition are simply sticking with Third Edition, not making the switch to Paizo's game.
