Changeover poll

[Darrin Drader]

Looking at the 20 or so gamers I have first hand contact with, about 90% of those who played D&D3 have adopted D&D4, and they love it. I'm sure that's not indicative of how the majority of players are reacting to the game, though.

Thanks to a convention that I was a guest at a week ago, I've had contact with somewhere around a 150 or so gamers, and the 50% adoption rate has held up pretty well in the real world.

 

[Maggan]

The whole quote is:
"With the market for third party d20 material continuing its death spiral, there is no longer a quick and easy way for new companies to establish themselves."

Using the words "death spiral" isn't a ringing endorsement of the health of the d20 market at the time. It was also about then that Green Ronin, one of the biggest d20 producers, announced going systemless with Freeport.

Also note the date of that post- January 2007- just months before 4Ed was announced.

The operative word being "before". I was asked to provide a link to back up my claim of seeing third parties saying d20 was not doing well before the announcement of 4th. I did.

EDIT: I'll add this as well:

http://necromancergames.yuku.com/sreply/12110/t/Can-d20-even-succeed-today-.html

At the time, WotC wasn't releasing much quality new material, just compilations and corrections of previously released material. In some cases, the 3PPs were busy supporting their own 3Ed variants more than supplementing WotC's product with generic releases.

3rd parties were also moving away from d20 at that time. Mongoose released RQ, Green Ronin went systemless, Malhavoc stopped producing, Sword and Sorcery as well, print runs had dropped from tens of thousands to maybe thousands if you were lucky, Kenzer all but stopped releasing d20 compatible material, Atlas had all but stopped doing d20, and smaller 3rd party publishers were dropping like flies.

And all this was happening because d20 sales were fine and healthy? No, that was happening because d20 sales were stalling. At least that was the impression I got back then.

Mongoose and Paizo has said that they were doing well at the time. A lot of others have said that they weren't. At least that's my impression of the discussions at the time. It would be great if some of the publishers chime in.

After all, this is just my impression of the state of the business at the time.

/M

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

We have another change in the results, so here are the numbers:

Changeover: 37%
Partial Changeover: 13%
No Changeover: 50%

 

[Maggan]

We have another change in the results, so here are the numbers:

Changeover: 37%
Partial Changeover: 13%
No Changeover: 50%

It should at this time be noted that the old trick of deleting the cookies on your computer allowing you to vote again still works.

This might be one explanation of the surges of voting that occurs on both ends of the spectrum.

/M

 

[jadrax]

I thought we were beyond this, we are talking about the percentages. These are the numbers we have to discuss, if you have better numbers let's see them.

I am discussing them I am saying like every internet poll from before time was recorded, they are not worth taking seriously.

Recent example, "Spiderman - One More Day", Internet polls say that 75% of people are dropping their subscription, real world result is the highest selling comic in years.

The lack of credible evidence does not logically dictate that you then must move to non-credible evidence and believe it.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

It should at this time be noted that the old trick of deleting the cookies on your computer allowing you to vote again still works.

This might be one explanation of the surges of voting that occurs on both ends of the spectrum.

/M

Not on ENWorld polls. The server tracks by login who voted and who didn't (I check from multiple computers and can say it is not cookies). If people are rigging the vote they are doing it by setting up whole new accounts. Even if the recent surge is wholely vote rigging the numbers have changed at most by a couple of points in the last few hundred votes. Whether this is a statisicly relevant sample can be argued, it is unlikely though that the results are being rigged.

 

[Maggan]

Not on ENWorld polls. The server tracks by login who voted and who didn't (I check from multiple computers and can say it is not cookies).

Ok, I'll try again.

Let's see, I've voted at least once already. I'll go to Firefox - Preferences - Privacy - Show Cookies ... now I delete the EN World cookies and refresh this thread in another tab.

I am now allowed to vote again. I do so to see if the vote is registered ... and it is. The choice I chose has gone up by 1 vote.

That looks to me like clearing cookies allows me to vote again. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what goes on on the server side, but it doesn't seem to track my vote after I delete the cookies.

EDIT: well, as you say it tracks my vote, telling me what I voted for initially. It still added my new vote to the total tally though.

/M

 

[Hussar]

Umm, guys, isn't this what got Fear the Boot booted off the Ennies a couple of years back? Because they made podcast jokes about exactly this exploit?

 

[Maggan]

Umm, guys, isn't this what got Fear the Boot booted off the Ennies a couple of years back? Because they made podcast jokes about exactly this exploit?

Nah, this isn't the ENnies. But I'll take it to Meta.

/M

 

[Hussar]

Sorry Maggan, maybe I wasn't clear.

For the Ennies, voting for the Best Podcast could be spoofed in this way. At least that was my understanding. Fear the Boot was up for an Ennie that year, and made several comments along that line. They got (ahem) booted from the Ennies.

I'm thinking that this is the same deal.