Much like AD&D, AD&D 2E, and 3.X before it, however, 4E has no real need for concern by moving away from its pre-existing support structure. They understand, just as TSR did, that there will always be people who are unwilling to reinvest in a new or expanded game. Every time D&D has changed, it has left behind some of the old players and drawn in new ones. My father quit D&D when 2E came out; he simply didn't feel the need to relearn the game, and began to redevelop his interest in music as a hobby. My longest-running gaming group, for the most part, passed on 3E and stayed with the volumes of books they had for second edition. Many of the people in my local area refused to move on to 3.5, as they considered it a tacky ploy to grab more cash. Reading these boards, there are people who never moved to advanced D&D at all and preferred basic. This kind of attrition is expected.
The other side of this is that the new edition occasionally brings the jaded ex-fan back into the fold. My wife and I haven't played D&D in 3 years; we just got fed up with what we perceived as the quirkiness of third edition. 4E has our interest back up again, based on the changes to the mechanics. Some of my previous 3.X gaming group were 1st and 2nd edition players who had moved on to GURPS, CoC, or WEG and found themselves intrigued by 3rd edition.
I guess my roundabout point is, you win some and you lose some. In any hobby with changing standards, this is true. If D&D were so easily prone to failure based solely on reinventing itself, it would have died in the eighties.
Which is all I will say about that as politics are not allowed here at ENWorld.
