When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[xechnao]

I think the notion that 4e was designed primarily on the basis of market research is largely flawed. While I'm sure the designers of 4e took the feedback they received seriously, I'll posit they did exactly what most game designers do: when given an assignment they made a game they thought would be more enjoyable using their creative muscles. That's right - they just made a game that they liked better. Nefarious bastards.

I do not agree. I believe certain goals are imposed to designers by developers that have more to do with business than anything else.

 

[Umbran]

The bottom line, really, is this - if you aren't buying 4e then, no, you aren't WotCs target audience.

The "target audience" is the group of people WotC is trying to sell to. This is not the same as the group of people who actually buy. To say, "the group of people we're going to try to sell 4e to is the group of people who buy 4e," would be circular.

Some members of the target may not buy, and some folks who aren't in the target may buy. The question is, who exactly were the target audience? Note that anyone who isn't a WotC employee is only guessing at the target audience. None of us really knows for sure.

 

[Qwillion]

I left and was left behind

I stopped buying WotC when Dungeon and Dragon Magazine where stopped (now I buy Kobold Quarterly).

I buy products in pdf have for a long time but I like the option of print, heck even most pdf publishers offer print on demand from lulu.com

I also got left behind because Dungeon and Dragon are what converted me from my "Golden Era" of 2E.

Then I read about the 100 yeah jump forward in the Realms in the timeline book, and thought well that means all my human Npcs are dead. Which again made me feal like what I cared about was being killed off.

Then came the bumbling of the GSL, and lack of my favorite 3rd party publishers. I have seen only one supplement that attracted me Open Design's Wrath of the River King (which may still try to get a copy).

I found a new game to play that my group likes (Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved) and I read things like Book of Experimental Might and the Pathfinder Rpg Beta.

I hope 4e does succeed, I hope the DDI fails so that I can get my magazines back in print, I hope that there is a 5e that comes back to the OGL. I hope that Pathfinder Rpg becomes as popular as D&D ever was.

 

[The Little Raven]

Why isn't D&D like Scrabble, Chess or Monopoly? They don't evolve, and they don't go out of business either.

Actually, all of these games evolved from their original incarnations.

Chess, obviously, has had the most refinement, since it has existed for centuries, and the basics of the modern form came into being about 500 years ago.

Scrabble has had little change to it in comparison to Chess, but it received some changes between it's original creation in 1938 and it's first major publication in 1948, as well as receiving some revisions in 1952 and 1976.

And as evidenced by it having its own article on its history alone, Monopoly has evolved over time.

Most of us weren't alive to see changes to these games like we are to see changes to D&D, so our perspective on whether they have changed and how dramatic the changes were comes from hindsight.

 

[Dragonhelm]

But that hasn't really turned out to be the case, has it? 4E fractured D&D fandom, sure, but many people who bought many 3E books have started in again with 4E books. Right?

Yes, and likewise, many haven't made the switch. When 3e came along, many went with 3e and many didn't make the transition at all. It's kind of the natural way of things. WotC knows they are losing some audience, but with the relaunch, they're also gaining audience.

Also, with new editions come new tones. The writing is a bit different this time around compared to 3e.

Also, I'm relatively certain that if 4E had been an evolution of 3E -- fixing its problems, introducing some new systems -- I'd still be buying.

I highly recommend Paizo's Pathfinder game. It's more of a natural evolution.

I recognize that it's very subjective, but I honestly feel that it's not that I decided to stop buying WotC products, but rather that WotC decided to stop making products that I want to buy.

Then don't. Vote with the dollar. There is no evil overlord standing over you forcing you to buy WotC's stuff. He's a ninja (kidding!).

It is weird going from supporting a company and buying their products to dropping them. I've done that with comic books, music, and gaming. The thing is, don't buy something for the name of the brand. Buy it because you like it or will use it. For those of us with a natural tendency towards collection, it's hard to work around.

Also, we all change over time. At one point, I had to have a majority of comics coming out from Marvel. As time went on and prices rose, I read less and less. Part of it was that the tone of the comics changed and characters acted out of character. Part of it was cost. I wasn't enjoying the stories as much. Things were retconned, and it became hokey.

So maybe you're having your own evolution. *shrugs*

 

[The Ghost]

My thought as to why: They decided to trade a bird in hand in hopes for 2 in the bush that is WoW.

Maybe the bird in hand is nothing more than a prairie chicken while the two in the bush sound a lot like turkeys! Turkeys are bigger and maybe more tasty than a prairie chicken.

My WotC purchases stopped with the first three 4E books. Until they produce either Greyhawk or Ravenloft in 4E that is probably where my 4E purchases end. I think CharlesRyan put it best up thread - I am part of that fuzzy zone in DnD gaming. I have no problem that my tastes differ from the average WotC customer. I have no problem with giving my money to a company that shares my tastes - lately, that has been Paizo and Fantasy Flight. I do have a problem when someone tells me my tastes are wrong, however.

I do wonder, though, why people feel so strongly toward WotC and the Dungeons and Dragons brand?

 

[avin]

On a side note (just for fun, no offense intended), we know that 4E is not Wow, because this topic would be trolled there as "QQ moar n00b"

 

[Drkfathr1]

I wonder if we've reached the point where D&D must become a Genre, rather than a specific game?

In a way we're already there: Pathfinder, C&C, Runequest, OSRIC, 3E, 4E, etc.,etc.

 

[TerraDave]

You'd think, and yet I'm very interested in Pathfinder*. I don't think 3.5 -- er, the second most-recent edition -- is perfect, not at all. I am almost certain WotC could have kept me as a loyal, crazy-spending customer, by fixing that edition, rather than creating a new game. That's why I'm so confused about why they didn't.

I think the answer has two parts, the specific, and the general.

The specific is basically what Toben the Many said. A lot of people had problems with 3E, and 4E made changes to fix those (percieved) problems and improve game play (for some). I think its worth noting that this is not really about WoW, Hasbro, young, old, DDI...a lot of people in what I am guessing is the exact same demographic as you, or at least many ENWorlders (typical 30 something pale skinned male english speaker playing D&D since early 80s) have found that 4E improves game play, and like it better, and will buy stuff for it in a way they no longer did for 3E.

But you didn't, and you don't. This leads to the general point. So much stuff for 3E had been released (and it is an incredible amount, by way of comparision, I have a pretty complete 1E collection, it takes up, oh, 18 inches of shelf space, at the most, while my very partial 3E/D20 one takes up much more) and bought by so many people, that WotC didn't really have a choice but to do a big revision. 3.75 would face too much competition, from what they have already released.

D&D just doesn't have the number of players, and hence raw volume of a, say, monopoly. (to touch on an earlier post) And you don't really need that much for it. But WotC wants to sell you a bunch of stuff. So they have to do better. They have to do a big revision that makes what they released before "obsolete". This revision naturally responds to a lot of problems (some) people have with the game.

But you didn't think the game was obsolete. Which leads us back to your problem.

 

[D'karr]

When did Motley Crue become classic rock?