I don't see Will tattooing 4e on his arm anytime soon, but Will's the kind of gamer that 4e was built for, and that is casual game play. A lot of people get irked by the mmo relationship, (more specifically wow) and this is such a wierd thing. Wow is the most popular game in the world becuse it was built for casual play. You can pick it up, play it and not have to worry about the detail that can often go into RPGs. If you're making a business model for an rpg product, that is what you patern it after and I couldn't see an intelligent company like Hasbro not wanting to have their own version of this.
D&D has traditionally been a game for a specific kind of gamer, and the only way for it to make the kind of money that makes it worth it for a company like Hasbro, is to make it accessible for the casual gamer. It sucks, but we live in an extreme capital world where even stamp collecting has gone casual to draw in more gamers. If D&D is forever associated with the stigimitation of for intelligent nerds only, it can not be profitable for wotc. Same thing with if console RPGs remained under the same stereotype. However, the easy of use and coolness factor of Woww helped change that stereotype and hasbro is banking that a similiar makeover will work.
Will's blog is very similiar to other blogs by casual gamers, and on that level Hasbro execs can smile as it worked.
Whether you like 3.5 or 4e, you too should still be happy at 4es popularlity. I run a jazz club. My club is for the hardcore jazz ethusisast. There aren't a lot of social clubs like ours out there because of our criteria for loving jazz in its purist form. There are about 6 pop-jazz clubs in our area. At first I hated them, they seem to attract those border line fans who don't have much intreest. However, over the last decade I've grown to appreciate their importance to us and without them we would not be as successful as we can. It's a symbiotic relationship.
The lighter fan only loves certain aspects of jazz, the poppy stuf, and they get that at their clubs. IN the mean time, these clubs are so popular and gain so much more revenue they attract people to the genre. In the mean time, we have a good relationship with the other clubs, and attract the hardcore fans, thus helping us grow. We're no where as big, but we're more specific.
For the hardcore fan who loves customization, you got third edition 10 years ago, and that has formed into a stable avalanche that will continue for decades seperately for Dungeons and Dragons. It'll be that bastard stepchild that you point people too who come into your campaign from a 4e campaign. You also got an advertising engine that will seperate the non hardcore fan (the guy who only wants combat every round) and create a more pure form of the game you like
That's an interesting thought.
Analogies only go so far, though, and I want to add some counterpoints to it.
I think you underestimate a few aspects.
World of Warcraft might have been designed for casual play, but there are still a lot of people that play it extensively and even grow addicted to it. I think it might be casual to pick up, but there is a lot to do with the game. For me, I saw there was too much to do, and I didn't just want to spend the time for it, so I gave up after playing the Demo for an hour or so.
Easy to learn, hard to master might be the description. D&D 4 doesn't stay simple. Maybe character creation and advancement is simpler, but the devil in the detail, during actual play. Some that wants hardcore D&D might never leave D&D 4 for another edition. He just plays it more often, gets more books, reads message boards on the optimum tactics for his character, have the DM throw exceedingly more difficulty encounters at him. Or maybe instead he rolls the dice less, and instead does more "improvised theatre" then using rules.
People that visit those "pop" Jazz Clubs are interested in Jazz, and pick up the stuff that's easy. But they don't decide suddenly "I want my music more demanding" and listen to classical music from Mozard or Beethoven, they hear more Jazz, and visit your hardcore club, that gives them a different, possibly greater, selection of it.
But again, analogies only go so far. Is your Jazz Club the equivalent to D&D 3E? Or is it the equivalent to D&D 4E with the party fighting itself through dozens of encounters with at least two levels higher then party level? Or is the equivalent to someone trying more game systems? Or is the equivalent to someone becoming a DM instead of a player? Or is the the equivalent of a party playing in a sandbox instead of a railroad? Or is the equivalent of a guy collecting every book on his favorite game system(s)?
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Speaking for myself, I play nearly ever week-end. Some of the guys in my group play RPGs (and not just D&D) for probably a decade longer then I do. We are pretty much "hard-core" gamers, I think. Well, I suppose you know what our edition of choice is... Suffice to say it doesn't match your expectation. Maybe we are unique in that regard. But I think few of the guys here on EN World can be described as "casual" gamers.
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