Alphastream
Adventurer
Paizo is doing as well or better than WotC in the RPG industry despite huge disadvantages in brand recognition because its pretty darn obvious that that is where the talent has gone. The system may not be perfect, but at least you aren't bored out of your mind reading the material. WotC never made a bigger mistake in the 3rd edition era than when it decided that modules don't matter.
D&D beat out its competitors in the early days because of modules. D&D is still in many ways relying on its old modules for content. Paizo is beating WotC because of modules.
D&D beat out other games because at first it was the only game, and because when other games came out it still out-competed them. Were their adventures better? Maybe, but I'm not sure that was the only or even biggest reason. There was a lot of quality across the board.
As for all the talent going to Paizo... that's just a ludicrous claim. Both companies have fantastic talent. Both draw upon fantastic freelancers. Wizards pays the best rates, and most people I know would consider them to have the best talent and to be the place to publish, but there is a ton of great talent in the RPG industry and both companies enjoy it by being respected brands.
And Wizards is making adventures. They are making more adventures than anyone. They don't sell them in stores... they give them out for free through Encounters and through LFR and other organized play. My stack of Encounters adventures isn't as big as my AD&D adventures, but if I put all the gameday and other 4E adventures I have, it is very close. And that's without including any of the 200+ LFR adventures. Think LFR doesn't count? Those admins are paid by WotC (though a small sum) and separately work as freelancers for WotC and have as much design and dev experience as folks at small RPGs. Then you have DDI/Dungeon, which is not easy to land as a gig, with top-notch editors and developers. By pages, by word, by tonnage, they are deep into the adventure-writing business. Sure, you haven't seen the latest classic adventure. We may never see it. We live in a different age. An RPG adventure doesn't sit on the shelf for 10 years like it did back then. I must have run Pharaoh six times for different groups over a decade. Innovations, as with Ravenloft, were significant - but that is increasingly hard to do. We just don't live in that world anymore.
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