Dude, I'm not picking on you at all, but I get the feeling that many of those who wish to downplay the idea that 4E didn't do well did not read Scott
Rouse's comments in another thread, months ago....
Yes I did say that and at that point in time anyone on the D&D team would have said the same thing. The publishing goal was (and should be) to have the edition last 8-10 years and we truly believed that would be the case with 4e.
There are a lot of things that happened with 4e that violated the communities trust (failure to have DDi tools at launch, the GSL vs OGL) but after all that has happened with 4e is a shorter edition life-cycle really going to be the thing that turns you away from the opportunity of a better game that 5e offers? 4e is broken as a game and business and it needs to go away. The "they broke their promise" argument sounds vaguely familiar of the "they are killing my 3.x game" that was all over the boards when 4e was announced.
Edit for the sake of clarity that I am talking about the game as it stands now:
Quote:
My statement about the game being broken is more a commentary on the environment in which 4e currently lives (play & business). The audience is fractured among a few D&D systems, the GSL did not accomplish what it was supposed to do (create broad 3pp support for the system), the designs has evolved over time (class changes, monsters etc), Essentials was/is confusing to new(er) players and veterans. If 4e was healthy we would not be talking about 5e right now.
And for the record, I am not bitter AT ALL. I enjoyed my time at WotC, I am proud of what I accomplished there, I still have a ton of friends that work on D&D and I hope 5e is a smashing success. To add to that, I am a pretty big 4e fanboi. It is my favorite D&D rules system and I wish I had more time to play in a campaign.
Now Scott goes to great pains to clarify his statements so that no-one gets the idea that he dislikes 4E or the game-play experience he provides, and I certainly believe him wholeheartedly. So, when someone says, "4e is broken as a game and business and it needs to go away." and they don't really mean gameplay or how much fun they personally find it, it stands to reason that an ex-brand manager just might mean that it really was not successful in the market place and/or drove a whole lot of people towards the competition, to the extent that Pathfinder currently outsells D&D at games stores (at least according to ICV2 data for Q2,3,4, 20011...take
that for what it's worth, right? ).
Not only that, but he does come out and say that they really did originally plan for an 8-10 year lifespan for 4E.......
Anyhoo, I think that that particular quote by The Rouse is required reading by both sides in the edition war.....
Cheers,
Colin