Bishmon said:
Seems more like a communication problem centered around the inefficiency of the internet to provide tone than anything else, to me, so it is probably best dropped.
On topic --
When WotC announced 4E, they were already 2 years into development on it and they knew it would be 9 months before the game appeared. What I am wondering is, I guess, why it does not seem that there was a plan in place to keep 3.5 going at full steam up until the launch of 4E. Whether there was an issue of learning curve at the new edition's launch or not isn't the point -- the point is that people who are invested in D&D, hagving fun playing it are more likely, it would seem, to rush out and buy the new edition when it hits the shelves.
Look at it this way -- people start wrapping up their 3.5 camapigns now, because they know the game is "dead". they grab that copy of Exalted or Buffy or whatever that has been gathering dust on their shelf for months or years and start that game. they like it. they have fun. they stop thinking about 4E and start thinking about the cool new releases for the game they are currently playing[/] instead. or, worse yet, they don't have any other games on their shelves, because the only game they play is D&D. So instead of starting up a new campaign, they fire up their playstations, x-boxes and PCs for the next six months and they just stop playing tabletop rpgs altogether. In neither case do you have a garaunteed sale of 4E when it hits the shelves anymore -- you have an ambivalent former D&D player that may or may not muster the effort to stay connected to what's happening with D&D despite the fact it isn't a part of their regular entertainment consumption any more.
I could have sworn that I read somewhere that it was three years.
