Wolfspider said:
What have they been doing here on the boards for the past several years? Ranting about their undying hatred of the game? If so, I haven't seen it.
You obviously didn't spend much time on the WotC boards prior to the 4e announcement. If you had, you would have seen how inundated they were with "3.5 is sooo broken!" threads. That's what the haters were doing before the announcement. Picking apart 3.5 and complaining about how it didn't work and how WotC just wanted their money and didn't care about making the game balanced anymore, etc etc. So yes, they were already there and they were already complaining. Many of them, myself included, continued to play 3.5 despite their distaste because we figured, warts and all, it was still the best thing out there ... Since the announcement, the complaining and the 3.5 hate has just taken on new forms.
In my particular circumstances, I've never really liked 3.5. I've always found it to be overly complex and too mathematical. After first picking it up in 2006 (I played 2e in the 90s, but gave up on D&D for about 5 years in the early 00s), I quickly found myself spending most of my DM prep time doing math or checking math or picking feats/skills/classes/whatever instead of creatively breathing life into my NPCs and their surroundings. In other words, my prep time was probably 95% crunch / 5% fluff. I would've preferred it to be the other way around but I stuck with it (while always looking for ways to be more efficient with the crunch). At first I didn't really mind but gradually it just became more and more of a chore, especially as the time I could spend on prep grew smaller and smaller as real life crowded in on it ...
99% of what I've read about 4e (or have seen for myself using the preview material) has either addressed/fixed the things I dislike about 3.5 or has renewed my faith in the system. Once again, I find myself inspired to come up with all sorts of interesting plot hooks, NPCs, and locations. Once again, I find myself wanting to play D&D ... whereas I don't ever want to play 3.5 again and I don't really know how I ever managed to derive any enjoyment from it in the first place. My gaming group, older gamers who grew up on 1e and 2e all, are all just as eager for 4e as I am. None of them have really liked 3.5 either.
Sorry that this is ending up so long but I'd just like to make one last point ... I've seen a number of people dismiss 4e as "not being D&D", whereas 3.5 is their "ultimate D&D experience". My group and myself, none of whom are from the video game generation (well, I am a little bit ... I'm the youngest one in the group at 27), have found 3.5 to "not be D&D", whereas 4e sounds and feels very much like the D&D we remember from editions past.
Maybe they just all joined up here to talk about D&D after the 4e announcement....
For the record, I only really started posting here at ENWorld after the announcement -- mainly because the WotC boards pretty much died. That and ENWorld is a vastly superior source of 4e info than the WotC boards are (hell, you're even more likely to meet WotC staffers here than on their own boards!).
