4e = the Titanic? and other insanity or irony

[Al'Kelhar]

She smokes like a chimney and has yellow teeth that only get polished for movie roles. It'll take more than her to get me to buy 4e.

Ain't no need to look at the mantlepiece while stokin' the fire. Just sayin'.

 

[Wiseblood]

That was cancelled years ago. It would have nothing to do with current events.

Pesky outdated internet information. Sorry.

 

[Banshee16]

Actually, you did.

It's a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. You are here every day, reading the forums, so your perspective is slightly skewed. I log in maybe 3-4 times a year at this point, and the sole reason I am here today is because a fellow gamer sent me Ampersand article to read.

Yes, every time I come here I see a *few* posts about the "death of 4E/WotC/Profion," but today reads like a panic is in progress. And understandably so, as WotC has made some major announcements without explaining their business rationale behind them. Which is entirely business as usual for any company. Only time will tell what these changes mean, but I see what prompted Azgulor's original post, and there is a panic going on today because of these announcements.

I tend to agree.....I've long been a member on the forums, but lately I haven't had much time to visit, so, aside from occasional visits to the Media forum and Pathfinder, I haven't been around as much.....tonight I come in and a bunch of threads seem to cover these same topics....4E being the titanic, what's going on with WotC's release schedule, what Paizo thinks about what's going on with WotC, one about WotC's recent insanity. It's kind of curious. I don't remember this much discussion back in the summer.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Banshee

 

[giant.robot]

First and foremost was the FAD died from the early to mid 80s. People got into other things.

Secondly, a HUGE amount of people who played in the 80s...grew up and got so busy that they didn't play anymore.

There were three nails and you hit two of them on the head. The third was the emergence of CCGs of all stripes. A ton of gaming/hobby money that went into D&D in the 80s and other TRPGs was redirected to Magic and games like it as soon as they hit the scene. While CCGs as a gaming experience are not a replacement for TRPGs they're still a game and something that eats into people's time and monetary budgets. Magic alone boasts several times even the best estimates of the number of D&D players.

The gaming explosion and subsequent market saturation of the 80s was largely from a new market opening up. This is a situation that isn't likely to crop up ever again, the market exists and now the players have to fight for a portion of it as its days of massive growth are largely over. A component of this was video games finally started to live up to their promise of being truly immersive in the 90s and have only gotten more so since then. D&D great in 1982 when the alternative was Ultima or Wizardry on the family Apple II or Commodore 64. You needed as much imagination to picture your Drawf in D&D as you did your avatar in Ultima.

Gaming is also something that requires a bit of free time on both the part of the DMs and the players. In high school and college it's way easier to find a group of people with the time and inclination to play D&D than it is once you're graduated and working. When I was younger I never realized how much free time I had (and often wasted). D&D is a game for suburbanites with free time and will be until you can viably get by without a live DM.

I think WotC realizes these three things on some level. They're not going to compete with WoW, sex (or masturbation), or Magic in popularity. They're not going to ever relive TSR's glory days of the 80s and 90s. While its disappointing to see them drop print products off their schedule they're trying to make money. Splat books don't sell anywhere near as many copies as core books do.

With pure splat books DDI makes a lot more sense than a dead tree version. It costs them next to nothing to publish it and people need to keep up their subscription to access the content. Things like the Character Builder obviate the need for a character option splat book. They can add a new module to the CB and blamo, everyone has errata'ed classes and/or new options. It sucks for me since I don't have a DDI subscription but if the content was there I might think harder about getting one.

While the game is likely to have more online components going forward including entirely online play I doubt they're ever going to remove the "Print" button. A lot of gaming will still take place at tables in living rooms and basements and they want people in FLGSes to buy things like Dungeon Tiles and Fortune Cards. They want the D&D logo in places where you find the Magic and Warhammer logos.

They want the kids coming in to drop tons of money on a case of Magic cards or some additions to their Warhammer army to instead pick up some D&D books and Fortune Cards and then subscribe to DDI. They've worked to get the Red Box back into big box stores because it's stocked right next to the Magic and Pokemon cards. They need to get the kids with lots of free time to pick up D&D and get DDI subscriptions.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Sorry, don't mind me sitting here. I'm just still laughing about "2E and 3E were very well-received by the majority of the D&D community". Seriously, this is the funniest thing i've read all day. Ah, the Palassassin flamewars over at the old PlanetAD&D... how soon we forget.

 

[Banshee16]

Honestly, I think Wizards of the Coast is simply focusing on expanding the player base of D&D with everything the have.

The growth of Fourth Edition has probably slowed, and the competition with Pathfinder has become rather intense. So, they're dropping everything with only marginal profitability and slowing down their release schedule to focus on selling fewer, more anticipated products.

On the one hand, the success of the Pathfinder Advanced Players Guide was probably a bit of a wake up call. On the other, they need to get more people to buy the Essentials products and subscribe to DDI.

Or, maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

Does anyone have information to validate these points? I like Pathfinder and all but I'm not harboring any perceptions that it's selling anywhere near as well as 4E. Has there been data released to that effect?

It would be a nifty accomplishment but has it happened or is it wishful thinking? I'm sure the sales are great by Paizo's standards but by WotC's?

Banshee

 

[dmccoy1693]

Does anyone have information to validate these points? I like Pathfinder and all but I'm not harboring any perceptions that it's selling anywhere near as well as 4E. Has there been data released to that effect?

It would be a nifty accomplishment but has it happened or is it wishful thinking? I'm sure the sales are great by Paizo's standards but by WotC's?

Banshee

ICv2 reported that in the 3rd quater of 2010 Pathfinder and D&D were tied for 1st place.

Link

 

[Wicht]

Does anyone have information to validate these points? I like Pathfinder and all but I'm not harboring any perceptions that it's selling anywhere near as well as 4E. Has there been data released to that effect?

It would be a nifty accomplishment but has it happened or is it wishful thinking? I'm sure the sales are great by Paizo's standards but by WotC's?

Banshee

I posted this in another thread already today but it is germaine to this discussion as well: Today's Amazon RPG bestsellers

 

[Banshee16]

Well, I would expect the Bestiary 2 to be up on that list, as it's brand new....aren't the D&D books a bit older (the ones on the list).

Now, what would convince me is to see a month where you had Pathfinder release a major book, and WotC release a major D&D book, and see Paizo's book still come out on top. That would be food for thought.

Hey, I'm excited either way....I like Pathfinder. I don't care as much for 4E, but I'd rather not see D&D fail. And if people like it, more power to them. I guess at the end of the day, I'd be more upset about the direction 4E went if Pathfinder hadn't happened....like if there was no OGL or SRD or whatever. Then there would be no choice. Given that fans of each system can get their fix, I don't think there's as much of a problem.

I also feel that Paizo has a bit of an easy time of it.....they're building on an excellent base foundation. The real challenge will come when they try to release Pathfinder 2E.......then we'll see just how good their design chops are.

Again, not saying I want either to fail. But I like Pathfinder because I liked 3E, and I found that the Paizo team basically hard coded in changes to the game that in many cases were using elements inspired over the last 10 years that I liked....the sorcerer bloodline feats, enhanced abilities for specialist wizards, better stuff for fighters, etc.

I guess it'll be interesting to see what happens. If Paizo *does* turn out to be taking serious chunks from D&D's market share, then I think down the road we'll see changes. At that point, it would just make sense for 5E to take more design cues from Pathfinder, than to move even further from 3E.

I don't know how scientific those sales data sources are....but showing Pathfinder beating D&D in Amazon sales is interesting....because the fact that the other sale data didn't include Amazon sales seems to be an argument used to invalidate it.

Banshee

 

[Imaro]

Well I think the Amazon rankings are interesting because they give us a chance to see the evergreen products of the Pathfinder and D&D 4e(whether you use essentials or classic) lines. I find it telling that the Pathfinder corebook (along with the AGP) this far past it's release date is ranking higher than any of the D&D 4e evergreen products. These aren't new releases... in fact they are much older releases than the essentials books, of which only Monster Vault is even close and the Pathfinder corebook is still above that.