1. You cannot sell over 80 hardcover books to people in the space of six years -- then come right on back to the same market -- and try to sell them similar books (often titled the same), which are incompatible with the 80+ books you just sold. You can try it – but you should not be surprised when a large number of them say “no, and HELL no.” Those fans now believe that you are doing to do it to them again in about four to five years, too.
2. The game was released too early for a large segment of the existing customer base. That is not a mere "opinion"; based upon the market results -- it is clearly an
objective fact. By releasing 4th ed too early, WotC created an opening that a well positioned competitor could take advantage of using the OGL against Wizards.
3. It gets worse when your first announced plan for the new edition involves cancelling the print edition of
Dungeon and
Dragon magazine. You just antagonized the hell out a large segment of your existing hardcore customer base with that announcement and the game isn't due out for a year.
4. Matters aren’t improved when the company you licensed to publish
Dungeon and
Dragon magazine, who by virtue of their monthly columns, quality product and prominent participation on the community message forums at both ENWorld and Paizo.com, developed a closer and more personable relationship with fans than WotC's own employees and designers did. WotC didn’t (and still does not) make those same efforts to cultivate their customers’ goodwill to the degree that Paizo does. That is an objective fact.
We can argue over the why later -- but the facts are real. This is the largest fan site for D&D on the internet. I have not seen the current brand manager for D&D post here.
Not even once.
Not even after we called her out on it.
In contrast, Lisa Stevens, Erik Mona, James Jacobs, and Jason Bulmahn ALL post on ENWorld regularly. They make themselves accessible to their fans as a corporate priority. It's even in the job description that Paizo puts on their website. It matters to them.
5. When the GSL essentially deep-sixed third party product support for 4th edition? Things went from bad to worse, very quickly. Suddenly, 3rd Edition went from an over-supported game with a glut of products on the market -- to a 4th edition which was a poorly supported game in terms of adventures and setting material. This transformation occurred essentially overnight, I might add.
6. When the company that was previously publishing
Dungeon and
Dragon – and who as official licenses had significant credibility as “real owners of D&D”, leveraged their customers’ goodwill and came out with a product that DID NOT wipe out the usefulness of those 80+ hardcover books? That was going to inevitably split the market, no matter what WotC did or would do.
Based on the above six factors, 4th edition could have been the greatest and best designed role-playing game of all time. It didn’t matter. There were too many missteps on the marketing front before the thing had even been released. WotC hobbled the brand out of the gate with poor decisions at a management level.
You will note I have not yet even talked about the changes to the underlying game. As it happened, the changes were perceived by SOME fans of prior editions of D&D as being too sharp a break with the traditions of the game. In and of itself, this might not have turned into a huge issue had the third parties come on board and had Paizo not moved from being their largest accessory publisher to their biggest competitor.
But that didn’t happen. When the design differences of the game are added to the six reasons numerated above, WotC found it had lost a third -- and now going on about one-half of its customers from the 3rd edition era.
If I lost half my clients? I’d be fired on the spot. And I’d deserve it, too.
