Mercurius
Legend
In my recent search to fill in my RPG collection from the last five years of 3.5 products that I missed, I have been struck by the sheer number of Wizards of the Coast hardcover books that were published. I mean, there's got to be close to a hundred, if we include campaign settings and uber-adventures, maybe more (does anyone know off hand?). It got me thinking: Let's say Wizards didn't "reboot" Dungeons & Dragons with 4E...what could they have done? Or to be more specific, what could they have possibly published and continued making money? Profitability is key as I'm sure we can all come up with books we would have liked to see, but most of our ideas are probably rather particular and wouldn't have made WotC enough to even bother in the first place.
My question boils down to this: If WotC had not come out with 4E, what should they have done? What could they have done without spiraling down and eventually out of business (at least with D&D), as had basically happened with TSR in the late '90s with the glut of 2E? Would it have been at all possible to continue with 3.5E indefinitely, while still making enough profit not to greatly downsize the company? Or could it be that 4E was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Dungeons & Dragons brand of Wizards of the Coast?
It is my opinion that the question of whether or not WotC should have come out with 4E is a moot point: they had to. There is only so much that can be published within an "edition cycle" without getting extremely obscure. As it was WotC was getting rather obscure in the last few years (although with seemingly some real gems coming out because all the basics were covered). At a certain point WotC had to come out with 4E, just as they will eventually have to come out with 5E.
Now 3.5E fans could argue that a less drastic revision would have sufficed, that they agree with this logic of "publish or perish" but feel that 4E could have been more of a 3.7E that cleared up all the problems with 3.5E (what some feel Pathfinder should have been, but evidently isn't). But instead WotC created an entirely new iteration of the game, far enough from the previous one to make conversion difficult enough to make buying new books a necessity of one wanted to keep pace with the game (from a business perspective, that's the point, right?).
So my question is primarily directed at 3.5E fans who would have preferred if WotC had updated 3.5E, rather than reboot: What should and could they have done (and still remained profitable)?
I just can't see any way around the necessity of a full reboot. I am not sure what the "proper timing" is, but evidently WotC thought that 2008 wasn't too soon, only eight years after 3E. Could they have waited another couple years? Possibly, but I don't know enough about business to hold to a firm opinion.
I don't know whether or not the size of the D&D division got larger after 3E came out in 2000, but one would assume so; but it may be that the success of 3/3.5E brought about its demise quicker than if it had been less successful. Meaning, because it was so successful WotC churned out all those dozens of hardcovers, thereby "burning through" the edition cycle more quickly than if they had been less successful. Looking at my bookshelf I have 13 4E hardcovers; I know that there are 5 books that I haven't purchased (the two Players Guides, Adventurers Vault 2, Arcane and Divine Power), which makes 18 hardcovers in about 14 months. That seems to be a similar pace as 3.5E was, although again, I haven't done the research to be sure (feel free, someone).
As for 5E, speculating is virtually impossible, but I'll conclude with a couple thoughts. If 1E came out in 1977, 2E in 1989, 3E in 2000, and 4E in 2008, we've seen gaps of 12, 11, and 8 years between editions, which would leave us to believe that 5E will be out no late than 2015, if not sooner (as the number of years between editions has always decreased). But given the economic volatility of the last few years, who knows where we will be in 2015? What the state of the RPG industry will be?
My question boils down to this: If WotC had not come out with 4E, what should they have done? What could they have done without spiraling down and eventually out of business (at least with D&D), as had basically happened with TSR in the late '90s with the glut of 2E? Would it have been at all possible to continue with 3.5E indefinitely, while still making enough profit not to greatly downsize the company? Or could it be that 4E was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Dungeons & Dragons brand of Wizards of the Coast?
It is my opinion that the question of whether or not WotC should have come out with 4E is a moot point: they had to. There is only so much that can be published within an "edition cycle" without getting extremely obscure. As it was WotC was getting rather obscure in the last few years (although with seemingly some real gems coming out because all the basics were covered). At a certain point WotC had to come out with 4E, just as they will eventually have to come out with 5E.
Now 3.5E fans could argue that a less drastic revision would have sufficed, that they agree with this logic of "publish or perish" but feel that 4E could have been more of a 3.7E that cleared up all the problems with 3.5E (what some feel Pathfinder should have been, but evidently isn't). But instead WotC created an entirely new iteration of the game, far enough from the previous one to make conversion difficult enough to make buying new books a necessity of one wanted to keep pace with the game (from a business perspective, that's the point, right?).
So my question is primarily directed at 3.5E fans who would have preferred if WotC had updated 3.5E, rather than reboot: What should and could they have done (and still remained profitable)?
I just can't see any way around the necessity of a full reboot. I am not sure what the "proper timing" is, but evidently WotC thought that 2008 wasn't too soon, only eight years after 3E. Could they have waited another couple years? Possibly, but I don't know enough about business to hold to a firm opinion.
I don't know whether or not the size of the D&D division got larger after 3E came out in 2000, but one would assume so; but it may be that the success of 3/3.5E brought about its demise quicker than if it had been less successful. Meaning, because it was so successful WotC churned out all those dozens of hardcovers, thereby "burning through" the edition cycle more quickly than if they had been less successful. Looking at my bookshelf I have 13 4E hardcovers; I know that there are 5 books that I haven't purchased (the two Players Guides, Adventurers Vault 2, Arcane and Divine Power), which makes 18 hardcovers in about 14 months. That seems to be a similar pace as 3.5E was, although again, I haven't done the research to be sure (feel free, someone).
As for 5E, speculating is virtually impossible, but I'll conclude with a couple thoughts. If 1E came out in 1977, 2E in 1989, 3E in 2000, and 4E in 2008, we've seen gaps of 12, 11, and 8 years between editions, which would leave us to believe that 5E will be out no late than 2015, if not sooner (as the number of years between editions has always decreased). But given the economic volatility of the last few years, who knows where we will be in 2015? What the state of the RPG industry will be?
