NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Najo" data-source="post: 4004234" data-attributes="member: 9959">In your original post, you missed qouted me and added your own typing to my statement. I wanted to clarify that as it makes your post confusing. If you can please correct it. Of course spirit could be subjective. The way I am using the term is to define the IP's feel and the elements that are popular to long term fans. The fans majority spoke well of the 3/3.5 product line. Most people are impressed with the campaign setting book. The previews before were not reacted to with such a negative response nor was Ed Greenwood publicly showing dislike. Ed Greenwood himself has stated about the 4e FR he is not happy about the changes. These things are what I am referring to, not some personal idea of what I like or don't like about the realms. Personally I am a Dark Sun kinda guy, not a Realms one.  Let's not turn this into an attack on my character. You know nothing about me or my research or professional involement within the industry. So please do not be so condemning. I am not looking to have a personal conflict with you.  You twisted my words. I said that some of the dedicated fans are being extreme. I didn't say I was listening to all of them. My comment was that the hardcore Realms fan base seems to be back lashing to the 4e changes. As of this writing, the uphappy fans are now nearly equal to the ones who are going to stay interested. That is a near 50% loss of current market with the new edition if nothing changes. The question is why are those 50% of the market not happy? I fully understand that the verbal minority can skew results. That is why the poll is more accurate then the forum responses. Forgotten Realms campaign setting sold roughly 40,000 copies into the market place through non-wotc hobby distributors within the first year of release. It can be estimated that WOTC sold roughly the same amount up to twice that amount. I do not have WOTC's exact sales numbers, but I do study the releases of direct sales from non-wotc and wotc distribution and that is a safe estimate. This means in a year, Forgotten Realms 3.0 sold 100,000 copies. In that same time, the player's handbook sold 250000 copies through distributors, it sold 2-3 times that amount through direct. That is 500,000 to 750,000 3.0 PHB upon first year sales. With these numbers you can get a rough market count of the Forgotten Realms customer base and what that percentage is compared to the D&D market as a whole. It should be noted that mass-market distribution (Borders, Amazon) is not included in these numbers.  Now those numbers are not entirely accurate because 1) The FRCS was new and many people bought it and then bought nothing else or weren't FR fans 2) The change over at 3.5 lost some fans 3) DMs usually buy campaign settings, so we don't know the size of the fan base solely on these numbers. From my own findings, most D&D groups use 2.5 player's handbooks amongst their 4.5 players. So this means that the D&D market is larger than PHB sales would indicate. Again, you are assuming I am referring to extreme fans. You are also assuming how much they spend, how much a casual fan spends and that I don't have an understanding of simple economics. The economics involved are a bit more complicated than that, but yes I get that a handful of hardcore fans do not add up to the many purchases of the masses. What you may not understand is that RPGs are a niche market with the majority of its particpants being dedicate fans, with very few casual players. The majority of FR fans are dedicated to the setting, just as Greyhawk's fans are. I think it takes that to run or play in a setting honestly. WOTC is trying to change that with 4e. The only part of the FR fan base that is gigantic is the people who read RA Salvatore's novels. Most of which don't play D&D.Your overall tone, disregard for those "extreme" fans and negative attitude towards me is very rude. Can you please take a step back and not read into my statements with such disdain. Also, please don't be so quick to make assumptions about people posting here. I would prefer to have a ration discussion with you instead of being attacked unecessarily.</blockquote>

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