If 2 out of 3 people are refusing to go with 4E, if this poll is accurate, then Hasbro has suffered a colossal loss of it's base from the game it supports. I cannot see them taking no action, not with results of this magnitude.
I'm really curious how this compares with the transition from 1E to 2E and then the transition from 2E to 3E. I know that from my own experience from the previous transitions that this time it certainly seems very different.
Back with 1E to 2E, most of the crowd I gamed with it dismissed it as a money grab and there were a number of grumblings about dropping things like the assassin, removing the "demon" and "devil" names, etc. Around that same time I moved away to grad school and gravitated elsewhere (Muds) for a long stretch. When I eventually came back to D&D in 1993, I worked with an odd mesh of OD&D, 1E and some 2E rules I had picked up for firearms and psionics. Eventually I migrated my campaigns mostly to 2E because after giving the rules a more serious look I decided that things seemed to be cleaned up so it wasn't just a money grab. I actually see the 2E days as the high point of D&D. Even though 3E proved to be a much better system from a mechanics point of view, I just loved all the campaign settings that TSR put out, especially the more grown up ones like Planescape with its philosophers with clubs arguing about the nature of existence.
Then along came 2.5 (Combat & Tactics, Skills and Powers, Spells and Magic). We switched right away to this and rode it through the end of TSR and beyond.
Then came 3E. We switched right away again. 3E was the only game in town and again it seemed like a huge improvement on the game although we did have some reservations about the more rapid rise in levels compared with previous versions.
We again switched right away to 3.5. There were a few things we've had to houserule since that switch, but otherwise we were happy to make the switch.
And then came 4E and it fell completely flat. We tried it, we played through a few levels and decided it's simply not something we want to use for our "serious" games. In fact, it's fallen completely off the table and radar. Instead we've started playtesting Pathfinder and we're much happier. It's not like the 2E days when we initially dismissed 2E as being a money-grab. We didn't have a problem with how 2E played - it just didn't seem like there was enough of an improvement to justify the version. It felt more like 1.5 then a full edition upgrade.
So 4E is the first version where our group has seriously balked over changes to mechanics and the tone of the game. I guess we're not the only group. Will we eventually change our minds (heck, it took me more than 4 years to make the 1E to 2E transition)? I'm doubtful. This time we have more options available thanks to the OGL and now Pathfinder so it looks less likely that we'll eventually make the transition to 4E.
What does this mean for WoTC and D&D? I don't know. EnWorld is probably not completely representative of the D&D audience. People here tend to be
DMs and/or serious players who are more immersed in the hobby. In my case, they're losing someone who spends a lot on the hobby. On our gaming shelves we have most of the D&D product lines from TSR and WoTC from 1E through the end of 3.5. It can't be good for WoTC to lose too many people like us.
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