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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4538520" data-attributes="member: 710">I hope to repeat the poll at a later time. (That's why I gave it a ending date.)I wish it was possible to make the same poll around 3E release and 3.5 release, this way it's mostly for "fun" and can't be used for much. But my goal was to know how EN World did react to 4E, and especially how the player retention was here. It seemed at least as if reading the books didn't turn off to many, nor did the first games. Meaning it will always be speculative for us, since we will never see the actual figures.My point here is saying that the effects of "novelty" and "novelty wearing off" are patterns that repeat themselves, regardless whether we're talking AD&D, D&D 3E, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, Shadowrun or Exalted. The success of the initial print runs between editions will give us a notion of the overall success.But maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are no patterns and it's different for every edition and every game. But in that case, we don't have any basis for speculation at all. Even if 4E sales would suck in the beginning, one could claim that the sales will improve over time and hold far longer then that of 3E. Of course, that sounds to me just as much as "wishful" thinking as saying that the sales will decline faster and last shorter with 4E. I think actually the size of the initial print runs and the fact that the Core Rules exceeded WotC expectations could also be something surprising, considering that D&D 4E hits a market that seemed pretty content with 3E and already decried D&D 3.5 as being too early for new Core Books. 3E seemed to have arrived at a time where AD&D was more dead then alive, while 4E came after a system that still enjoyed strong first and third party support and had a very strong userbase. But maybe there is a flaw in assuming that a large and strong userbase is bad for a new game edition - maybe in fact it's a good thing and can only promote an expansion, since you don't just catch the old fans, but will invariably attract new ones. While if you have a disgruntled fanbase that possibly even partially gave up the old edition, you first have to slowly excite them to the "new thing" and then slowly can expand your base.But I really don't know what's closer to the truth, if any. I am not a marketing or business guy.People don't buy the PHB again if it's fundamentally flawed and they didn't like it so far. And both concerns would also hold true for comparable print runs of 3E, so comparing them should be valid. Of course, the problem is we don't have the real data to compare.</blockquote>

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