... It does ape WOW. It need not be a one-to-one comparison. The use of Marks by some Defenders and Strikers (aping Warriors, Paladins, and Hunters), the changes to the design and presentation of the classes to make them recognizable by MMORPG players (taking informal roles, making them explicit and reorganizing the game around the MMORPG paradigm of five-man groups with Tank/Healer/DPS (often with various forms of Crowd Control) through the Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller scheme (breaking Crowd Control into its own niche, ala City of Heroes) and wholesale redesign of some classes away from their historical niche (Rogues are now less thieves and confindence men, instead being more assassins and thugs, just like Rogues in WOW), the extreme focus upon encounters as the foundation of both content organization (modules) as well as class abilities (aping the dungeon instance design for both small and large group content), the increased emphasis on movement and positioning from what was already extant in 3.X (to strongly push miniature and map sales, recreating the similar effect that strong visual representation has on gameplay as seen in WOW in its boss fights and in PVP), and the reorganization of its supplemental product release schedule into more of an annual expansion paradigm with fewer (but, historically, more frequent) smaller supplements (more Expansion Packs, less Patches).
The success of this scheme will be measured by the DDI, with the pressure from above to make the TRPG into crippleware without the DDI being the metric for failure, because Hasbro's shareholders and senior management will demand that D&D's performance become like WOW's performance and that will mean forcing larger degrees of network effects out of the D&D customer base: more RPGA sort of formalized and organized play (again, aping WOW) as well as greater degrees of dependance upon the DDI for customers to stay up to date on the game (and, as WOTC has its basis in CCG design, they know how to make that happen).
The initial year or so of 4.0 should, by all appearances, be wildly successful. Pay attention to the quarterly reports, however, as well as communication between Hasbro's board/shareholders and WOTC management; what those two bodies see as success is what governs things here and if they aren't seeing 4.0 meeting their expectations (however inappropriate or unfounded they may be) then they will strongarm WOTC into making changes that they believe will make it happen. A year or so from now, when the second year of 4.0 is about to start, that is the time when we'll see how successful 4.0 really is in the marketplace; D&D 4.0, said or unsaid, is aimed at attacking WOW because that's the only competition that D&D has anymore. (Hell, 3.5's attacked WOW on and off for some time, and that failed; we're already at Second Degree Failure Response.)
I expect it to fail and I expect it to fail because the fundamental differences between the TRPG medium and the MMORPG medium cannot be bridged by any amount of game design or by the very best marketing campaign; you can't play TRPGs whenever you want, as you want, how you want because you have to have at least one other person to play them at all- and you usually need more than that. Futhermore the rules and content emphasis of 4.0 is something that MMORPGs are far superior at executing than TRPGs; the only advantage that TRPGs have is in speed of content release, and that is only if the individual GM half-asses it through a myriad of shortcuts and stock content (reused statblocks, sticking to what he's memorized through long familiarity, glossing over everything that needs no stats to interact with it, etc.) because publishers don't have that luxury. On the other end is the still unacknowledged nature of TRPG products as being capital goods; you can't use them out of the box, but instead use them to make your games--they are the tools to make the final, consumer product and not the product itself--and that is why one man can buy one set of rulebooks 30 years ago and yet remain an active hobbyist with a content regular group for all those years.
For the TRPG as a product category to survive another generation, it must shed its current form and audience; the existing one is shrinking and aging, many of them going to MMORPGs because the latter is a no-brainer better deal all around for them, and that is where the action--business and gameplay--is these days. A new audience must be found, cultivated and nurtured through a new TRPG that is not D&D in function or form. There are strengths to this medium that MMORPGs do not possess and cannot counter; those must be found, understood and then exploited for renewed commercial and cultural success. In short, TRPGs need to wholly reinvent themselves and the culture that surround them because the old one just upgraded to a superior medium with a far larger and more vibrant scene.
