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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9227717" data-attributes="member: 7035894">I think there is still some confusion as to the point of the 2024 version, and it's because the business model is different from what we've seen from D&D in the past.The point of 2024 is not to get everyone to replace all their books. That used to be how editions worked, but WotC have been very clear that they now see a need to change that business model. This makes sense; the old way of doing things sacrificed long term stability for short term profits, and originally developed in response to A) a legal dispute, where TSR wanted to claim that AD&D was a fundamentally different game from OD&D, and B) TSR's peculiar publishing deal with Random House that incentivized them to print more books than they could sell, so they had to keep printing new things in order to get advances in order to keep their financial house of cards standing a bit longer.The problems created by this method of publishing editions are pretty obvious just by looking through this thread: you cannibalize your own fan base, which is why we still have folks playing various old editions, or splintering off into competing systems rather than replace all their D&D stuff. And you make it hard to settle on a core brand identity. Plus, you know, bankruptcy.So when folks argue, as some have in this thread, that the kind of incremental changes being offered for 2024 don't seem worth it for them to replace all their books...that's mission accomplished as far as WotC is concerned, as long as they can keep you from walking away from the game entirely. A feature, not a flaw. They are offering some new stuff, especially cosmetics, to incentivize veterans to eventually want the new stuff, but they want to make it easy for us to do it over time, so we don't have to make a big decision about whether to switch over or not. The point is to stream veteran and new players together, and to remove barriers that divide the fan base. In their dream world, they eventually get to a place where the vast majority of players don't really worry about what edition they are playing; they are just playing D&D.Preferably through DnDBeyond, so they can better control the brand identity while keeping more of the profits in house, while still supporting enough 3PP that it becomes harder to challenge them as monopolistic (basically, they are starting to kind of pit 3PP against each other).Edit: side point, but notice how the first 3PP to get invited to have a stake in DDB are the ones with some of the biggest voices on the internet. That's not accidental. Critical Role or the Dungeon Dudes can't really criticize WotC's control of the brand when they are now effectively part of it.</blockquote>

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