I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
see here is the real thing, every one of these threads basicly is danceing the subject.
Piazo Vs WotC
4eVs Pathfinder
It's totally possible to enjoy (or dislike) both. I'm going to give Pathfinder a spin, but I'm saying odds-on that I just find it a more complicated 3e and thus don't have much use for it. And I'm well on record of being very critical of 4e (I play it, but that's more an accident of chance than an intention).
I think there's no real "vs." here. There's some competition, some rivalry perhaps, but there's no war.
Lets say 4e doesn't exsit. your choices are ONLY 3.5 from WotC, Pathfinder, True 20, and other misc games (rifts, GURPS ect)
What then sells pathfinder on it's own Vs say Mutants and Masterminds?
What about Rifts?
or how about this. What makes this worth rebuying the books I own form Wotc??? and what makes it worth me eaither spending time updating or throwing away 25+ classes that can not be done pathfinder (Not OGL)?
If there is no 4e, Pathfinder probably wins because it's an updated 3.5. I won't have to re-buy everything, but I'll be getting a better game experience for what I DO buy. Backwards compatibility is a big win here, because if WotC keeps pumping out 3e products, I can still use them with Pathfinder (and vice-versa).
Of course, if there is no 4e, there is no GSL, and so Pathfinder probably doesn't exist as such. It probably remains a campaign setting/adventure path for 3e, rather than modifying the game, perhaps "unearthed arcana" like in its house-rules.
WotC kind of forced Paizo's hand with their botching of licenses and amateurish timing problems. Without that, Paizo and WotC aren't even rivals, they're just two companies trying to sell me some keen gaming stuff.