Essentials replacing Hardbacks?

[Scribble]

Because you never know when you will need such a quote..

Walked right into that one huh...

Humans are an irrational lot, angered or pleased by minor elements of presentations. People resented 3.5 for making their 3.0 books full of obsolete, negated content, but the endless tide of updates has met with far less rancor. Take a spell like magic missile that has been completely re-written. Was the reaction all that ugly? Compared to, say, 3.5 haste or harm?

I think it's because of the difference between how the two systems are setup.

In 3e when you made a change it rippled throughout the rest of the system. Most of the changes made in 3.5 effected everyone in some way.

In 4e there are kind of two systems. The base rules system that is the shared "global" part, then the rules "exceptions" that get layered on top.

Most of the rules elements they've updated are the exceptions, and designed to stand on their own. Make a change to that element and it primarily only effects the rule itself, as well as the guy who uses that rule; if no one in the group is using it, it goes unnoticed.

They haven't really done much updating to elements that effect the game globally, so it's not as huge a hit.