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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dmccoy1693" data-source="post: 5372011" data-attributes="member: 51747">It really comes down to 3 reasons why I am not playing and publishing 4E today. 1) The "marketing" of 3 years ago. I don't mean the marketing department. They did an awesome job. Marketing gave us the gnome videos. Marketing gave us some of the best examples of what 4E was going to be like. Marketing did an awesome job. What I feel was done poorly was the non-marketers trying to market it. "Just as clouds will fly over head, 4E will come." "In 3.5, a heal check can determine what you just stepped in." "Grapple is the reason for 4E." I feel the designers that were trotted out to market 4E did a poor job of marketing the game because ... they're not marketing people. Surprise! The designers came up with a good game, but they didn't do a great job at marketing. Not their fault. But management allowed it to continue. Repeatedly during the run up. 2) The 4E GSL was terrible upon initial release and it didn't improve much when it was revised. I still won't publish under it. Mind you, it wasn't the laughable joke of a license that the GSL was originally, but it is still not a good license. Why is it not a good license: far to much risk (the license can end in a heartbeat with no notice) for far to little potential gain (3 years ago sales estimates: dozens of PDFs and a few hundreds of print sales). Wizards could have done a paid license structure that would have gone much further (like if they licensed off Forgotten Realms after they were done with it) that would have sold so much better, but Wizards refused to license anything to anyone. They could have licensed off a few settings they weren't going to develop much if at all. They could have kept the Dungeon and Dragon mags in place and promote the game to existing customers and show them how much fun it was going to be right in the existing marketing channel they already had. Instead they chose to play protectionist and cut off all outsiders. They took their ball and went home. As such, no one wants to play with them anymore. Not even customers that still have whole book shelves of 3.x books. Strike 2 against management for creating that atmosphere. 3) Momentum. I've been playing Pathfinder for over a year now and the Alpha/Beta for a 1-1/2 before that. I'm not going to change now. While I have PHB I-II, I'd sooner play a Pathfinder Dark Sun game with hybrid 3.5 psionic rules instead of picking up PHB III. Why? I've been playing Pathfinder for so long, I'm comfortable with it and am not interested in changing at this point. Even if Essentials is the Bees' Knees, I'm not changing. Wizards knows this*** is the case and they failed to snag myself and other customers early. The fact that management knows that that is a probably conclusion to a certain sequence of events and failed to take extra precaution when they had the opportunity makes it management's fault. Strike 3.Now I know the current management has probably changed over ... completely in the past 3 years and the problems they inherited from the previous caretakers is not their fault, they do have to deal with the reprecussions of those problems and change course so they do not keep making the same mistakes of the past. I would love to see a non-protectionist Wizards shepherd the RPG industry in a direction they want it to go, but they are not doing that. Instead, Paizo is doing it for them. And in a few years, there won't be a question anymore as to whether Pathfinder is outselling D&D. it was be very obvious. *** Wizards knows that once a customer goes to a different system, some do not return. <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e" target="_blank">link</a></blockquote>

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