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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rasyr" data-source="post: 2462945" data-attributes="member: 2855">There was no evidence of 3.5 either until approximately 10 months before it was released. IF 4E is coming, I would not expect much more than that amount of notice (thus you would have a little over a year before it is announced if it is to be released in 2007).These boards are not the only place that speculation takes place....Motivation? I think that any new edition will be financially motivated first and foremost. I feel that Hasbro will come down from on high and say "your revenue is slipping, bring it back up". And the surest way of doing that will be a new edition. What I would like to see? No 4th Edition until 2010 or later. However, I think it will come much sooner than that. My own predictions in this regard had 2006 or 2008 as possible dates (using simple logic on observed occurances and a little extrapolation. If they moved to the 3-4 year development cycle then 2006 (3.0 in 2000, 3.5 in 2003, 4.0 in 2006). If they kept with the original 5 year cycle (3.5 was supposed to come out THIS year, but it got moved ahead 2 years for some reason), then 2008 is a more likely date. The funny thing is that this thread started the same day that I saw speculation elsewhere saying 2007 - but for different reasons. What I would like to see as far as the rules doesn't really matter. Though if I had to give my preferences, I would say more flexibility in character creation, where I don't have to plan out a character x number of levels in advance. Combat and magic use as skills rather than class features. More skill points overall - and have then be based upon either a fixed number OR something other than class (which currently drives you to playing certain archetypes). Do I think that this will happen? Not a chance. Personally, I think that 4E will be MORE minis oriented. Possibly making the required. Hasbro bought WotC cause of Pokemon and Magic - collectible card games. CCG's use a cyclic business model, where you put out a main release every few years with a couple of minor releases between. Look at 3.0 to 3.5 and you can see something along the same lines happening here.Add to this WotC not releasing 4E under the OGL (WotC's current in-house lawyers do not like the OGL), and instead of WotC having a smaller slice of a larger pie, they will reduce the size of the pie and keep it mostly to themselves. One thing that you have to realize is that whle 3.5 may not be able to be removed from under the OGL, the d20 logo is a different beast altogether, and it can be taken away. IIRC, there is a grace period for companies to sell through stock, and then the logo must be obfuscated, OR the product must be destroyed, and the choice of which to do is up to WotC, not the third party company. Destruction of stock could, and would most likely end up killing a lot of companies just like the move to 3.5 did.IMO, that move from 3.0 to 3.5 showed WotC that gamers will go with the D&D brand. Companies could have continued to produce 3.0 and even done their own versions of it (like several are starting to do now with 3.5). This brings up another point to be considered. Other companies are moving away from the core of the SRD and producing their own versions (C&C, Arcana Evolved, True20, Mongoose's Pocket series, Grim Tales, etc.). This has the effect of splitting the player base. So the "pie" I mentioned earlier is already shrinking as others begin making their own pies (look at some of the D&D vs. C&C threads....). This can only hasten the move to 4E since 4E would only cause a split player base to begin with, since it is already happening, it would work to WotC's advantage to release 4E before these splits become too large.I guess I am what you would call a "pessimistic optimist". While I hope for the best, I expect the worst, thus I am not disappointed, and can be pleasantly surprised when I discover that I am wrong. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Well, you made me ramble on for a bit, so I guess I better stop now...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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