Goodman rebuttal

[BryonD]

Its like saying, "For every 'Our gaming group hates 4E!' post you can quote a 'Our gaming group loves 4E or has come back because of 4E' post. How do you prove that kind of thing? You can't really.

It certainly sounds like you have described something in the ballpark of a "split".

 

[Imaro]

He said that certain years of TSR could be found in court documents. What he didn't say, and I am pulling this out of previous things I have seen discussed on forums is that until recently it wasn't hard to find actual sales numbers gathered from distributors, and before the complete dominance of Amazon those numbers meant much more than they do today. Maybe he is getting his numbers from yesteryear from that.

So he is claiming a comparison over the span of 30+ years, off of "certain" years, found in court documents, and you don't see why people are skeptical of this... ( Regardless of your guesses as to where the rest of his info might come from, as that is not what is stated by Goodman.)

And then, I again find it strange that WotC has claimed that accurate information from many of the TSR years is unavailable. I guess I don't know which is true, but they both can't be...can they?

 

[Spatula]

Why is 4e a year after launch not comparable to 3e a year after launch?

Because 3e and 4e were launched in very different environments. 3e came after the D&D "brand" had been essentially fallow for years, when a lot of gamers had left the fold or gone to other games. 4e came hot on the heels of the very successful 3e. That's without getting into the different economic environments and other factors.

 

[MadMaligor]

It certainly sounds like you have described something in the ballpark of a "split".

It really becomes one of those impossible to quantify kind of things, so I would be very hesitant to say "split". But there certainly is enough opinion on both sides to say that arguments about "Which one is better?" or "Is 4E as successful as 3E?" are moot. Which is what I think Joe was saying.

You can only really look at 4E and ask "Is it profitable?", or "Is it doing well?"

Joe seems to say yes to both and I take him at his word having seen no evidence to the contrary. He would be what I would consider a good 3rd party verifiable source. Just my opinion though, I understand why others may differ.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

It certainly sounds like you have described something in the ballpark of a "split".

It also begs the question of whether the "split" is a good or a bad thing. If splitting 20% off of the other 80% builds and grows the 80%, dumping the 20% can be good for it. Certainly that is less good of a thing for the 20% though. It all depends on where you stand.

 

[Piratecat]

Another thread full of circular, unprovable arguments that we're tired of babysitting. I may reopen this again in a few days.

Klunk.