History repeats itself

[Lord Fyre]

The 4.0 announcements, automatically handicapped by the bone-headed decision to cancel Dragon a few months ahead of time and shutting themselves out of the perfect advertising platform, have been uneven, and if not for sites like this one, helpfully compiling the random dregs of information trickling out of WotC, much of which is 'reverse-engineered' to try and figure stuff out, just leaves people arguing over what they are doing. Whether concerned or enthusiastic, we are all just sniffing fumes here, with no real knowledge of what's cooking.

I think that is the biggest difference between what happened with 3rd Edition and with 4th.

With 3rd Edition, the Dragon Articles made the transition from 2nd to 3rd easier to accept and change over to. The stuff on Gleemax is just not doing the job.

 

[architect.zero]

...Since 3e "won", people tend to forget the anti-3e arguments.

Q F T

I was actively involved on usenet back when 3e was announced, and then I was actively involved in the 1st incarnation of Eric Noah's 3e news site message boards (different username). I will personally vouch for the truth in this and the OP's statements.

The entire hubbub surrounding 4e, pro and con, could be replicated exactly by taking old comments, grep'ing them so that 4e replaces 3e, 3e replaces 2e, and WoW replaces Diablo.

The collective memory is so short. This amuses me to no end.

 

[architect.zero]

I think that is the biggest difference between what happened with 3rd Edition and with 4th.

With 3rd Edition, the Dragon Articles made the transition from 2nd to 3rd easier to accept and change over to. The stuff on Gleemax is just not doing the job.

Yes and also back then we had Ryan Dancey peeing in the pool and getting into flamewars on usenet, and this time we've got a cool cat like Mr. Rouse (sp?) to come on by and smooth our ruffled feathers.

6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other... or so the saying goes.

 

[Mirtek]

There is one major distinction -- the OGL.

IMO the distinction is that 3e didn't mess with the fluff of D&D like 4e does.

Sure, suddenly the FR had this new cosmology, but the majority of FR players simply ignored it and it was no problem since the real D&D cosmology was still in the official splatbooks.

4e changes a lot of the unique history that D&D build for itself over three decades. Like it or hate it, it made D&D for a whole lot of people.

 

[Lizard]

IMO the distinction is that 3e didn't mess with the fluff of D&D like 4e does.

Sure, suddenly the FR had this new cosmology, but the majority of FR players simply ignored it and it was no problem since the real D&D cosmology was still in the official splatbooks.

4e changes a lot of the unique history that D&D build for itself over three decades. Like it or hate it, it made D&D for a whole lot of people.

This is also true -- a lot of fluff changes were made that have nothing to do with fixing or improving 3e, but seem to be purely change for change's sake. It's worth noting that while at this point in the 3e cycle, we had a LOT of crunch info, in terms of the 4e release, we've got almost nothing but fluff -- R&C and W&M were 95% fluff, 5% vague hints at mechanics which might or might not have been changed in the time since the books were written.

 

[Semah G Noj]

Hell, I remember the Dragon magazine forums when 2nd ed was announced. You wanna talk about the more things change...

 

[gizmo33]

And I am incredibly amused how history repeats itself. Today we are seeing the same hysteria, the same rumors, the same denouncement of any changes (regardless of whether these changes have actually been confirmed), the same endless debates which are only based on hearsay instead of factual confirmation.

Endless debates? If you've discovered the secret of time travel please share. I predict all these debates will eventually end. As for "hearsay", I'll take as an example of that a statement that supposes that there's a group of people out there who are being "hysterical" in a way that's identical to the pre-3E days.

Seriously though, I think your complaints are grounded in some actual rudeness or something and you have experienced that you are probably justified in complaining about. But why not deal with those individually? The OP seems like an over-generalization to me.

I've seen a number of instances of something like this:
Poster #1: "The official campaign world for 4E will be based on My Little Pony."
Gizmo33: "Wow, that sounds like a horrible idea. I don't think cute ponies give you a wide enough range of character options as in 3E. What if I want to play a nightmare?"
Poster #2: "Stop being such a grognard Gizmo33, you don't even know if this is true or not because you don't have the complete 4E rules in front of you. Playing an all-pony campaign might be awesome. Besides, "pony" might really mean half-orc in 4E terminology. You should purchase all the 4E books before you complain about them."
Gizmo33: "Well then I'm just saying IF such a thing were true, I think it would be a bad idea."

So basically:
1. I cringe when you characterize someone's complaints as "hysteria".
2. I cringe at the patronizing tone of the OP.
3. I think it's reasonable to expect that WotCs statements about the game are fairly complete or worth evaluating as such. Otherwise, I'd have to wonder what the point is of posting their new design ideas if it's not fair to try to make sense of them.

 

[Lord Fyre]

This is also true -- a lot of fluff changes were made that have nothing to do with fixing or improving 3e, but seem to be purely change for change's sake. It's worth noting that while at this point in the 3e cycle, we had a LOT of crunch info, in terms of the 4e release, we've got almost nothing but fluff -- R&C and W&M were 95% fluff, 5% vague hints at mechanics which might or might not have been changed in the time since the books were written.

That is what I mean, though.

The 3rd Edition team, via Dragon, did a MUCH better job of communicating with their customer base then the 4th edition team (for all their showmanship) does.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yep. It was pretty bad. On the other hand, there was also a lot of optimism. 2E was so old and creaky that many people had abandoned the game altogether. 3E brought a lot of people back. That was one of the most recurring threads, "I'm coming back to D&D because of 3e." Third Edition had this sense of revitalization; it was exciting to see the game getting updated with a brand-new design.

I love nearly everything I've heard about 4E (and am increasingly disgusted by the bloat and annoyances of 3e), but I also realize that 4E is not riding that wave of excitement. I doubt 4E is going to bring anyone "back" to the game. Unlike 3E, the target market is not lapsed D&D players. Instead, the target market is people who have never tried D&D.

If there are differences to the 2e/3e transition, this is certainly a point. 3e revitalized D&D, and got people back to the hobby.
And they're still there. Maybe, in another 5-10 years, D&D 3.x would have been as unlife as 2e was back then, but - wel, WotC didn't want to wait till their game lost traction and its profit margins...

From an emotional point of view, 4e probably can't revitalise people as much as 3e did. Or at least not as many people as 3e. On top of that, it also has a larger remaining fanbase, which means the pool of potential for "Anti-4E"ers is a lot higher. People that have left a game usually won't complain if a new edition of the game looks different or doesn't look better then the old one...

 

[maggot]

As I recall, the transition from 2E to 3E included a lot of mechanical complaints. In particular, I remember people hating the new multiclass system because they couldn't play an elf wizard 11/fighter 11 (in 2E this was about a 13th level character, but would be 22nd in 3E).

I don't recall so many people complaining about the additional races or classes. Or about the naming of classes or feats.

The 4E transition includes a lot more complaints about the flavor changes. The reorganization of demons and devils, elves and eladrin, the Shadowfell and the Feywild, etc. The mechanical complaints seem very limited (perhaps a complaint about lack of a skill system for being a tailor), but the complaints about additional races or classes are much more pronounced.

So 3E to 4E is very much a different beast than 2E to 3E. And yes, the (lack of) communication from Wizards have made the transition different. It's hard to argue mechanical stuff when the mechanics aren't revealed, and it's easier to fly off the handle with wrong impressions when there are no correct impressions available.