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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 6003768" data-attributes="member: 151">Well, that's the problem, isn't it?  Effective marketing has always been the problem.  The D&D brand, in North America at the very least, is well established and a household name.  But far fewer people have ever actually played the game than are aware of it.  Mentions in stuff like Warehouse 13 or Eureka unfortunately are preaching to the converted.  I would be very surprised if anyone watching those shows (and similar material) wouldn't be at least tangentially aware of what D&D is and what it is vaguely like.The problem for WotC is the same one faced by many brands and items...getting individuals aware of their brand to actually purchase their product.  And the problem here is that we don't really any good dependable way to do that.  Selling an RPG to a person who is only vaguely interested is far, far harder than selling a specific brand of food or drink to someone who was already inclined to try that type of food or drink.  Selling Jameson's Whiskey to a beer drinker is like selling tabletop D&D to someone who enjoys Wow.  It's possible, but not easy.  One could argue that 4E was exactly how WotC was attempting to enact that strategy (their success in that endeavour is another discussion entirely<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />).Well, I'm not sure what you mean by 'the shambles that was DDO'.  Are you discussing that it was unsuccessful as a game or unsuccessful financially?  If the former, that's a valid opinion.  For myself and my friends, we enjoyed the game...but not enough to spend $15/month with it.  When it went Free-to-Play, however, it was a substantial financial success.  They were the first MMO to adopt that model and tripled their membership virtually overnight.  It wasn't just a success, it was a smash hit for Turbine, with revenue increasing by 5 times.  Regardless, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that DDO's execution helped or hindered the success of D&D as a tabletop game.  The actual subscriber numbers have only ever reached about 2 million (and we don't know how many are duplicate accounts, gold farmers or what have you).  When you consider WoW has had over 12 million active subscribers at it's peak, it's clear the DDO probably has hurt the tabletop game far less than Blizzard, IMHO.I tend to doubt that, honestly.  Follow-on sales like that rarely actually materialize.  Ask most comic book shop owners how much of a bump a superhero movie gives to the actual comics upon the movie is based, for example.  You'll find that other than a mild bump for one issue (with the exception of the Watchmen graphic novel, which has been in print for 25 years), most comics see no carry-on effects or new readers. It's likely, for example, that more people watched the D&D cartoon as kids (or now on syndication on basic cable) than have ever played the game.I think that RPGs in general need to emphasize their strengths against their various competitors...the things that make tabletop RPGs a superior experience to other forms of entertainment to their fans.  WotC has tried marketing like this in the past but often failed (I recall a print-ad campaign that appeared to disparage MMORPGs that ended up irritating more than enticing...when a large number of your customers enjoy BOTH things, insulting them about one of them is not a great idea, IMHO).</blockquote>

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