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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6279093" data-attributes="member: 6667193">That's probably true, but Paizo has proven that subscriptions and books are not mutually exclusive. Likewise, WotC is proving that purely web based subscription content sitting on a corporate server has it's own problems. The idea that subscriptions is the future is not a new one, just a new one to the RPG genre; comic book companies have been using it for decades and for good reason; notably, most of them are still putting out a physical product. The key is how those subscriptions are implemented. Paizo set up subscriptions to provide access to individual product lines that come as a physical book and pdfs, which once downloaded are basically books in a digital format. WotC tried to setup a one subscription for everything, whether you really want or need it all or not, and the vast majority of the content is reliant on WotC's whim as to whether or not they decide to continue 4E support in Next's version of DDI, which may or may not stay the same. WotC's approach is fine for gathering already firm supporters of a system that is otherwise being supported in other ways, but 4E's reliance on DDI is high enough that if WotC decides that maintaining DDI support for 4E simply isn't worth it after the new edition is formally released and becomes the focus, 4E's remaining fans are basically left with access to a few books that all received massive amounts of errata no longer available, and even at it's best, it was never an effective marketing tool. That's going to do little to encourage 4E fans to switch over to Next and even less to assuage their numerous critics of the potential for the same thing to happen again with Next. On the other hand, if Paizo were to discontinue their subscriptions tomorrow, none of their former subscribers would really be out anything. The pdfs already gained would still be accessible as long as the website stayed up, which would be very likely because the forums generate a lot of traffic; the content in the books and pdfs would still be accurate and reliable; their ability to purchase future products would be impacted slightly, but not overly so, given that they could still probably purchase directly from Paizo from the website or go to their local game store, just like they can now for product lines they don't subscribe to. They would have to take an additional step for each product they wanted instead of getting it automatically, but that's really about it.Both companies rely on subscriptions but the impact of the structure of those subscriptions could not be more different. Paizo actually has a very sustainable method that does not completely remove other components of their distribution network or make their subscribers 100% reliant on their servers 100% of the time. WotC's model just doesn't have that sustainability and it cannabalizes other marketing and distribution methods to work, so while I don't disagree on the subscription aspect, I do tend to take most assertions made about DDI specifically or comparisons between DDI and Paizo's subscriptions with a heavy grain of salt.</blockquote>

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