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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 5761979" data-attributes="member: 59506">Is it a bad thing? Yes Did it have to be a bad thing? No  I don't accept this premise. I do not believe that the RPG community is split due to the existence of competing versions. The RPG community is split due to the way in which those competing versions were introduced and implemented, and the way in which they were supported. It was not predestined that the community was going to be split. WotC could have avoided 99% of these problems by making DDI inclusive to all editions. And before anyone goes there, the idea that WotC would have hurt themselves by competing against themselves is just crap. The proof is right in our faces. A DDI that had support for all editions (in the form of character, npc, and encounter builders, along with rules compendiums and sales of electronic books), would have kept a revenue stream coming in from players of all editions, not just the currently supported one. It would have also provided a place for fans of different editions to mingle together, possibly even playing in eachothers games (even though not eachothers preferred systems) and maybe even leading to sales of new edition materials to those that wouldn't have otherwise bought them. And I think it would have had the added benefit of nullifying most of the edition warring right from the start. Sure, some edition warring is always going to be present, but the level of diviseveness would have been significantly less than what we have now. A lot of that goes towards the bad mouthing that WotC themselves did concerning past editions. Utter foolishness.  I think both <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/315794-split-bad-thing.html#post5761853" target="_blank">Morrus</a> and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/315794-split-bad-thing.html#post5761846" target="_blank">Umbran</a> answered this well. Parts of this have been bad, parts good. I do however think the net gain in players was mostly insignificant compared to the number of current gamers. The divisiveness between players I think is a bad thing. Part of that is self induced, as Umbran said. But much of that was generated by WotC themself, which was a monumentally foolish thing. All in all though, I'd say it's mostly negative. Especially in relation to how this could have been if dealt with respectfully and inclusively. If it had been implemented that way, I believe it would have been almost all positive.  IMO: Yes.  Complete data here is almost impossible for us to know. We have some hard data, but not enough. So all we have are educated guesses and opinion. My opinion: We still have only one company making decent profit (Paizo), and one that isn't (WotC, but only on the D&D brand).* But those are still qualified opinions. Paizo is making decent profit in comparison to what Paizo used to make. They've grown compared to where they were before Pathfinder, but they are not the size of WotC (just my opinion though). I also believe that the D&D division of WotC is a mere shadow of what it used to be. And that's a loss for everybody. *(Based on each companies business expectations. Paizo's expectations were probably significantly less than what they achieved. WotC's expectations were likely much larger than what they've actually achieved.)  I'm glad that DDI is doing respectably well. And also glad that it has increased. I am however quite saddened by those numbers as I believe that if a philosophy of inclusiveness had been imparted from the start, those numbers may be much higher. Even if the real numbers are more like 100,000, I believe DDI may have been more in the range of 300,000 to 500,000 if inclusiveness had been the watchword. All in all, I feel that's a loss for both WotC and D&D's fans.  I don't believe so. There's currently no synergy being generated due to a lack of cooperation. As seperate, non-inclusive entities, I don't believe much growth is in the cards. They are probably about as big as they can get. Inclusiveness would have made the sum much larger than it's parts. In the current situation, such synergy is impossible. If WotC's philosophy towards support of D&D changed to one of inclusiveness, I believe that synergy would generate a new golden age for D&D, including Pathfinder, and for all RPG's in general. If the release and implementation of 5E is the same as for 4E, it won't matter if they've created the Holy Grail of systems - it will just be more of the same. More fracturing, more diviseveness, and even smaller pieces of pie for everyone. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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