not sure how that's a positive for WotC? Can you elaborate? If I were in WotC's shoes, I would want a unified player market, not a divisive one. Those three bullet points I
Right and I wasn't ignoring everything else you said--with which I agree--but I was only responding to the first bit. If you compare the MTG market to the D&D market... MTG is competetive, D&D is cooperative, and I believe that's an important distinction to help understand what the flip just happened. It's about divide and conquer. A divided player market is exactly what WoTC wants; a united player market is exactly why WoTC didn't get what they wanted. They can go full ham on MTG and players
get upset, some leave, but it's all as
individuals. When they point the gun at D&D, we locked arms and said no--african american, caucasian, asian, male, female and everything in between, conservative, liberal, christian, jewish, muslim, atheist--all locked arms and said "you will
not cross this line." I think that the fact that we've all been conditioned by our game (and lifestyle brand for many) to cooperate and work together,
not to compete with one another, definitely has something to do with that.
I too hope the TTRPG community stays this course and we enter a renaissance period. How much of a division this will eventually cause is anybody's guess. I don't have a crystal ball of course and I don't really think WoTC intended this either, if you're into the whole conspiracy theory thing. But I think they could benefit from it, if they make some extraordinarily shrewd, cunning, intelligent business decisions in the coming years and take every advantage they possibly can. And if that means exploiting a divided community to stay alive... I mean they already tried to exploit a united community. Yes I do see some D&D players feeling at least nonplussed that a huge swath of the fanbased just walked, if not hurt/angry, many other feels. How much they represent the mainstream cannot yet be known.
It's just interesting to watch and ponder. It's really something to think that this is probably going into the history books--and I mean outside just the RPG world. In the advertising world (that's where I work so I can claim a bit more than armchair expert on this one) the poster child of bad PR is the New Coke campaign of 1985. Coke lost ball park $85 million dollars, adjusted for inflation to 2023. I believe it was $5-$6m in 1985. New Coke is the cautionary tale of the advertising world--it is the euphamism for royally farkling up your marketing campaign. This is taught in college textbooks/classes to budding designers and business people alike. Whatever happens, you don't ever want to be the "New New Coke!"
We won't have meaningful numbers for a while, but I've got to wonder if WoTC's insane blunder could usurp New Coke as the new cautionary tale of the advertising world.