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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nergal Pendragon" data-source="post: 6506570" data-attributes="member: 6777649">It's not a strawman if it's something argued early on. This is stuff Sailor Moon argued on page 2 of this thread.Except they didn't do the same set of surveys prior to 4E that they did for 5E, considering 4E never had an open playtest. So, no, it's not the same set of data.Around the time they had two editions in a row turn out to be disasters, forcing them to abandon one edition partway through and put out no new content for months while scrambling to plan out a new edition.Also, WotC isn't just competing with Paizo; they're also competing with Savage Worlds, Numenera, Shadowrun, nWoD, 13th Age, FATE, and a few others.And yet, it's a market strategy that has worked repeatedly for video game developers like Bethesda and Blizzard, several RPG companies (including Catalyst, the makers of Shadowrun), and even portions of the software industry. Given all of those are operating in a Western market and doing quite well with the tactic, it seems that the conventional wisdom on "must market as much as possible" isn't actually true.Technically, neither one was a success; remember, they abandoned 3E for 3.5 partway through its development cycle, just like they would later abandon 4E. The only difference is, they didn't replace 4E with a patched version. That is the difference between the two, and why one is considered a worse failure than the other.After all, as you pointed out, 4E was made by pros. And so was 3E, as I'll point out. In fact, one of those pros has his own game system now. That did not stop 3E from having massive problems of its own and WotC being forced to abandon it for 3.5.Essentials isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about 3E and 4E.It's been a little over a month since the DMG was released. Their first major adventure path to be released with the full ruleset out comes in April. I don't know about you, but I think that's a reasonable amount of time to see how things are actually developing and how sales are going. And if it turns out sales are higher than expected, they can adjust their product schedule accordingly.But like I said... if, in six months they're still going slow, I'm going to agree they're being too cautious. Caution like this early on is very warranted, given their history with this game. Continued caution beyond that is a sign things are in trouble.You mean, no new DnD material like the upcoming elemental evils campaign that is going to begin releasing in March, with the books that cost money coming out in April?I keep waiting for people to see the obvious and realize what WotC is doing with Elemental Evils and which company very famous for doing the same exact thing they are ripping off. I mean, WotC isn't even trying to hide that they're doing it. I just haven't stated it before now because the tone always comes across wrong.Any insults to your intelligence are not being delivered from my end.Not really. It makes sense when you know who's business strategy they are using.Yeah, it always has confused me as to why Paizo does that, yet complains on their forums that they don't make enough money from PDF sales to justify a PDF subscription model. If they at least charged a little for the most-downloaded items from their APs, they'd probably make up that difference.So you don't approve of Paizo's strategy for handling adventure paths?Seriously, releasing the player's guide as a free PDF but charging for the the DM-run adventure portions is classic Paizo. And yet, that's exactly what WotC is doing with Elemental Evil.I would't be surprised if that printer run was not related to free guides to give out as part of their Adventures League. In which case, stores would get the preview because stores would need to know that this isn't a product to charge for and what to look for when advertising it to their DnD players who partake in Adventures League.After all, if you're going to steal someone's business plan, you might as well try to improve on it as well so you do better than they are.</blockquote>

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