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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6385075" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Well, it /was/ trying some very new things.</p><p></p><p> Frankly, those all sound pretty plausible. We know from an insider that WotC had promised some phenominal revenue gains, and you can't do that without trying some bold (and, yes, mercenary) things. </p><p></p><p>As it turned out, the development of on-line tools stalled out and those targets couldn't be met.</p><p></p><p>But, /trying/ to do all that, to differentiate from d20 and appeal to new players and expand the community to extensive on-line play, did result in the game trying a lot of new things, some of which also happened to solve long-standing, seemingly insoluble problems with the game. Class balance, for instance. </p><p></p><p>So not every attempt to make more money is necessarily going to be bad for the game. 3.5 started out as an early rev-roll to goose revenue, but a lot of folks certainly liked it.</p><p></p><p> Whether it was designed to be a better game than prior versions (which, really, seems sensible, whatever else you may also be going for, why make a game /worse/), or merely to have a shot at being an improbably profitable one, it was a much better game, in the technical sense of /game/, than D&D had been before (though that's really not saying a whole lot).</p><p></p><p>It shouldn't have been any great surprise, though, that a game that had resisted change for so long had accumulated a fan base that didn't much care for any technical improvements, but really did like those sacred cows....</p><p></p><p> You have the directive - "Rebranding" perhaps. And you have the motivation of the designer - "Improving," maybe. Not necessarily terribly incompatible.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6385075, member: 996"] Well, it /was/ trying some very new things. Frankly, those all sound pretty plausible. We know from an insider that WotC had promised some phenominal revenue gains, and you can't do that without trying some bold (and, yes, mercenary) things. As it turned out, the development of on-line tools stalled out and those targets couldn't be met. But, /trying/ to do all that, to differentiate from d20 and appeal to new players and expand the community to extensive on-line play, did result in the game trying a lot of new things, some of which also happened to solve long-standing, seemingly insoluble problems with the game. Class balance, for instance. So not every attempt to make more money is necessarily going to be bad for the game. 3.5 started out as an early rev-roll to goose revenue, but a lot of folks certainly liked it. Whether it was designed to be a better game than prior versions (which, really, seems sensible, whatever else you may also be going for, why make a game /worse/), or merely to have a shot at being an improbably profitable one, it was a much better game, in the technical sense of /game/, than D&D had been before (though that's really not saying a whole lot). It shouldn't have been any great surprise, though, that a game that had resisted change for so long had accumulated a fan base that didn't much care for any technical improvements, but really did like those sacred cows.... You have the directive - "Rebranding" perhaps. And you have the motivation of the designer - "Improving," maybe. Not necessarily terribly incompatible. [/QUOTE]
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