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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9410040" data-attributes="member: 18">I think two big differences are:A) It's the 2020s, not 2008. People are hugely more used to subscriptions and microtransactions for online games and services, and I suspect generally feel more positive about them (albeit still not great). 2008 was only two years after the famous "Horse Armor" incident with TES Oblivion, and there was a perception among DMs (not entirely unwarranted*) that MMORPGs were stealing their players, so any connection to WoW was a brush you could tar people with, even the most tenuous.B) WotC have actually been more upfront about their digital plans this time, even if they're very much not nailed down. Literally the first mentions of the 3D VTT (now apparently "Sigil") including mentions of a subscription and microtransactions (and seemingly quite a lot of microtransactions at that!). But they also very much seemed to suggest the 3D VTT was going to exist alongside D&D in general, rather than to replace it. Whether it'll actually play out like that, we shall see, but in the short term it probably will. With 4E whilst the actual plans, when they finally got revealed, were not dissimilar, it was long after the damage had been done by a lot of vague and concerning statements.Also thanks to Beyond an awful lot of people are already used to paying WotC more money and not questioning it - both via subscriptions and double-purchasing the books (or just purchasing a digital book that has a very low overhead relative to getting a printed book made and shipped, and where basically 100% of the revenue goes to WotC). It was little-observed at the time, but weren't WotC getting like, 70% of the amount paid to Beyond per book before they owned Beyond? When they took over they could have thus reduced prices and still be coming out ahead (hahaha as if), but in fact not only did they not do that, they soon thereafter raised digital prices.One can hope this does indeed work out. Historically WotC has made error after error after error with digital-related decision-making, certainly the "red" column is lengthy whereas the green one very short, even recently they didn't manage to convince Larian to keep working with them despite Larian making insane bank off of a WotC IP (and sure, that's not something WotC could force but I do feel like it's highly unusual and probably has roots beyond "we were bored of the IP").* = More realistically it was that MMORPGs were dominating the increasingly limited leisure-time of a lot of players, and MMORPGs of that era particularly could basically easily expand to fill your entire leisure-time if you were even slightly endgame-oriented. People weren't saying "To hell with D&D" they were fulfilling social obligations they'd created to raid X times a week or whatever. There were probably a few people who got the same thrill from MMORPGs as playing actual D&D, but I doubt it was many and their loss was likely inevitable.</blockquote>

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