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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5261425" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the problem here is really that people expect a decades old business model to continue unchanged into the future. The problem is, this IS the future. 4e is not 3e or 2e or 1e or BECMI or any version of any other game that has come before. It's a 21st Century RPG and the world has changed since 1979 when TSR created the 3 book model with AD&D.Welcome the new century. Games will continually evolve. Each book is going to come out, get constantly updated, and retired in favor of a new set of books. The new books will be compatible with the old books and all the old content will continue to exist in digital form for as long as people care to use it, all with constant updates as needed. Meanwhile every so often a new book will drop with whatever the latest new stuff is and whatever the current relevant version of core rules is at that point in time. I honestly don't think there will be new editions. There will just be exactly what D&D is now, a constantly advancing incrementally improved game that continues to use the same basic core system with modest tweaks. Some day 10 years from now maybe it really will be pretty much nonsensical to use the PHB1 classes anymore and I'd expect at some point the PHB1 will stop getting errata and be declared obsolete. Until then you get to use all the stuff that came out with that book.Nothing about any of this is 'dishonest' or 'money grubbing' on WotC's part. It is just a modern approach to supporting an RPG product. Essentials will take the place of the 3 core books as the printed version of the core rules. You don't HAVE to buy it, you can keep using the 3 core books for years to come, as long as you don't mind attending to the errata or ignoring it. At any given point whatever books any given player is using will work fine as long as everyone can agree on what you do when different books have different versions of stuff (basically you just use the most recent errata and you are all fine).With DDI out there to provide everyone with a place to get the most up-to-date version of all the different game elements and CB that can let you make a character that follows those rules it should work pretty darn well. If there is older stuff, like say the PHB1 warlord, that lots of people like and isn't in a currently published book then they'll probably recycle it into a new book, probably including whatever tweaks and additions have been made since then.The only part of this that I think we really haven't seen yet is some sort of deprecation mechanism that allows the devs to tell everyone "hey, this class/race/feat/item is really not useful anymore so we're going to flag it as something we no longer support officially." We're just starting to see the back side of the cycle for the first 3 core books. Of course all of this stuff is new territory and we are bound to see various experiments as they figure out how to do all this stuff. There are bound to be some mistakes and shortcomings too. Nothing is perfect. Remember, the old AD&D style business model wasn't perfect either. If something was messed up in 1e AD&D you were just stuck with it for 12 years or you made up some house rule to fix it.</blockquote>

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