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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3813626" data-attributes="member: 4937">Let me be completely clear about my position:1) I'm convinced WotC is going to deliberately screw the third party vendors.  Why do I believe this?  Because if I was in charge of WotC, I'd do the same thing.  From WotC's perspective, the only thing that was unsuccessful about the 3rd edition launch was that being open about the rules set very early on allowed 3rd party vendors to get a jump on them with high quality products that were in direct competition with thier product line up.  Before they could blink, there were high quality alternative monster manuals and setting supplements coming out and getting prominent product placement along side thier material.  As company, you know they couldn't have been happy about that.  I wouldn't have been.2) A good portion, perhaps as much as 50% of the community, either thought it was too early for a new edition to the game because they were happy with what they had invested in this one, or else if they wanted a new edition (like me) they expected something incremental and largely backwards compatible.  There are obviously changes that need to be made, but more of what we have works than doesn't.  D20 is the market leader right now.  It's not like late 2e where the game is losing out to more innovative products from companies like WW.  3) That is not to say that 50% of the community won't convert unless WotC just absolutely screws up.  New editions are exciting.  Many fans collect almost everything that comes out.  But I think it is fair to say that more players won't convert to 4e, than those that failed to convert 2e to 3e and possibly more even than failed to convert from 1e to 2e.  Nonetheless, it strikes me that 4e is a very 'anti-grognard' rules set that has made the decision to not bother with 'grognard capture'.  Love it or leave it.4) I really hope 4e is successful.  D&D's failure would hurt the whole industry.  It wouldn't be good for anyone.  Nonetheless, given the wholesale abandonment of 30 years of flavor and concepts, for better or worse, I'm convinced that there will be a significant market for a incremental 3.75 market and that that market - while it will never be as big as 4e - will be larger than the markets for alternative 3e products like True20, AU, etc.</blockquote>

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