Pathfinder 1E Paizo being mysterious

[Rauol_Duke]

What polls were those?

The poll has been up on Paizo's front page for months now.

 

[Zinovia]

At this point there's not much time for them to produce a 4E product by GenCon even if WotC did drop the GSL over at their place earlier today.

I'm not sure anyone is going to get much benefit from early buy-in. It's less than three months until the game is released and everyone can get their hands on the rules by running over to the FLGS and purchasing it for $105 retail rather than $5K. Yes, that means they'd have to wait until January to release a 4E product, but so what? It takes substantial lead times to produce a worthwhile product. Is it worth that kind of money to buy in early for few months jump on everyone else? Every day that passes without the GSL being in the hands of the 3rd party publishers makes the answer to that question slide from "maybe" to "probably not" to "no way".

If the GSL issue had been resolved a few months ago, and the publishers who bought in had their hands on the SRD (in flux as it may yet be) right now, then sure, it would likely have been worth the $5K. They'd have had time to develop a good product in time for GenCon and perhaps even earlier.

I vote for the theory that the goblins have infested the Paizo servers and haxx0red the message boards so that the computer will place automated orders for pizza with randomly generated character names.

 

[AZRogue]

What polls were those? I am a Paizo subscriber and I am definitely switching to 4E, and I have not seen any polls. If there were any, I'm sure many of the subscribers might also not spend too much time on the messageboards to know when a poll goes up. I certainly never received an email from Paizo requesting a poll response, which is what I think they would do if they wanted a more accurate sense of their subscribers.

On the 4E forum Erik Mona asked Paizo customers (or posters, I should say) whether we were going to switch to the new edition. There are also other threads, such as whether the DnDXP has changed peoples' minds regarding the new edition. In each poll, I believe, the majority of voters and posters were for them remaining 3.5, with some people adding that they would switch if Paizo did, but would prefer they remain 3.5. Such polls have been up in the 4E forum for months now.

 

[helium3]

What polls were those? I am a Paizo subscriber and I am definitely switching to 4E, and I have not seen any polls. If there were any, I'm sure many of the subscribers might also not spend too much time on the messageboards to know when a poll goes up. I certainly never received an email from Paizo requesting a poll response, which is what I think they would do if they wanted a more accurate sense of their subscribers.

See, this is what I'm saying. Internet polls on a message board are not a good way to assess what your market wants. A better method is to add a cardstock insert to your next shipped publication that doesn't require the customer to pay for postage. The insert can ask directly whether they want to switch to 4E or stick with 3.5. as well as general comments. Then, you just have to make sure there's something on the publication that also points out the existence of the survey.

Heck you could go through your customer database and barrage them with an email, phone call or mail them a survey.

 

[takasi]

This could also be an early April Fool's gag.

 

[CaptainChaos]

I wasn't aware of a chat they had, but my impressions are the same. 3.5 for another year.

Or forever if they decide to do their own revision of 3.5 and sell Pathfinder core books. The thing is, they are also Necro's publisher, so Paizo can in a sense have their cake and eat it too by going their own way with 3.5 support and publishing Necro's 4E stuff.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Getting your products branded with the new players is important.

I want to know where the new players are coming from.

3e brought a lot of people back to D&D.

4e will apparently leave a lot of 3.5e folks behind.

Taking for granted the subset of "Finally got fed up with 3e and ready to come back again to 4e" players, who are the new new players, and how will WoTC attract them?

 

[keterys]

That would be an awfully premature gag.

I'm going to go with the red horse with the weird legs:

WotC gave them the GSL and rules and asked them to help out with running online dragon/dungeon until WotC is able to handle it themselves. They're waiving the $5k fee and not so subtly hints/begs them to conver their lines to 4E. Paizo makes some decision (perhaps a straddle move where the next pathfinder is 3.5, but gamemastery starts converting over as possible)

There, seems unlikely, but makes me feel good.

 

[Festivus]

This is one of two things:

1. They got the GSL and are making a decision that will prompt them to re-launch their website.

2. They got new software for their website, which is what they really, really, really need.

I vote for #2, having just performed a major system update for our website, we took 5 hours and had a "Please BEAR with us..." page up (I work for UCLA) while working on it... mainly so the site monitor wouldn't send three emails to my phone every 5 minutes.

 

[pedr]

Jason Bulmahn's blog post is... interesting: http://iuztheevil.livejournal.com/

Note that his current mood is 'excited'!