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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alatar" data-source="post: 6994988" data-attributes="member: 38424">Oh, I'm sure Magic was never threatened. But D&D...They created a direct competitor and ceded to it half their customer base. That was a strategic error.Gleemax was a horror show. The site had an undead Visual Basic vibe from day one. From there, it rotted. The fumbling that was DDI never broke even, I am sure, and their failure to deliver on the promised virtual tabletop did not help their brand. At the time, this is what I expected to happen to a bunch of English Lit. people who didn't have a clue and farmed it out to some Microsoft Platinum Partner. I also heard back then that they had inadvertantly licensed themselves out of being allowed to run a virtual tabletop, but I don't know if that was true. Rumors often aren't. But it did sound plausible. It seemed in line with their other activities.The new dogfood was a bust. The dogs wouldn't eat it. The attempt to reanimate 4e with Essentials was a failure and another financial bust. It was as if someone had handed them an automatic weapon and they proceeded to empty the magazine into their own foot. Most of the people at WotC  went off in pursuit of other opportunities, not that WotC didn't always have a lot of turnover with much shrinking and growing in sync with product cycles. This time they went down to what? Eight people? Not enough to get a food truck to stop by at lunch time. Days of PB&J. Mike Mearls survived, though. They took a big hit. 4e cost Hasbro money, which is not the way it's supposed to work.Mind you, I liked 4e. I liked Essentials. I bought the books. I subscribed to DDI. I even spent a little time on Gleemax before it was staked.D&D vanishing for the foreseeable future was one of the possible outcomes. Hasbro could have shelved the IP or sold it off. But that did not happen, which is great. And having Pathfinder as an alternative has been great as well.From where I'm sitting, the 4e adventure was a series of missteps that sent them tumbling down a staircase. That Hasbro decided to pick them up, brush them off and give it another go is fortuitous. Maybe their desire to protect the 3rd party licensing revenue stream was what did it. Maybe they are hoping to catch a little of what Marvel and DC caught. I don't know.And what WotC has been doing since with 5e seems really smart and appears to be really successful. They've done a 180. So good on them. I hope they continue to flourish. Take my money, please.</blockquote>

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