Regarding Polls - Just some numbers and dates

[jodyjohnson]

Just the Numbers:

The dates are articles when the results were reported not opened.

WotC DnD Polls

August 30: 1259

Monte Cook joins staff roughly Sept 27th, 2011

Oct. 18: 3555
Nov. 1: 3331
Nov. 8: 2346
Nov. 22: 2150
Nov. 29: 2498
Dec. 6: 2383
Dec. 13: 2952
Dec. 20: 2123

5e Announcement Jan. 9, 2012

Jan. 30: 4063
Feb. 6: 2628
Feb. 13: 5418
Feb. 20: 4698
Feb. 27: 4919
Mar. 5: 6096

A year or so ago when Mike Mearls started doing polls and L&L it was supposed that he was talking 5e. Adding Monte in September reinforced that. The announcement confirmed it. Each bringing a statistical bump to the Poll raw responses.

A typical ENWorld poll gets 100-200 responses while the 'What should 5e be called?' poll was something like 3500-4000 responses.


Interesting to me as a measure of how much investment people are having in shaping 5e.

 

[Mokona]

Clever. Smart way to track the engagement of this marketing campaign. Do people take the polls? How many people are reading these articles?

 

[jodyjohnson]

Adding Blog polls: Oldest is Feb. 2 and all are still open.

Robert Schwalb blog
Feb. 2: Weapon Damage Types - 3635
Feb. 9: Customizable Fighters - 5746
Feb. 16: Fighter Multiple Attacks - 4696, 4321, 4349
Feb. 23: Kings and Castles - 4206, 3840, 3810, 3747
Mar. 1: Hit Points - 5641
Mar. 8: Sneak Attack - 2783 (less than a day open)

Monte Cook blog
Feb. 3: Racial Choice - 3532
Feb. 17: Dice Tricks - 4429, 3824, 3802, 3778
Mar. 7: Deadly Dice - 3764 (just over a day old)

Bruce Cordell blog
Feb. 8: Negative Hit Points - 5369
Feb. 15: Spell Names - 3889
Feb. 22: High Level Play - 3251 (the other is multiple selection)
Feb. 29: Favorite Class - 5738

Greg Bisland blog
Feb. 14: DDN at GenCon Seminars - 2386

Rodney Thompson blog
Mar. 2: Skills - 5028

2-4 Polls per week on the blogs plus Legend and Lore.
Also tends to show a 7-15% drop-off in multiple question polls.
Monte's Dice Tricks poll has enough dropoff the make the last question have a large margin of error.

 

[Khaalis]

Sadly, the polls are not necessarily very effective as a source of market research since we all know that active posters are only a very small percentage of the player base. It is interesting though to see just how many people are actively responding (and sadly just how SMALL that number really is).

 

[jodyjohnson]

Wizards Community Group numbers:

Magic the Gathering: 3964

D&D Insider: 69,942
D&D Insider Beta: 36,434

D&D: 5268
D&D Next: 3969
D&D Playtest: 2512

Living Forgotten Realms: 2644

ENWorld Community: 123,399

 

[Scribble]

So what are these numbers telling you?

 

[jodyjohnson]

I would be a little disappointed as a marketer or a Hasbro exec if a national media blitz reaching potentially nearly every tech field, game retailer, or general geek netted a mere doubling in the active interest in giving input on the game.

The brand team has said the D&D brand had roughly 2 million active and maybe 4 million lapsed players (the Rouse).

WotC has been trying to sell D&D as a $50-100 million a year brand. To get there consistently they'd need DDI to have maybe 10 times the current subscribers and if the proportions hold they might get a doubling.

Obviously they are gathering a lot more metrics than just raw poll numbers.

For example, 1-2 million page views after the Jan. 7 announcement would mean a lot. Or adding 20,000 non-DDI emails to the Beta test. Numbers WotC has but we aren't privy to.

We don't even have 4e or 3.5 or 3.0 PHB sales numbers.