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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 5346275" data-attributes="member: 725">As we've seen and heard in the last ten years, WotC/Hasbro has a whole different set of expectations of a succesful product (line) then all the other RPG manufacturers. The move from 3.5E to 4E was less about a better system as it was more about selling more of the 'same' to the customers. While 3.5E was more of a tweaking of 3.0E, this whole Essentials thing seems like a whole different direction (although that might just be my perspective). Between 3.0 and 3.5 there were three years. Between 4 and 4Essentials there's two years, at this rate we'll see 5E in 2013. The time between cycles seems to be getting a lot shorter and that isn't driven by gamedesign, but purely by the salesdespartment (getting as much profit as quickly as possible).As such I think that the change to the Essentials line was promted by Hasbro management that D&D wasn't hitting the expected sales quotas and needed profit margins, that usually results in "Change things to become more profitable or we'll close you down!". I don't think the Essentials line won't change things in the direction WotC was expecting (I think they'll loose more paying customers then they'll gain), so I think it's only a matter of time before Hasbro puts D&D in the freezer. WotC already dropped the RPG/miniature lines of SW, because they weren't profitable enough for Hasbro.I expect we'll see (in 2011) either more freaky/desperate directions for the D&D brand, a significant reduction on D&D releases or seeing D&D put into a cryogenic freezer for revival in a decade or two. Maybe Hasbro will do licenses from time to time (as they did with GI JOE en Transformers).The edition change over at White Wolf was also pretty much the beginning of the end for the nWoD property. Maybe the WoD MMO CCP is working on might revive the property, but I seriously doubt it.</blockquote>

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