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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brown Jenkin" data-source="post: 4157706" data-attributes="member: 2572">I've been thinking for awhile that New Coke could be the example that best relates to 4E. New Coke was an interesting story. Coca-Cola was seeing their market share slip slowly to Pepsi. The president decided that he was willing to go out on a limb and reformulate the Coke recipe to make it better. They spent allot of time on the new recipe and kept tweaking it until almost everyone in taste tests and focus groups liked it better than Coke or Pepsi. In those focus groups though were a VERY SMALL if somewhat vocal segment that kept saying over and over, it may taste good, but it is not Coke and it never will be, Coke had some flaws but thats what they liked about Coke. The president was informed of this but marketing and everyone else kept saying, don't worry this is at most like 1% and 99% of the people love it. So Coca-Cola went ahead and released New Coke. Now this is a part that most people are not aware of. At first New Coke was a giant success. Coca-Cola market share went up and lots of people bought New Coke. Within the first couple of months though that small but vocal minority kept up its chants of New Coke is not Coke it is something else. We want real Coke. The media started to pick up on this meme and it started to be believed by the general public. Sure the public liked the taste of New Coke, but they began to believe as well that it wasn't really Coke but Pepsi by a different name. Some of the vocal minority also hit Coca-Cola at their bottlers. Bottlers began complaining to Coca-Cola that people on the street would come up to them and yell and complain that they had destroyed Coke. It wasn't that the bottlers weren't selling product but they were getting sick of being yelled at. Coca-Cola was beginning to feel and notice the PR disaster that was happening around them. In order to placate the masses and hopefully staunch the wound it was decided to bring back the original formula (even if it wasn't really the case since the sugar had been replaced with high fructose corn sweetener) and call it Classic Coke. New Coke was not taken off the market and even stayed on the market for over 10 years as Coke. The two brands of Coke were to both be on shelves and people could choose which formula they wanted. Once Classic Coke went on the market it immediately outsold New Coke and soon sent it into niche oblivion. Classic Coke shortly thereafter not only kept the market share that New Coke had gained but increased it even more.I see many of the same factors with D&D. 3.5 was losing market share and WotC/Hasbro wanted a boost in sales. They did lots of research and came up with new rules that made the game more fun. Almost everyone who tried the new system kept saying yes this is more fun. I like this better than 3.5. A small but vocal minority kept saying though, yes it is fun but it doesn't feel like D&D anymore. We want D&D and this is no longer it. Well WotC has heard this but like Coca-Cola looked at the bigger picture and said, yes some people don't like it but almost everyone does so lets go with it.The small minority continues with its insistence that while it may be fun it is a different game and no longer D&D. Slowly this idea is catching on and more and more people are repeating it. 4E will be released soon, and just like New Coke it will probably sell really well. But does that mean it will be successful in the long run. The question will start to be how much the idea catches on that while 4E may be fun it isn't really D&D anymore. We also need to look at what kind of reaction the FLGS end up getting. Will it be like the bottlers where customers come in and start harassing the employees because WotC ruined D&D. If the PR gets bad enough, even if sales are strong, this could make WotC reconsider their direction. New Coke didn't die because it didn't sell well, New Coke died because of bad PR.</blockquote>

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