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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickster Spirit" data-source="post: 6227025" data-attributes="member: 6701829">Precisely.When an edition is released, I feel, is almost as important as what that edition looks like when it comes out, and part of the reason I've been less concerned while others rave on the forums about 2+ years of a mostly-empty D&D release cycle (which isn't even all that empty, if one considers that they're catering to older editions' players with all the reprints and D&D Classics re-releases). When 4E came out, a big part of the reason for the backlash was because a significant portion of the player base still saw plenty of life in 3.5, quite apart from any dislike of the mechanics of the new edition, and Paizo swooped in quite masterfully to take advantage of that - "3.5 Survives! Thrives!"In contrast, when 3.0 came out, the player base as a whole was much more receptive to mechanical change because of how long it had been since 2nd Edition product had come out. The time scale wasn't all that much different from the 3.5 to 4E transition (1989-1995 pre-Player's Option or 6 years from 2.0 to "2.5", and 1995-2000 "2.5" to 3.0). The difference was, TSR filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and the hiatus between then and the release of 3.0 in 2000 gave gamers plenty of time to become overly familiar with the now-fossilized system. (I use the term fossilized to denote that after official releases ceased, the system remained preserved as-is, not as a knock on 2E! Sure, individual groups might've continued to make new house-rules or homebrewed kits/classes/spells etc., but as a lingua-franca between tables 2nd Edition was largely set in stone after 1997.)I'm convinced that three year hiatus in D&D was a major factor in 3.0's success. It allowed for gamers to wrap up their existing campaigns, get their money's worth out of their old books, and develop a hankering for some new D&D by the time the year 2000 rolled around. I've seen a lot of people argue that WotC is taking too long to release Next, or that there's no chance that it'll steal away that many Pathfinder players. As a Pathfinder GM myself, it's precisely because D&D is "resting" right now that I'm so eager to pick up a copy of 5E. The longer the wait, the less I need 5E to resemble Pathfinder; I'm already getting my Pathfinder fix, what I'm looking for now is something different. One of the critical mis-steps of 4E is that it was rolled out to soon; not only would an extra year have given WotC more time to fix the missing-content-and-math-issues-at-release complaints many had, but it would have given more players time to get on board with the idea of an edition change-over. So while personally I'm expecting and hoping for a 2014 GenCon release, because I'm just that impatient for it, I wouldn't be terribly concerned if we didn't see Next released until 2015 instead.TL;DR: Gamers are perfectly willing to accept change, the timing just has to be right for it. The longer a rest WotC gives D&D, the more saturated we'll get with what we're already playing and the more willing we'll be to try something different.</blockquote>

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