dajr said:
Thats what I was responding too. That ranking would NOT have happened if it was Fatal with D&D slapped on it, imho.
4e is doing very, very well indeed, but I think you severely underestimate the brand loyalty of D&D fans. 4e isn't doing great because it's a messiah of a game, come to save us all from darkness and lead us into the light.
Or at least, not JUST because of that.
In fact, you could argue that 4e's initial sales are a result of 3e's success in cementing and expanding a D&D market, if you wanted to point fingers at causes.
4e is doing quite good. Those who protest this point are kind of sticking their heads in the sand. But...and here is a prediction you can test in about a decade....5e will do
even better. And 6e will do even better than that.
2e did better than 1e, which did better than OD&D, and 3e did better than 2e.
All 4e's initial sales mean is that people are still playing or interested in D&D. This is a tremendously good thing, and it's very fortunate that WotC underestimated rather than overestimated that crowd. It means our hobby is a healthy one, and that it can grow.
It doesn't mean 4e has won some sort of "better than sex!" contest. All my little quip was pointing out was that 4e sales doesn't tell you much very specifically about 4e aside from the fact that a lot of people bought it. A lot of people buy illegal drugs, romance novels, and mass-produced oil paintings of Jesus, too.
I used to think that sales and cost and that whole capitalism bag were sort of a democratic process of quality or at least functional usefulness. But then I remembered that people are fundamentally insane, and that you can create supply and demand for
pardons from sins, if you wanted. Buying 4e is probably motivated more by hope, fear, curiosity, loyalty, and other nebulous things than it is by whether or not fighters can trip at-will or per-day. Meaning that, if the rules were FATAL, but the name was D&D, it would still inspire that emotional hope/fear/curiosity/loyalty/etc. A rose by any other name would NOT smell as sweet, so to speak.
4e is selling well. This is to be expected, praised even. But try not to make the mistake of assuming 4e is selling well because it is the bestest. Sales don't tell you very much about quality. Awesome stuff goes unnoticed, and crud gets consumed because human beings are not eminently logical creatures. Sales probably tell you more about how popular the fantasy genre has become since 2000, and how well WotC's pre 4e media blitz reminded people that D&D still exists, than it does about anything that's between those splashy covers.
