Bob is right
Bob is totally right.
In the 3.5 days there was an awful lot of crap that floated around, but I really think they threw the baby out with the bathwater by changing the 4.0 OGL to such a degree. Now they are trying to make money and expand their market but there are a lot of gamers out there that can't have their needs met with D&D compatible products to the extent they could with the older license.
The real problem with what they are doing is by and large thanks to a more restrictive OGL is that they have limited other publisher's ability to put out niche products with smaller production values that will appeal to different groups. This has and will hurt the hobby overall, and will negatively affect WotC's bottom line in the long term. A proper stakeholder analysis might have led them to this conclusion. Marketing research is only one piece of the puzzle.
Havent you really answered your own question there? Without a bag of cash at the end, which corporation in its right mind would pick it up?
TSR went backrupt, WOTC wont. Why? Because they know how to expand there market.
On the other hand, D&D could be run by a "fringe" group, but watch the quality drop through the floor and it become more and more of a closet hobby with an ever shrinking base.
Like it or not, reality has to come into this somewhere.
Bob is totally right.
In the 3.5 days there was an awful lot of crap that floated around, but I really think they threw the baby out with the bathwater by changing the 4.0 OGL to such a degree. Now they are trying to make money and expand their market but there are a lot of gamers out there that can't have their needs met with D&D compatible products to the extent they could with the older license.
The real problem with what they are doing is by and large thanks to a more restrictive OGL is that they have limited other publisher's ability to put out niche products with smaller production values that will appeal to different groups. This has and will hurt the hobby overall, and will negatively affect WotC's bottom line in the long term. A proper stakeholder analysis might have led them to this conclusion. Marketing research is only one piece of the puzzle.