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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5931548" data-attributes="member: 27160">That's one view. Mine, based on 35+ years gaming and 25 years working in business, is that it wasn't a mistake at all. In fact, I think the &quot;issues&quot; WotC are having as a result of Pathfinder right now are caused, in fair measure, by the fact that 4e was not OGL.If 4e had been OGL, I think two things would have improved, from WotC's perspective:1) Some customers who abandoned them because of principled stands over their &quot;closing down&quot; of the license would have stayed with D&amp;D. Customer revulsion at a business practice is both a real and a very rational market mechanism.2) Third parties would have picked up and covered a lot of customer-perceived &quot;gaps&quot; in 4e. This would have done two things: it would have kept &quot;on board&quot; gamers who had specific gripes with 4e but found 3PP material to change, replace or obviate those issues, and it would have given WotC feedback from the market about what areas customers perceived 4e as weak in - what types of product were popular, in effect.Failure to pursue an OGL approach left, I think, a gaping hole in the market for an established OGL product (Pathfinder) to flood into.Returning to the point of the OP, D&amp;DNext will have to rock my socks off, if it's not OGL, for me to be interested in it. That's not purely a principled stand thing - an OGL product will likely have some good product come out for it, making the core buy worthwhile even if it's only average. 4e managed to impress me even without OGL - that speaks to how well I regard its actual systems. But I still regard the abandonment of the OGL for it (not to mention the clustercockup surrounding the whole digital area, which seems mostly to have related to a paranoid psychosis concerning IP) a massive mistake from a business standpoint.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 5931548, member: 27160"] That's one view. Mine, based on 35+ years gaming and 25 years working in business, is that it wasn't a mistake at all. In fact, I think the "issues" WotC are having as a result of Pathfinder right now are caused, in fair measure, by the fact that 4e was [B]not[/B] OGL. If 4e had been OGL, I think two things would have improved, from WotC's perspective: 1) Some customers who abandoned them because of principled stands over their "closing down" of the license would have stayed with D&D. Customer revulsion at a business practice is both a real and a very rational market mechanism. 2) Third parties would have picked up and covered a lot of customer-perceived "gaps" in 4e. This would have done two things: it would have kept "on board" gamers who had specific gripes with 4e but found 3PP material to change, replace or obviate those issues, and it would have given WotC feedback from the market about what areas customers perceived 4e as weak in - what types of product were popular, in effect. Failure to pursue an OGL approach left, I think, a gaping hole in the market for an established OGL product (Pathfinder) to flood into. Returning to the point of the OP, D&DNext will have to rock my socks off, if it's not OGL, for me to be interested in it. That's not purely a principled stand thing - an OGL product will likely have some good product come out for it, making the core buy worthwhile even if it's only average. 4e managed to impress me even without OGL - that speaks to how well I regard its actual systems. But I still regard the abandonment of the OGL for it (not to mention the clustercockup surrounding the whole digital area, which seems mostly to have related to a paranoid psychosis concerning IP) a [I]massive[/I] mistake from a business standpoint. [/QUOTE]

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