delericho
Legend
I would be surprised if there aren't people at WotC giving quite a lot of thought to 4e. In fact, I expect everyone there gives quite a lot of thought to it.
I would be shocked if we don't have at least a year between the announcement of 4e and its release.
I don't expect 4e before Gen Con '07. In fact, I think GC '08 is more likely.
I'm desperately hoping that WotC do two things when developing 4e. The first is to take the game apart and put it back together, in the same way they did between 2e and 3e. The core mechanic is fine, and shouldn't be changed, but there are a lot of areas that just don't fit right (eg grapple), and some sacred cows that maybe should be killed (although, actually, most of the ones that get mentioned on threads of this sort are things that I like). There are clearly some systems in place that really need rebuilt from the ground up (LA for one), and doing a minor update won't really cover that - I think we need some whole new systems built in line with the rest of the new edition. And it's important that the designers not be afraid of changing too much with the new edition. (Which is not to advocate change for change's sake - 4e should be as different as required to be the best edition of D&D yet produced, and no more different than that.)
The second thing that I really hope is done in 4e is to consider the development of electronic DM tools to be integral to the development of the edition. Basically, "Master Tools 4e" should ship on the release day of 4e itself, or very soon after.
I would be shocked if we don't have at least a year between the announcement of 4e and its release.
I don't expect 4e before Gen Con '07. In fact, I think GC '08 is more likely.
I'm desperately hoping that WotC do two things when developing 4e. The first is to take the game apart and put it back together, in the same way they did between 2e and 3e. The core mechanic is fine, and shouldn't be changed, but there are a lot of areas that just don't fit right (eg grapple), and some sacred cows that maybe should be killed (although, actually, most of the ones that get mentioned on threads of this sort are things that I like). There are clearly some systems in place that really need rebuilt from the ground up (LA for one), and doing a minor update won't really cover that - I think we need some whole new systems built in line with the rest of the new edition. And it's important that the designers not be afraid of changing too much with the new edition. (Which is not to advocate change for change's sake - 4e should be as different as required to be the best edition of D&D yet produced, and no more different than that.)
The second thing that I really hope is done in 4e is to consider the development of electronic DM tools to be integral to the development of the edition. Basically, "Master Tools 4e" should ship on the release day of 4e itself, or very soon after.
)and 3E came out several years ago...then 4E should be announced at GC and out by '06 or '07 (that would put about 6 or 7 years between 3E and 4E, ignoring the service pack 3.5 release 
