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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 1312405" data-attributes="member: 8863">Yeah, I remember thinking roughly the same thing.  I was waiting for a couple of new products, especially the various volumes of the Wizard's Spell Compendium.  But they didn't come out.  They didn't show up at any of the local bookstores that sold D&D stuff, and I kept asking the owner of a local comic shop who would put game products on special order, but he kept saying they were unavailable.  Then in the summer, I read about WotC's buyout.   Now, I didn't know anything about the state of the industry at that point.  I didn't have Internet access back then either, so I didn't read anything about the tactics of They $ue Regularly.  And yeah, it was sort of a fear that CCGs were destroying the RPG industry, when in fact the real problem was fragmentation of the RPG market.  What the CCGs did do, in retrospect, was kill off the weaker companies, and it would seem the stronger ones survived.  As for the CCGs, they were fragmented too, maybe even worse than RPGs, and a lot of them died afterwards. But now I know better.  T$R got itself into its own mess by fragmenting the market.  And while WW managed to prosper with the goth subculture for example, a lot of companies tanked.   Computer and console games probably played their part as well, and most RPG publishers didn't cope very well with that either.   I thought that WotC would destroy D&D, because after all they started the whole CCG fad.    But now, I'm glad they did it.  The products released after the WotC showed a marked improvement.  The d20 concept has really breathed new life into the industry; instead of trying to compete with the juggernaut that is D&D, small companies can now publish stuff compatible with it and prosper if they have a good idea.  WotC isn't saturating the market, instead D&D releases are once again anticipated like they were long ago (or so I understand).</blockquote>

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