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<blockquote data-quote="IanWatson" data-source="post: 6289181" data-attributes="member: 10702">Here's the thing. Sales had been on a steady downward trend, and with the evolving metaplot, the line was increasingly hard to get into for newcomers. Products being released were more and more niche, since just about everything had already been covered in the previous 13 years. So they made the very risky decision to do the Time of Judgment and then introduce an entirely new World of Darkness: one with no metaplot and a toolbox approach, which would help avoid some of the previous issues.With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering. But that wasn't easy to see at the time. WW made their decision for entirely sensible reasons, they just happened to be wrong.As an example of the sales slump -- one of the few for which numbers were made public -- VTM's 1998 Limited Edition rulebook sold 10,000 copies, and many more unlimited editions. Six years later VTR's 2004 corebook, which only had the one version, sold 10,000 copies, and that was exciting enough that WW issued a press release. That's a huge change in such a short period of time. WW was hurting.But it means we get to play in two different WoDs. We get to explore two different interpretations of werewolves, of changelings, of vampires, of demons. We get to introduce new weird stuff like Sin-Eaters and Prometheans. It's very freeing, creatively speaking. Both WoDs have their fans (and many are fans of both).Or the third option, &quot;keep playing.&quot; It was brought up multiple times during the Time of Judgment. Existing books weren't going to catch fire, and there was 13 years of material to build from, so people could continue to play their Classic games for as long as they wanted. And many did exactly that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="IanWatson, post: 6289181, member: 10702"] Here's the thing. Sales had been on a steady downward trend, and with the evolving metaplot, the line was increasingly hard to get into for newcomers. Products being released were more and more niche, since just about everything had already been covered in the previous 13 years. So they made the very risky decision to do the Time of Judgment and then introduce an entirely new World of Darkness: one with no metaplot and a toolbox approach, which would help avoid some of the previous issues. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering. But that wasn't easy to see at the time. WW made their decision for entirely sensible reasons, they just happened to be wrong. As an example of the sales slump -- one of the few for which numbers were made public -- VTM's 1998 Limited Edition rulebook sold 10,000 copies, and many more unlimited editions. Six years later VTR's 2004 corebook, which only had the one version, sold 10,000 copies, and that was [I]exciting[/I] enough that WW issued a press release. That's a huge change in such a short period of time. WW was hurting. But it means we get to play in two different WoDs. We get to explore two different interpretations of werewolves, of changelings, of vampires, of demons. We get to introduce new weird stuff like Sin-Eaters and Prometheans. It's very freeing, creatively speaking. Both WoDs have their fans (and many are fans of both). Or the third option, "keep playing." It was brought up multiple times during the Time of Judgment. Existing books weren't going to catch fire, and there was 13 years of material to build from, so people could continue to play their Classic games for as long as they wanted. And many did exactly that. [/QUOTE]

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