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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5533492" data-attributes="member: 59082">Not quite. I think too much is made of places like EN World not being representative of the larger fanbase. Sure, a poll on EN World only means something on EN World (if even that), but what you can get a sense of is the general tone of fandom of a given edition - how happy people are with the game, how many people moved to another edition, and so forth. This isn't cold hard data but it is "listening to the people" (which WotC could do more of and evidently is doing, to some extent, through Mearls' articles).And also remember that it is the diehard fanbase that is, while a small minority of overall D&D players, the engine that moves the vehicle of the hobby. It is well known that a small percentage of active, regular D&D players, is responsible for the majority of D&D sales. My game group is a good example: in our group of six I own a huge bookshelf of a few hundred (400?) different game books. My guess is that the other five guys own maybe 20 between them, and some of them are old attic-dwelling copies of 1E books they haven't played in 25 years. So in my group, 17% of the group (me) is responsible for 95% of the product. I know this is purely anecdotal but I've heard variations of this story time and time again. Even if we reduce the numbers a bit and say that 20% of D&D players are responsible for 80% of the product, we still have to recognize that it is very important to keep that 20% happy. Even if half are OK with only minor gripes and a quarter grumble but keep on spending, you still have 5% who are in danger of not buying anything--which is 20% of the product. And then you have that other 5% that is teetering between sucking it up and entering full-out disgruntlement.The point being, if a business wants to have long-term success then it needs to care not only about sales figures but customer satisfaction, and lasting customer satisfaction. Plenty of people buy 4E books but my guess is that customer satisfaction is lower than any other edition only three years into the cycle. People loved 3E in 2003; well, there was the 3.5 debacle but that was just a blip on the radar. All was well in 1992, three years after 2E came out, in heart of the "Golden Age of Settings." And of course the 1980-82 era (three years after the various 1E core hardcovers were published) was the peak of D&D interest.So I don't think it is erroneous to say that, at the least, something is iffy, if not completely rotten, in Denmark. It doesn't matter what the exact numbers are; what is important is the general tenor of the community, which is problematic to say the least, and certainly not improving.</blockquote>

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