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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5533780" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, THIS is absolutely true, that if you have a community account and you are a DDI subscriber you are added to the DDI group, and if you lapse your subscription you're removed from the DDI group. In EVERY OTHER GROUP on the community the count reflects the actual number of users who have joined that group. The numbers in the DDI group are too large to prove if that is true there and you can leave that group to test the theory anyway AFAIK. So, yes, it is POSSIBLE that the group member count in the DDI group is an evil conspiracy by WotC to deceive us all about DDI subscription numbers, but frankly that seems rather ridiculous to me. The 13k missing avatars? It COULD indicate that the group membership count includes people without community accounts, in which case it is an absolute count of actual active DDI subscribers. I can believe that's possible. I fail to believe the count never decrements since in every other respect the DDI group is just another group (WotC rents the whole community platform, it isn't like they built it specifically for their needs anyway).There is a HUGE difference. First of all 2e was deader than a doornail in 1999. The books were off the shelves and long since gathering dust in the bargain bins around here. Anecdotally around here it was a has-been game. Yes, you could find the die-hard core of 2e AD&D fans online etc but the game was dated, the producer was moribund, the market had been flooded for several years with badly written garbage. It was by far the low point of D&D in my experience. ANY new edition was entering a green field. Of course people welcomed 3e, it was the first sign that D&D was still alive.Contrast this with the introduction of 4e, very different. 3.5 never suffered from a deficit of support, etc.No, it makes relying on it an exercise in piling one flimsiness on top of another. It isn't even a matter of flimsiness either. It is a matter of there is NO OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER to support the conclusion that 4e isn't quite successful. The popularity of PF is notable, but even that doesn't indicate a whole lot about 4e. 2/3 of the people I play with play other versions of D&D as well as 4e. It seems logical that PF sales detract from 4e sales in some fashion, but we don't really know to what extent that is true. In fact if you know a bit about markets and marketing you'd be very hesitant to draw that conclusion hastily. Many people buy both. They might spend more on one if the other didn't exist, but they may also buy more overall since there's more to choose from. Many of the people buying PF stuff might not be playing at all if PF didn't exist, and those people may STILL buy a 4e product now and then. The opposite is true as well, I doubt PF would be doing as well if 4e didn't exist personally. The point is, your 'evidence' isn't flimsy, it is non-existent.Again, what other choice of game systems did people have? 2e was DEAD DEAD DEAD dust covered bargain-bin fodder. The question wasn't between 2e and 3e, it was whether or not D&D was going to survive at all or if more modern games were finally going to kill it off (IIRC V:tM was doing quite well at the time of the 3e launch). Obviously 3 years in that question was answered, D&D lived and thrived, but 3.x WAS D&D. So, again, the difference today is only that 3.5 was far from dead when 4e was launched, and on top of that we have D&D zombie stepchild, PF, out there as well.Beyond that though I think there is a deeper underlying issue. The TT RPG hobby as a whole is dying. Objectively the whole hobby has aged drastically. There were VERY few adults playing D&D 30 years ago. Today it is largely a hobby made up of people who picked it up 10+ years ago and half the demographic is 40+ and a good chunk are past that. This is no secret. Heck, half the justification that WotC had for releasing 4e and then Essentials, not to mention Encounters, was to bring new people into the hobby. It is a shrinking pie. It is simply a different world than it was 10 years ago.I'm not having trouble finding groups. The groups I find are older (by far) than they were 20 years ago, but there are plenty of people around to play with and I've run 4e continuously since it was released without any shortage of players. You're taking Hussar's words and twisting them. He simply made an example where he used the names of two games to illustrate a point and you're trying to warp it into some kind of evidence for your position. Personally I find that indicates either a huge deep seated bias or a rather thin rhetorical trick that does nothing for your arguments.I think we CAN agree that things are different in 2011 than they were in 2003. It is a very different market. The world is changing fast, and frankly one of the major factors in the RPG market is that WOTC created the competition for its own product. Not to take anything from Paizo at all, but they didn't make 3.5 what it was, and PF wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for 3.5. I really don't believe that ANY conceivable 4e that was anything beyond a mild refresh of 3.5 would be in any different market position than 4e is now. It is a good game, and frankly I think it is doing quite well. Times may be tough and PF may, or may not, be biting into its market, but even so the game is obviously pretty successful. The alternate theory being what, that Hasbro is so dumb they published 35+ 4e books before figuring out they can't sell it? I'm skeptical...</blockquote>

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