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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 6336868" data-attributes="member: 27252">Forgive me if I don’t quote all your post back to you, as it was quite long. I did read it all though. I don’t really feel comfortable discussing the tragedy surrounding former a WotC employee, and I’m not sure how appropriate it would be. However, my point is that if the game was clearly projected to be profitable and doable as an compatible and integrated electronic online game, they would have done so. There was certainly a drive to do so, going on the articles and interviews that came out around the release of 4E. I’m not sure about the technical differences between WoW and other online games - I don’t play any of them and have little interest in online gaming - but I was just holding up WoW as an obvious example of the type of online game that WotC was influenced by, among many influences, when designing 4E. That’s not a controversial point stating whether it was right or wrong to do so, btw, just that it had a degree of influence over certain aspects like Roles and at-will powers, etc. I’d certainly add the ’tangible’ aspect to the ‘visible’ aspect I highlighted before - they were both brought in as design goals to appeal to casual gamers. My point here, however, is that D&D isn’t a miniatures battle game, nor is it a german-style board game or an MMO. It’s D&D. The game shouldn’t have to change itself to attempt to capture a market based on appealing to fans on these other games. It should stand alone as a classic in it’s own right - with the fundamentals in place of what made it a unique, visionary experience to many people the first time they played it.From my experience, the thing that always appealed to me - and has kept me in the hobby for 30 years or so now - was the whole ’theatre of the mind’ aspect. The idea of playing in a shared, interactive fantasy without the need for visual, tactile or tabletop representation of any kind. Having a game called D&D that focussed on such things was a detraction from the central appeal to me. I say that with the understanding that that is the appeal of a lot of other RPG fans too - and that is why there was dissent.</blockquote>

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