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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5709008" data-attributes="member: 2067">The answer, at least from my view back in 97-2000, was sort of.[sblock=Aside]AD&D had been an mostly-dead horse for a while by the time 3e came out. The people who were still buying books were not buying very many. TSR had big fat ugly political and financial problems eating it alive, aside from middling sales. The existing fanbase was on the slim side.3e was a pretty big change from AD&D, but by that point, there hadn't been a new "edition" for quite some time, and the age of the game was clear to most anyone who was playing. Very few people were playing the RAW, and while that was something of an advantage, WotC saw a game that would fix the problems of D&D's mechanics, and keep the important game elements of D&D. So there was fury at the changes, but the fury wasn't quite as vehement or long lived. A lot of folks had problems with AD&D 2e -- it's hard to find many folks who prefer that edition. Most are 1e fans who were still playing 1e. A revision, bringing back some 1e elements, and keeping the same core game, was pretty broadly welcomed. Not everyone liked 3e, because there were some radical changes, but more people liked it than liked 2e in 2000 at any rate, and the game grew.4e exists in a different time -- the internet hate machine is more efficient now than it was in 2000. 3e had more fans than late 2e did. WotC had made such a good system that it was hard to see 4e as an improvement for some. It is likely that those people who had serious problems with 3e were a smaller crowd than those who didn't. The OGL allowed 3e (and other e's) to compete directly with 4e, rather than being forced to change. Given the PATHFINDER book sales, I think we can say that 3e is at least AS popular as 4e is right about now. 4e was in many ways a much bigger gamble than 3e was. Depending on the ultimate success of 4e, 5e may be an equally big gamble. Or it may be more like 3e was: coming into a less popular edition, restoring lost things, and picking up steam.But 4e is (and 5e will be) dealing with different problems. The 2e -> 3e transition was shaky, but not quite as toxic. It could be any one of a thousand reasons, though. It could just be that 4e's improvements are harder to see. It could just be that a worldwide economic clusterflub puts everyone in the mood to be angry at something (in which case, WotC should go on a hiring spree so that people can afford its books <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />). It's not really a fair comparison. [/sblock]</blockquote>

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