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9 months ago ::
Oct 12, 2012 - 1:20PM
#41
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That was the problem for WOTC, not the OGL.
Yup...
No one ever thought the OGL was a better idea until 4th edition was released and Pathfinder turned out to be the more popular game. Its true that Pathfinder wouldn't exist today where it not for the OGL, but something else similiar to 3rd edition would have inevitably come out and acomplished the same thing. The division of the community didn't happen because of the OGL, it happened because 4th edition made a poor follow up and people have been trying to rationalize an execuse and reasoning to the contrary ever since. That's all it was howeve, plain and simple. 4th edition was a lesser D&D.
Sad part is that it could have been really great, they had an amazing albeit it, flawed basis to continue the legacy.
I disagree. Pathfinder (and in fact any of the OSR games) wouldn't exist without the OGL. Time and time again FRPGs have tried to challenge D&D and they have all failed without making any real dent in it at all. People WANT D&D, not Rune Quest, Dragon Quest, GURPS Fantasy, Hero Quest, Savage Worlds, BoL, EPT, etc etc etc. Some of those games have had decent followings and dedicated fans, and were good games. NONE of them was ever more than a bump on the behind of D&D, literally. RQ was probably the most popular (maybe GURPS) and neither of them ever had even 1/10th of the sales of D&D, until PF came along.
WotC putting out '3.8' instead of 4e wouldn't matter. The problem was losing control of their IP. Paizo is a much smaller company with a lot lower overhead and frankly a looser and more creative corporate culture that is more gamer-friendly and a lot less obsessed with brand management than WotC is. WotC created that monster, they gave them a license to their game, brand recognition (through their distribution and publishing of Dungeon and Dragon), and a nice income stream selling D&D products online.
But how does any of this really matter? We might agree that Pazio was in a good position to invade the D&D market, but the essential point was that WOTC was "abandoning" it. 4e is just not D&D. [I deem it superior, but obviously quite a few disagree.] So if they had put out 3.8, there would have been no market room for Paizo to invade.
Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about OGL from the perspective of players, at least for a while, but it was a terrible and crippling business strategy for WotC. It meant essentially they could either freeze D&D at its 3.5 version (because any change from that is a fork of the community AND the game now) or try to do what they did with 4e. That HAD to be done though, because eventually the game needed to be modernized.
The success of Pathfinder shows there was no such need to "modernize". What is pretty much the old stuff is selling quite well. Now you might be correct if we define "modernize" as "nothing of the sort, just different enough so everybody has to buy new books". But as 3.5 showed, there was no need to massively change the rules to get those sales.
Maybe not all the choices they made in 4e design worked out perfectly, but if it was the only D&D in town it would be fine and they could proceed to build on that until they had a game that was both amazing and supported their new business models.
But that is the point. WOTC could no longer be confident it would be the only game in town. So it needed to stick to a 3e base and put out 3.8.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 2:55PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Apr 22, 2001
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So yes the OGL is wonderful, amazing, fantastic for the hobby and industry. But the OGL is a cancer, slowly eating away at the life force of the D&D brand.
Correction, the OGL is a cancer slowly eating away at the profits of WOTC, but D&D is well, alive and thriving it just goes by a different name... Pathfinder.
D&D is just a name, the game of D&D is a design philosophy, a spirtit and above all else its fan base. A huge chunk of that fan base has moved over to Pathfinder which is in every sense of the word down to the finest detail D&D. 5th edition is all about one thing and one thing only, getting back the fan base under WOTC, rather than where it is today, at Paizo.. but don't be fooled into believing that D&D fans exist only on this forum, in fact, I would say that most of the poeple on the 4th edition forums aren't D&D fans at all.. They love 4th edition, not D&D, its a distincition with a big difference. How can you be a fan of D&D if you don't like the first 30 years of its existance and think the latest incarnation of it that has little to no resemblence to its roots is somehow D&D. That's like saying Spaceballs was a sequal to Star Wars... its a silly notion and anyone who counts himself a fan knows better. What has been released in 5th edition so far is more D&D than 4th edition has ever even hoped to be let alone acomplished.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 4:34PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Jan 26, 2011
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OP. sorry 4 E isn't old enough to have a good old days
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 4:44PM
#44
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Lots of hogwash being spewed around by the 4e haters.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 6:19PM
#45
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Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2009
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OP. sorry 4 E isn't old enough to have a good old days
I disagree. The world of 4e is very different now than it was at launch.
Want to know more about the history of D&D, especially how to play older editions of the game? Check out Crazy Monkey's "Tour through the editions":
http://community.wizards.com/crazymonkey/go/forum/view/133793/225799/Asylum_Play-by-Post
The current edition is BECMI, the most popular form of Basic D&D and the adventure is the classic Red Box quest to kill Bargle the evil magic user. Check it out, learn about the games roots, and enjoy the story as it unfolds.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 6:35PM
#46
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Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2009
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[ in fact, I would say that most of the poeple on the 4th edition forums aren't D&D fans at all.. They love 4th edition, not D&D, its a distincition with a big difference. How can you be a fan of D&D if you don't like the first 30 years of its existance and think the latest incarnation of it that has little to no resemblence to its roots is somehow D&D. That's like saying Spaceballs was a sequal to Star Wars... its a silly notion and anyone who counts himself a fan knows better. What has been released in 5th edition so far is more D&D than 4th edition has ever even hoped to be let alone acomplished.
What a load of garbage. I've been playing D&D for well over 30 years and enjoyed ALL editions of the game and I know a large number of people who would say the same thing, including many of the 4e fans on these forums. To say that fans of 4e are not fans of D&D is just a garbage statement. Please take your hate somewhere else.
Want to know more about the history of D&D, especially how to play older editions of the game? Check out Crazy Monkey's "Tour through the editions":
http://community.wizards.com/crazymonkey/go/forum/view/133793/225799/Asylum_Play-by-Post
The current edition is BECMI, the most popular form of Basic D&D and the adventure is the classic Red Box quest to kill Bargle the evil magic user. Check it out, learn about the games roots, and enjoy the story as it unfolds.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 6:55PM
#47
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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I would actually agree in that...i am not a D&D fan before 4e, i disliked the brand D&D before i decided to test 4th edition. Because everything i was expose to attached to the D&D franchise meaned crap to me, i disliked the rules of 1e to 3.X, the videogames (and even videogames using d20 ruleset like KOTOR), the cartoon, the novels and those horrible horrible movies...i got late into the 4e, because i rejected invitation to play it for a whole year, because in my mind, everything attached to D&D was crap for as long as i have memory in my short 26 years of life, i played 4e and i liked it quite alot, it removed most things i hated about the other editions.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 10:09PM
#48
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4E is basically humming right now. If WotC hadn't totally screwed the pooch with some of the worst adventures in the history of the D&D brand - Pyramid of Shadows and anything with Bruce Cordell's name on it - it may have become more popular. However, releasing adventures specifically designed to highlight the WORST parts of the 4E game is one of the more stupid moves WotC has made. I don't know. I'm dreading 5e. While I was against 4e when it came out, I've come around and accepted that it's a superior system. 5e feels to me like a step back into the dark ages.
I feel the same way.
I love the earlier editions but 4E simply gets it right as far as I am concerned and my players feel the same way.
5E is going to be a dud. Mike "Iron Heroes" Mearls thinks that releasing an incomplete game and calling it "modular" is a design feature rather than a design disaster and I can also practically guarantee that the adventures they're going to publish will suck. Or blow chunks.
Fun Fact: When they scraped the selling pdf version of 4e books...they actually made piracy the only way to get into D&D in most of the world. There are alot of potential and current D&D players all around the globe outside your first world bubble. So yes...the fear of piracy and it's countermeasure...provoked piracy. People that pirate to avoid paying won't pay for D&D books anyway, if they can't get it free they won't, plain and simple...but there are alot of people that have to do piracy, because it's the only way for them to get that material would be thru piracy. Digital Distribution have proven to be the best weapon against piracy: Netflix, iTunes store & Steam are some of those examples.
This is so true.
I bought the 4E PDFs when they were available for sale legally. Since then I have illegally downloaded every single book plus an offline version of the Compendium and the Character Builder. I live in a Third World country so I have no fear of lawsuits but I would also happily go back to buying the PDFs tomorrow if WotC started selling them. (I do buy hard copies of all the books so I also treat my PDFs as "fair use" personal copies. And the Compendium and Character Builder are my back-ups for when WotC turns off the 4E e-Tools. After all, they promised they wouldn't... which is corporate speak for, "Yes, of course we're going to turn them off.")
Cheers
Imruphel
aka Scrivener of Doom
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9 months ago ::
Oct 13, 2012 - 10:23PM
#49
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uhg. PoS. That adventure was the worst PoS (pun very intended) ever.
I think that what you're going to see is that 5e is going to divide the community even more. I dont think that you can dispute that 4e was a large departure from traditional D&D, and you have to think that there was a target audience for 4e. I believe that there was a hope that older gamers would also pick up the new edition and be accepting. While some did, I think it's pretty safe by the numbers of pure haters out there, that there were many who did /not/ stay brand loyal regardless of edition.
That said, there /are/ a large number of 4e fans out there. Perhaps not as large as the older editions (I'm not interested in the argument that the 3e legions of hate are always willing to take up), but certainly there is a good number of 4e fans out there.
5e is very much a step back to a more 3.5ish game. Those of us who believe that 4e is a vast improvement over the older systems aren't interested in taking a step back in time to, a worse set of game mechanics. We're simply going to keep playing 4e instead.
People who are happy with Pathfinder are likely not going to all of a sudden jump on the D&D bandwagon, just because it's got the D&D name. Their brand loyalty died off years ago when 4e came out and they decided to jump ship. So, 4e's going to probably lose their brand loyal, and /some/ paizo folks will jump ship and give 5e a go, but the fact is, the fractured community is /never/ going to be healed simply because the gap between the systems is too great.
5e's not a /bad/ idea; it's certainly wise to tray and reclaim what was lost. What /is/ a bad idea is telling the 4e fans to take a long walk off a short dock like they did the 3.5 fans. if they had half a brain, they'd continue with the 4e support, even if it's at a lesser rate then 5e. the fact is, the 4e fans are likely to tell WotC to get bent, just like the 3.5e fans did.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 5:09AM
#50
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Date Joined:
Nov 13, 2004
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...the 3e legions of hate...
Normally I'd consider this overdramatic generalization, but man, if only I had a buck for every time I'd endured a generic 4e = WoW rant in person, typically as part of meeting a Pathfinder gamer for the first time. After asking "Why does it feel like WoW to you?" enough times and getting the "I dunno, it just does" response, I've learned to take a deep breath, merely say "Okay," and remind myself I will never game with this person.
4e D&D is not a "Tabletop MMO." It is not Massively Multiplayer, and is usually not played Online. Come up with better descriptions of your complaints, cuz this one means jack ****.
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