Link fixed - just needed http:// tacked on the front

I think the most interesting part is how they aren't penetrating into the young market. I suppose there's a lot more competition for kid's attention now than in the 80's, but D&D was the thing to do then.

Note that they only got 1,400 people responding. that's not a ton of folks, so I wonder how representative this is of the entire D&D community.

And now ICv2 also lists Pathfinder above 4e.

For giggles, someone posted a link to the following the announcement of Pathfinder. The edition war started almost immediately, or, more accurately, the edition war between 3.X and 4e changed theaters.

The Auld Grump

That post you linked, Grump, is from 2008. The most recent post in it is from March of 2008. Are you sure that's what you meant to link?

Yep! I found it amusing how many people were prophesying the failure of Paizo, or claiming that Paizo was betraying 4e (?), or apparently had no idea how the OGL works.

Some choice lines from that thread:

[Imbran]All who look upon this press release should sympathize, however briefly, with Erik Mona, forced by the delays and absence of communication regarding the GSL into a dilemma where Paizo had to either cease producing books for months on end, leaving their publishing division haemorrhaging money due to being payrolled but unable to produce anything saleable, or make a dunderheaded decision like this, leaving him in the position of countless other fantasy heartbreaker authors crying "Look, look! My game is different from Dungeons & Dragons in ways that no one will notice, and this makes it better!" to the heavens and hearing no reply save for the howling wind of people rushing past them to the one dungeon fantasy game people actually play.

For a few months, at least. Then he'll be sent to the poor house anyway as Paizo terminates its entire publishing division due to violently haemorrhaging money on this tomfoolery.

[Kunimatyu] First reaction: Paizo, you just shot any chance of a good 4e OGL in the foot.

Second reaction: I'm glad someone decided to be gutsy and try an open rules beta. It's the wave of the future.

(What can I say - this one came true....)

[ainatan] So Paizo decided to betray 4E?
They won't get my money anymore.
I'm just moving my Paizo bookmark from the RPG/D&D folder into the RPG/Others folder.

[Henry] And people keep forgetting that they will be seeing 4e material published by them -- from Necromancer Games! So working with Clark, who's one of the top OGL-experts in the biz, they can get an idea of how 3rd party 4e sales are from him, and decide accordingly.

Someone looking at this thread might get the impression that they're shooting themselves in the foot; someone looking at the sister thread in the General RPG forum might think Paizo just hit a virgin crude well.

(This one was just sad - the terms of the GSL drove Necromancer to canceling their 4e plans. )

[GVDammerung] As someone who disliked 3x enough to be for 4e when being for 4e wasn't cool, and who then found Wotc's "vision" of 4e unappetizing, especially as it was not backwards compatible, I'm pleased as punch that Paizo has pulled the sword from the stone.

People seem to forget or not to have noticed that the OGL is forever, that you can modify those rules, improve them and release a NEW version of The World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game. The OGL is a sword. Paizo will now wield it. And Paizo is NOT Fast Forward Games.

Paizo has a very loyal fan base to start and produces the highest quality of products, easily the equal in quality of Wotc. The open playtest will draw people into the Pathfinder RPG and refine the RPG. Paizo has a very solid shot of making this work.

Wotc has a name - D&D. 4e. Its based on the d20 system. So will be the Pathfinder RPG. So Wotc's "advantage" is the name - D&D. Systemically both 4e and Pathfinder will be d20 variants.

And Wotc goofed in the sense of setting this up for Paizo:

1) The jetisoned the backstory of D&D, leaving the name but not alot of the accumulated backstory behind that name;

2) The made 4e non-backwards compatible when they knew or should have known that gamers had a TON of 3x material they had invested in that would be invalidated;

3) The original OGL;

4) The cancellation of Dungeon and Dragon Magazine leaving Paizo with time on their hands; and

5) There utter failure to be able to deliver the GSL in any timely manner.

Paizo may be the next White Wolf level company to storm the RPG stage.

(This one is probably close to reality in regards to Pathfinder v. 4e.)

[thatdarnedbob] If the Pathfinder RPG is one of the top five bestselling products that Paizo publishes in 2009, I will eat a stinky sock.

(My favorite!)

[Reaper Steve] Bold! Audacious!
But ultimately, I think it will be remembered as a brave attempt...

I am a Pathfinder subscriber, and will continue to be in the short term. I was hoping that the Adventure Path #3 would be 4E but I expected not (with the lack of GSL and all) so I'll probably hang on at least through that.

But the Pathfinder Alpha pdf has proven to me that 3.5 is done. There are some great things in there... things I would have loved to have seen years ago. But ultimately they are patches on fallacies of the game that have been propagated through every edition. Their proposals makes some things better, but for me, they are not worth sticking with 3.5 and its fundamental flaws when 4E fixes those root problems.

A 3.5 derivative, while it may profit in the short-term, is ultimately a losing proposition. The customer base isn't going to grow. The 'Pathfinder RPG' will not be able to hold its own on the shelf next to D&D.

Of course, short term is better than no term.
Paizo has to do what it has to do. Although if I were in this position and in charge and elected not to go to 4E, I would not publish my own house-ruled 3.5, I would take my own hack at redesigning the game from the ground up while holding on to whatever principles I think 'make it D&D.' But it would not BE D&D... it would be a game carefully designed to appeal to fans of older editions of D&D, specifically 3.5.)
For instance, it's been too long coming that single digit HPs at first level--rolled randomly, no less--went the way of the dodo. Having the Pathfinder RPG bump a wizard HP from d4 to d6 is not near the fix required. (Yes, I read the sidebar and know there are other options. But those options are all based on an outdated trope.)

Now is definitely the time for a company seeking to sever their dependence on WotC/OGL/GSL to do so. But to do so, I think they must have their own stand alone system.

I wish them luck and I enjoy their products, but I suspect they have overestimated the 3.5 loyalty.

(Or maybe not....)

The Auld Grump

I really don't agree with the Paizo nay sayers.

Its pretty clear to me that PF and 4e are completely different games, and will definitely appeal to different crowds for different reasons.

FYI... I love 4e, but its equally obvious, that Paizo has better writing, which is something I desperately miss..

In any case, there is room in the world for two different products.

I don't really care who 'wins'.