I mostly get sick of people dissing on 4.0 simply because they liked 3.5. But then, I guess they would not love to hear about my 3.5 complaints and I could just stop reading their forums. Heh.

Yet this is often necessary if the company producing the game deems it time for a set of bugfixes and new features, in the form of a new “edition”. Backward compatibility in pen-and-paper RPGs is not really feasible.

I know you were going after the resistance to change, but I feel that is something of an aside to the adoption of a new edition. Those who don’t like it will stick with 3.5 (or something earlier) and the rest will probably take the upgrade plunge.

I suspect that a certain amount of general whining with respect to the new edition stems from the fact that most D&D fans realize they’ll want to upgrade, in order to get the bugfixes and new features of course, yet balk at the perception of dropping a load of cash, annexing a new bookshelf, learning new rules, etc., despite the fact that those things are basically happening each time they buy a new rulebook for any edition (okay maybe not getting new bookshelves).

That is, assuming the gamers in question buy in to the new direction the company’s taking with the new edition; those who don’t would have perfectly reasonable grounds to stick with their older books as long as they like.

After buying book after book it’s difficult to want to buy the next one that will make all the previous ones obsolete or forgotten. If you make the move to the new version, chances are the old books won’t see the light of day. That in itself a hard pill to swallow especially for the hardcore fans that picked up most if not all the books.

Then you have people who have been playing the old version for years. When you spend a lot of time doing something with your life its typical human nature to resist a change to that. After years of playing 3.0 and 3.5 it difficult to let go of that and try something new, especially if you still like those systems. Which as Josh put you don’t have to get the new version if you still like the old stuff. But I’m not getting into that part, just why people are resistant to the change.

Of course there is the do-over factor. In order to play the new system you have to learn the new system. When you have the rules down the game takes on a different feel. It becomes less about the rules and more about the experiences because you don’t have to think about the rules. This is where the game starts to really take hold. With a new system, comes learning new rules and thus you have that time period learning new rules rather then just existing in the game.

Then along the same lines is the laziness factor. I don’t want to take the time to learn the new system, so I’m not going to.

I’m sure a good chunck of the naysayers fit in those categories or similar ones. I doubt that most people are resistant purely because it was too soon or design issues. But those are easier targets to complain about and as we all know we love to complain about things especially about things other then ourselves