Blackmantle
King
What Bobchinski said, only that they won't neglect those players who like the flavor-classes more but instead release a book containing all those later. (PHB2 is already announced to contain all these classes and races.)
That reeks alot like milking the fans in any way possible.
(not all serious but still has a hint of truth in it.
No wonder since they are comercial head to toe.)
So seems not so much dumbing down the core of the system as catering to the average new players first (by realeasing a bare skelleton of a game first so everyone gets to grasp the basics) and adressing the old fans later... (i reckon that the other classes / races will need new features that are not in the main books / rules yet, but will be released as time goes by. Making more money along the way of course...
)
And seriously they whould be dumb to downright smite those more flavor-oriented players in the face. (I find it quite strange that they will take half a year to introduce those classes... Might backfire i reckon. We will see...)
Some promising things, other things rather hard to stomach (Most importantly the missing flavor classes. Especially Druid
.).
But all in all for me it perhaps will be a bit of testing and waiting until the game is more solidly fleshed out (For me the time when PHB2 comes out most likely.). If it turns out good one can still embrace it.
Even though i do indeed like the stronger emphasis on teamplay / cooperation.
(Even if up to a certain point i share the sentiment of the dragonborn race seeming like a simple-mixup low-flavor powerplay race put in to appeal to a certain kind of gamer which didn't find D&D apealing before.)
Biggest plus for me is that they finally de-facto axed the alignment sytem / "play how your class / alignment dictates or be divinely punished if you go stray from that prescribed path" junk.
Gives the game the potential to go away from some if its worst stereotypes and stretches in a party working together and leaves more room for personal motivation / background / roleplay.
All in all i think the game is far from ready right now so i don't try to compare it to 3,5. Few new versions could hope of accomplishing something like that at the very start.
That reeks alot like milking the fans in any way possible.


So seems not so much dumbing down the core of the system as catering to the average new players first (by realeasing a bare skelleton of a game first so everyone gets to grasp the basics) and adressing the old fans later... (i reckon that the other classes / races will need new features that are not in the main books / rules yet, but will be released as time goes by. Making more money along the way of course...

And seriously they whould be dumb to downright smite those more flavor-oriented players in the face. (I find it quite strange that they will take half a year to introduce those classes... Might backfire i reckon. We will see...)
Some promising things, other things rather hard to stomach (Most importantly the missing flavor classes. Especially Druid

But all in all for me it perhaps will be a bit of testing and waiting until the game is more solidly fleshed out (For me the time when PHB2 comes out most likely.). If it turns out good one can still embrace it.
Even though i do indeed like the stronger emphasis on teamplay / cooperation.
(Even if up to a certain point i share the sentiment of the dragonborn race seeming like a simple-mixup low-flavor powerplay race put in to appeal to a certain kind of gamer which didn't find D&D apealing before.)
Biggest plus for me is that they finally de-facto axed the alignment sytem / "play how your class / alignment dictates or be divinely punished if you go stray from that prescribed path" junk.
Gives the game the potential to go away from some if its worst stereotypes and stretches in a party working together and leaves more room for personal motivation / background / roleplay.
All in all i think the game is far from ready right now so i don't try to compare it to 3,5. Few new versions could hope of accomplishing something like that at the very start.