Quote from: trechriron;713884Eberron was a brilliant idea for D&D 3.x; "everything in D&D has a place in this setting". And it worked. I really dig Eberron and I think they accomplished that goal.

I would suggest that the decline of popularity in Eberron followed the same decline in popularity of D&D. 4e was not received as well, so it only makes sense settings ported over wouldn't either.

I would also suggest that business goals affected Eberron's popularity. What if WOTC had sold Eberron to Paizo? Or gave it back to Keith Baker to let him run with it (maybe even possibly keeping it a 3.5 ish system that competes with Pathfinder...). I think we would be looking at a different level of popularity. I think WOTC decided to focus on core books because in a decline, that is what sold the most.

It's kind of like a popular TV show. At first you have some free desktop wallpapers and maybe a calendar. Next thing you know there's action figures, coffee mugs, bathroom rugs, stickers, underwear and every imaginable THING you could brand and sell. When Eberron (and D&D) was popular, you could sell novels easily, because people were interested. Once that popularity declines, not so much.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if Eberron was re (re?) -packaged into a 3.5 platform for WOTC to support previous editions of D&D, it would see a resurgence in popularity. They should probably re-tool Forgotten Realms back to 2e, keep the generic Points of Light for 4e and come up with a completely new setting for 5e. I would dust off and update Greyhalk to be a 1e setting. Then you can publish stuff for a particular setting tied to a particular edition and offer free "conversion" PDFs for enterprising DMs who want to port a setting to another edition. I also think each of these combinations would sell pretty well.

That makes too much sense, so it probably will never happen.

I love this plan, for what it's worth, though I agree it's unlikely to happen.

The decline of Eberron certainly has to be pinned on the transition from 3.5E to 4E. Eberron was built around the 3.5 rules; what happened in the world of Eberron was what the 3.5 rules said should happen, making for a very tightly associated set of mechanics and cultures. When the rules shifted to 4E, Eberron was out of step.

Quote from: amacris;714004I love this plan, for what it's worth, though I agree it's unlikely to happen.

Me too. Ahh, if I had a billion dollars...

Quote from: amacris;714004Eberron was built around the 3.5 rules; what happened in the world of Eberron was what the 3.5 rules said should happen, making for a very tightly associated set of mechanics and cultures. When the rules shifted to 4E, Eberron was out of step.

Please see: Vreeg's First Rule of Setting Design

D&D Online is partially set in Eberron, so it must have been reasonably popular - otherwise I'd imagine they'd have gone with the Realms or Greyhawk to start instead of waiting to introduce Realms content.

I agree with other posters who blame 4th edition on Eberron's decline.  I mean, in a sense, all of the mainstream D&D settings are in decline right now to some extent.

Man, I hadn't been on the Wizards site for awhile, but glancing at their product section right now is just kind of sad.  All they seem to be doing is just re-releasing old stuff, like a 3.5 magic item and spell compendiums and old modules and stuff.  Jesus.  Next can't come too soon for them.

After we defeat the wicked sorceror and his spiderous minions, we can get wenched in the local smoky tavern and then... hop on the train...

The 07.30 commute to True Adventure in Graywall seperates the men from the boys, I can tell you.

I think Eberron needs bringing back in some form for Next, maybe it could be the signiture setting for the pack that adds more 3.X crap to the rules...tbh i think if they do bring it back they need to get the guy who created it back aswell so that we can get a more definitive version of the setting than the trainwreck we got for 4e.

I thought the Sharn city book was an underrated gem. Even the music CD that came with it wasn't bad- I figured that if one thing on Earth could be worse than RPG fiction, it would be RPG music. It's no Vornheim (The gold standard of D&D city sourcebooks), but what is?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;713767I suppose I'm curious about the details and the degree of success or failure. Obviously it didn't set the world on fire, but what RPG product does these days?  It made the leap to 4e when many other settings and D&D concepts did not, even if its run was very self-contained. Exactly how badly did it do? What factors held it back, if any? Why didn't it have the multimedia penetration potential that was clearly hoped for? I've sometimes been given the impression by the internet at large that someone outside of WotC's secret cabal knew these things.

The gaming industry, largely filled with privately held firms with no need to release sales details to stockholders, is famously opaque in such matters.

The Internet, with a lot of posers who love to pretend they're Bigshots In The Know, is famously unreliable in such matters.

Quote from: amacris;714004The decline of Eberron certainly has to be pinned on the transition from 3.5E to 4E. Eberron was built around the 3.5 rules; what happened in the world of Eberron was what the 3.5 rules said should happen, making for a very tightly associated set of mechanics and cultures. When the rules shifted to 4E, Eberron was out of step.

Say what you will about 4e's take on Eberron, they did correctly identify and mostly address several problems the 3e rules for it had. Dragonmarks had a lot more "umph" for instance.

Quote from: JeremyR;713729Well, look at the novels. It started off strong, 12 in 2006, then slowly tapered off into nothing. 4 in 2010, 1 in 2011, 1 in 2012.

Doesn't that correspond to a massive reduction in WotC's novel output in general?

Quote from: Ravenswing;713747If the setting had sold like hotcakes, and kept on selling like hotcakes, I expect that WotC -- no more full of morons than any other business -- would have kept on pushing the product.  Since they stopped pushing the product, one can reasonably infer that it stopped selling well.

Except Eberron kept getting RPG support right up until the release of 4E (at which point WotC switched their support structure for all their campaign worlds). In fact, Eberron received more support than any other WotC-published setting from the time of its release until 2008.  And it was then the second official campaign to receive the new "annual spotlight of 3 products" treatment for 4E (after the Forgotten Realms).

Based on product release schedules, I'm not seeing any indication that WotC lost any sort of confidence in Eberron. Its recent decline seems to be pretty heavily associated with the across-the-board decline associated with 4E, but it appears to still be the second most popular D&D setting.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;714671Doesn't that correspond to a massive reduction in WotC's novel output in general?

By comparison, FR had 11 new books (plus 1 compilation) in 2010 compared to Eberron's 4, 11 (plus 2 compilations) in 2011 compared to Eberron's 1, and 11 new books in 2012 compared to Eberron's 1.

Only 5 in 2013 (compared to none in Eberron).

11 seems to be the normal for the WOTC for FR, though it peaked at 19 in 1998

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_novels_in_order_of_publication

Quote from: JeremyR;714713By comparison, FR had 11 new books (plus 1 compilation) in 2010 compared to Eberron's 4, 11 (plus 2 compilations) in 2011 compared to Eberron's 1, and 11 new books in 2012 compared to Eberron's 1.

But FR is the only exception to WotC's pruning of its novel lines, though.

In fact, they've produced only FR novels this year. In 2012 they only produced two non-FR novels -- one set in Eberron and one set in Nentir Vale.

There hasn't been a Dragonlance novel since 2010. The only other D&D setting to get any attention at all has been Dark Sun (with novels released during the Year of Dark Sun).

If we're looking to establish that Eberron isn't as successful/popular as the Forgotten Realms... Well, yeah. Nothing is in the D&D stable. That doesn't translate into a "lukewarm reception".

Quote from: Justin Alexander;715041If we're looking to establish that Eberron isn't as successful/popular as the Forgotten Realms... Well, yeah. Nothing is in the D&D stable. That doesn't translate into a "lukewarm reception".

Well, actually, I was trying to establish that Eberron was initially very popular (rivaling FR), then fizzled out with the transition to 4e. Which seems to be the consensus in the thread, not the original premise.

Quote from: JeremyR;714713By comparison, FR had 11 new books (plus 1 compilation) in 2010 compared to Eberron's 4, 11 (plus 2 compilations) in 2011 compared to Eberron's 1, and 11 new books in 2012 compared to Eberron's 1.

Only 5 in 2013 (compared to none in Eberron).

11 seems to be the normal for the WOTC for FR, though it peaked at 19 in 1998

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_novels_in_order_of_publication

It's interesting that their D&D based novel output has slowed. No Dragonlance, no Generic D&D, etc...

Is their Magic novel output steady? What about their other properties?

Quote from: Piestrio;715099Is their Magic novel output steady?

Same thing: Phased out starting 2009-2010 timeframe, nothing published in the last two years. (Link.)

I remember reading articles talking about this at the time, but my google-fu isn't tracking them down now. IIRC, FR novels were the only ones that were consistently profitable and WotC decided to purge the department.

Here's a recent article commenting on the earlier decision to cease the publication of MtG novels due to poor sales and also announcing that an e-book-only MtG novel would be released some time in the near future.

In all seriousness, I'm guessing that R.A. Salvatore is largely propping up the FR novel line and that if it wasn't for him WotC would have exited the novel-publishing business entirely in 2010.

Quote from: danbuter;713752I liked Eberron a lot. The 4e reboot is likely what killed it, as I had no inclination to buy any of the 4e books. Also, a lot of the novels were very, very good.

The only taste of it I had was in 4e, never played it in 3e but I preferred it over FR 4e, the best book out of that line was the Neverwinter book.