D&D 4E Sales Figures Debate

[karpik777]

But we don't know that 4e was canceled for performing like a barrel of limp dicks. Maybe they were cancelled and the heads were routinely fired for doing too well. Yesssss. It all makes perfect sense.

[devil's advocate]It would certainly be possible that 4e did well, but was canceled, and people were fired because it didn't reach the goals set by some higher up who knew nothing about the RPG market but only wanted more and more money[/devil's advocate]

Of course once you add in that they compare 5e sales to 3.5 ones, mention "hundreds of thousands" for the number of core books sold and so on it is rather clear that 4e simply did poorly, and it wasn't just a case of a moron in a suit destroying something that did remarkably well...

[momothefiddler]

to the amount of 4e vs. PF on the shelves at your local game store.

I don't often go to game stores because they're pretty far away but last week I did and I took note of the comparative shelf space.

Dark Heresy (not even all the WH40k shit) had roughly equal shelf space with D&D total. More than half of D&D's space was 3.5, the rest was 5e, and there was no 4e whatsoever. PF had more space than any of the previously mentioned games.

It was pretty sad.

(To be fair, 5e also had a few box sets up above the shelf, but I feel I'm not alone in arguing that those don't really count for anything but display and even if they get counted in full it brings 5e up to about even with PF.)

Edit: yes, I know this is anecdotal. It was just something that struck me and was relevant to Orca's comment.

[Insomniac]

The main trend I see when I go to local game stores is how much space Magic and increasingly, board games and quasi-collectible Living Card Games get. RPGs get comparably jack SHIT in floor space and floor prominence. The gaming book section is like 2 or 3 shelves in the back, located in an obscure corner of the shop. However, board games and Magic cards are the very first thing you can buy and Magic singles are prominently displayed under glass cases like they are jewelry.

War-gaming and miniatures get comparable if not more floor space than pen and paper RPGs and they are put in better places than the RPGs are.

4E is anecdotally dead. There is not even one hold out game in three RPG groups that I attend. You go to the RPG Club on campus and it is 20 people playing Magic, 10 people playing board games and maybe 1 or 2, tops, groups playing a pen and paper RPG and its almost always Pathfinder and never 4E.

[souran]

CaptPike is correct that any view of 4E sales that doesn't include sales of monthly subscription is vastly underestimating 4Es sales. The book sales for 4E were signifgantly worse than 3E. However, the internet sales are clearly the reason why WOTC/Hasbro didn't give a shit that that it took 2.5 years to develop 5E. The one place 4E IS like an mmo is its online sales, where they charged you for the right to keep your character up to date. Without their online tool managing a 4E charcter is a nightmare.

I know multiple people who maintained the 5/month 4E accounts for long after they were done playing 4E. I know people who NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE 4E GAME who gave WOTC 5/month for the ENTIRE RUN of 4E.

So I also don't think that WOTC/Hasbro considers 4E a commercial failure. However, they did lose a TON of prestige. They fired people every christmas because the press on 4E was terrible. If 4E was a shittier game, with the same sales but no Edition War they don't fire the head of the line every christmas. The money or quality of the rules were not the issue, it was all about the view of D&D.

Additionally, none of that on-line profit made brick and mortar retailers happy, and while it would be fine for D&D to go to an all digital format and do a fuck the retailers strategy, that simply won't work for MtG and WOTC can't afford to have t D&D be a sore spot with their MtG distributors.

The 5E starter set is going to be sold at Walmart and Target. It wouldn't surprise me if the intent for essentials had been to get them into those retailers.

Its the reason why Mearls has kept his job. 5E is a shitty system, with terrible says and NO books coming out. However, he has a job because the REPORTING of 5E is that its a great edition that merges the strengths of 3E with the warm fuzzies people get from playing OSR games. Mearls will keep his job until industry people start turning on 5E.

Also, it is completely clear to me that even with the lake of money WOTC made off of 3.5 they would rather have 1000 4Es than do anything associated with 3.x and the OGL. They clearly feel that Dancey lied to them when that was structured (he did, but they were stupid).

[Username17]

CaptPike is correct that any view of 4E sales that doesn't include sales of monthly subscription is vastly underestimating 4Es sales.

So what? Paizo also has subscription sales. Paizo subscriptions cost more than DDI does. Going all Phoenix Wright and shouting "Objection!" just because 4e has some unknown amount of revenue from subscriptions doesn't indicate that 4e is or was beating Pathfailure. Pathfailure also has subscription sales, and neither company publicizes those numbers.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

I always have a hard time taking the whole "the 4e market wasn't the same as the old market" argument seriously given that one of the defining features of the old market was a whole school of d20 derivatives trailing after 3.x like remoras.

[name_here]

Honestly, I seriously doubt that 4e was a commercial success or they wouldn't have let there be a gap. There was a period where they decided they'd rather have no DnD products than more 4e products. That doesn't necessarily mean it lost money, though. For businesses, a product is a failure if it makes less money than a safe alternative option like sticking the cost into a savings account for a similar time period, and Hasbro has a fairly large number of properties stable enough to count on a consistent return from.

[souran]

Honestly, I seriously doubt that 4e was a commercial success or they wouldn't have let there be a gap. There was a period where they decided they'd rather have no DnD products than more 4e products. That doesn't necessarily mean it lost money, though. For businesses, a product is a failure if it makes less money than a safe alternative option like sticking the cost into a savings account for a similar time period, and Hasbro has a fairly large number of properties stable enough to count on a consistent return from.

Actually I agree with your central point, which is that the success or failure in a business case is different if the product is well reviewed, received, or became a market leader.

You point out they stopped making products. That is true but they did NOT stop putting out digital content or shut down the character builder. Again, 4E was a profit center, it didn't LOSE WOTC any money, and without more information its hard to tell if 4E made more money than attempting to continue the 3.5 Line would have.

The fact is, when 4E was announced 3.5 sales were on a downward trend as well. There was also clear product fatigue with the splats WOTC was producing at the time. So again, Hasbro Suits and WOTC management would say that 4E was a success because it made more money than staying with 3E. (and before some smartass mentions pathfinder remember that they convinced everybody to buy a new core rulebook, and a sequence of books covering a bunch of content that was pretty much already covered by existing 3.5 products).

Now 4E is clearly a failure to get people to shift over to it, it splintered the market, and created a lot of negative sentiment. It didn't perform as well as its direct competitor. However, if that is the only metric then Pepsi is a market failure.

Also, when you read people from Paizo or the other 3rd party publishers talk about the run up to 4E its clear that Hasbro/WOTC absolutely HATES the OGL. Clearly their ownership felt the tradeoff in playerbase/goodwill/market dominance were worth it to not have a game that they felt other people were "stealing" from them. Being able to make sure that there was no way 4E "book of Erotic fantasy" could get published was probably a design requirement for the legal team for 4E.

[souran]

So what? Paizo also has subscription sales. Paizo subscriptions cost more than DDI does. Going all Phoenix Wright and shouting "Objection!" just because 4e has some unknown amount of revenue from subscriptions doesn't indicate that 4e is or was beating Pathfailure. Pathfailure also has subscription sales, and neither company publicizes those numbers.

-Username17

This is disingenuous. The 4E subscription was access to a computer tool that was used in the same way as the 3.x/pathfinder SRD. It was substantially cheaper and involved software access that was basically considered vital to play the game.

Pathfinder subscription is basically an agreement to purchase whatever rulebooks Paizo craps out and in exchange they will send you your physical copy at about the same time they begin distribution to retailers.

We don't have a lot of hard data but the pathfinder subscription is not really a different profit center than the sales of their rulebooks because it is just a way prepurchasing their rulebooks. The 4E subscription service was a pay-for-access service to tools that you couldn't get any other way.

[Kaelik]

Now 4E is clearly a failure to get people to shift over to it, it splintered the market, and created a lot of negative sentiment. It didn't perform as well as its direct competitor. However, if that is the only metric then Pepsi is a market failure.

If Pepsi was owned by coke, that would be true. Since it isn't, Pepsi is infinity times more money than the owner of pepsi was making before releasing Pepsi.

[name_here]

Actually I agree with your central point, which is that the success or failure in a business case is different if the product is well reviewed, received, or became a market leader.

You point out they stopped making products. That is true but they did NOT stop putting out digital content or shut down the character builder. Again, 4E was a profit center, it didn't LOSE WOTC any money, and without more information its hard to tell if 4E made more money than attempting to continue the 3.5 Line would have.

The fact that they shut down their physical sales does indicate that they did not think it was a business success. Now, apparently the return on their digital stuff was acceptable because they did keep doing that, but on the other hand software is almost entirely upfront costs and PDFs don't have printing costs. Keeping their digital service going just means it costs less to keep it running for another year than it takes in, not that the total income is more than the operating costs and the cost to make it in the first place.

Anyways, my point was that it can turn a profit and still be a failure. It needs to make more money than the best safe alternative to be a success. It is also definitely worse than making a fourth edition that sold like 3.0 did, and I would argue that Pathfinder demonstrates that is totally possible.

If Pepsi was owned by coke, that would be true. Since it isn't, Pepsi is infinity times more money than the owner of pepsi was making before releasing Pepsi.

Actually, it is important to remember that it isn't infinity times more money, because rather than make Pepsi he could have stuck the money in a bank account. It's a success because it made more money than a bank account, not because it made any at all.

[souran]

If Pepsi was owned by coke, that would be true. Since it isn't, Pepsi is infinity times more money than the owner of pepsi was making before releasing Pepsi.

This is stupid.

The vast majority of markets have room for multiple actors. Being second is not a failure.

If you think that ANYBODY but pathfinder was outselling 4E you are simply being an ignorant asshole on purpose.

In 2006 when development of 4E began sales of 3.5 were slideing. If you are trying to argue that WOTC could have made more money by producing a different style game (one closer to what pathfinder) that impossible to know (but likely based on events that did transpire).

If your argument is that they could have produced 6 more years of 3.5 supplements and made as much money as they did on 4E thats again an argument that impossible to come to any conclusion on because it didn't happen. However, the facts point in a direction of that being a very unlikely result.

4E is a popular failure, but not a commercial failure.

[karpik777]

The vast majority of markets have room for multiple actors. Being second is not a failure.

When you have a brand that was first for a long time, having the new version stop at second place isn't a success either.

[erik]

This is stupid.

The vast majority of markets have room for multiple actors. Being second is not a failure.

In 2006 when development of 4E began sales of 3.5 were slideing. If you are trying to argue that WOTC could have made more money by producing a different style game (one closer to what pathfinder) that impossible to know (but likely based on events that did transpire).

If your argument is that they could have produced 6 more years of 3.5 supplements and made as much money as they did on 4E thats again an argument that impossible to come to any conclusion on because it didn't happen. However, the facts point in a direction of that being a very unlikely result.

4E is a popular failure, but not a commercial failure.

Goddamn, this is stupid. 4e not only slipped to maybe 1/10th their previous sales, but they were eclipsed by a blatant adaptation of their already existing ruleset that had nice art and the false promise of making 3.5 a bit better. Decimating your sales and *creating* a rival who outperforms you with what you discarded is the kind of abject failure that gets people fired.

That would be like if Coke switched over to New Coke only with 10% of previous sales and a total newcomer knocked off the flavors to become the new #1. Shareholders would fire the board for gross incompetence.

We do know that WotC could have done better with a 3.6 because Pathfinder proved that. Pathfinder put lipstick on 3.5 and outsold 4e. Ergo WotC would have done better to just put lipstick on 3rd edition, again.

It's not a death knell, it's not a loss*, but it puts D&D on the edge. 5th edition looks like another failure in the making. With enough of these and eventually it really will become a death knell. How do you justify a 6th edition after spending 2 years developing something to not even get 2 years of product line.

*They've been cashing in on the brand name and causing it to lose value. If their sales are not enough to offset the loss of value of the brand name, then it can be seen as a loss. WotC isn't sponsoring GenCon this year, and I bet almost nobody cares because D&D isn't relevant anymore.

[souran]

Erik;

You are simply a liar if you think 4E did 1/10th the sales of 3.5. It was not some massive slip. This is the worst sort of revisionst fucking history. 4E did SLIGHTLY WORSE THAN PATHFINDER. IT DIDN'T DO A LOT WORSE, IT WAS STILL A HUGE FUCKING RPG THAT LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PUBLISHER WOULD HAVE FUCKING DROWNED PUPPIES TO MAKE.


Paizo created pathfinder not out of any fan outcry but because of WOTC dickery over contracts. This is WHAT THEIR FUCKING MANAGAMENT HAS SAID. Even if 4E is almost exactly like 3.X pathfinder would still because WOTC tried to screw over the third party publishers out of having products at GEN CON. This would have STILL occurred and there would STILL have been splinter versions of D&D. Fuck, paizo's been simply better at providing adventures people care about. If WOTC produced a 3.75 D&D, and sill pulled the same fucking shenanigans that they did they would still have a competitor who is simply better at producing adventures than they are.

Now, a 3.75 edition that said WOTC on it would have been a FUCKING DISASTER. Do you remember the outrage over 3.5? Quite simply, would you have bought another version of the fucking PHB from WOTC with another round of minor cosmetic changes?

But even that is not a real argument because the real option to compare 4E sales against is sales of 3.5 in 2006 and 2007. 4E was a sales boost to that. People were not buying more copies of the shit that WOTC was making in 2006 and 2007. 4E was a sales boost, it was successful as a project evaluated on its own metrics.

Now, evaluated against 3.5 it was not as successful. This is disappointing for WOTC and was probably bad for the hobby as a whole. However 4E was not some fucking disaster. Pretending like it is is stupid. A fucking disaster is Shadowrun where money disappeared and books had to not be printed. A disaster is White-Wolf where you go bankrupt. 4E didn't even need MtG money to justify a 5th edition.

Hell, between 3.5, 4, and 5th WOTC could have 2-3 more shitty editions before it would be worth not TRYING for the lighting in a bottle that was sales like 3.5.

What WOTC should have learned is that D&D will sell well enough even if the edition isn't great that they can afford to take risks.

[Username17]

You are simply a liar if you think 4E did 1/10th the sales of 3.5.

OK, first of all, you understand that someone is a liar if they say something that they don't think is true, while if they think something is true which is not then they are merely wrong. Your statement here is incendiary and demonstrably false. If you were pretty sure that 4e did better than 1/10th the sales of 3e, people who thought otherwise would not be liars if they said so. They would be liars if they said you were right despite thinking otherwise.

So, after you stop tripping on your own dick trying to get a rise out of people, what the fuck is your evidence? Third edition sold more PHBs in the first month than 4th edition sold of all books combined in the first year. 3rd edition sold "millions of books" and 4th edition sold "hundreds of thousands."

Hell, White Wolf sold millions of books before they killed themselves with their ill-fated nWoD debacle. In fact, they sold eight million books between 1991 and 2005. And 3rd edition kicked their ass. By a lot. We never got a running total of how many books total 3rd edition ever sold, but it's almost certainly over the ten million mark yet considerably less than a hundred million. And all 4th edition books combined sold "hundreds of thousands" of books. As stated by WotC's lawyers. In court. For real.

The only question is not whether 3rd edition outsold 4th edition by a factor of 10. We know for an absolute fact that it did that. The big question is whether it outsold 4th edition by a factor of one hundred. Which it very plausibly could have. We're pretty confident that it didn't outsell 4th edition by a factor of one thousand, so there's that.

Yes, 4th edition had the D&D brand name and worldwide distribution that an indy game company could only dream of having. They sold more copies of books than anything I will every write. But if their own flaks are to be believed, I literally sold more e-copies of After Sundown than WotC did of the 4th edition PHB2. Not even fucking kidding. They said in court that they had proof that the PHB2 was pirated at least 1010 times. Then their PR guy said in an interview that they had solid evidence that the e-books were pirated more than 10 times for every paid legal download. If those statements are at all connected to reality and each other, they seriously sold 100 or less copies of the PHB2 in electronic format. Meaning that I did in fact sell more copies of After Sundown than they sold of the PHB2. That is the level of dismal failure they were living in.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

This is stupid.

I think you will find, that in fact it is you who are stupid.

The vast majority of markets have room for multiple actors. Being second is not a failure.

If you think that ANYBODY but pathfinder was outselling 4E you are simply being an ignorant asshole on purpose.

In 2006 when development of 4E began sales of 3.5 were slideing. If you are trying to argue that WOTC could have made more money by producing a different style game (one closer to what pathfinder) that impossible to know (but likely based on events that did transpire).

If your argument is that they could have produced 6 more years of 3.5 supplements and made as much money as they did on 4E thats again an argument that impossible to come to any conclusion on because it didn't happen. However, the facts point in a direction of that being a very unlikely result.

How about my argument is that if you are a company that is already established as the 80% market share, and you release a new product, and that product gives you 60% market share, while some other company makes up 40%, that is NOT A GOOD ANALOGY as compared to a company that doesn't exist, and then produces a product that suddenly takes up 40% of the market share.

Pepsi is to Pathfinder, Pepsi is not D&D 4e.

For Pepsi, diving the market was an unquestionable success, because if they didn't divide the market, they would have zero dollars in revenue. For 4e, regardless of what actual numbers are, or whether any specific numbers count as a success in one way or another, dividing the market is not unquestionably successful, and likely is not a success at all. Because they are Coke, the established brand.

[erik]

This is the worst sort of revisionst fucking history.

Ahem. Anywho, you already got schooled on the factual matters, so onto the wild speculation.

Paizo created pathfinder not out of any fan outcry but because of WOTC dickery over contracts. This is WHAT THEIR FUCKING MANAGAMENT HAS SAID. Even if 4E is almost exactly like 3.X pathfinder would still because WOTC tried to screw over the third party publishers out of having products at GEN CON. This would have STILL occurred and there would STILL have been splinter versions of D&D. Fuck, paizo's been simply better at providing adventures people care about. If WOTC produced a 3.75 D&D, and sill pulled the same fucking shenanigans that they did they would still have a competitor who is simply better at producing adventures than they are.

Maybe. I guess I would say that WotC should have stayed the course and not have abandoned SRD, nor fucked over their fanbase (RPGA) and business partners (Paizo, 3rd party publishers). I consider that part of the 4e battle plan since they wanted to change gears into a table top MMORPG.

If they had stayed the course with a 3.6 with all the promises of fixing more things, moar Tome of Battle/project:Orcus, then there would be no Pathfinder and we can reasonably assume that they would have done at least as well Pathfinder.

Now, a 3.75 edition that said WOTC on it would have been a FUCKING DISASTER. Do you remember the outrage over 3.5? Quite simply, would you have bought another version of the fucking PHB from WOTC with another round of minor cosmetic changes?

I would have thought that in 2003, but then 3.5 did happen and despite my feeble outrage it was damned successful. I don't know any 3e fans who hated 3.5's existence more than me, and I still wound up buying some 3.5 books because that's what I had to do to keep playing since my usual gaming group wasn't reliable.

So yes, I would have bought another fucking PHB, shaking angry dollars in my fist. I probably would be playing Pathfinder right now except their RPGA equivalent isn't as established, and as random happenstance I had kids when Pathfinder came out so that put me in a RPG hiatus for a bit. As luck would have it my group is gaming regularly I don't have need to find a Pathfinder game, but if status quo had continued and my usual group couldn't get together then I'd be rolling in Girallon or whateverthefuck Pathfinder is set in.

But even that is not a real argument because the real option to compare 4E sales against is sales of 3.5 in 2006 and 2007. 4E was a sales boost to that. People were not buying more copies of the shit that WOTC was making in 2006 and 2007. 4E was a sales boost, it was successful as a project evaluated on its own metrics.

When a new edition is announced then sales will definitely taper off from the existing edition. This is why only idiots would compare sales of an edition launch to tail end of its predecessor. You want your launch to be at least as good as your previous launches. You want to bring in new blood on top of the people who are upgrading. If you get diminishing returns with each new edition that's a death spiral.

[tenngu]

4e was widly popular by any and all data I have seen.?

Can you share with us this data?

[MGuy]

I also think it needs to be highlighted that PF was a success WHILE PUTTING ALL THEIR MATERIAL OUT FOR FREE! Do you get that? No one REALLY has to even buy a god damn book to play, at all, ever and they STILL did better!

[karpik777]

4e was widly popular by any and all data I am willing to accept.

Fixed that for you.

[Orion]

Maybe. I guess I would say that WotC should have stayed the course and not have abandoned SRD, nor fucked over their fanbase (RPGA) and business partners (Paizo, 3rd party publishers). I consider that part of the 4e battle plan since they wanted to change gears into a table top MMORPG.

I don't understand this argument. What does the direction they want to take game play have to do with their legal structure? Actually, to the extent that there's a connection, it goes the opposite way. They really wanted to destroy 3rd edition as much as possible -- hence recalling all the product off store shelves and whatnot. They didn't have the power to stop 3rd-party publishers from continuing to write 3rd-style d20 stuff, so the best way to shut them down would have been enticing them to write for 4E. It's the same playbook that made the OGL so successful in the first place -- convert potential competitors into parasites.
I'm pretty sure what happened is that someone at Wizards got uncomfortable with the general concept of not having tight control on their IP. It had nothing to do with 4E design decisions, and in fact may well have been decided by someone who had nothing to do with 4E design. WotC has people with jobs like "Brand Manager" and a parent company to answer to, and some suits somewhere up the chain probably just heard that there was some kind of permissive licensing going on an shut it down out of general conservatism.

[erik]

I don't understand the complaint. S'far as I can tell we're in agreement.

The 4e plan wasn't just writing World of Warcraft for D&D, it was to sever ties to 3e entirely and ruin all support for that edition so that people are forced to play 4e. It wasn't just that the game design execution was a failure, it was how they went about burning their bridges that fueled the circumstances of their failure.

I'm not saying game play direction was required to be hand in hand with their legal structure. They just happened to combine multiple paths to failure concurrently to achieve a far greater failure than any alone could have accomplished.

What does the direction they want to take game play have to do with their legal structure?

That that his how reality played out. I cannot separate them since they happened together. So to do a fair comparison I cannot speculate on what would happen if they only had one and not the other. That's why I gave Souran a generous "Maybe" to his speculation (on if the legal structure were kept but the ruleset were different) despite that he's an uninformed idiot. I cannot disprove his speculation, nor can he prove it.

I feel it is a far more honest comparison to say that if they had just kept things status quo and put lipstick on 3.5, same rules, a host of nominal improvements changes, and retaining an OGL and SRD (as that's pretty much what Pathfinder is) then they would have done better than their 4e run. I can justify that "What if" prediction since Pathfinder pretty much exactly did it.

If we start changing variables, like "What if the 4e ruleset ran with OGL and didn't shit on the RPGA and Paizo?" or "What if they used Orcus to make a 3.6 and still shat on the OGL, RPGA and Paizo?", then I would have no idea how things would have turned out. It was a near thing that Pathfinder almost didn't happen. It pretty much took a perfect storm of incompetence in 4e's execution to open the door for Pathfinder to exist and prosper.

[tussock]

Long before 4e came out, people were predicting a market split based on the rules changes they'd announced. Mostly people speculated on Necromancer Games, or Mongoose Publishing, but then they took Dragon and Dungeon off Paizo with people still on subscription and away that went.

Mongoose and Necromancer went 4e anyway, until sales proved so weak, if they'd dragged Paizo in with a compatible OGL, who would actually have enough bugdet, talent, and customer base lying around to turn the SRD into a sellable alternative? Pathfinder didn't land final copy until 2009, but they'd announced the project before 4e was on sale at all, who else could have done that?

Then if 4e was still using the OGL, they wouldn't have had to change so many names and monsters and background stuff around to jam new IP in everywhere and make it hard to copy, so it could feel like more of a natural continuation.

---

Obviously Marking (and Defenders in general) and the constant fucking interrupts and great bloated thousand hit point monsters that you stun-lock forever would still be there and it would be a bad game, because they were incompetent on every level, Mike Mearls would still give them those Skill Challenge rules because he did work for them. But if you could still Charm Person and Great Cleave and have a pet Bear and actually climb a wall in the first PHB, with all the major 3rd party companies trailing out adventures and books of better feats and powers, how does anyone compete with that?

[CaptPike]

4e was widly popular by any and all data I am willing to accept.

Fixed that for you.

while misleading that is true. but of course I only accept data that is both useful and correct.

and again no one has pointed out to my any usable data that points to their propaganda side of "lol everyone knows 4e tanked, why would you question it? I just said it didn't I?"

I will say it again WHEN PATHFINDER AND 4E WERE IN DIRECT COMPETITION, 4E WAS WAY AHEAD ON BEST SELLER LISTS. I do not CARE how much 3e sold ten years before, that does not matter, I do not care that after that time when 4e had no new books out pathfinder sold more. at that point how much 4e sold stopped being able to provide any useful data to how many people were playing it.

How would you go about changing minor things without causing problems? For instance the Warlock and Wizard both have force armor, but the Wizard's is hour/lvl and the Warlock's is min/lvl. Or what if the bonuses were slightly different? And what about preparing for future expansions, like the Dank Mage from Magic of Dank with 1 round force armor?

this is my problem with giving two classes the same powers unless they are used by both classes in the same way. There should be several differences between a fireball that is usable once per encounter and one that is only useable once per day and is a major resource.

I would rather have three "fireball" spells then three classes with the same spell but each having as much text telling them how theirs is different as the spell takes.

the fact that they use one big list also makes the Dev's not want to slightly alter it for a classes use. but if you making a new fireball anyway you might as well make it fit that new class.