Was 1e WFRP broken?  No, not really.  It had areas that needed fixing, but a few house rules worked to solve those problems.  Was 2e broken?  No, not really.  It had areas that needed fixing, but a few house rules worked to solve those problems.  Will 3e be broken?  No, probably not, but no game is perfect for everyone and I'm sure it will have areas that will end up getting house (over) ruled too.  Thats just the nature of RPGs.  In fact I can't recall a single RPG in my 25+ years of GMing that I haven't created a house rule for some aspect I thought needed fixing.

Was creating 3e a financial decision.  Of course it was.  There may have been other factors involved, but most companies can't afford to be altruistic and continue to support products that don't maximize profits vs. production costs.  Companies that do that don't stay in business long. So whether or not 2e was broken is quite irrelevant.  What matters from a business standpoint is if a company could continue to support it with new products even though the majority of profits have already been earned from that line by another company.  Things might be quite different if FFG had been involved with WFRP from the start.  Afterall, they have been involved with DH and RT from the start and those lines, for now at least, will continue as they are.

In the past GW has dropped WFRP (both 1e and 2e) once they felt the cost to profit ratio was too low for them.  1e was picked up by a couple of different companies (Flame, Hogshead) that tried to continue support for the game even though the line was in its twilight and profits were down.  Now I'm sure there were other mitigating factors for these other companies eventually dropping WFRP (*cough GW cough*), but I'm sure the bottom line was profit.  You'd be surprised how much crap a licensee will put up with from a licensor if enough money can be made from the license itself, but eventually it reaches a point where its just not worth it anymore and then support dies.  So from FFGs standpoint it makes perfect sense to start over with a 3e rather than try to continue supporting 2e and I don't fault them one bit for the decision.  Anyone who honestly thinks that a company should cater to them and their preferred product rather than doing whats best for the company is living in some type of altruistic fantasy world.

I'm trying to reserve judgement on WFRP 3e until I have more information and/or actually played it.  Some of the things I've heard I like and some things I don't like.  Its not the direction I would have gone with things if I were creating a 3e, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be a bad game.  I may very well find out once I've actually given it a chance that it is the best edition of WFRP yet or I may find out that its just not suited to my tastes and stick with my house-ruled-to-the-gills 2e.  Either way, I for one am glad that WFRP will continue and not go through another Dark Ages.

Everyone with a wife knows it doesn't have to be broken to be changed.

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