Oh, I believe you that it could have worked. Many people seem happy to go with easy even if it's worse in many ways. Sometimes that's fine and the trade-off is worth it. I don't compile all my software from source.
Making DND more like a video game seems really sad to me, and I wouldn't want to take the poison pill. But I guess that's like looking at the Internet and longing for when it was free hobby stuff while most people just want Facebook.
I like to think people would be like "wait, this sucks, we can't go off the rails?" but I think most people's expectations are lower. They'd be happy with DND as board game.
