The Internet is Full of Lies

Quick, what's the best-selling edition of D&D of all time in the USA? If you read a lot of gaming forums, especially the most passionate ones, you'll probably say, "Oh yeah, that's easy. 3.5. That's the one everyone loves the most and which spawned Pathfinder, the most popular RPG of all time!"

WRONG.

"Oh, well in that case, it's probably AD&D, maybe first edition? I remember AD&D 2e bankrupted TSR."

WRONG.

"Then it must be AD&D 2e for sure. Planescape was awesome!"

WRONG.

The best-selling edition of D&D of all time is the Basic Set. That's the edition that sold to millions of players. It's not even AD&D! The Basic Set tends to be regarded as "not real D&D" by the hardcore fans. And what's more, the next best-selling version is 3rd edition. Not 3.5, 3.0, which is widely regarded among fans as the most broken edition of the game.

The reason you are wrong is the Internet works a lot like classic rock radio. If you listen to much classic rock, and I asked you what the most popular songs of 1969 were, you'd probably say things like "Whole Lotta Love," "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Come Together," and "Proud Mary"...but none of those songs were even in the top 10!  When I look at Billboard's Hot 100 of 1969, I see only four songs in the top 20 that I regularly hear on classic rock radio.

See, classic rock playlists are put together by the most dedicated fans for the most dedicated fans. Enthusiasts' tastes rarely overlap with the masses. In tabletop games, D&D 3.5 has the most expansions, the crunchiest math, the most complex options, and the most detailed mechanics. It's an enthusiast's game through and through. But Basic D&D, which came in an attractive box, had simple rules (race and class weren't even separate, and there was no such thing as a "build"), and was sold in toy stores, achieved much greater success. So when 3rd edition completely discarded the framework of Basic under the theory that AD&D is the game that "everyone" played, they actually turned off a lot of players.

Online, forum chatter, blogs, and webzine articles create the most noise, but they're also a self-selected sample of the most dedicated fans. While 3.5 has the most dedicated, loudest following, it wasn't the most successful product.