The Business: This Is The Minimum, But It Is Enough For Them

"But Wizards of the Coast will fall!"

LOL-fucking-no. WOTC's position is so dominant that this dogshit is all they need to do to stay on top indefinitely.

Everything that the target audience needs to know that Current Edition is still The Game To Play is right here.

No, you're not the target audience; that's the Stranger Things/Corona-chan crowd, the sort served by drivel like Critical Role.

No, contra the Professor, they are not aging out; they don't have the means to age out, so they're developmentally arrested by institutional powers beyond their control and thus they are staying because damn is it dirt cheap to log into Discord and Beyond and play Current Edition exactly the way that WOTC sells it to them and spend via microtransactions to get the virtual widget access they crave for that dopamine hit that real life denies to them.

Do they need to buy physical product? No. Do they need to order things from a store? No. Go to a store? No. They can do it all cheap or free from home, so they do that; Door Dash, pizza orders, or grocery deliveries take care of the food and drink issue. Chances are good that, unless something they want to use is paywalled and tech-locked, they'll share their virtual content too.

Then they do their performantive psuedo-gaming that is really Fanfiction With Extra Steps, mainline that dopamine (especially the women and girls), and try to do it again as soon as they can because Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster and the odds of running into a situation like Episode One of Goblin Slayer are slim to none.

That ad? Targets that audience's narcisism drive (again, especially the female players) directly and with the impact of a raging bull.

Yes, WOTC knows what the psych profile of its target audience is; yes, it knows damn well what's going on between their ears; yes, that's why Current Edition is what it is.

So long as WOTC feeds the beast, they cannot fall.