Cross-Playability and the Warhammer Changes

So, back in August of this year, I was given the work Night's Dark Masters, the vampire book for WFRP 2nd Ed. I've been collecting the rest of said 2nd Ed since then, but I've recently found out about the 3rd Ed... which is dramatically different from its predecessors...

I'm not thrilled.

I know, the shock, the amazement...

I'm not even sure why I feel the need to ramble on about this, those that agree with me (due to exasperation with novelty, the desire to maintain perfection, or sheer hatred of truth and beauty) will continue to do so and those that disagree (due to addiction to novelty, the desire for perfection, or sheer hatred of truth and beauty) will plot my inevitable downfall... or continue to do so, as their fancy takes them.

Nonetheless...

I rather like the second edition, overall it is the same game, but it does have certain tweaks and some things were deleted, changed, and what-have-you. I think the strength and toughness changes were silly, but can understand them, and the reining in of elvenkind was an unlooked-for delight, so things seem fairly reasonable. Also, I really like the fact that the systems are basically compatible. Yes, you'll have to tinker a bit with it all, but not too much and you can use all the old material with the new.

This is, I think, an important point. Similar to how D&D was, essentially, the same game from 1974 to 2000 (I realize that the differences seem vast, but they really aren't... and I say that having already gone on record with my hatred of second edition AD&D...), WFRP was the same game from 1986 to 2009. All the material released in those periods was usable if you happened to want to use it (though some was so dreadful I wouldn't have wished on my worst enemy... OK, maybe I would have inflicted Skills and Powers on them... if I were in a really bad mood).

I like improvement (one of the things that many intelligent gamers really like is some form of non-random character generation - in many games, I like it too, but there are some times I like trying to make a character out of a set of random rolls - so packaging a well thought out "point buy" system, along with the old random method, in your game's new edition isn't going to hurt anyone, under normal circumstances...), but I also like backwards compatibility. Deleting the usefulness of the small library of game books I've already purchased isn't going to win the new edition my friendship or money.

The point must be made that I am probably not the "target market" anymore, and therefore superfluous...

So be it.

I do wonder who the current "target market" is, however. Is it anyone who's played the previous editions? And am I cheap, or does $100 seem a tad pricey for the start-up kit?