D&D Intiative...Master Tools 2008?

Terwox said:

Which of those did e-tools pick?

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Not ever having been around for e-Tools, I couldn't tell you.

Terwox said:

Which of those did e-tools pick?

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It tried to pick all three which is why it failed.

Mercurius said:

Sad. And so the death of imagination commences.

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Wow, that was a pointless post. I personally have zero interest in games like WoW, and yet I don't have an urge to insult those who do. I must be interwebbing wrong, as they say.

Just to add to the thread...

I see the current D&DI Rules Compendium as the analogy of the MasterTools Character Generator demo that came with the 3.0 PHB.

I see the screenshots of the rest of D&DI as an analogy to the many screenshots we saw for MasterTools.

I see the posts and articles about what MasterTools D&DI will supposedly do and be as an analogy to the many Listserv discussions about changes to MasterTools' development, scope and function.

There is nothing that leads me to believe that D&DI will be more successful than MasterTools, which was scrapped and replaced by E-Tools.

jdrakeh said:

Me, too. That said, the good news is that the DDI doesn't appear to be at all essential, so as long as WotC keeps printing books, I'll be okay. I already have all of the die rolling software I and email access I will ever need to run PBEM games usng my PDA, so I'm covered in that regard.

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And there is already a good Virtual Tabletop available at OpenRPG. It's just not branded but would work as well as WotC's, especially since the word is they'll charge for virtual miniatures.

amaril said:

Just to add to the thread...

I see the current D&DI Rules Compendium as the analogy of the MasterTools Character Generator demo that came with the 3.0 PHB.

I see the screenshots of the rest of D&DI as an analogy to the many screenshots we saw for MasterTools.

I see the posts and articles about what MasterTools D&DI will supposedly do and be as an analogy to the many Listserv discussions about changes to MasterTools' development, scope and function.

There is nothing that leads me to believe that D&DI will be more successful than MasterTools, which was scrapped and replaced by E-Tools.

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Exactly. We've seen this all before.

It's a bit early to be crying vaporware no?

I mean, we're what, a month after the release? They're still in beta and are releasing new bits from time to time. The Compendium came up last week after all. You guys are absolutely brutal IMO. Give them a bit of time to get this up and running.

Since the release, Dragon and Dungeon have been releasing material regular as clockwork for example, despite the many, MANY cries that prior to the release, both Dungeon and Dragon were a bit sparse.

Sit back, relax, take a deep breath and realize that it might take a bit of time, but, this isn't Ghost Orb.

Hussar said:

It's a bit early to be crying vaporware no?

I mean, we're what, a month after the release? They're still in beta and are releasing new bits from time to time. The Compendium came up last week after all. You guys are absolutely brutal IMO. Give them a bit of time to get this up and running.

Since the release, Dragon and Dungeon have been releasing material regular as clockwork for example, despite the many, MANY cries that prior to the release, both Dungeon and Dragon were a bit sparse.

Sit back, relax, take a deep breath and realize that it might take a bit of time, but, this isn't Ghost Orb.

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I haven't checked recently but has the Rules compendium got the errata incorporated yet? As functional as the Rules compendium may be unless it keeps up with new books and errata it is as good as useless.

Hussar said:

It's a bit early to be crying vaporware no?

I mean, we're what, a month after the release? They're still in beta and are releasing new bits from time to time. The Compendium came up last week after all. You guys are absolutely brutal IMO. Give them a bit of time to get this up and running.

Since the release, Dragon and Dungeon have been releasing material regular as clockwork for example, despite the many, MANY cries that prior to the release, both Dungeon and Dragon were a bit sparse.

Sit back, relax, take a deep breath and realize that it might take a bit of time, but, this isn't Ghost Orb.

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To be clear, we're talking about the software components, not the articles.

It's also not too early to cry vaporware when they've already announced that the Game Table won't be available until later this year, and that's being optimistic since software is usually late and never early.

Additionally, the scope keeps changing. Screenshots keep showing more features, and while that might seem cool and fun, it's also what happened to MasterTools. Feature creep is a dangerous thing for budgets of time and money.

What they showed at D&DXP should have been enough for a beta test. The only thing that could be an issue at that point is load balancing, ID/account management, or something else related to the back end. Considering it's supposed to be free of rules, I don't understand what else could be tying up their resources. Perhaps if they spent less time on 3D dress-up dolls and more on the important parts, they'd be further along.

PS - They haven't been releasing much more than what was already available in the print versions of Dungeon/Dragon magazine. Additionally, we now have less of what we used to get on the Web site before. In fact, most of what we had seen on the Web site up until the release was "4e is so great! We've been playtesting it for months. Sorry, can't tell you about it, but you're going to love it because it's the best version of D&D ever! Trust us!"

Hussar said:

It's a bit early to be crying vaporware no?

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No.

I mean, we're what, a month after the release? They're still in beta and are releasing new bits from time to time.

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Maybe I'm crazy, but they should have been in Beta before release and actually...you know... released on release day.

You guys are absolutely brutal IMO.

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Speaking as someone who has been jerked around by WOTC's software fumbles for years, I feel I've earned the right to be brutal.

As has been said above, we've been here before. And given WOTC's track record, it's no surprise that people don't have any faith. It could be said that WOTC has always failed in this area. And so far, we haven't seen any evidence that this time will be different.