A Technical Look at D&D Insider Applications

Scholar & Brutalman said:

Wizards have mentioned the fee before. They said "Nominal" means "about the price of a cup of coffee."

I have no problem with that part of DDI, or even the Dragon and Dungeon online as long as the content improves.

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Nor do I, I will pay a few bucks to gain access to additional stuff for books. What I don't want to see is the code printed on every box of miniatures I buy... and paying a nominal fee for each of those.

Phoenix8008 said:

How unhappy I'll be about paying for the book twice depends entirely on how nominal their fee is ...

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Considering that you are essentially getting a second copy of the book, I don't see the problem with them charging to at least make up their overhead.

The question I have is how will this affect the used book market? To be fair, if every book has a generic code, it would soon be all over the internet and then no one would buy the book and everyone would pay their "nominal fee" for an e-copy. I don't think this is a good idea for WotC.

But if the code is unique, what's to stop someone from buying the book, using the code, and then selling the book to some hapless buyer who forevermore cannot buy the electronic copy? The used book market will be hurt by this. If you want a book, you are pretty much buying new. No picking up anything from Ebay unless you know that you are not interested in the e-book version.

But in all fairness to WotC, the used book market doesn't pay their bills so why should they go out of their way to accomodate it to the detriment of their business? The bottom line is that WotC designers and staff have to put food on the table. Its not a charity for gamers to take advantage of. Also the physical copy of the book is still useable and buying a used 4e book would really be no different than buying a used 3.5 book.

Also, having a unique code lets WotC provide a reward to those customers who buy new products from them and I don't have a problem with that at all when looking at it from that perspective.

Dragonblade said:

To be fair, if every book has a generic code, it would soon be all over the internet and then no one would buy the book and everyone would pay their "nominal fee" for an e-copy. I don't think this is a good idea for WotC.

But if the code is unique, what's stop someone from buying the book, using the code, and then selling the book to some hapless buyer who forevermore cannot buy the electronic copy?

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You know, I just had a thought...

When I was a kid, a lot of computer games had a security feature to make sure you weren't using a pirated copy. Every time you booted the game up, it asked you a question something like this:

"What is the Xth word in the Yth paragraph on page Z?"

It occurs to me that this might actually be the way to go for WotC. I'm no programmer, but would it be possible to write a script that selected a new question each time? (And even if not, they could still do a list of, oh, 20 rotating/random questions per book, which would at least cut down on the spread of codes throughout the net--it would certainly be slower than the use of a single code would be.)

Maggan said:

I'm not. I've stopped being surprised at how many non-Mac people can't keep the different options on the Mac apart.

I think he is talking about running Windows in Parallells or VMware, but thinking that is called "dual boot".

And even so, DirectX support is available for both those solutions, so basically if you have an Intel Mac, you have the option of running the DDI under Windows either as dual boot or as a virtual machine, without any loss of functionality.

/M

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That's what I thought

Thanks

I spend a lot of time overseas or running about in the Army-so the thought of being able to use the V-table to game with my friends is pretty cool. Since storage space overseas is also somewhat limited, having PDFs for all the books I buy is also a nice deal.

My concern are V-minis. I DO NOT like the idea of random V-boosters or some crap. I reckon, if I buy the mini I should be able to pop in a code and get it online. How that works IRL, I have no idea.

Mouseferatu said:

You know, I just had a thought...

When I was a kid, a lot of computer games had a security feature to make sure you weren't using a pirated copy. Every time you booted the game up, it asked you a question something like this:

"What is the Xth word in the Yth paragraph on page Z?"

It occurs to me that this might actually be the way to go for WotC. I'm no programmer, but would it be possible to write a script that selected a new question each time? (And even if not, they could still do a list of, oh, 20 rotating/random questions per book, which would at least cut down on the spread of codes throughout the net--it would certainly be slower than the use of a single code would be.)

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That is an interesting idea, but with the proliferation of PDF pirated copies of their books online, I think WotC might prefer to go with the unique code route and just have marketing spin it as a bonus for people who buy new books, rather than a liability for people buying used books.

The only problem I see is that it pretty much requires them to shrink wrap their books. Otherwise, you could just go to Barnes and Noble, copy the code out of a book and then use the code online. Then that customer who did buy the book in good faith is screwed. I would be extremely upset and demand a new code from WotC if that happened to me.

Perhaps a combo of having a unique code and being asked to answer a page reference question like you suggest is a good way to do it but that seems burdonsome.

Mouseferatu said:

It occurs to me that this might actually be the way to go for WotC. I'm no programmer, but would it be possible to write a script that selected a new question each time? (And even if not, they could still do a list of, oh, 20 rotating/random questions per book, which would at least cut down on the spread of codes throughout the net--it would certainly be slower than the use of a single code would be.)

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You do realize that at that point there were so many more innovative ways of bypassing the security. I remember photocopies and manually assembled spinning codewheels for some of the first commodore 64 games. That sort of security only hinders its use for the paying customers.

Mouseferatu said:

"What is the Xth word in the Yth paragraph on page Z?"

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Empire!

Man, I loved that game....

I got it. WotC could put a sealed enevelope in the back of their books with a unique code in it. Then when you use the code to purchase the online copy of the book, it gets a digital watermark identifying you as the owner.

Buyers are protected by knowing whether the code has been open and used, and WotC knows who is responsible if a digital copy gets leaked on the web.

DaveMage said:

Because if you subscribe to the D&D Insider, you are already paying a monthly fee. It'd be like paying for a news service, but having to pay more if you want to access certain feature articles.

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On the other hand, if you have to be a subscriber to get the PDF, that would upset a whole seperate group of people. Easier to keep them seperate - that way I don't have to pay for Forgotten Realms/Eberron/whatever-I-might-not-like books without having a choice.