WotC's D&D Virtual Table Cancelled

Remathilis · Jul 10, 2012

And with that, DDi goes belly up.

No VTT
No character visualizer
Halfway decent char-gen program turned into a buggy piece of webcoding
Quarter decent monster builder decimated into useless webcode.
Dragon and Dungeon reduced to half-baked web articles.

Kinda fitting that D&D 4e and DDi both die together, since they were literally made for each other.

Zaukrie · Jul 10, 2012

That puts me over the edge of ever trusting them again. Burned too many times. Frankly, I'm close to cancelling DDI, even though I need it to DM. We'll see, but I'm close.

ShinHakkaider · Jul 10, 2012

MadJoe said:
I'm sure Paizo's free play on their VTT didn't help WotC to "generate enough support"

Paizo just announced their VTT solution on Saturday. I'm probably guessing here but I'm thinking that the decision to cancel the DDI VTT must have been in the works for a while now. WOTC is big boat. I dont really think that it can stop or turn on a dime.

Hussar · Jul 10, 2012

This blows. But, then again, if they actually got off their collective ass and presented a VTT tool that was at least as useful as what you can get already, then perhaps it wouldn't have tanked. A year of Beta testing and they haven't added any tokens, you still cannot use your own maps and, AFAIK, no extra bits have been added since the beginning. Yeah, shock that it failed.

Oh, and no standardization on time announcements (apparently scheduling was based on Pacific time, maybe, but, it's not mentioned anywhere. Good luck finding a game if you don't know when the bloody times are). I found the whole thing a complete disappointment.

Can't use my own maps, can't make more tokens, less functionality than you get in something like Maptool. Yeah, total shock that this tanked.

aventhar · Jul 10, 2012

Remathilis said:
And with that, DDi goes belly up.

No VTT
No character visualizer
Halfway decent char-gen program turned into a buggy piece of webcoding
Quarter decent monster builder decimated into useless webcode.
Dragon and Dungeon reduced to half-baked web articles.

Kinda fitting that D&D 4e and DDi both die together, since they were literally made for each other.

I am forced to agree.

This is sad but unfortunately not at all unexpected. WOTC (the corporate side) just doesn't get it. Thank all that is holy that the OGL happened.
I feel for all the talented game designers over there.

To continue the big boat analogy:

...and the band played on

Frylock · Jul 10, 2012

I was excited when I saw the 3D interface. It was the only thing that stood out from the other tools, and it was so cool I was actually considering online play (which otherwise I hate). When the 2D interface came out, it was disappointing. I tried it once just to help WotC but was so uninterested that I never went back.

Scrivener of Doom · Jul 10, 2012

I love the dismissive, "Oh, you take can screenshots".

amerigoV said:
You sound as this was unexpected. I'm shocked it got to Beta.

Me too.

I wonder how long before the 4E tools are also cancelled?

Votan · Jul 10, 2012

Scrivener of Doom said:
I love the dismissive, "Oh, you take can screenshots".

I understand the want to not throw good money after bad, but people could potentially have a lot of information (adventure notes aka Journal and character sheets) in the tool. Three weeks is not a huge amount of time to extract that information without a way to download it.

Yes, you can do it if you are disciplined but it is a bad precedent for product support.

ShinHakkaider · Jul 10, 2012

Is it weird that I was kind of thinking that they would have kept working on it and had something actually fully ready in time for the D&D Next Launch?

I mean theyve been working on it since 2008 (and lets face it probably before). I really and truly wonder how all of this went horribly wrong.

Ampolitor · Jul 10, 2012

Really

wow, some of you act surprised, that's why I never signed up for anything online that wizards does. They never fully support anything that they do, feels like they all have ADD over there.