DRAGON+ Now Available For Ratings

Mistwell · Jun 19, 2015

MartyW said:
Positive astroturfing is a very commonly paid practice for a business. Reputation.com isn't the only big league player in this industry (just the most well known). It's a multi-billion dollar industry because large companies (even one like Hasbro) do use these methods.

Unless you are a politician, negative astroturfing is almost unheard of. It only occurs during political campaigns when you get Super PACs working against a candidate. It's not worth the money to try to tarnish a competitor's business, but it is often worth the money to try to polish your own business image online (depending on the product).

Again, I'm not saying there was any of that going on here at all. I'm just following the logic trail of the original poster.

Except both competitors are known to read and post here, so all that general information isn't really applicable to this specific issue. He's not saying some third party was paid to post positive stuff, he is saying a WOTC employee who reads these boards posted it...which is subject to the identical accusation against him in the opposite. The whole thing is nonsense. No idea why we are even still discussing it - you don't even buy his argument so why are you still defending it?

MartyW · Jun 19, 2015

Agamon said:
Though I think they could maybe improve the content somewhat, I personally wouldn't care for this. I wouldn't want gaming material tucked away inside a cumbersome app. I hope they stick to fluffy read-and-done articles.

In my perfect world, a digital Dragon magazine would be available in a number of formats. I actually came to really like the 4e PDF Dragon and Dungeon issues. At first, the odd landscape layout annoyed me (I often forgot to print landscape), but as I perused more of the PDFs on mobile devices and on laptop screens, it just clicked for me. PDFs aren't the perfect delivery system, but they used them well during those years between 2009 and 2013.

Anyway, as I was saying, in a perfect world, the content would be available in an HTML5 container that would have defined CSS templates for the differing formats. People on a computer could view and print it like a nicely laid out PDF. People on a mobile device could view the content without all the difficulty normally associated with viewing PDFs on small screens.

One doesn't actually have to be "locked in" to one format or another. The technology and tools exist today. Believe it or not, this perfect world actually does exist at some companies, but it requires technologists and designers with the right tools that understand cross-platform digital publishing.

Unfortunately, that's never been WotC.

Kramodlog · Jun 19, 2015

MartyW said:
Except that those people will never download the app. If I'm not well-informed about D&D, I'm not going to know that there's a "Dragon+" app that has anything to do with D&D.

Which means, the ONLY people who are downloading this app are people who already know about these things because they visit the Wizards.com site and hit social media related to D&D topics.

So the target audience is apparently a group of people who will never download the app.

That makes absolutely no sense... which, now that I think about it, is fairly typical of WotC's digital strategy.

(Those damn) Kids these days are always on their fancy smart phones, downloading all sort of stuff from what they call the interwebz. I've heard some of them get virtual comics and never saw one made of paper! Shear blasphemy!

I swear, back in my day to get info on D&D we had to walk ten miles barefoot to get to the gaming store to get some info on up coming products.

MartyW · Jun 19, 2015

Mistwell said:
No idea why we are even still discussing it - you don't even buy his argument so why are you still defending it?

I wasn't defending the accusation. I was merely pointing out, that your criticism of his original post was not applicable because he wasn't criticizing the other user's low post count. He was laying out what he thought was evidence that there was someone pretending to be a consumer who was not.

Astroturfing is not just paying a 3rd party for reputation management. It can also be an employee posting incognito. It has nothing to do with people who post openly as themselves, like Mearls or Gygax as you stated earlier, because people know who they are (were) and who they work for so one can take bias into consideration. If Mearls says, "Dragon+ is the greatest thing in digital publishing!"... then yeah, that's fine because we all know who signs his paycheck.

That's all.

Dire Bare · Jun 19, 2015

Henry said:
Not only that, it's a mocha-brown raspberry sorbet that smells like chocolate, and takes you back to when your dad used to buy you chocolate ice cream as a kid. as an advertisement app, it does what's intended; but call it "WotC Now!" Or "D&D Exclusive!" Or something like that.

Actually, they had the perfect vehicle - Rich Baker used to have a column called "Ampersand". it did largely the same thing, highlighted a topic of the day or a new prodcut they were touting at the time. Yeah, the name is terrible for a wide audience, so not a good choice, but just something that won't make fans of the former Dragon Magazine (in all of its previous forms) think it's an actual vehicle to support the RPG.

How about "D&D Insider"? Seems a better use of that name that originally, IMO.

MartyW · Jun 19, 2015

Dire Bare said:
How about "D&D Insider"? Seems a better use of that name that originally, IMO.

Nailed it.

EDIT: Damn, I really wish I had thought of this first.

Mistwell · Jun 19, 2015

MartyW said:
I wasn't defending the accusation. I was merely pointing out...

Why, if you're not defending his point? What is the point of your reply?

Astroturfing is not just paying a 3rd party for reputation management. It can also be an employee posting incognito.

Which makes your prior response nonsensical...as it was purely about 3rd parties and how in those situations there is no negative bashing of competitors...but if it's an actual employee, then it would exactly as easily be an actual employee of the competitor. Particularly in a small niche industry like this one where one of the two companies involved (the one accused of astroturfing) has literally about a dozen total employees who are so swamped they can barely produce content once ONE guy goes on jury duty.

Seriously, this whole discussion is ridiculous. Go ahead and take the last word in the position you're not defending for reasons of clarifying something that nobody was confused about.

MartyW · Jun 19, 2015

Mistwell said:
Which makes your prior response nonsensical...as it was purely about 3rd parties and how in those situations there is no negative bashing of competitors

(sigh) No, I was giving an example of reputation management. And then I stated that essentially it's not worthwhile to pay someone to bash another's product when money is better spent polishing one's own image (i.e. - that a person posing as a positive astroturfer is much more likely occurrence than one posing as a negative one).

I was pointing out that under the circumstances, positive astroturfing was much more likely to be present than negative astroturfing. You know, Occam's Razor and all that. Nevermind, it's not important. Clearly you are not understanding what I'm getting at.

MartyW · Jun 19, 2015

Well, #$%* me with a sharp spoon. Wizards went an updated the Basic PDF rules this week.

AND IT WASN'T EVEN MENTIONED IN DRAGON+... What the hell is wrong with their social media team that this wasn't all over the Dragon+ feed?

Instead we get pictures of "Snowball". (sigh)

EDIT: Ahh... now I see why. The edits were so minor that it barely deserves mention.

Hey Wizards -- How about adding the spells from HotDQ/RoT/Elemental Evil player PDFs? How about adding in the monsters too? Seriously, what are you guys doing over there all day?

Quickleaf · Jun 19, 2015

I just posted a review with a comparison of table of contents from the first issue of DRAGON+ and Dragon #354. Pretty glaring difference. I gave DRAGON+ a 'C' but it was more like a 'C-' honestly.

And for folks claiming detractors of DRAGON+ are getting too hung up on the name, it's not mainly about the name. Let me remind you that Matt Chapman and Chris Perkins draw direct comparisons between Dragon magazine and DRAGON+ in no uncertain terms in the very first issue.

Matt Chapman said:
Dragon+ take the traditional magazine format to the next level, making it more interactive and allowing you to enjoy it anywhere on smartphones, tablets, or computers.

Chris Perkins said:
Dragon+ is a digital descendant of a much older print publication called Dragon magazine, which was for many years a colossus in the gaming industry. Before the Internet, Dragon was how we got D&D news and previews…

I'm not disputing DRAGON+ does what they set out to (i.e. a functioning newsstand app). But to equate it in any way to the old Dragon magazines is way off the mark.