If they did go with "compendium < character builder + mags < monster builder" motif, I could see the line being the amount of tech/money investment WotC had to make to get it right, and how "digital realm" the offering is.
The tech/money investment is irrelevant. Nobody pays a premium for something just because it costs the company more to make; if you want to charge a premium, you have to offer more value to the consumer*. Besides, the marginal cost of granting access to any DDI tool is next to nothing. As with most electronic offerings, DDI is almost all overhead.
Now, it's obviously true that Character Builder plus Compendium offers greater value than Compendium alone. So you could justify a premium for that. But I don't see where the demand for a Compendium-only tier is supposed to come from. How many people are there who want to use a computer at the gaming table to look up rules, yet don't want to use a computer away from the table to make their characters?
The whole point of a tiered system is to bring in as much revenue as possible, by giving customers a variety of options based on their willingness to pay for value. The lowest tier is by definition aimed at the customers with the smallest budget for your product. Therefore, you have to ask, "Out of what we've got for sale, what do these cheapskate customers value enough to pay for?" I'm not seeing a lot of cases where the answer is "the Compendium" and nothing else.
[size=-2]*Admittedly, in some cases the value to the consumer is the social status conferred by being able to say "I paid the premium for this." In other cases, consumers who have difficulty judging the relative value of products may use price as a guide to quality, paying a premium because they assume it indicates value. But I don't see that either of these situations applies here.[/size]
Why would they do that, when the biggest selling point for DDI so far has been "all of your information, and tools to help you manage it?" Better to charge more for more tools than to charge more for more info, I'd think. But we're rampantly speculating so your idea has as much merit as mine, I guess.
I could see them splitting it out by content because it would mesh better with their business goals and there would be more demand for it. "Access to all D&D products" offers value mainly to the hardcore gamer. To the casual gamer, it's not that useful and may even be a hindrance--I know novice gamers often feel overwhelmed by the number of options.
The high barrier to entry has always been one of D&D's biggest challenges. What casual gamers need most are things to lower that barrier, and e-tools are one of WotC's best means of accomplishing that. Give them an introductory tier with access to all the tools but a limited subset of the content. Once you've got them hooked, you can entice them with the lure of new options. It's the same "core plus splatbooks" model that RPGs have relied on since the dawn of the industry, just updated for new technology.
You didn't HAVE to click on the thread. It says right in the title it's about DDI tiered pricing. You didn't have to post in it if you're annoyed by the subject matter. If you don't want to talk about it, posting in the thread and bumping it is a strange way to discourage conversation.
I didn't say I don't want to talk about it; I enjoy shooting the bull about WotC's future prospects and business decisions as much as anybody. I'm just wondering where the sudden influx of "DDI tiers" threads is coming from.
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