D&D Intiative...Master Tools 2008?

[Hussar]

Always failed? They had what, one electronic product and that was before they hooked up with Hasbro?

Well, I suppose that IS a 100% failure rate.

Software fumbles for years? What fumbles for years?

It's not like no one ever does public beta's.

 

[Vanuslux]

Always failed? They had what, one electronic product and that was before they hooked up with Hasbro?

Well, I suppose that IS a 100% failure rate.

Software fumbles for years? What fumbles for years?

It's not like no one ever does public beta's.

Well, there's Magic Online, which is on its third version and still has a lot of issues...though at least it's functional so I guess it can't be called a total failure. I'd give it two stars.

Frankly, I'd be thrilled to have any character generator options that I thought was worthy of two stars...right now, I have zilch.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Always failed? They had what, one electronic product and that was before they hooked up with Hasbro?

Well, I suppose that IS a 100% failure rate.

Software fumbles for years? What fumbles for years?

2nd edition Core Rules(?) - Failure

Master Tools - Failure

eTools - Failure

Magic - Failure

I guess that's really just my opinion, but yeah, "fumbles for years".

It's not like no one ever does public beta's.

We were not promised a Beta, we were promised a finished product. And for that matter, we don't even have a beta to play with for most of it.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

Something else to consider...

WotC had supposedly designed 4e to also be relatively compatible with a database structure, particularly in the area of rules consistency. The lack of database compatibility and rules consistency in 3e (despite it's many merits regarding consistency) was what made the 3e tools so difficult to pull off.

In my mind, this is why I feel as though they failed me. I was very excited by the 4e presentation at last year's Gen Con. I wanted D&D to be everything they said it was going to be, particularly with respect to the software. "I think they got it right this time!" was my hope.

It's because those tools aren't available that I chose to not switch to 4e, despite my previous position of wanting to stick with 3e because of the amount of money I had invested in 3e materials.

Without the time-saving tools, I just didn't see the point in switching to 4e anymore. Now I've used my time to create my own 3e compendiums, including a Feats Compendium and a Hypertext Rules Compendium. (My next project is an Eberron Compendium with all the setting material and mechanics compiled together.)

 

[Xyxox]

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.

Nope, it's not too early to call it vaporware, in fact it's a bit late.

The relase of the virtual tabletop was supposed to be when 4E released. Now they are saying late this year. My bet is next year at the earliest and it won't be anywhere near as feature rich as advertised up to this point.

After suffering through years of software failures for D&D, I expected the DDI to be the saving grace. Obviously, expectations of anything more than utter and complete failure were too high.

 

[Glyfair]

2nd edition Core Rules(?) - Failure

I heard great thing about the Core Rules (actually once "Core Rules 2.0 was released). I own it, but never really played 2E, so only used the map programs. When I played with the character generator it seemed great, at least for the time.

Plus, it had copies of most of the key books included (with the Complete Necromancer as a free download). That in itself was worth the price for many.

 

[Xyxox]

I heard great thing about the Core Rules (actually once "Core Rules 2.0 was released). I own it, but never really played 2E, so only used the map programs. When I played with the character generator it seemed great, at least for the time.

Plus, it had copies of most of the key books included (with the Complete Necromancer as a free download). That in itself was worth the price for many.

IT was good with the expansion. Unfortunately, right after the expansion came out 3E was announced.

 

[Hussar]

The 2e core rules CD was great. Was it released by WOTC?

Magic is bad? Really? Pretty solid userbase and very popular. How is that bad? I don't play it, but, by most accounts its solidly successful.

eTools was Code Monkey, not WOTC.

 

[Glyfair]

The 2e core rules CD was great. Was it released by WOTC?

The Core Rules 2.0 was released while WotC had the license (I believe the first was released while TSR had D&D). The company was Everymore or something like that.

eTools was Code Monkey, not WOTC.

eTools was Fluid. Code Monkey took over later and fixed a lot of the eTools problems (but admitted it needed a complete rebuild to fix everything, which was supposed to be the RPG Toolkit).

 

[Delta]

Magic is bad? Really? Pretty solid userbase and very popular. How is that bad? I don't play it, but, by most accounts its solidly successful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_online#Version_2.0