Aberzanzorax
Hero
I don't think the VTT team ever recovered from the tragic events of 2008 and I find it hard to fault WotC for trying to keep things going but not ever quite measuring up.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ds-coast-employee-commits-murder-suicide.html
Well, yes and no. I don't mean to sound callous. That was, sincerely, a terrible thing, and must have been a huge blow to those working with him.
However, as I said in this thread,
http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/3...ider-d-d-4th-edition-hasbro-some-history.html
here:
First, I want to be very clear...the murder/suicide was a horrible thing. I don't wish to diminish the importance of this impact on the D&DI team (I'm sure it was devastating to them emotionally, as well as a major hit the project to lose the leader of their team).
However, I believe the quoted paragraph is a bit misleading (still true, but misleading), and I'd like to point out some facts.
The VTT wasn't ready when 4e launched (which was June 6th). The tradgedy occurred on July 28th. That's nearly 2 months after 4e was released.
D&DI was being developed by another company (a software company), they failed to produce it, and the tools were brought back in house. I've looked for the company's name and a timeline for when this occurred, and haven't been able to find one. (Maybe someone else remembers, or has better google-fu).
I can imagine that without the tragedy, WotC may have been able to pick up the pieces of D&DI...however, it was not this event that caused it to be in pieces in the first place.
Just one more time, to close...it was a terrible tragedy, but I don't think it's fair to blame it for the state of D&DI (especially at launch).
Shemeska filled in some details I didn't know with this:
Radiant Machine was the name of the company. When WotC brought everything back in house, the in-house team was given a 6 month timeline. They restarted on everything, the previous quasi-3d VTT was scrapped along with the 3d character viewer, and only the compendium and offline-character builder were ready for (late) release, missing the launch date originally given.
Only recently did WotC release a VTT that was purchased from another company and adapted to their needs.
The outsourcing problems, and other problems with management in-house didn't seem to have been caused by the murder/suicide (though as a contributing factor it was a horrible one), since that was never mentioned as a major factor by one of the developers of the character builder when I spoke with him later that year. But they'd dropped double digit millions and didn't have anything to show for it close to launch.
And yes, it must have been a huge challenge to pick up those pieces (project in disarray as well as emotional challenge)...but that was four years ago.
4e was reportedly worked on for 2 years prior to its release date. That means, with their slated release of 2 years of development by the failed company, they had double the time to recover and put out something.
Was it a huge blow? YES. Unequivocally.
Is it fair to blame the sputtering along of (and now cancellation of) VTT on that, and that alone? Hardly.