WotC WotC'S May Community Update Talks School Support, Accessibilty, & Creator Marketplaces

The Community Update page on D&D Beyond has a new entry which briefly covers topics such as ongoing support for schools and clubs, accessibilty of D&D Beyond for players with disabilities, early plans for the third-party creator marketplace, plans for convention attendance, and the upcoming Virtual Tabletop.

It's mainly a (very brief) recap of things which came out of the recent D&D Creator Summit (see D&D Creator Summit--VTT & One D&D, D&D Creator Summit--'D&D Beyond And Beyond', D&D Creator Summit -- Morning Sessions) but the key points include:

• One D&D reiterated again as being 5th edition, not a new edition. This is something WotC is repeating frequently, and is a message they are clearly very keen to get across.
• School and club support includes teaching kits, afterschool club kits, and free access to D&D Beyond resources for educators.
• Plans to connect with accessibility experts to ensure D&D Beyond is a tool that everybody can use.
• Migration to D&D Beyond as the 'front door' of D&D.
• Intention to eventually create a third party marketplace, but this is a long way in the future.
• A new creator summit at Gen Con in August.
• Pre-alpha tests of the VTT with small groups.

D&D Community Update

D&D Beyond - Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Tools, Rules, Races, Classes, Items, Spells, Monsters, and More

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WotC selling 5000 of a book is not just a probable failure, it would be a complete disaster.

I don't think any of those titles stopped selling at 5,000 copies. I think OBS just stopped counting because, at a certain point, the disparity between the most popular titles and copper sellers (50 sales) just gets awkward for all involved.

 

[Umbran]

Do you honestly think if WOTC decided to let some 3rd party game designers sell their work on DnD Beyond, but don't let everybody participate, that there won't be a large group of people that gets incredibly mad and starts accusing WOTC of all sorts of nefarious plans?

I think that if WotC starts with a small group, and rolls out to fully open in stages, then those people will be unreasonable, and the complaint should be ignored.

 

[codo]

I think that if WotC starts with a small group, and rolls out to fully open in stages, then those people will be unreasonable, and the complaint should be ignored.

I just think opening it up for everybody, all at once, is a much safer option, and much less likely to upset a sizeable portion of players. Why do something that they know will piss people off (even if the complaints are disingenuous, and not based in the truth), when you don't have to? Sure they can just ignore the complaints, but isn't it better to try and head off the complaints before they occur? Isn't it better for WOTC to actually be promoted their new products rather that fending off complaints, and trying to explain there is no basis for them?

 

[Umbran]

I just think opening it up for everybody, all at once, is a much safer option, and much less likely to upset a sizeable portion of players. Why do something that they know will piss people off...

I already gave a reason - the same reason that makes is a fairly standard practice in the software industry. Grand openings tend to lead to a rush of people accessing the system all at once. The effect can be like a DDOS attack, and cause the system to have errors in dramatic ways, or fall over, possibly in states that can take days to fix.

The user experience at such events is... crappy. Uploads can get lost, logins can break, users can be left in unrecoverable states. Quite the mess, leaving WotC looking, yet again, incompetent.

It doesn't generally pay to engineer to take such rushes, unless you expect to have them on a regular basis. So, if you expect such a rush, you build for a lower volume, and simply stagger the rollout. Folks will forget a staggered rollout once everyone gets in. Folks would not ever forget the thing falling over on opening day.

 

[kenmarable]

I already gave a reason - the same reason that makes is a fairly standard practice in the software industry. Grand openings tend to lead to a rush of people accessing the system all at once. The effect can be like a DDOS attack, and cause the system to have errors in dramatic ways, or fall over, possibly in states that can take days to fix.

The user experience at such events is... crappy. Uploads can get lost, logins can break, users can be left in unrecoverable states. Quite the mess, leaving WotC looking, yet again, incompetent.

It doesn't generally pay to engineer to take such rushes, unless you expect to have them on a regular basis. So, if you expect such a rush, you build for a lower volume, and simply stagger the rollout. Folks will forget a staggered rollout once everyone gets in. Folks would not ever forget the thing falling over on opening day.

Exactly! As a programmer, opening a completely new system built entirely in-house that is unlike anything you have built before and then allowing others to add content to it via a marketplace by first opening it up to literally everyone and anyone all at once is very, very much not the "safer" option from a technical standpoint. At all. Even thinking about it makes me twitchy and I'm not involved!

"But people will complain if WotC does [blank]" is true regardless of what goes into the blank. As you said, reasonable complaints should be considered, not whether any complaints will happen at all, because there will be a significant amount of complaints no matter what. It's the nature of being the biggest business in the industry. Reasonable and valid complaints should be taken into consideration, not the fear of any outcry whatsoever.

In every situation, whether they choose A or B, there will be outcry by someone. That's unavoidable, and therefore pretty meaningless.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

For the money people, a 3rd party product on DmsGuild or Beyond is free money, since WotC gets as much money from every sale as the creators.

For the D&D team, the business model is to get people into the 5E ecosystem, so in-system competition is always positive.

Not quite. The creator gets 50% and WotC and OneBookShelf split the other 50. We just don’t know what that split is.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

, OneBookshelf gets 30%, WotC gets 20%.

Do we know that is the split or are just assuming because 1BS takes 30% on DrivthruRPG?

 

[ad_hoc]

I don't think any of those titles stopped selling at 5,000 copies. I think OBS just stopped counting because, at a certain point, the disparity between the most popular titles and copper sellers (50 sales) just gets awkward for all involved.

I'm replying to someone who used the figure of 5000.

 

[mamba]

Do you honestly think if WOTC decided to let some 3rd party game designers sell their work on DnD Beyond, but don't let everybody participate, that there won't be a large group of people that gets incredibly mad and starts accusing WOTC of all sorts of nefarious plans?

I'd say that will happen regardless of what WotC does, just look at these forums

 

[Hussar]

Staged rollouts are standard software practice. They'd like it less if the doors were opened to everyone on the same moment, and the thing fell over in the rush.

Perfectly reasonable and true.

Neither of which will matter one iota.