DDI for $7.95

[Remathilis]

I could live with that price scale...

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

To me, it would already be worth that if the quality of Dragon and Dungeon Online continue to be as good as they are right now. That's two magazines that used to cost 7 bucks each, newsstand, with advertisements, for 7 bucks together with NO ads.

Here in Canberra the "newsstand" price - they are only available at the one game store that I've ever seen - was more like $AU 16 each when I last bought them. At the time the Australian dollar was about $US .80, give or take.

This is a vast improvement.

 

[charlesatan]

Right now, I have no confidence that material from Dragon/Dungeon will be added to the online Rules Compendium in a timely fashion. WotC couldn't even finish their 3.5 errata in time... how will they successfully integrate the full material from entire books as well as manage errata?

I don't think the problem with errata is implementation but rather deliberation (whether to actually errata something and what the solutoin is). The Dragon/Dungeon articles errata seem to have been caught when they've been compiled.

I have very little confidence that the virtual tabletop, virtual miniatures, character visualizer, dungeon builder and so forth will ever leave a beta state... especially not in a month's time. I hope that I'm wrong about this.

Read the press releae on the status of these other items.

 

[MerricB]

Here in Canberra the "newsstand" price - they are only available at the one game store that I've ever seen - was more like 16 each when I last bought them. At the time the Australian dollar was about .80, give or take.

This is a vast improvement.

Definitely. I subscribed for the last year, and that was about aus$8 an issue, IIRC.

Cheers!

 

[CountPopeula]

"I know there has been a lot of discussion of our business model and our pricing plan. We’ve been paying attention to those conversations and have decided to tweak a few things. Our current plan is to start charging for subscriptions before we have the client applications ready. That means the initial Insider subscription package will include exactly those parts that are currently in free trial mode: the magazines, the Compendium, and the bonus tools. The price tag for this subscription is as low as $4.95 per month, depending on how many months you are willing to sign up for."

Read that carefully.

Everyone saying what a great deal it is and that they'd gladly pay that for Dungeon and Dragon only will be pleasantly surprised.

I don't think this bodes well for people wanting the rest of what DDI promised.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

Read the press releae on the status of these other items.

I read it, but you are right that I misspoke. WotC isn't claiming that those other items will be ready in a month's time.

 

[Kzach]

Well, at last I can say something positive about DDI.

The fact that they're being upfront and telling us honestly what is going on and where things are at is very refreshing, IMO. Instead of the, "AWESOME! SO GREAT! WICKED! FANTASTIC! YOU'LL WANT TO HAVE IT'S BABIES!" crap they've been pulling for so long. Randy's article alone is giving more faith in the process than I've had in it at all, ever.

And the price is right. Assuming it remains at those price levels once full features are enabled, and they don't pull some sort of stunt to increase them as soon as everything goes subscriber only, I can now see a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope for DDI yet.

Of course, whether that light turns out to be a bright, shiny, blissful, sun-filled field of daisies and gently rolling hills full of wondrous maidens singing the sound of music, or an oncoming train, is yet to be determined

 

[LightPhoenix]

WotC couldn't even finish their 3.5 errata in time... how will they successfully integrate the full material from entire books as well as manage errata?

Well, for the record, with Dragon at least they've been providing errata with the full PDFs released at the end of the month. So that actually bodes well.

I'll hold a wait-and-see approach, but that price point is certainly more palatable. I'd still prefer they move to a pay-per-article/issue system, but even $8 a month isn't bad, depending on the content.

 

[Vanuslux]

I want to point out that before Dungeon and Dragon when online, WotC always had a decent stream of free adventures and articles. Apparently now DDI is about charging us for what we used to be able to get from them for free. Not even the compendium counts as new because before they had the SRD.

 

[cougent]

We aren’t ready to discuss our medium or long-term pricing plans, but this is what the short-term looks like.

As this reads, and it may just read funny, it seems this is quite possibly a "limited time offer, buy it while it is hot!" kind of thing. I am *guessing* that if you lock in a year now... then you get a year's access no matter what else changes or gets added? However if you go the other routes you may get a surprise in a billing cycle or two, especially as new items do come online. I can sort of see the yearly thing, but the other two don't seem so appealing to me.