Important: Please Read! Changes Are Coming!

[TheYeti1775]

That's not 4000 users per day, it's 4000 users at one time. That day saw tens of thousands of users.

4000 visitors on one day would be a very slow day indeed.

Your seizing on the wrong line of it.
Is that a quarter million UNIQUE visitors to the website in a one month span?

Yes I know that the 4k mark is at one instance a number of unique visitors.

When you start on the quarter a million mark, does that include folks like me who on average use at least 4 different machines in a month to access the site, but all with my one account? Am I 4 of those visits?
Don't confuse page hits with unique visitors they are two seperate things entirely for advertisers.

 

[darjr]

That was when the WotC PDF's were pulled. It was a big day all round.

(I think)

 

[the Jester]

That's because there's a difference between "this is what's going to happen," and "this is what we're going to try to make happen."

The former is a promise, and the latter isn't. Considering that it's plain English, the distinction would only be lost on ... well, honestly, who cares who it would be lost on?

Tell that the all the people that called the Rouse a liar immediately following the 4e announcement.

People rarely hear what others say; instead, they tend to hear what they hear.

 

[TheYeti1775]

That was when the WotC PDF's were pulled. It was a big day all round.

(I think)

Actually it was right after they were pulled with bets going on about how soon the latest book coming out would be pirated. If I remember right I know I found copies of it rather quickly, with full scannable bookmarked ones becoming available by the end of the week proving the pulling of PDFs had nothing to do with piracy.

 

[Morrus]

Don't confuse page hits with unique visitors they are two seperate things entirely for advertisers.

Yes, Yeti, I am fully conversant with the terminology. I've been doing this a decade now. Thanks, though.

Page hits run into the millions. Several millions.

 

[darjr]

Actually it was right after they were pulled with bets going on about how soon the latest book coming out would be pirated. If I remember right I know I found copies of it rather quickly, with full scannable bookmarked ones becoming available by the end of the week proving the pulling of PDFs had nothing to do with piracy.

Actually I think all it proved was that pulling the PDF's was next to useless. Unless that little window of a couple days was a huge boost to sales, it was pointless for fighting piracy.

I'm not sure it says anything at all about WotC management's intent.

But yes, that was after they were pulled.

And sorry for thread capping.

I don't really have much to say except that I don't generally use signatures, though I understand they will be missed. I hope that a compromise can be made. I also hope and suspect that this will lead to bigger and better things for ENWorld.

 

[Scotley]

Dice Roller - very nice to have and could be worth it for some subscribers. But than again, Invisible Castle offers the same thing for free with code to put on the message board to show your rolls.

I agree Invisible Castle does the job, but it requires use of another site that has occasional stability problems with a separate log in. It would be much smoother to have an integrated die roller here and it doesn't seem like it would be that complicated to do.

 

[Umbran]

The former is a promise, and the latter isn't. Considering that it's plain English, the distinction would only be lost on ... well, honestly, who cares who it would be lost on?

Jeff, these people are first and foremost members of this community. They are also either paying customers, or potential paying customers. If Morrus didn't care about their (and by inclusion your) opinions, this thread itself would not exist!

The basic reality is that some notable number of customers are not apt to react with such rational calm when disappointed. Even normally gracious people can react quite negatively when you let them down. That negativity can feed on itself and grow - this is how PR debacles are born.

 

[Oryan77]

Well, the idea is that we provide a much better functionality for finding games and gamers. In fact what we have planned (which will be free) is going to be pretty darn spiffy! Maps, events, etc. Youll be able to find everyone within X miles of you in a matter of seconds.

I must have been mistaken then. I thought the idea was to create a really nice Gamers Seeking Gamers functionality but making it available only to paid subscribers. If that's a free tool, that would be awesome. There is a lot of potential to making that free...it could bring in a lot more new visitors to ENworld.

One thing folks seem to be doing is concentrating soley on the "losing sigs" part of the plan.

It always sucks whenever you have something taken away from you regardless of getting something in return. For me, the reason is because I get more use out of my sigs and other people's sigs than I do most of the things that I may get in return. It also seems strange because sigs are such a standard feature for a forum. I'd also be making a big stink about the Search feature, but I just do a google search and can usually find the thread I was looking for. So I never bother to voice an opinion about that.

Ignoring subscriptions for the moment - assuming you're not a subscriber, and don't intend to be - you'd be losing sigs, but getting a crapload of really awesome stuff for free in return.

So then why exactly is a sig important enough to be taken away from the general public and made into a paid only feature if you're willing to give us all of this "awesome stuff for free"?

Allowing a non-subscriber the ability to send and receive private messages via an Inbox is ok, but sigs are important enough to pay for? Is the only reason you really want to eliminate the sig is so people like me can't advertise a measly website? That's the only logical explanation I can think of seeing as how many current subscribers have stated that they don't even care about sigs and paying for them is not a perk.

I've been creating all kinds of reference lists for 3.5 content in Excel and have already had people in the rules forum asking for it. I had planned to add it to my other resources that I have linked in my sig. I just can't figure out why a fan of RPGs like yourself would want to limit other people from providing useful gaming related content via links in their sigs unless you're making money from it.

I don't go actively looking for content very often at all. But I have noticed a crapload of sigs while I'm reading posts and clicked them before I finished reading the thread. But that's sure not something I'd be glad to be paying for. Taking it away is just an annoyance and makes me feel bullied into subscribing. Taking anything away seems like a form of bullying into subscribing.

 

[Oryan77]

If Morrus didn't care about their (and by inclusion your) opinions, this thread itself would not exist!

Lets be honest, he didn't start this thread to ask the community what we would think if he made these changes. He started this thread to tell us what changes he is going to make.