Yes, and it was stable, as stable as it could be before it was getting hit by hundreds of people at a time from a dozen different browsers on a dozen different operating systems.
And the original CB was only "more stable" because it had gone through the initial instability phase.
You're missing the point.
Subscribers had a good working tool that has abruptly and unexpectedly been replaced (after misleading statements about updates to the CB and MB re: Essentials and Darksun) by a
poor, barely-working tool. The old tool is no longer supported, even though it appears that it is the 'egg' that grew into the CBv2, and the new tool does not do its job well enough to match the old tool yet.
It doesn't matter a dingo's kidneys whether the new tool is better
eventually. Right now, people are mad because they feel like they traded in a running car for a bicycle with two flats.
The worst part (imho) is that the launch of the new tool was talked up (for the short time between the announcement and launch) as if it had no problems and was ready to roll out, but very clearly it wasn't. It's like a car without anything above 2nd gear, a speedometer or door handles. Yes, you can make it work, but what a pain in the ass!
I've gotta have some sympathy when the protests are about a software delay of a month or two. This ain't entirely the world of adaptable humans. One line of conflicting css, one file error carried through the workflow or one character of Javascript out of place and the code can unravel. Creating the 'damned if you do, . . .' conundrum.
Do you quality test at every step and slow development to a crawl without more staff, or do you go for it.
Yeah, but where's the gain for WotC in releasing the new CB this much before it was ready?
Releasing a piece of software that is vastly inferior to what it is replacing is probably not the best choice. It doesn't inspire people to keep buying your products, for one thing. The perception of the quality of your offerings is very important; if customers think your stuff sucks, they will go elsewhere. (There's a lot of chatter about other VTTs right now, for instance.) When you replace a good tool with a poor one, you may well lose customers, and certainly you'll trigger outrage. If two goals of business are 1. to generate new customers and 2. to keep old customers, this seems like a lose on both counts.
If it's all about piracy,
it still doesn't matter, because people scan the books the day they come out, sometimes even sooner. I really agree with those positing that the management forced a deadline for some kind of anti-piracy 'reforms' to DDI and the software guys had no choice; but really, I'm talking out my butt here. I don't have any way of knowing. And don't get me wrong, I sympathize with WotC on the piracy issue here; if that is really the motivation behind this rushed-out thing, then
they still should have waited until it was ready before pulling support for CBv1.
This is just such a blunder for WotC. With their rep for screwing up electronic offerings, they should have kept the good thing they had going until they were truly, truly ready with the web version. They should have known that anything less than a great launch would be met with exactly the kind of nerd rage that we've seen. I truly hope they can fine-tune the online CB into usability, and fast! I want to renew my annual sub when it comes up, but it's really going to depend on the quality of tools available by then (I think March or something?). If I'm asked to pay the same amount of money for less utility than I was getting before, with the offline CB and MB, then... well, I don't think I'll be able to justify it. I have the v1 tools on my hard drive already. What's the point of keeping my sub going if the new CB doesn't seriously kick butt, there isn't a live MB tool that works or there isn't any better content in the mags? Aargh.
