WotC, really? No...really? You can't maintain a publishing schedule?

[Hawke]

I get 100% of my articles via RSS feed (in fact, probably 80% of my browsing is via reader/rss) so I don't really mind too much.

The quality of the articles is more important, though I do say the changes in publishing schedules has been quite concerning to me. I'm paying for compendium access which includes new content, I haven't been happy with the new class/player content as much, so... uhh... what can I expect with the ramp down in content?

I know that VT is a big thing, but MapTool is far superior so far (even after doing the beta) and I don't think wotc is interested in adding the automation MT allows. I also suspect when they get some more of those tools out the door, wotc will up the price for the subscription.

I guess, I haven't been alarmist about this in the past and have been a happy subscriber, but if it was up to renew today I'd choose now and not 1% of that has to do with maintaining schedules.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Well, my main concern isn't that articles come out in a clump on Friday...or that there is not an obvious schedule that the customers can see.

My main concern is that this provides WotC with the opportunity to take the mags much less seriously, potentially producing less product and inferior product, with less of an overall vision for a given month of the magazine.

I may be naive in regards to e-publishing. I still don't understand why someone producing a professional magazine can't or, perhaps, wouldn't have their copy at a minimum of a week in advance, ready to go.


What I'm most concerned about (and why I wrote the "history" in the OP) is that this may be the beginning of a backslide to the "standards" they had when WotC first took over the mags.

I've already read several recent complaints about a decrease in quality and quantity (haven't verified those myself, but I have noted them). These were before the recent announcements where they have scaled back their own accountability with publishing dates and a monthly compilation.


If we see a further decrease in quantity and quality over the next 6 months, I will think my fears have been justified here. If not? Then maybe I'm tilting at windmills.

 

[shadzar]

I may be naive in regards to e-publishing. I still don't understand why someone producing a professional magazine can't or, perhaps, wouldn't have their copy at a minimum of a week in advance, ready to go.

It seems it may be the times a changing. Rather than people planning what to to when be it read or write something, they just rely on their phones to ring to tell them when something new is ready and just run amok throughout life.

Maybe people today don't care about professionalism in many things as much as convenience to just tell them when it is ready so they don't have to try to BE ready for it.

 

[Umbran]

My main concern is that this provides WotC with the opportunity to take the mags much less seriously, potentially producing less product and inferior product, with less of an overall vision for a given month of the magazine.

Any change gives WotC an opportunity to do worse. But it also gives them an opportunity to do better.

This change, for example, allows developers and writers to make better use of their time. With fixed schedules, meeting the schedule becomes more important than the quality of the final product. You end up with "death marches" and rushed work, because conflicting deadlines end up with people trying to do more work than they have hours in the day, and everything they work on suffers.

Remove the publicly announced deadline, and all of a sudden it isn't a tragedy if someone needs to take an extra day to polish up a piece. Conflicting deadlines can be resolved, nobody is as rushed, and overall quality can increase.

 

[shadzar]

Any change gives WotC an opportunity to do worse. But it also gives them an opportunity to do better.

This change, for example, allows developers and writers to make better use of their time. With fixed schedules, meeting the schedule becomes more important than the quality of the final product. You end up with "death marches" and rushed work, because conflicting deadlines end up with people trying to do more work than they have hours in the day, and everything they work on suffers.

Remove the publicly announced deadline, and all of a sudden it isn't a tragedy if someone needs to take an extra day to polish up a piece. Conflicting deadlines can be resolved, nobody is as rushed, and overall quality can increase.

Isn't that in part what professionalism is? The ability to make the deadlines?

Not that it is only the writer's fault, but the entire chain from deciding who to do it based on the remainder of their workload, but when they should reasonably be expected to get it done, turn it into the editors and/or playtesters, send it back tot he writer for needed changes, then back to the editors again to clean it up after the proper changes have been made.

Is isn't like he is not saying "Hey Bart Carroll, why can't you get your act together and write something on time?", but more, "Hey WotC why can't you work together in a meaningful fashion and get all these things done in a timely fashion?"

While it may mean less product, and even though the product is going through more proper testing, it still could be inferior as it is jsut thrown together. Not 17 years like Harry Potter time to write something, but still so much time that the energy making it is lost as it is done over too much time and focus could be lost.

If a deadline can't be made, then there is a break in the chain. Something or someone is backed up, someone isn't doing their job right, and things of that nature.

It is being considered now like a blog, in which you write when you feel like it, rather than write what needs to be written.

Again proper planning would give plenty of time for a schedule to be made, given to readers, and met.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Any change gives WotC an opportunity to do worse. But it also gives them an opportunity to do better.

This change, for example, allows developers and writers to make better use of their time. With fixed schedules, meeting the schedule becomes more important than the quality of the final product. You end up with "death marches" and rushed work, because conflicting deadlines end up with people trying to do more work than they have hours in the day, and everything they work on suffers.

Remove the publicly announced deadline, and all of a sudden it isn't a tragedy if someone needs to take an extra day to polish up a piece. Conflicting deadlines can be resolved, nobody is as rushed, and overall quality can increase.

Good points, but I'll also agree with Shadzar below you.


I don't mean to be obtuse about this, but I guess I can't really get my head around it.

My response to the highlighed section of your post is: Why doesn't WotC just have the product ready a month in advance? Use foresight, have a general plan on how your magazine will be produced, perhaps you could interlock it with other gaming releases thematically?

I don't see why everything you said couldn't be true with some foresight and some preparation. Writer needs an extra day? Ok! We have a month before this article is due out. You can miss our internal "soft" deadline! But we have hard deadlines too, and when we release the Table of Contents at the beginning of the month, the article darn well better have been in and proofed already, or you're not getting it published (or getting paid for it).

In addition to my other concerns this seems to indicate to me a lack of vision for the magazines as a whole (a whole magazine rather than a hodgepodge/collection of individual articles). Add the lack of hard deadlines to the lack of compilation, and this fear seems a bit more justified (not 100% or anything, but moreso).


I suppose, though, that some may say "it's inevitable" like how albums are not cohesive melodically thematic journeys...but collections of songs that you buy individually for 99 cents.

I'm not sure I agree with this though, due to the subscription format. Eventually, the producers of the product KNOW you get the full "album" or, in this case, magazine. If they wanted to put the artistry of theme and interrelatedness between articles, they could do so, and in the end people who wanted to read a whole mag could see such things.

 

[Umbran]

Isn't that in part what professionalism is? The ability to make the deadlines?

Honestly, I think real professionalism should include a more sophisticated view of deadlines than "Just make them". I'll get to why as I respond to someone else below.

My response to the highlighed section of your post is: Why doesn't WotC just have the product ready a month in advance?

I take it you don't work in a project-based environment?

Look at the world for a moment. Look at anything that's supposed to be "on time". Buses and airplanes. Theater performances. Appointments at the doctor's office. Things run late all the time.

I mean, really, who gets their holiday shopping done before Thanksgiving? Who is knocking on the door at 7:30 on the dot for every party? You run late yourself, don't you?

In a clockwork universe, we could plan completely, and everyone and everything would fall into lockstep, and everyone would have things done when you needed them, and you'd have them done when the next guy. But reality doesn't work that way. The old saw is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and it is 100% correct - and the enemy is reality.

It is demonstrable that humans are actually pretty phenomenally craptastic at estimating the time and amount of work required to complete tasks that take more than a single day - and the longer they take, the worse they are at estimating them. And, no matter how good and complete the plan, issues arise that weren't in the plan. And no matter what else is going on, someone will have a bright new idea, or have new information that needs to be factored in, or change their mind halfway through the plan.

We ask too much of our workers these days to have them reliably and properly execute everything we want them to do on-time. And the things they do are too complex for the plans and estimates for completion to be particularly accurate.

There's also human psychology to be considered. If you plan to have things done a month in advance, with full knowledge that you have a month worth of buffer time, you will simply then use that buffer time. You will find a half bazillion things of high value that crop up that you could use that time on, and you'll use it, because that's extra money in your wallet, or looking extra good on your performance review.

So, modern professionalism includes planning, but not typically for sake of creating "the plan that will be followed and on time gosh-darn-it". We plan because the act of planning is valuable - it helps us learn about what we are trying to do, and builds a frame work for our efforts. Then, we try hard to work by the plan, and when the plan fails (because it *will* fail) we have thought about how to handle the situation in the best manner we can.

 

[mudbunny]

In how many other magazines do we know, weeks ahead of time, when articles are going to be published? (serious question...)

In all of the magazines that i have ever subscribed to or purchased over the past couple of years, you find out what will be in the next isssue when you get the next issue. You have no idea how many articles were late, how many were not ready for the month or anything like that.

Now, that being said, WotC *did* set themselves up for this to happen from the start by posting what was going to go up and when.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

In how many other magazines do we know, weeks ahead of time, when articles are going to be published? (serious question...)

<snip>

Now, that being said, WotC *did* set themselves up for this to happen from the start by posting what was going to go up and when.

Well, just to pick two, but they're pretty relevant , the old dungeon and dragon in print did this. They told us what next month was going to be in the back of the magazine.

EDIT: Found another one (wanted to check first). Kobold Quarterly...THE in print D&D magazine also has a "next issue" list. (And that's a magazine that comes out every three months...talk about foresight and planning!)


Also, Mudbunny more personally, am I misremembering them NOT doing this from the start, and only beginning to do it after the community (including yourself and myself) rallied to get some accountability from them, waaay back when the mags were new (to WotC) and pretty sloppy?

 

[Eridanis]

Look at the world for a moment. Look at anything that's supposed to be "on time". Buses and airplanes. Theater performances. Appointments at the doctor's office. Things run late all the time.

True, but don't we think more highly of organizations that hold themselves to the schedule they set? Airlines that fly most of their flights on time have greater patronage than those that are usually tardy. When I stage manage a theatre show, the curtain darn well goes up at 8pm if we've advertised an 8pm start; I make sure that's so because I've planned and led the "team" to that goal.

In a clockwork universe, we could plan completely, and everyone and everything would fall into lockstep, and everyone would have things done when you needed them, and you'd have them done when the next guy. But reality doesn't work that way. The old saw is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and it is 100% correct - and the enemy is reality.

But in WotC's case, all you need to do is go to another gaming site that's one click away - on the same very same web server! - for a counterexample. WotC's Magic site is a model of what content should be for a gaming site. They have a schedule of writers who publish weekly articles exactly when they're promised. They offer scads of free material to inform customer/gamers and do it in a very professional, sleek and organized fashion. I don't play M:tG as often as I like, but I still buy cards and keep up with current sets, and their site encourages me to do so. They don't get as much money from me as they do from other, more regular players, but I buy cards with every new set. That's a consistent revenue stream.

Ever since the Dragon/Dungeon/DDI experiment began, I've hoped the D&D side would learn lessons from the M:tG side. I'm sad that they have not.