D&D 4E 4E PHB II & DMG II 1 year after release (and a new one every year after that)

[Lonely Tylenol]

Yes.

When I pay $120 or buy three books that contain PrC or monsters etc, I expect that I can use that book when ever I want to. So a year from now when I no longer want to pay WoTC their monthly subscription fee. What do I have to show for it? *snip*

You have the books you bought. Unless I've missed something entirely, the 4th edition is still going to be sold as hardcover books. The digital editions of these books will become available once you purchase the book and enter a code found therein. This will, I am led to believe, not require a DDI membership, but instead a nominal fee per book. If you wish to use the character generator, or other DDI tools, your registered books will be integrated with those tools.

So when you let your DDI membership lapse, you only lose access to the DDI tools, and still have access to the digital editions of the books. This is the way I've seen it described in the blog posts.

In any case, you will have purchased the books before you can unlock the digital editions, so you'd still have those even if WotC goes out of business and the DDI goes down.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You have the books you bought. ... In any case, you will have purchased the books before you can unlock the digital editions, so you'd still have those even if WotC goes out of business and the DDI goes down.

Yep. I'm really not sure where the "I can't play without DnDI!" is coming from. :\

 

[Mouseferatu]

What I disagree with is the fact that Devyn is talking about the trustworthiness or lack thereof of a company, a singular entity...and mouse seems to want to imply he is questioning the integrity of particular people.

Just for the record, I'm not "implying" that.

I'm stating it outright.

WotC isn't some monolithic, faceless entity. It may be part of a corporation, but it is not, in and of itself, a Corporation (capital C deliberate) of the sort that most people mean when they use the term. And the D&D brand isn't really even on Hasbro's radar, financially speaking.

When it comes to talking D&D, we are dealing with these people as individuals, at least as much as we're dealing with them as parts of a "larger entity." So yes, any statement that "WotC is lying" is, by definition, a statement that each and every one of these individuals is lying.

Now, I never once said the people making these claims should be banned. I'm not trying to sic the mods on them. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to address the issue, as an individual, as I see fit.

For a long time, people were complaining about the lack of communication from WotC. Now that we're getting it, a subset of of us refuse to take anything they say at face value. There's no way for them to win.

 

[variant]

I don't want to pay for the same content twice. For example if I own the hardbound book, I don't want to have to purchase the same damn book again to use it on my online games. Plus paying for any digital content is retarded because if something happens as the online service isn't profitable, you'll lose it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

For the record, because I know someone's going to make an issue of it...

I'm not claiming that WotC isn't a corporate business. I'm not claiming that they won't do what they (reasonably) can to turn a profit. And I'm not an idiot; I know full well that business plans can change, and that sometimes people in a business have to hold back info, or prevaricate.

My point, though, is that we're dealing with real people who are part of that. People who have, to date, given us no reason to doubt their veracity, and who have gone out of their way--and above and beyond the call of their actual duties--to communicate with us. To simply assume they're lying from the get-go is both unjustified and non-conducive to any sort of meaningful discussion of the coming edition.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I don't want to pay for the same content twice. For example if I own the hardbound book, I don't want to have to purchase the same damn book again to use it on my online games.

You don't have to. The e-book copies of the hardcover books are there for convenience. But they're not, as I understand the plan, tied in any way to the online tabletop.

Plus paying for any digital content is retarded because if something happens as the online service isn't profitable, you'll lose it.

Unless you've, you know, downloaded any of it.

It's the digital age. The quantity of online/electronic/digital product is only going to grow--not just in RPGs, but in almost every field imaginable. Claiming that all of it should be free is simply not rational.

 

[Imaro]

I don't want to pay for the same content twice. For example if I own the hardbound book, I don't want to have to purchase the same damn book again to use it on my online games. Plus paying for any digital content is retarded because if something happens as the online service isn't profitable, you'll lose it.

I believe it's been stated that there will be a "nominal" fee to get the downloads from your book code. Take that as you will, I find it kind of shady.

I mean it's not like you didn't buy the book already. Now I believe that they've also stated it'll be like a dollar to get your downloads(independent of your actual subscription) and for some reason this dollar is charged, because it costs to make the PDF of the book and somehow(I'm not exactly sure how.) it's suppose to discourage someone from stealing the codes out of the book and using them without purchasing it. I see a dollar as, individually, not much...but when you add up a dollar from even half of the total people who purchase a PHB...it's alot of revenue for essentially a duplicate e-version of a product you already purchased, and it's on top of the subscription if you have it. IMHO it should really be free to those who purchased the book, even if you have to e-mail them the code from a valid address or something to confirm. I look to Paizo(a much smaller company) who is doing this for those that subscribe to their Pathfinder product and wonder why WotC can't.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I believe it's been stated that there will be a "nominal" fee to get the downloads from your book code. Take that as you will, I find it kind of shady.

I mean it's not like you didn't buy the book already.

How is it "shady" at all? You paid for the book, you got the book. With most companies, that's the end of the transaction.

I have hundreds of D20 books. If I want PDF copies of most of them, I need to buy those separately, because they're separate products.

So WotC is saying, "Hey, we're offering you an extra for a nominal fee." That's not shady; that's just a deal they're offering.

Sure, a few companies offer free PDFs as bonus. That's excellent of them, and sure, it'd be cool if WotC did the same. But failure to offer a benefit that someone else offers isn't in any way, shape, or form dishonest. Whether it's good business is an entirely different issue, of course, but that's not the question at hand.

 

[Glyfair]

Sure, a few companies offer free PDFs as bonus.

And, the companies that do this aren't doing it for free. They are adding those expenses to the cost of the book, regardless of whether you want to use it or not. WotC, on the other hand, is only charging those who want to use that extra content.

 

[Aristotle]

I, personally, agree with mousey... but I think it's time to agree to disagree or create a dedicated thread? Just a suggestion.