DRM issues aside... I thought potential DTRPG vendors might be interested in Jane Random Gamer's first user experience with DTRPG.
We have cable modem. When I tried to get through to the DTRPG site this morning, I kept timing out. I finally got through to the site tonight. It took nine seconds for *anything* to appear on their page. The full page load took substantially longer. (By contrast, RPG Now's page took six seconds for text to appear, and finished loading all those graphics in about 20 seconds. And the RPG Now page has some indication that the page is actually loading. When reloading the front page from cache, DTRPG takes four seconds to get rid of the blank screen. RPG Now takes one second before the header pops up.)
And then the links...
I clicked through to the privacy policy. It's very short. In fact, it's too short. Has anyone received any information regarding the privacy issues raised in post #1 of this thread?
Next up was the "forum response" page. Again, the responses are too short. For example: "You may put these book [sic] on any computer you own." Call me paranoid, but I've been wordsmithing long enough that I noticed they never say you can *use* the *PDFs* on any computer you own. We've already read a case of how one person was unable to use the DRM'd PDFs on a network-disabled computer. And any machine that cannot run Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0+ is a no-go when it comes to DRM.
And then there were the first set of product links. Starting with the "hot item of the month", I present the links and the pages they really went to:
Gehenna --> Dark Ages Fae
Children of the Rune --> works!
Grimm --> works!
"Free Download Exalted" --> All Flesh Must Be Eaten (not free)
"Free Download d20 Gamma World" --> Bushido (not free)
Big Eyes Small Mouth --> "Welcome, Please Sign In" (login page!)
Screwing up four out of the first six product links does NOT inspire confidence in a potential buyer! My first thought was along the lines of "They got four out of six important front page links wrong...how likely am I to get the PDF that I order?"
Further, since the two free download links both go to other (purchase required!) product pages, I can't test whether the DRM PDFs will work for me.
I'd thought of letting the webmaster know about the broken links, like I would for any other company. But then, when I hit the "Contact Us" link, I got the following message:
"The connection was refused by DriveThruRPG.com".
My initial thought response to that: "Fine. I will refuse to buy from DriveThruRPG.com."
We have cable modem. When I tried to get through to the DTRPG site this morning, I kept timing out. I finally got through to the site tonight. It took nine seconds for *anything* to appear on their page. The full page load took substantially longer. (By contrast, RPG Now's page took six seconds for text to appear, and finished loading all those graphics in about 20 seconds. And the RPG Now page has some indication that the page is actually loading. When reloading the front page from cache, DTRPG takes four seconds to get rid of the blank screen. RPG Now takes one second before the header pops up.)
And then the links...
I clicked through to the privacy policy. It's very short. In fact, it's too short. Has anyone received any information regarding the privacy issues raised in post #1 of this thread?
Next up was the "forum response" page. Again, the responses are too short. For example: "You may put these book [sic] on any computer you own." Call me paranoid, but I've been wordsmithing long enough that I noticed they never say you can *use* the *PDFs* on any computer you own. We've already read a case of how one person was unable to use the DRM'd PDFs on a network-disabled computer. And any machine that cannot run Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0+ is a no-go when it comes to DRM.
And then there were the first set of product links. Starting with the "hot item of the month", I present the links and the pages they really went to:
Gehenna --> Dark Ages Fae
Children of the Rune --> works!
Grimm --> works!
"Free Download Exalted" --> All Flesh Must Be Eaten (not free)
"Free Download d20 Gamma World" --> Bushido (not free)
Big Eyes Small Mouth --> "Welcome, Please Sign In" (login page!)
Screwing up four out of the first six product links does NOT inspire confidence in a potential buyer! My first thought was along the lines of "They got four out of six important front page links wrong...how likely am I to get the PDF that I order?"
Further, since the two free download links both go to other (purchase required!) product pages, I can't test whether the DRM PDFs will work for me.
I'd thought of letting the webmaster know about the broken links, like I would for any other company. But then, when I hit the "Contact Us" link, I got the following message:
"The connection was refused by DriveThruRPG.com".
My initial thought response to that: "Fine. I will refuse to buy from DriveThruRPG.com."
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