Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[DennisB]

Finnaly, someone has a valid explanation of my topics instead of just slamming what i have to say. that i can understand and as long as wizards accept responsability for there lack of releasing said products

 

[mudbunny]

I think that they have. I also think that they are committed to releasing the various tools on their schedule. And their current schedule is "it will be released when it is ready". Is as much information being released as a lot of people (incluing, I am sure, a lot of WotC staffers) would like to see? No. But I think that is a result of them getting burnt with the tools not being released with the release of 4E. I think that the level of communication *will* eventualy increase, it will just take some time.

{Disclaimer, I am VCL for the DDI forums, and am fairly optimistic about the future of DDI and the tools)

 

[DennisB]

Like i said, it is just disapointing that it is still a year after the initial release date and there is not even a beta version out.

 

[mudbunny]

From my discussion swith WotC Community Management, they are disappointed as well. However they are now, lilke I mentioned above, looking more at getting a great program out when it is ready, as opposed to an OK program out now. If the upcoming tools show the skill and polish of the Compendium and Character Builder, I think it will be worth the wait.

 

[DennisB]

I hope so.

This PDF thing to me was the icing on the cake for me, and no I will not be buying the hard copies, i was keeping up with the releases in PDF and if they do decide to strat releasing the PDF's again, i dont think i can catch up with the releases, i was looking forward to the arcane and divine powers handbooks but i guess i will be living with dissapointment as well as wizards of the coast, because I will not try to catch up when they do release them back to PDF so in turn, they have lost a costomer for life.

I will just be playing with the materials i have.

 

[Obryn]

IT is a crime to sell the books at $40 a piece, $20 is a reasonable price and my god, $100 for a deck of cards, cards that are ugly as hell, are generalized, and just plain out suck, they need to go to jail for robbery.

If they went to your wallet and took the money, that is robbery.

If they put a product on the market that is more expensive than you would like, you have the option not to buy it and have not been robbed.

they took the idea of the cards from the players that worked so hard to design the cards on here. They did all the work and then Wizards tells them to stop so they can make the money from there idea. That is plain out wrong.

There were power card templates in the original character sheet packet, and power cards used by playtesters. Power cards were not invented by the community.

2) The stopping of the PDF Versions of there books is also wrong.

I think it's a questionable business decision, but casting it as a moral issue is iffy at best.

-O

 

[Imban]

I think that the level of communication *will* eventualy increase, it will just take some time.

Bollocks. We'll either get a longwinded explanation out of the blue of everything that went wrong explaining why it had to be cancelled, or they'll release it out of the blue and then probably hike the DDI subscription price like they said they would back before these things started their coming out never.

I think we will likely see the tools eventually, and expect all of them except the Game Table to be well-received, but the "level of communication" is not going to increase.

 

[DennisB]

By the time they do release them, 5th edition will be released

 

[Shemeska]

Except no-one has paid for the Visualizer or Game Table yet.

Except some people are subscribing to the DDI before their release on the assumption that they'll be out eventually in order to lock into the current pricing scheme. In fact I seem to remember this being a selling point for longer subscriptions along the lines of 'Buy now and lock in this low low price long term so you'll save money if the price goes up as more features are rolled out.'

The longer WotC doesn't say anything about the status of the various bits of vaporware for the DDI, they're still locking in people for up to a year of subscription payments by the implication that by paying for that subscription they'll save money in the event that vaporware actually gets released at which point the subscription prices would presumably get raised.

They might have completely stopped development on the VTT, Visualizer, and Dungeon Builder, but so long as they don't make any announcement, they stand to benefit financially based on earlier promises, even if they never get realized. Based on that alone, they really do owe it to people to state definatively if any of those projects are even still in development. They don't have to provide estimates for release, but just an admission if they have or have not cancelled them. And it needs to be addressed in public, by the people in charge of the DDI, not secondhand by volunteers who might have heard something by someone inside WotC who isn't remotely part of those projects.

 

[Maggan]

'Buy now and lock in this low low price long term so you'll save money if the price goes up as more features are rolled out.'

And after that, they've released the Character Builder and expanded the Rules Compendium.

So they're already adding to the content, without charging long-term subscribers more.

/M