CMP: On its way out?

[MojoGM]

I think what he meant was could you please start your own thread to talk about PC GEN and all its little intricacies, as this one was started to talk about CMP and the delay of RPG Forge...

 

[Zulithe]

It's a real shame, losing their license like that. CMP had more than ample time to get a product out the door. 80% code rewrite that far into development? That's pure mismanagement. Good luck to you CMP, whatever you do. Learn from your mistakes.

I eagerly await what WotC plans to do with its license now.

 

[Steel_Wind]

To Robert Reed and all of those who helped build CMP,

I was sad to read more of your troubles. I am as well positioned as perhaps anyone to understand some of what you are going through.

Making computer applicaitons for the hobby game market is 90% an act of faith and 10% willfully blind arithmetic. Sometimes the end user has a very hard time understanding that - but I do.

I appreciated your products, your profesisonalism and the very difficult task you took on after Fluid left the original e-tools in a precarious code state.

I enjoyed meeting you last GenCon and will look forward to reading about the fruits of your current labours in the future.

If it helps: I imaging when Peter Adkinson had a certain RPG accessory blocked from being released, he probably thought it was among the worst days of his life too.

It only became clear - much later - that it was, in fact, the best day of his life. He just didn't know it.

Life can be like that. Hang in there.

 

[iwarrior-poet]

I think what he meant was could you please start your own thread to talk about PC GEN and all its little intricacies, as this one was started to talk about CMP and the delay of RPG Forge...

Exactly.

 

[Steel_Wind]

It is painful to watch this happen to a company I had very, very high hopes for.

That's funny. Up until Mynex's quote - you appeared to be ghoulishly cheering on their deaths whilst eating popcorn and insulting them.

And if you weren't - let's make no mistake about it: that is PRECISELY how you came off.

 

[iwarrior-poet]

That's funny. Up until Mynex's quote - you appeared to be ghoulishly cheering on their deaths whilst eating popcorn and insulting them.

And if you weren't - let's make no mistake about it: that is PRECISELY how you came off.

It may have appeared that way, but that is not what I felt. I was never hoping that CMP would perish. I still don't---though to be honest I don't think they will recover and I doubt RPGF will see the light of day (let alone the dataset transfer software that would make it all worth the wait). All I have ever hoped for is that CMP would either produce its product within a responsive time frame---or if not---be very clear about the reasons for missed deadlines. I felt that if CMP was not going to be honest about its current state---than somebody should. That is why I started this thread. When Mynex finally posted his address on the CMP website, it went a long way to addressing many of my concerns/criticisms---hence my change in tone.

What you picked up on was my frustration at CMP's numerous blown promises and scraped "potential" release dates (for both RPGF and datasets), in addition to its lack of sincerity in addressing concerns/criticisms about forthcoming products.

I spent over $200 on CMP datasets for PCGen----largely on the belief that I would be able to trade them in when RPGF came on the scene (which the folks at CMP made it seem was always just around the corner...)
So when CMP/WoTC (I blame both) blew this for me and numerous others---I was pretty darn upset.

Even worse, CMP initially tried to insist it had never promised the trade-in. This was probably what escalated my frustration almost past the point of no return. Not only did CMP go back on a very important promise---but they tried to insist they had never made it in the first place... Horrendous. Someone more savvy than me used some sort of technique to call up the previous CMP web page ("way-back machine"---or something like it) that clearly outlined the dataset exchange agreement that CMP had promised, disproving CMP's denial of the deal.

On the plus side, CMP's customer support for problems with purchased datasets has been excellent, and I have always said as much.

I may have ranted at times, but CMP's lack of credibility and relationship building with loyal customers was infuriating to me and others. So I voiced my opinion.

 

[DethStryke]

Someone more savvy than me used some sort of technique to call up the previous CMP web page ("way-back machine"---or something like it) that clearly outlined the dataset exchange agreement that CMP had promised, disproving CMP's denial of the deal.

http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html

One of the best tools available on the internet for finding those lost pages! Type in the address of the website in question, and many times their crawlers have hit it and archived the website in question, sometimes at many times per year. I've found old, long-since broken bookmarks and salvaged D&D tools/information that I had thought was gone forever!

I have the Wayback machine installed in Firefox's quick search selection.

 

[iwarrior-poet]

And CMP's website is down again...

 

[iwarrior-poet]

Still down...

 

[lonejedi]

Though I will grant that it's intriguing how the site was up for a while after the server was totally reformatted and now it's gone again... Wouldn't you rather spend your time playing a game, or at least moving on to some other software, rather than wasting it obsessing over CMP?