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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 4804564" data-attributes="member: 11697">WotC spent an insane amount of money on Gleemax and the still vaporware portions of the originally promised DDI lineup. They appear to have fewer developers now than developed any of that material, or even developed the character builder, and are currently under a Hasbro mandated hiring freeze. The current people remaining on staff after the announced (and non-announced) layoffs have to continue to do updates on the CB and compendium on top of anything new. Only one developer remains on staff who was involved in any capacity with Radiant Machine (the outsourcing design studio who did the original work on the VTT). Given the status of the VTT, which in the opinion of one of those in-house developers I've spoken with would be best served by being scrapped and re-coded from scratch, IMO its not likely to be seen till late 2011 or 2012. And that's assuming that in light of having already broken the bank on the original outsourcing, WotC still feels it's worth the investment to actually finish it and release it years down the line.As for the Visualizer, again they've spent a ton of money already, and it was already getting hammered for its visual quality in the preview images. Well, the art pipeline hasn't been active for a while, so any new models and artwork for it either won't happen, or will take more time and money to work on. So WotC is faced with either putting out a product that only covers the year 1 core material for 4e, or spending more money to add features. Again, I have to wonder if they'll decide to not release it at all, rather than release a product that might look cheap or substandard or dated, or require a ton of further investment. The revenue it would bring in might not offset the bad PR in that first instance, or the investment required in the second. I think this one will either be swept under the rug deeper than it already has been, or released to much criticism sometime in late 2010 or so.I think the ship has already sailed on the programs they initially promised, and they're better off cutting their losses and letting them die in a void of no new news. They've already been scoured from the DDI pages, and unless specifically asked, nobody even mentions them any more. I increasingly suspect that WotC's phrase of "No longer under active development" is in line with the gulag-era "Imprisoned without right of correspondence". They both rather mean the same thing without coming out and saying it.</blockquote>

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