D&D: Insider Tools - will they succeed?

[BASHMAN]

You forgot my biggest concern:

a) it's a subscription model
b) it will be bundled with the digital Dragon and Dungeon magazines - this means they will price it beyond the point where people who only want the digital tools are willing to pay.

QFT-- if you pay for it, it will only encourage them to have that girl write more Confessions of a part time witch stuff about 4th grade teachers and wanting to date her DM... Maybe if nobody buys it, they'll stop giving her money.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

QFT-- if you pay for it, it will only encourage them to have that girl write more Confessions of a part time witch stuff about 4th grade teachers and wanting to date her DM... Maybe if nobody buys it, they'll stop giving her money.

I'd rather pay for that than pay for about half the crud in the Paizo Dragons. YMMV

Edit: The other half was Really GOOD!

 

[Mercule]

I'd rather pay for taht than pay for about half the crud in the Paizo Dragons. YMMV

Oh, come on. We could get more Downer. I've reread that thing twice, now and still can't figure out the plot. Of course, it doesn't help that the artwork makes it hard to tell any given character from a chunk of rock.

 

[Scribble]

Yes. It was abandoned. It's been repeatedly stated that it's been abandoned.

Unfortunately, I'm in the camp that thinks that the VTT is going to have some serious problems. I want it to work, but, I think that it won't. Bundling the VTT to the subscription is a serious mistake. The VTT allows people to game who may not be able to currently and allows those who can to game even more.

More people gaming=more books being sold.

Make the VTT free and people will use it. The more people that use it and game regularly, the more interested they'll be in buying a physical book and getting the bennies from unlocking that book in the VTT.

Tying it to Dungeon and Dragon is a bad idea. There's loads of people who might want to game, but, do all of them want to read Dungeon and/or Dragon? Why would I pay 120 bucks a year to use a VTT when there are fantastic VTT programs already out there for half that or even free?

I'm not understanding this idea.

System Integration.

Once everything is out and ready thats the thing that will push the DDI above the freebies and one time fee programs.

A new feat/class/rule/item/spell/gizmo hits Dragon? (whamo) it'll be available in the DDI is my guess. One click add to the character/encounter generators.

Same is true for the various books they sell. One click and you have the rules ready to use. The standalone 3rd party stuff requires you to enter in stuff by hand.

Same is true for the adventures in Dungeon.

A cool adventure hits Dungeon... Log onto DDI find people who want to play and you have a game going. Easy as that.

Want to go even quicker? Grab some characters already made in the character vaults.

Also as they said before, they are trying to create a "community." Almost like a 24/7 convention. They aren't trying to create a suite of programs."

 

[The Little Raven]

Other free apps (like Skype conference calling) replace a lot of functionality and aren't tied to any ruleset.

Neither the game table, nor the chat interface have any interaction with rules. It's been verified that you will be able to use them for any roleplaying game you desire.

 

[The Little Raven]

I would love for you to be right and me to be proven wrong... BUT I actually have a second word for you that I think makes my case even more iron clad: GLEEMAX!

One wonders what you use to determine a website to be a failure? Statistics? Web traffic? Ranking? A point supported by facts?

So far they are 0 for 2 and the next fastball is rapidly approaching.

If I want to look at their track record for commissioning software of this nature, I look at the only real product that has been put together for this: Magic Online, which is a hugely successful product (30%-50% of Wizard's total Magic business).

Gleemax is ranked higher than ENWorld, and has showed higher traffic (up to three times) since the 4e announcement. If we're going by any kind of objective scale, then Gleemax is far more successful than ENWorld.

But something tells me that some people here classify a failure as "I don't like it."

 

[AWizardInDallas]

D&D: Insider Tools - will the succeed?

I think their online subscription model will ultimately fail for the following reasons:

1. Wizards is assuming that most gamers are also computer geeks which isn't the case. It would be interesting to know what the general percentage is and I wonder if they did any market research before making this move.

2. Wizards has a poor track record as far as producing useful software for D&D goes. Third party companies are better at it.

3. Wizards has been away from the publishing business for a while, having outsourced Dungeon and Dragon magzaines to Paizo which turned out to be a good move. Taking these back in house is a step backward.

4. The best content doesn't necessarily come from Wizards.

5. As someone already said, Wizards has a short attention span, basically that of a TV executive.

6. The navigation on the Wizard's site pretty much stinks as does personalization, which is an indication of how they might dis-organize online content.

7. Wizards isn't willing to invest the dollars in server infrastructure and serious enterprise-level development resources it would take to really grab today's very demanding gamers.

 

[The Little Raven]

1. Wizards is assuming that most gamers are also computer geeks which isn't the case. It would be interesting to know what the general percentage is and I wonder if they did any market research before making this move.

Well, it worked for Magic Online, which accounts for 30-50% of their Magic business now. I think they know what they're doing far more than you do (or anyone else on this forum for that matter).

2. Wizards has a poor track record as far as producing useful software for D&D goes. Third party companies are better at it.

This is 100% correct, just as saying "Miramax Pictures has a poor track record for publishing successful books" is 100% correct. However, both are predicated upon the fallacy of judging a company's track record on products they don't produce.

Last time I checked, Fluid and Code Monkey were not a part of Wizards in any way, shape, or form. But hey, if you want to place the blame on Wizards for third-party developers failing, don't let things like logic stop you.

3. Wizards has been away from the publishing business for a while, having outsourced Dungeon and Dragon magzaines to Paizo which turned out to be a good move. Taking these back in house is a step backward.

...

Are you honestly saying that Wizards, the number one publisher of RPG books and material, has been away from the publishing business? Did you fail to notice the large number of published books that they've put out?

5. As someone already said, Wizards has a short attention span, basically that of a TV executive.

Yeah, real short attention span. That's why they make stupid decisions like purchasing a needlepoint distributor or setting up a west coast office in a high-price castle... oh wait, that was TSR. For a company that supposed has the attention span of a 4-year-old with ADD, they've been going solid with the same strategy for Magic for almost 15 years now.

6. The navigation on the Wizard's site pretty much stinks as does personalization, which is an indication of how they might dis-organize online content.

If my 9-year-old niece has no problem navigating Wizards' site, then I think the problem isn't with the site.

7. Wizards isn't willing to invest the dollars in server infrastructure and serious enterprise-level development resources it would take to really grab today's very demanding gamers.

Oh really? What do you call Magic Online, then?

Oh wait, don't want any facts to interfere with your position, do we?

 

[carmachu]

One wonders what you use to determine a website to be a failure? Statistics? Web traffic? Ranking? A point supported by facts?

Slow. Hard to navigate. Or find anything. Frustrating to use. And ugly. Those things are a huge turnoffs.

And the most heard complaints.

If I want to look at their track record for commissioning software of this nature, I look at the only real product that has been put together for this: Magic Online, which is a hugely successful product (30%-50% of Wizard's total Magic business).

Gleemax is ranked higher than ENWorld, and has showed higher traffic (up to three times) since the 4e announcement. If we're going by any kind of objective scale, then Gleemax is far more successful than ENWorld.

But something tells me that some people here classify a failure as "I don't like it."

You know, I keep hearing that. And its great that magic online is successful.

But thats not the DI. In the realm of D&D, wotc has had not a great deal of success. And different uses....ones I say that is perhaps greater than magic online(I'll admit, I assume you just play magic online by its description, as I dont play).

Consider how much different DDI is going to be.

 

[The Little Raven]

Slow. Hard to navigate. Or find anything. Frustrating to use. And ugly. Those things are a huge turnoffs.

And the most heard complaints.

Yet, it gets three times the traffic as ENWorld. The objective metric used for success is ranking and net traffic. I mean, I could say that Yahoo is a failure because I don't like it's search algorithms, it's webpage layout, or the advertisers it uses. However, I'd be wrong since it's the number one site on the internet, which makes it a success.

In the realm of D&D, wotc has had not a great deal of success.

I don't see anyone having success in that field, but I do see the number one RPG producer in the world making a concerted effort to commission a high quality product, which we actually saw in alpha a couple months back.

And different uses....ones I say that is perhaps greater than magic online(I'll admit, I assume you just play magic online by its description, as I dont play).

More uses, not just different ones. The DI looks as though it will provide everything Magic Online provides and more.

Consider how much different DDI is going to be.

A community-based software suite that focuses on new material and play access for online gamers. That's just like Magic Online, except because of the nature of D&D, there is far more potential for more content.