D&D to become entirely online?

[2WS-Steve]

At the rate the DDI is progressing I'll be playing MMO's on my Wii-holodeck before D&D is wholly online!

 

[xechnao]

The guy doesn't know jack. You don't spend a few million dollars designing, promoting, and printing paper books if you're going to move the game entirely online. If you're creating an online game, you build, market, and sell an online game.

But the game was supposed to be moved online. It is designed like this. Regarding printing, they do sell books now and make profits so why wouldn't they print? Besides now is not the right timing -even if the design is there- for the tabletop fan base to not print books. It would be a disaster. When and if the fan base is ready and they are ready they will probably move online. I doubt the plausibility of this "if" becoming a reality myself though.

From what I saw Gamespy was to front page titles of a DDI review series beginning from launch day. But we know how things went...

 

[Umbran]

An acquaintance claims to be a freelance game designer and discuss things frequently with several WotC staff members. He claims that there's a move within WotC to transition D&D completely to subscription based play, because the online M:tG is doing better than the card version and that WotC is losing money on printed materials, so they plan to shift D&D's business model to follow Magic's. He cites the "The future of gaming is online" statements to be foreshadowing this, and that all of 4E, DDI and the GSL is designed to slowly move everything online.

Well, maybe there is a "move". I am not an insider who could definitively say otherwise, however...

WotC has clearly shown that its software arm is nowhere near up to snuff for such a movement. The tools do not exist currently, and WotC has had problems just getting their forums and online magazines into acceptable states.

If they want to try this right now, it'd be an abysmal failure. If they spend a decade making themselves into a solid software house, they might have a chance.

 

[tenkar]

Are they looking to get a piece of the MMORPG pie? Definitely.

Are they anywhere close to the ability to get more then a crumb of that pie in the next 12 months? I doubt it.

Role playing is still a social event that takes place around tables... even those that might play using a virtual table top (like me) prefer to game in person. I don't see that trend changing anytime soon.

 

[eyebeams]

I'm sure it's contingency plan #21 or something, but I would phrase it more as,

"If the new edition of D&D fails to have any long term legs, we'll push DI to get as many people to transition as possible, run it for cheap and use it to market to the lead niche for anything else we do with the brand."

It all depends on how the game does.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I hope and expect that D&D will move completely online within 10 years. It'll be an MMORPG with user generated content, a pnp game but with graphics and 24/7 accessibility. What's not to like?

 

[CountPopeula]

There is already a D&D MMORPG. My ex-girlfriend used to play it... she might still, I don't know. What I do know is that it launched with 12 servers, it now has 5. My battlegroup in WoW has more than 12 servers, and I think there's more than 12 battlegroups.

The problem D&D is going to have breaking into the online world is it's not competitive. When I look at the content DDI offers, even if any of it worked when it was supposed to, even if it supported my platform, even if all 3d minis were free and there were minis for every monster in every book they published and I could design an unlimited number of different styles based on clothes and such... it's not worth as much as I pay for WoW. And implementing the rules as an online game... to me, 5 servers suggests less than 10K players overall. WoW has millions of players.

The fact is, WoW is a lot like D&D. Not in a "oh, 4e is like a video game way" but in a "this is a fantasy-based game that incorporates large amounts of european and Tolkienian trappings" way.

The MMORPG that unseats WoW is going to have to offer something that World of Warcraft doesn't, because Warcraft is a far more powerful brand name than "Dungeons and Dragons," so brand loyalty is out. It would need to offer something WoW doesn't that a significant number of people want.

Is it true this is their plan? I doubt it. But the World of Warcraft miniatures game probably has them feeling pretty threatened.

 

[Doug McCrae]

he's a liar and his debate tactics when discussing it is basically to say one thing, and then when it's refuted change it ever so slightly so he can claim he's still right.

I would advise smacking him upside the head with a copy of Ptolus.

Here's a dead tree publication for ya!

 

[Foundry of Decay]

While I can't say for certainty if this is truth or not, I know that in my case I would outright abandon anything released under this model.

Subscription based would be hard to adhere to from a gamer standpoint. I have problems just getting my players to agree to a day to game once a month let alone on a regular basis. Seeing as one player doesn't really do the internet thing playing online exclusively would be out of the question (and utterly lazy. We're all within 20 min. of one another).

But having me pay $15 USD/month for a glimmering hope at playing once a month? That's just not going to happen.

And If the folks at Hasbro/Wizards thought piracy of their product was rampant before? Just wait until those same pirates crack the 'DRM' and copy and paste whole volumes digitally for people to peruse at their leisure.

So I'd hope that its unlikely. I know that anything is possible these days though and its hard to say just what the vision of a company is. I would hope that they don't rampage down the path of insanity that is subscription based gaming.

 

[Khairn]

You don't spend millions of dollars designing, promoting, and printing paper books if you're going to move a game line entirely to the web. If you're creating an online game, you build, market, and sell an online game. At this point there is nothing to indicate that the DDI is anything other than a support option for printed products and plenty to suggest that Hasbro would be the most horribly managed company on earth if you friend's claims had any merit.

The point is not that 4E will become a primarily "online" game. That product has already been designed and launched in a paper format.

But given the financial benefits that a successful online gaming vehicle with a subscription based payment structure would provide, I cannot see WotC not building it into their future business strategies. Based on the admittedly cracked view I have in my crystal ball, I can easily see how the DDI will be analyzed and used as a first step in that direction.

The real value of the game is not based on the success of the rule system it uses or in the gamers that sit around tables or at computer screens playing it. Its the D&D brand itself and the marketing power that it leverages. WotC as a company is charged with maximizing that value and generating profit from it. If they can figure out a way to get players to accept a purely online format, does anyone honestly feel that they wouldn't make that change?