DDi News

[Simplicity]

It's your choice to make obviously, but is it really a good comparison?

Xbox live can afford a lower subscription rate due to ammount of subscribers.
My Men's Health subscription has always been less expensive then a subscription to dragon magazine, and the magazine is thicker to boot. More people subscribe to men's Health then Dragon, and the magazine can also charge more for ad space and such.

Yeah, I understand that. Niche products cost more. Fine. I've been paying through my nose for D&D stuff for a while now. I'm used to it.

The Rules Compendium is useful... Once there's more stuff out. Right now, they have this ONE BOOK that pretty much has the same details in a nice interface.

The Beta Character Generator: (A) I'm not sure why I need it? I've got a party. They've generated their PCs already. And NPCs don't follow PC generation any more. So... Umm... I'm good there. (B) I don't even know how good it's going to be. (C) It's going to be beta. For a while. It's clear they're not going to fast on this stuff.

Dragon and Dungeon: I like the DRAGON articles. God, I never thought I'd be saying that again. But they actually have some content for the bare bones that is 4e. But they seem sparse. I'm just not sure there's enough there for me.

Just me though.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah no doubt.

If in the end it's not something you need/want, it's not something you need/want...

 

[Jeremy757]

The Rates

$4.95/mo seems like a good deal for two magazines and the compendium.

Yes it does and I plan on subscribing even though I hate their website. The quality of the Dragon and Dungeon issues is too good to pass up.

 

[catsclaw227]

Well, I'll be a subscriber too. I am glad that they are opening up dialog and they are giving the barbarian playtest for free (something that a few people were screaming at the rooftops that they WEREN'T going to do).

I just hope that the people that offer up some critique do it in a constructive manner and not just a "your site sucks, the magazine sucks" kinda way.

And I also hope that people understand that they can't have everything, because there are varied ideas about what is good about 4e and what isn't. Also, business decisions will be made in the best interest of the company, and not the loud internet guy.

 

[Shemeska]

Well, I'll be a subscriber too. I am glad that they are opening up dialog and they are giving the barbarian playtest for free (something that a few people were screaming at the rooftops that they WEREN'T going to do).

Aren't they only offering the playtest initially to paying DDI subscribers, or did they revise that?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Aren't they only offering the playtest initially to paying DDI subscribers, or did they revise that?

I don't think there was any revisement (at least not officially). They said sometime in October they would switch to payed service. Some people assumed that meant that this means we wouldn't get a free play-test version. Apparently, that's not what WotC had planned or at least decided.

I think it makes more sense this way, too - how many people would really get a subscription just for the hope of seeing a Barbarian play-test version? Using the play-test version to show what DDI will offer them sounds a lot more appealing.

Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight and I am not a marketing professional who could judge how sensible either approach is.

 

[wedgeski]

Aren't they only offering the playtest initially to paying DDI subscribers, or did they revise that?

No. It's mentioned in the blog that the barbarian playtest is the kind of thing that will only be open to insiders once the subscription period kicks in, but the barbarian playtest will remain open to everyone.

 

[Jack99]

Aren't they only offering the playtest initially to paying DDI subscribers, or did they revise that?

It was always only speculation from the onlne community, never a statement from WotC.

 

[wedgeski]

As an aside, on poor site design, how do you access your account details? For example to change your email address...I cannot find it anywhere. Normally (i.e. on every other site I have ever logged into!) there is a your account or profile or whatever on top of every page. Not Insider you log in (and I have to do it every time, it never stays logged in) and that is it.

You're right. I've never looked before now but there doesn't seem to be anywhere you can do it. If it's any consolation they will absolutely *have* to fix it for the subscription service so expect changes soon.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I think I'll be subscribing - given the quality of material I've seen so far, I'd love to be able to continue to add to it. I'm not likely to buy much in the way of 4e books (other than continuing to buy the WotC adventures as they come out), so getting access to everything this way make a lot of sense to me.

Plus, if I subscribe, I get the Scales of War adventure path as a back-up set of modules should I ever find myself running another campaign.