Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Truename" data-source="post: 5346279" data-attributes="member: 78255">Here's the evidence:- If WotC was developing a new tool that had nothing to do with the CB, it wouldn't affect CB development times.- On the other hand, if a rewrite or major overhaul of CB was planned, it absolutely would affect CB development, quite possibly to the point where CB was literally incapable of supporting new content. This happens all the time in software development: a rewrite is planned, data formats are changed to support the new tool, personnel are reassigned, and then deadlines are missed and the old tool can't read the new format and has no development resources anyway.- CB has had just one programmer assigned to it for the last several releases, which supports the previous two points. It doesn't make sense for WotC to give CB so few resources given that they knew Essentials was coming down the pike.- New content is coming to the Compendium but not the CB, which also supports the second point. Adding new content to the Compendium seems like fairly simple data entry. There's typos in some of the entries' HTML code which wouldn't be there if individual Compendium listings were machine-generated.- "Total rewrite!" is the kind of dumb mistake that software developers make all the time. (And before anybody blames WotC management, it's typically programmers who push for this.) The CB is old enough now, and the rules changes over time large enough, that the original design probably hasn't held up. That would lead to complaints about the code needing a rewrite.- The existing CB isn't very newbie friendly. It puts all of the classes in your face and asks you to choose between thousands of options. That's the exact opposite of the Essentials philosophy of providing a few clear choices with significant results.- The current DDI subscription is a huge giveaway. $10 for ALL crunch ever created--ever? When you have to pay >$20 each for a dozen books otherwise? That's beyond generous. And the data sits on your hard drive, meaning that the tool is easily cracked and pirated even if you program it to check the subscription before starting.- Marketing departments like to make big splashes. They probably had some sort of big announcement planned to coincide with the release of Essentials. Combined with the previous two points, this makes a new CB more probable. (Marketing's very hard deadlines and Programming's inability to meet deadlines is a traditionally a huge source of friction between the two groups.)(For fun, Google 'software rewrite': <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html" target="_blank">Things You Should Never Do, Part I - Joel on Software</a> - <a href="http://jamesshore.com/Blog/How-to-Survive-a-Rewrite.html" target="_blank">James Shore: How to Survive a Software Rewrite</a>)</blockquote>

Verification