DDI Updates end in March - WotC Trevor Kidd

[Scrivener of Doom]

Bandwidth and maintenance are both minor factors and would be the public rationale but mostly, I predict, to "encourage" people to switch to 5E. (snip)

Yeah, both are tiny.

I just wish they would produce offline versions of the tools even if they sold them rather than simply included them as part of the DDi subscription. Sadly, that won't be happening.

(snip) WotC doesn't exactly have a good record of continuing support for prior edition products, though that has shifted some with the runup to 5E with the reprint of some older products -- but limited print runs and a continuing online presence are different things.

... or at honouring commitments relating to online products.

When 5E was announced, it was promised that 4E DDi tool support would continue. Of course, that was corporate-speak for "will not continue"....

 

[delericho]

The killer would be maintenance. Sure there wouldn't be much, but security patches alone would drive some, and at some point those security patches would drive an upgrade of api's or servers or the network/servers it's based in.

I suspect that's the pattern it will follow - as long as the maintenance can be done alongside the maintenance of their other servers, they'll continue with it. However, as soon as it looks like they need to move it to a new server, or if all the other servers have migrated to a new underlying architecture (enough so that "maintain the 4e DDI server" becomes a separate task from "maintain the servers"), then that's probably the point where they kill it.

Unless that happens in the very near future (due to a server failure or similar). In that case, they might commit to one such upgrade. But probably only one.

That said, I am still expecting there to be a 5e DDI of some sort, and depending on what happens that might either extend the lifespan of the 4e version (if it gets to leech resources), or might hasten its end (if 4e fans convert in significant numbers, such that even minor maintenance costs cannot be justified).

 

[jodyjohnson]

The tools were updated yesterday. Including Dragon and Dungeon through September.

3 months worth instead of the normal two. 3 months left (Oct/Nov/Dec) to cover in the final update in 2014.

Anyway, the D&D Insider tools were updated yesterday. In this update, we're getting the content from Dragon 425-427 and Dungeon 216-218. There are no bug fixes. There are official release notes for the Character Builder, Compendium, and Adventure Tools.

http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1636/kw/character builder
http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2142/kw/compendium
http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2139/kw/adventure tools

 

[n00bdragon]

I just wish they would produce offline versions of the tools even if they sold them rather than simply included them as part of the DDi subscription. Sadly, that won't be happening.

You mean like the offline version of the character builder they originally had?