DDI vs WoW

[Firevalkyrie]

Point made and accepted. There is a time factor too--but I feel that it's reasonable to expect that the majority of people that play D&D or WoW aren't choosing one because they don't have time to do both. From my perspective, I stopped buying D&D books because I wasn't playing anymore, too. But the reason I wasn't playing had nothing to do with WoW (or any MMO)--my gaming group was separated. So we got a VTT and now we're not separated anymore.

The cost for GameTable is off of the chart when compared to the other crude options available.

If you looked at it as GameTable in isolation, you'd have a point. It's not just GameTable, though - it's (per WotC's press releases):

GameTable
12 months of Dragon content
12 months of Dungeon content (that's at minimum thirty six new adventures per year, all encoded and ready to go in the Game Table)
Guest play space for eight player-days per month, which is enough to run a twice-monthly campaign with four players, or a weekly game with two (this is the part that absolutely kills me - people are griping about everybody in the group needing a subscription - only the DM needs a subscription, the players can use the DM's tokens).

I dunno about you, but that sounds like pretty decent value-for-money to me.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I dunno about you, but that sounds like pretty decent value-for-money to me.

It's a decent value if you want to play nothing but standard 4E D&D online, and you think the contents of Dragon and Dungeon are worth a subscription cost, and you don't mind getting the mags online--either reading them that way, or printing them for more cost. This is also assuming that DDI tabletop isn't buggy as hell.

Look, I'm about 95% positive on 4E, but those are some awfully narrow assumptions, even for me.

 

[AllisterH]

You know, with all these comparisons to WoW, does no-one actually play MTGOnline?

From reading the excerpts from WOTC, the goal of DDI is the same as MTGOnline. Basically to get people who have lapsed because of lack of a group, a decent matching service.

Wgy does everything come back to WoW?

 

[Firevalkyrie]

It's a decent value if you want to play nothing but standard 4E D&D online, and you think the contents of Dragon and Dungeon are worth a subscription cost, and you don't mind getting the mags online--either reading them that way, or printing them for more cost. This is also assuming that DDI tabletop isn't buggy as hell.

Look, I'm about 95% positive on 4E, but those are some awfully narrow assumptions, even for me.

I had a subscription to Dragon for 5 years and Dungeon for 2; I'm not happy about online distribution of the magazines but I'm willing to give it a shot and the articles so far are high-quality if not as frequent as I'd like; and the DDI tabletop is supposed to have house rule or zero-adjudication support as well as RPGA rules.

I'm willing to at least give it a chance

 

[Mirtek]

I mean... EverQuest didn't compete with D&D, Star Wars Galaxies didn't compete with D&D, neither did City of Heroes/Villians, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, Planetside (the only FPSRPGMMO lol), Ultima Online, Tabula Rasa, Horizons, Shadowbane, or any other MMOs out there.

On the contrary: They all did and do compete with D&D. Each hour of free time spent playing one of them is a hour of freetime not playing D&D. And free time is quite limited for most people.

The only way that MMOs compete with tabletop is cost. And if little Johnny has to decide if he's going to spend his $15 on WoW, or the 4E PHB, then it's not MMOs that are getting in the way--it's that little Johnny needs a big boy job, because $15 is his entertainment budget.

Or little Johnny has the money but simply decided that his limited free time doesn't justify more than one $15 subscription. And then the MMO directly competes with DDI and the MMO just offers so much more for the same time/money

Yet somehow, 4E is trying to be like an MMO. *sigh*

Which can only bomb, as this means to promise something it just can't deliver

 

[Simon Atavax]

However, what if every weekend was a RPGA convention? That is, there are "tables" with a GM available and you just join up, play a game with strangers and then bail. If you like any of the other players, you PM them to build a future group of your own.

You know, this one statement really captured my attention. I may just give DDI a look-over.

 

[Andor]

Thank you

I don't think recycling the old audience is entirely the solution. Bradford may be off on a number of points but he does have it correct that the old audience ain't getting any younger. We need fresh blood.

And of all RPGs out there, D&D is best positioned to get it, given its affiliation with the world's #2 toy company.

The new Hasbro line! D&D plushies! Lidda plushie! Redgar plushie! Hennet plushie... ok. Maybe not Hennet...

 

[bramadan]

DnD4 is less like WoW then any previous edition of DnD.

In WoW, and pretty much any other real-time RPG, there is no tactical movement. In all fights in WoW combatants are either static or move based entirely on avoiding global effects (Lurker's spurt, Prince's elementals etc...). There is no such thing as advantageous positioning in WoW and consequently no spells or abilities that deal with positioning.

While the above describes previous editions of DnD reasonably well, DnD4 deliberately moves away from it and plays to a significant strength of table-top over computer: fact that human GM can generate much more tactically challenging combat then the scripted AI.

Combat against multiple opponents is exception rather then a rule in WoW. Even in the "multi-boss fights" such as Majordomo, Four Horsemen and Ilidari Council ratio of PCs to antagonists is 5:1 or more. Great majority of "interesting" fights in WoW are old style party-against-one big baddie.

Again, this pattern of numbers fits old style DnD. DnD4 seems to move more towards 1:1 ratio between PCs and antagonists, with solo and smaller groups of monsters being exception rather then a rule. Again, this is playing towards the fact that GM is more flexible then then AI and the fact that more monsters means more tactical complexity.

With extremely rare exceptions (General Rajax event and some fights in Zul Aman are the only that come to mind) WoW adventure is structured in the familiar mould of trivial "trash" fights taking much of the time, punctuated with exciting "Boss" fights culminating in the hardest and most rewarding "Boss" at the end.

This happens to be exactly the pattern of the old style DnD adventures where characters were able to deal with the dungeon room by room with enough rest time in between. DnD4 appears to massively increase size of what it considers "an encounter" to the point where significant part of the dungeon falls under a single encounter. (See Mearls' article on re-using old dungeon maps). This has the effect of raising risk and fun level of "trash clearing" to par with "boss encounters". To consider just how different this is from WoW - consider how WoW would play if each instance was designed so that the players get to rest/drink only 3-4 times per run.

Magic items are primary means of character advancement in WoW at the cap level (greatest bulk of WoW play takes place at cap level) and are incredibly important even before cap level (as everyone who has ever twinked an alt will know).

Magic items were always important in DnD and never more then in DnD3. DnD4 deliberately reduces their importance.

In a word, WoW - being, as it is, an ofshoot of the DnD borrowed very many DnD tropes. DnD4 actually deliberately moves away from some of the old DnD tropes and in particular away from the ones that give themselves better to a synthetic/computerized GMing.

Out of the two (mutually contradictory) criticisms of DnD4 one which claims that it is becoming more like a board game is ways closer to the mark then the one claiming that it is becoming more like MMO. Reason for this is that DnD4 appears to be playing strongly on the qualities inherent in a human GM (much as human opponents provide much more of a challenge then AI in all but most rigid and over-analyzed board games).

 

[CleverNickName]

The new Hasbro line! D&D plushies! Lidda plushie! Redgar plushie! Hennet plushie... ok. Maybe not Hennet...

Gimble for your garden? A Krusk bobblehead for your dashboard?

It's a goldmine I tell you.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Apropos teleconferencing; I wonder if you could use Skype to run a "face-to-face" game without actually being face-to-face.

Have done it, will do it again.

It works if your players have enough immagination to not need maps