Digital Insider #13

[Lord Xtheth]

I love the power cards! Especially the DM refference card! I can't wait til my players start using this!

 

[darjr]

And the thread has confirmation that the save files are in XML. Very cool. So I could use it to autopopulate my favorite character sheet after using the creator.

 

[Imban]

There is no need to have to jump through hoops like the auto-renew cancel procedure. This is not taking advantage of the digital media. They are adding more and more human interference steps into the process, that make me prefer NOT to be using digital at all.

Yes, the auto-renew thing is a pain. It's also utterly unsurprising given subscription features on the internet in general. Would that this were not the case, but for SOME REASON there's not much of a profit motive to fix these things and never do them again.

There is no reason a yearly subscriber should have to call, email, form fill someone at customer service to have to wait any length of time to try and track down an old issue.

I provided a suggestion for what you could do if you can't possibly wait any length of time to get your old issues back. Admittedly, it would be NICE if WotC was a modern internet-oriented company, but I'm trying to save my complaining about that for when they release their for-pay game table and it turns out to be a very pretty but feature-poor and crashy version of OpenRPG or MapTool.

 

[Zaukrie]

Two things:

1. You are not giving WotC your credit card information, but Digital River. They have been doing on line transactions for years.

2. Holy Cow! That character builder is going to be awesome (assuming it runs on my machine). I am quite looking forward to that being available. Power cards, character sheet. Very nice.

3. (oops). I've already used the compendium to help build 4 encounters by cutting and pasting information onto sheets so I have all the data in 1 place. It has already paid for itself this month.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I played around with a version at Gen Con UK that was about 95% of what Didier showed off in the column. I thought it was awesome at the time, and I can see some small changes now that make it even cooler. Now if only I could run it on my Mac. . . .

 

[malraux]

Having to remember to DL issues to keep access to articles is approaching unacceptable IMHO. Online transactions should be able to handle that w/o me having to do anything. Its just silly to force me to store data locally instead of having that be part of the subscription.

 

[wedgeski]

Holy cow... that looks great. Can't wait for the beta.

 

[Zsig]

Swordmage with INT 8 and DEX 18? What a noob!

If you like, you can use the Auto Build feature to fill these choices automatically, and then alter them as needed.

No thanks!


Seriously though, looking good!

 

[drscott46]

Re: the Paypal option and canceling auto-renewal- I do specifically remember that Randy acknowledged both of those concerns in one of the previous Digital Insiders (either #11 or #12, probably the latter) and said they were working on it.

I would also add the opinion that Paypal is not any more secure than your typical online credit card transaction. It does need to be available, but I don't really understand why someone would be willing to PP and not use a credit card. Sounds like superstition to me.

 

[Zaukrie]

Many, many Europeans don't carry credit cards, and many younger adults wisely avoid them. There are other reasons than security to want to use paypal.

I have no issue with the back issues not being readily available. My guess is that over time that will be altered. But for now, it really isn't an issue for me. If, otoh, I used lots of different computers that were not networked, that might be an issue. I really don't get the whole "what if my computer crashes" argument, though. It's not like they had a replacement policy if your house burned down. This way, they actually do offer a "disaster recovery" process and off sit back up.