Discussion on the feasability of WotC supporting all editions in DDI

[Umbran]

Okay, what if they modified the license on the previous editions to match the OGL, but they didn't bother to digitize them. What if they gave us permission, (so long as we give credit, and perhaps put in a disclaimer about this not being a WotC supported edition) and left all the rest up to us?
Do you think that would be an acceptable solution?

Why would/wouldn't WotC go for it?

WotC would not go for it simply because they get nothing out of the deal. It is effort for no gain. Why should they do that, and in the process enable product that competes with their own?

 

[El Mahdi]

WotC would not go for it simply because they get nothing out of the deal. It is effort for no gain. Why should they do that, and in the process enable product that competes with their own?

Agreed. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. The only way for them to make money is to keep the licenses, and keep the material behind a subscription paywall.

I can see a bit of downside as concerns 3.x (since it's OGL). But even then, they'd be providing something that nobody else has: an integrated character/monster/encounter builder-compendium-VTT, and have the sole ability to use non-OGL 3.x material.

 

[RangerWickett]

WotC would not go for it simply because they get nothing out of the deal. It is effort for no gain. Why should they do that, and in the process enable product that competes with their own?

If they'd done this 3 years ago it might have been worth it for the good will it would generate toward them. Nowadays? No.

Then again, stuff is collectible and has charm because it's old and rare. If vinyl records were still on sale and easy to get printed on demand and delivered to your house, people would probably not care so bloody much about them. So I dunno, maybe the best thing WotC could do is re-release OD&D products as print-on-demand, so people can get their fill and get over their silly obsession.

 

[Umbran]

1) It´s doable and it´s no mamuth sink of money and manpower if done with competent people. Granted, it´s still time-consuming.

Time is money. Competent people are money. If it consumes time, they need to pay someone for that time.

As a business, when you are going to spend time, money, or resources on a project, you must ask not only whether the project will make you money, but will it make more money than the other things you could spend those resources on.

I have $10,000 to spend on a project. Do I spend it on the project that will return $1000 over my investment, or the thing that will return $5000 over the investment? No brainer, right? SO, why on earth do we think that this work on old stuff will net them more than work on new stuff?

Most of it already IS digitized.

My understanding was that some of the books had been scanned, and the images put into PDFs. That's not yet digitized in the sense that the text itself can be manipulated. There'd still be massive OCR and editing steps.

If the VTT does integrate rules into it to bring up displays ons creen of monsters or such, and this can also be used to pull data form the older edition compendiums... in a <blank>ing heartbeat!

Well, that's still more work. Character builders, monster builders, treasure builders, all more work.

Lots and lots of work - everyone asks why they don't do it, and when you look at the list of work needed, it isn't short - and how many people *outside* of the squeaky wheels on message boards are playing these games?

I don't fathom them ever making tools as decent a there was for AD&D, and those were even lacking in functionality.

I don't know what tools you are talking about. WotC stopped supporting AD&D (1e) back in 1989. That's before WIndows 95 and Internet Explorer. I don't believe they had any computer tools of consequence back in the day.

 

[Maggan]

T
I don't know what tools you are talking about.

The Core Rules CD-rom, maybe? I loved it! Especially the 2.o release.

/M

 

[Alzrius]

The major problem with this thread is that it's talking about the feasibility of supporting all editions in the DDI.

I believe that this will require far too much time and effort on WotC's part to make it feasible for them, much less worthwhile. Adding older-edition materials to an electronic database is bound to be too much work for too little reward. While I do think it'd attract more subscribers, it's a gamble that WotC seems very unwilling to make.

I think it's far more reasonable to expect them to reinstate PDFs of older-edition materials, along with POD for those same products, and the rare new work for an older edition (roughly one such product per year or so) which would be constructed by dedicated freelancers.

 

[shadzar]

I don't know what tools you are talking about. WotC stopped supporting AD&D (1e) back in 1989.

That is nice since they didn't have rights to make D&D until they bought TSR in 1997, so probably a good thing they didn't support it back in 1989 or Primal Order wouldn't have been their only legal battle.

As Maggan pointed out: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Archive: Core Rules CD-ROM 2.0

None of the scans of the PDFs had searchable text?

I wasn't asking for any of those tools for older editions though. Just a compendium to test the waters, and to get people to try DDi. Not that I care for helping WotC, but the idea was to get older editions into DDi to get older edition players to use it. So I was looking at minimal requirements to support the edition. You must want a much higher level of support than I would be happy with.

 

[Maggan]

WotC is the only entity capable of effectively tapping that customer base, and it's a very large untapped pool of potential customers.

It is my belief that such a vast untapped pool does not exist. Therefore, I don't think it would would be in WotC's commercial interest to support multiple editions through the DDI.

I would love for it to happen, though. But if WotC, or anyone else, would do it, it wouldn't be because they see vast fortunes awaiting, but rather for some ideological and idealistic reason, such as love for the game.

If there would be hard numbers presented to prove the existence of a large pool of untapped customers who would pay money for material they most likely already own in print format, from a company that they probably aren't sympathetic to, I am open to changing my belief on this.

That pool would have to be tens of thousands of actual customers, and to get those the larger pool would probably have to be in the hundred of thousands of potential customers.

Look at the OSR. It is a vibrant community, but is not by any stretch a large untapped pool of potential customers for WotC.

So, it is not feasible for WotC to support all editions, barring a change of heart and the creation of a non-profit organisation tasked with the mission of doing this a la Wikipedia.

/M

 

[Umbran]

That is nice since they didn't have rights to make D&D until they bought TSR in 1997

Yeah, yeah, TSR not WotC. Get snarky when you never make mistakes. Sheesh.

None of the scans of the PDFs had searchable text?

I don't believe so, but I could be mistaken.

As for the CD ROM, that might be a good start, depending how it is done, and whether they have the source code data from that time in a from they could read now (as opposed to say, in an offsite tape archive backup for a drive system that no longer exists and that they've lost the encryption keys to - don't laugh, this happens pretty often).

I wasn't asking for any of those tools for older editions though. Just a compendium to test the waters, and to get people to try DDi.

Well, limiting the support helps. But I don't think it'll prove to be an effective leader to the rest of the product. If I'm already not playing current editions, that content is useless to me. There's no point in looking at it. Only the small subset of folks actively playing old and new editions simultaneously is going to find that intriguing.

You must want a much higher level of support than I would be happy with.

I don't want any support for older editions. I have my books, and I played them all with paper and pencil just fine, thanks. If I wanted to pick them up again, I'd have no trouble doing so without electronic support.

I was running through those questions to demonstrate to those who don't see why they don't give support why - because support's actually not a trivial amount of work.

 

[billd91]

The 2nd edition CD had most of the 2e books as text-searchable files. I've seen them as Windows help files but I want to say I may have seen rtfs as well. I don't believe all of the Monstrous Compendium sets were included. But the core books plus rule supplements like Tome of Magic, Complete Handbooks, Players Option books were all there as I recall.

So while getting them ready for any other use would take some time and effort, it wouldn't be at all insurmountable.