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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4085042" data-attributes="member: 1003">You speak of the devil ...And he appears...<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The devil reference is a joke of course. I have a great deal of respect for the work the 4E devs are doing on the Core Rules, and I'm glad Scott et. al. make an effort to respond to our concerns.BUT, Scott's comment ("I think it would be the height of stupidity to ...") confirms mine:  DDI was deliberately designed to not cannibalize an existing business.  Put another way, one division of the company demanded that another division deliberately break their own product.This reminds me of a story about GM. They invented a transmission that would reduce fuel consumption by 10%. The "problem" (if you can call it that) was that this 10% improvement made the engine simpler to build.  It needed less parts. Meaning it needed fewer line workers.  And so the improvement never happened ... until the Japanese came along and ate their lunch.It is NEVER a good idea to put a broken product in the marketplace. It will die. The money spent on it will be wasted, your customers will lose respect for you, and they'll look to your competitors to treat them better.  Moreover some other company (one without a dungeon tiles business to protect) could release a much simpler, cheaper, and non-broken competing product and put you out to pasture.You think I'm exaggerating? Game table is a shared world, a voip client, and dice roller program. That's about it.  The hardest part of that is the shared world part, but lots and lots of companies are trying to make that cheap and easy.  Check out the Multiverse client, which is free to download and start development on.  All the art aside (which you can buy pretty cheap as long as you're not picky), two CS majors in their dorm could do this.  There is no technological barrier to competition.As I see it, WotC has three ways of protecting DDI from competition that would surely kill it:1. It can use the walled garden of DDI (Dragon, Dungeon, character generator, rules database and game table) to lock competitors out. This is the AT&T/Verizon strategy, forcing you to buy their phones if you want on the network.2. It can use its IP and its GSL to stifle innovation and put the legal choke-hold on little-guy startups who love this hobby.  aka, the RIAA/MPAA strategy.3. It can use its real profit centers (the books, tiles and minis) with higher barrier to entry to cross-subsidize the cost of the online tools and put competitors out of business by underpricing them.  i.e., the Standard Oil / Microsoft vs. Netscape strategy.Does anyone at WotC who isn't wearing their tie too tight really think that any of these are good idea??  Do any of these options appeal to all the employees there?I realize that Scott can't answer my question, so it's not really fair.  I'm sure he's got some leeway to state his opinion, but I doubt that he could say "Yeah, the whole strategy is FUBAR." (If that were his opinion).  So I don't really expect a response. That's too bad. But this is how I feel. I expect a lot of people feel the same way. I hope Scott, or someone else at WotC reads this (and posts like it) and at least internally debate among themselves whether they should look for the better way.But to repeat Fifth Element's question:Because if WotC doesn't, someone else will. Because if you're afraid to innovate, you get eaten.  Because it's dumb not to.If you don't innovate you get to choose between out of business or belligerent and bullying. Who wants that choice?</blockquote>

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