catsclaw227 said:
Fair enough. Here's the way I see it.
The editorial was written to nip a problem in the bud. They don't have the manpower to dedicate a team to writing new crunch for an edition that they don't plan on supporting for the next six months.
The very fact that this is a problem for WotC at all is indicative of why the fan base is reacting so badly.
They have made the business decision to move their resources to making the next version of their product the best that they can in the hopes that it will be able to attract the most customers.
They also made a business decision when they made a suite of promises to their existing customers, as well as potential new customers, and then failed to live up to them.
They have instead decided to utilize their DDI to:
- provide adventures, of which there have been three for Dungeon 152, and two for Dungeon 151 (though one of them is a 94 page triple sized adventure)
- provide peeks into their new edition
- added support articles for their recent 3.5 products (Elders and Exemplars)
- wrote content for two of their previous columns in Dragon (Demonomicon and Ecology)
- added a pair of good articles on Devil (Infernal Aristocracy)
- and finally looked at FR and Eberron
Some of these were provided for free in the past, via wizards.com, yet now all of it has been free. Unfortunately, it hasn't been posted at a pace that the customers have come to expect. Though it is questionable whether the expectations are a bit too high. Only the preview articles have some real revenue opportunities since it is obvious they won't be creating 3.5 content after the release of 4e.
Back when they were releasing everything you listed, the fans were mostly satisfied. True, they weren't being released in as timely a manner as people were used to, but they were still given to us, and for free.
Now, however, WotC has just announced that they're removing everything from that list except for the adventures and the previews. This is after telling us that
Dragon would be just as good, if not better, on the web than it was in print format - that seeing what it was like over the coming months would convince us to purchase D&DI subscriptions.
I have heard the complaints that WOTC should be EXPECTED to provide adequate content to convince people that this digital magazine should be more than it is.
WotC is expected to provide us with exactly that - they deliberately crafted this expectation from when the new format for the magazines was announced.
I was part of the digital transition of 27 different publications in 2000 and 2001 that were trying to move their print medium online. We NEVER had responses from customers that were as harsh, unappreciating, cynical, and had such radical expectations as the way WOTC is treated on the boards here and elsewhere.
Did your company foster those "radical expectations"? Did you then fail to live up to them after only a short time of trying to meet them, and announce that you were offering reduced content for the duration of the project? If so, then you deserved responses that were harsh, unappreciating, and cynical.
They need to make business decisions that are in the best long term interest of their company, but how do you do it when your customers will rake you over the coals for taking a break from supporting a lame-duck edition so you can make something they will really like?
Perhaps by not announcing that they'll be supporting it, and then not doing it? WotC took it upon themselves to use e-
Dragon as the medium that would convince us that D&DI is something we'd really like, but has now come to admit that they're not up to the task of doing that.
There's still people playing 3.5E for the next six months. There's also people looking to e-
Dragon as an indication that it's content now is reflective of what D&DI will have when 4E launches (which is the perception WotC fostered). However, WotC is now seriously scaling back on marketing to those groups, not because they think it's best, but simply because they don't have the resources to do what they said they were going to do.
I do not envy their position. Personally, I am appalled at the responses. Would you rather they give you some 3.5 crunch, spend resources on art, writing and editorial and then put out a sub-par edition in June? Only to have you complain in August how this or that is broken and why didn't they spend more time on it?
Why can't they do both? Seriously, it's hard to be sympathetic for WotC's unenviable position when you remember that they deliberately placed themselves there. Why didn't they make sure they had the resources to make e-
Dragon as good as they said it would be? And if, when 4E comes out, it obviously needed more time spent, then why did they not just spend more time on it before announcing it and giving it a firm release date? WotC made promises of their own volition, and now is having trouble meeting them - all of the fault is their own.
Or maybe they should simply charge now for online Dungeon and Dragon, keep the 4e previews for free online, but now you won't get your FR, Eberron, Ecology, Demonomicon, and e-Dungeon for free? Then they could maybe give you some more crunch that will be stale in a FEW months.
Seriously, I wish they had. I really, really do. I was used to paying for monthly crunch and fluff that was of a quality I considered to be high. I'd have had little problem doing that in an e-format. But WotC didn't give me or anyone else that choice, instead mandating that it would be free, and promising that it'd be of the same caliber (and even at the same speed). However, after just one "e-issue" they've found that they just can't do it...so why did they say they could?
(BTW, when I tell a customer that a development project in alpha might be released in a few months, I am talking about 5-7 months.)
WotC announced e-
Dragon two (maybe three) months before it's slated appearance, and had problems from the ground up.
WOTC isn't going to support 3.5 after May 2007 when H1 comes out. If a customer want sto play 3.5 only, and have totally committed to NOT going to 4e, then they have decided that they aren't WOTC's customer anymore. They don't plan on supporting WOTC with their dollars, so why should they spend money to give you something now for free?
Because they said they would, perhaps? People are angry because WotC hasn't met their expectations...which WotC set just a few months ago.
They are transitioning, and I understand their business decisions. I have had to make similar decisions in the past and as a result I have had two sucessful businesses. As much as our oversized expectations may revolt and rant and we stomp our feet and pout, it doesn't change the fact that they are right about what they are doing.
They're making the best of a bad decision, yes, but how much better would it have been not to have made that bad decision to begin with? Seriously, it's been only four months since August, when they made the announcement. Did they not realize they'd bitten off more than they could chew?
Our expectations aren't oversized - they're exactly what WotC wanted them to be. And now, they can't meet them. So yes, people are upset about that. It's the right and natural reaction.
