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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 3958576" data-attributes="member: 8461">Fair enough. Here's the way I see it.  The very fact that this is a problem for WotC at all is indicative of why the fan base is reacting so badly.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.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.WotC is expected to provide us with exactly that - they deliberately crafted this expectation from when the new format for the magazines was announced.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.  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.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.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?WotC announced e-Dragon two (maybe three) months before it's slated appearance, and had problems from the ground up.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'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.</blockquote>

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