Dragon 397 - Table of Contents

[the Jester]

No, but when they have given you what you wanted for all this time since whenever it was you signed up for DDI and then along comes February 2011 and for whatever reason, which is probably totally out of the control of the guys putting together Dungeon, an adventure doesn't show up or maybe it shows up late they are suddenly lying cheating scum? ZOMG!!!!!!

Except in this case, it has been what, half a year of disappointments? First the lack of updates in the CB and MB, the very misleading statements about the update, the Final Update! that stripped out a bunch of content, a new CB that was given to us as complete when it really was barely ready for beta testing, a replacement for the MB that didn't build monsters, the lack of content- this is not a single-month one-time phenomenon. This is an ongoing problem that has been at various stages of badness for about the last half of my last subscription. If that isn't room to complain, I don't know what is.

I simply think that you are taking a rather unfair stand with WotC. First you assume they are trying to rip you off and not themselves subject to the constraints of the real world where contributors fail to produce material on deadline or whatever other things could happen ONCE that would cause them to fail to provide the one article that they have stated they should have provided.

I don't think anyone is arguing that WotC is trying to rip us off. Speaking for myself, I am saying that the value of DDI has fallen so far that I cannot feel good about giving WotC my money for it. I do not feel that I have been receiving my money's worth; moreover, the times when DDI has failed to deliver on promises are many. DDI still hasn't gotten to where it was promised to be when 4e released! Now, I don't think anyone is holding that against them at this point, but it's worth noting, when you say that they failed "ONCE", that they have actually had a long and impressive history of fail. The "good period" of DDI- from the initial release of the Character Builder until the time the updates stopped- was, overall, really good; but that doesn't mean that there have not been many significant disappointments.

"I'm afraid you are more comfortable getting taken for a rube than I." A little backhanded, but yeah it was getting a little personal there.

You are absolutely right, that was out of line. Sorry, my bad.

 

[JoeGKushner]

In terms of trying to make WoTC out to be lairs... well, they've pretty much done themselves in here. They have very little 'creed' to share.

"Where's the Dark Sun and Essentials material?"

"It's coming."

and hey, it was. Just not for you know, the people who were waiting for it for the old CB.

There are numerous other instances we could go into where WoTC said one thing and did another, but seriously, if you're stance is that WoTC can do no wrong, more power to you.

I'm one of the former subscribers and keep waiting to be impressed by the current offerings.

Still waiting.

 

[AntlerDruid]

Hyperbole for the WIN!!!

First off WotC didn't "give" me anything...In the end WoTC failed to provide the services that they took many people's money for (after advertising that one would in fact receive these services as part of a subscription)... then left it upon those people to ask for a refund instead of taking the initiative and responsibility to refund their customers money for February...

Also, whether you subscribe yearly or monthly is irrelevant since you would have had to pay for February beforehand and wouldn't have known they would not meet their obligations until February was over... thus you would be in the same situation.

I have subscribed to DDI since the beginning. In Feb, I finally had enough with the poor release of articles for Dragon/Dungeon. I contacted Customer Service & asked for a refund for Feb or an extension of my subscription for a month.

CS replied back with a "tough " email and refused to refund or give me an extension. Talk about Customer Service. My subscription ended in Feb and I didn't renew.

It is nice to see that they are actually "supposed" to give worthwhile articles in March. Now if we actually get them...

I am not a fan of the Warlord (not that I dislike them - just would never play a martial class personally) so I am looking to see if the other articles are worthwhile.


I did get a Customer Service survey and I told them how disgusted I was with their Customer Service and how they treated a loyal 20+ years D&D fan.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have subscribed to DDI since the beginning. In Feb, I finally had enough with the poor release of articles for Dragon/Dungeon. I contacted Customer Service & asked for a refund for Feb or an extension of my subscription for a month.

CS replied back with a "tough " email and refused to refund or give me an extension. Talk about Customer Service. My subscription ended in Feb and I didn't renew.

It is nice to see that they are actually "supposed" to give worthwhile articles in March. Now if we actually get them...

I am not a fan of the Warlord (not that I dislike them - just would never play a martial class personally) so I am looking to see if the other articles are worthwhile.


I did get a Customer Service survey and I told them how disgusted I was with their Customer Service and how they treated a loyal 20+ years D&D fan.

Hmm, yeah, that isn't very cool. Never heard of them NOT giving someone a few bucks off at the very least if they complained. That seems like a first. Well, hopefully they get the message. Give 'em a kick in the butt when they don't give you what you feel like you should be getting.

I know people have the idea that I'm just being an apologist for WotC, but really, it isn't like that at all in my mind. Honestly, while they've done some things that seemed stupid like releasing the OCB with insufficient (or no) beta testing, it has seemed to me overall that they're just doing what they can do and mostly it has been pretty good. Taking the last 3+ years in total they've released a lot of good material in the magazines. I wouldn't have paid $74 a year for JUST that, but then the CB and Compendium have added a lot of convenience to DMing. Compendium alone saves me hours and hours during adventure design and game prep. Having nice clean CB produced character sheets, also very convenient. Maybe I'm unique, I really don't run many pre-generated adventures and between MB, CB, and Compendium I find that DDI is worth the cost of a couple core books a year. I mean I've skipped several of the less interesting books like Psionic Power and still have access to their content, which is nice and saves me a few more bucks.

Really, I think it is worth complaining when WotC screws something up, but in the grand scheme of things are their screw ups really that big a deal? It is like sending your steak back because there isn't quite enough salt on it. You're totally within your rights to do it, and I've complained to them (or maybe criticized is a better way to put it) when they did something I didn't like. I'm just not really anywhere near prepared to stop being able to look everything up in the Compendium or whip out a quick character sheet or monster. It seems like cutting one's foot off because it itches at this point. If things just go right on downhill, then yeah I'll stop giving them my money. Just isn't at that point. I really don't think it will get to that point either. Plenty of people have complained. I think they generally ARE pretty responsive to customers.

 

[delericho]

Huh? I am not expressing a low opinion of anyone.

The thing is, my position is that WotC should be able to do better with the resources they have available. Your position appears to be that what they are doing now is the best that they can possibly do. So, yes, although you haven't expressed a low opinion of them, you still seem to think them less capable than I do.

No, but when they have given you what you wanted for all this time since whenever it was you signed up for DDI and then along comes February 2011 and for whatever reason, which is probably totally out of the control of the guys putting together Dungeon, an adventure doesn't show up or maybe it shows up late they are suddenly lying cheating scum?

This is a management problem.

In the editorial for Pathfinder #42, Rob McCreary comments that he's actually hard at work putting together the material for issue #44. That is, they work a good couple of months in advance. This was also the way the print magazines worked - by the time issue X was going out, the staff were basically done with issue X+1, and busily at work on X+2 (or beyond).

And that's why WotC's argument that "we'll only release stuff when it's up to standard" falls apart. They shouldn't be working on the material for February in February at all. Barring a major disaster (a server meltdown, or something equally severe), it should just be a matter of pushing the stuff out at the appropriate time(s).

Indeed, by the start of February, the material for March should be well in hand, and be undergoing the finishing touches. The bulk of the work should be concentrated on the material for April, or even beyond.

That's why the old magazines were able to put "next month in Dragon" sidebars in place and be almost entirely accurate. They weren't guessing, and they weren't expressing a hope - they knew that material was going in because they added those sidebars very close to the end of the process, by which point they had the material all-but ready to go.

(Working ahead also meant that when the old magazines did have a problem, they were at least able to offer an alternative. So, even if they couldn't offer the adventure they had hoped for, they were still able to provide three adventures in the month, rather than simply leaving a gap.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The thing is, my position is that WotC should be able to do better with the resources they have available. Your position appears to be that what they are doing now is the best that they can possibly do. So, yes, although you haven't expressed a low opinion of them, you still seem to think them less capable than I do.

But we don't really have much idea what resources they have. I'm simply assuming that the people over there work hard and what we've got is what they were able to do. It isn't a matter of I think all they can do is crappy, I just figure they've got a staff that isn't enough to deliver what people are expecting them to deliver. I mean look around the boards and everyone wants 100k words of magazine content a month, a new hardback book every month, all super high quality material, a perfect set of tools, etc. and RIGHT NOW. We know that WotC's parent company took a bath last year. They didn't lay anyone off, but that pretty much just says to me that the staff was already at a level that was so bare bones there simply wasn't anything left to trim.

This is a management problem.

In the editorial for Pathfinder #42, Rob McCreary comments that he's actually hard at work putting together the material for issue #44. That is, they work a good couple of months in advance. This was also the way the print magazines worked - by the time issue X was going out, the staff were basically done with issue X+1, and busily at work on X+2 (or beyond).

And that's why WotC's argument that "we'll only release stuff when it's up to standard" falls apart. They shouldn't be working on the material for February in February at all. Barring a major disaster (a server meltdown, or something equally severe), it should just be a matter of pushing the stuff out at the appropriate time(s).

Indeed, by the start of February, the material for March should be well in hand, and be undergoing the finishing touches. The bulk of the work should be concentrated on the material for April, or even beyond.

That's why the old magazines were able to put "next month in Dragon" sidebars in place and be almost entirely accurate. They weren't guessing, and they weren't expressing a hope - they knew that material was going in because they added those sidebars very close to the end of the process, by which point they had the material all-but ready to go.

(Working ahead also meant that when the old magazines did have a problem, they were at least able to offer an alternative. So, even if they couldn't offer the adventure they had hoped for, they were still able to provide three adventures in the month, rather than simply leaving a gap.)

Sounds more like a manpower issue than a management issue. If you give me 5 guys and tell me to put out a product that requires 8 guys to put out, guess what I'm not going to put out that product on time. I'm sure not going to manage to get ahead. There's only certain things that are physically possible for people to do. The best manager in the world can only do so much. I mean 2 years ago they seemed to have plenty of content, and they also had more people. If I had to guess I'd guess they were well ahead of things. So yeah, if something went wrong then it was no big deal. Now two years later there's a smaller staff and it kinda looks to me they've burned through whatever backlog they had and they're down to a point where if something doesn't roll in there's nothing in the cupboard to use to cover for it.

I mean there's no way to know what the effectiveness of their management is. Maybe they're a house full of idiots over there with a pack of fools in charge. Who knows? Given that the company has been in this business for 20 years I'd be surprised if that was the case, but I sure don't have any answers.

The thing is, supposing you're the guy in charge and you don't have enough staff to do all the things you'd like to do, what are you going to do about it? Cut back on stuff you can cut back on and put people onto the most important things. They just canceled 3 books recently. Seems a lot like they're trying to concentrate on the most immediate and important things.

Comparisons to what Paizo or someone else did at some time in the past may or may not really have any relevance. Print magazines that can't put out an issue are out of business. With the online stuff the equation is a bit different obviously. It all boils back down to what they can do vs what people expect and will pay for. If they can't do any more than they are doing now, then everyone has a choice of accepting it or going elsewhere. It helps to let them know, but it may not be something they can fix.

 

[webrunner]

Is it just me or has the word on the missing "Ability Score Adjustment" article from last week been kinda.. quiet? There was no mention here, or on twitter that I could see, or anywhere.. it just quietly didn't come out.

 

[Shroomy]

Is it just me or has the word on the missing "Ability Score Adjustment" article from last week been kinda.. quiet? There was no mention here, or on twitter that I could see, or anywhere.. it just quietly didn't come out.

I was pretty sure that when they announced the CB update delay, they were going to also delay this article since it makes sense to release them together. I would bet its coming out tomorrow.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Also, there is a sort of funny thing going on here. When LOADS of the game's content starts to be only existing behind a paywall there's the danger that it will actually drive people away from the game. In a perverse way DDI may actually turn out to be bad for D&D in the long run. There are a lot of things to consider there, and WotC may not feel that it is a smart idea to put vast amounts of content in the magazines all the time. Sure people can pay a month and grab it all, but in a weird way the whole 'Insider' thing isn't really a big invitation to more casual gamers.

I'm not a casual gamer, and I've been using computers at my table for years, but this is how I'm beginning to feel about it. I like 4e, I've subscribed to DDI in the past, and would consider it in the future, but I really don't want to keep investing month after month to keep up with the rules churn. At some point, I will probably just start playing something else.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Is it just me or has the word on the missing "Ability Score Adjustment" article from last week been kinda.. quiet? There was no mention here, or on twitter that I could see, or anywhere.. it just quietly didn't come out.

Did you see the comments on WOTC_Bart's schedule post? Not exactly quiet.

There are a couple posters in his comments there week after week, constantly criticizing the delays and lack of content. I'm glad there are people doing that - it's important for them to know what a crappy job they're doing with the magazine these days.

Mind you, even if things were peachy, they'd probably still complain. Then again, that's not necessarily a bad thing either. Growing complacent isn't good for anything.