Dragon 397 - Table of Contents

[Jhaelen]

I canceled my DDI - they have now lost a loyal customer who has been playing D&D for over 20 years and who has supported anything 4E since it came out.

Well, if you had been a loyal customer you wouldn't have canceled your DDI subscription, right?

 

[AntlerDruid]

Well, if you had been a loyal customer you wouldn't have canceled your DDI subscription, right?

well they decided the $7 was more important than a customer who has bought every darn 4E book in the past

had they given the 1 month refund I would have re-newed....now I won't re-new

 

[Obryn]

I too was giving them the benefit of the doubt until....I asked for a 1 month extension or 1 month refund for Feb DDI since barely any articles came out. CS basically told me "no - tough !"

I canceled my DDI - they have now lost a loyal customer who has been playing D&D for over 20 years and who has supported anything 4E since it came out.

They have the worst customer service I have ever seen in a company!

IMO, that crosses the line from "reasonable" to "unreasonable" customer demand. When they switched to the online character builder and missed all sorts of deadlines? Yeah, I could see refunds. But just having a slow month? If I were in charge, I would have told my reps to say no, as well.

While there weren't all too many articles, and while the value of that month might have been questionable, as far as they see it you had access to the Compendium and Character Builder, in addition to the articles that were there.

WotC can't operate on a policy of "give everyone who subscribes refunds for every month they don't love everything." That way lies financial dissolution. A subscription means you're paying for access, and you had access, so...

-O

 

[MrMyth]

IMO, that crosses the line from "reasonable" to "unreasonable" customer demand. When they switched to the online character builder and missed all sorts of deadlines? Yeah, I could see refunds. But just having a slow month? If I were in charge, I would have told my reps to say no, as well.

While there weren't all too many articles, and while the value of that month might have been questionable, as far as they see it you had access to the Compendium and Character Builder, in addition to the articles that were there.

WotC can't operate on a policy of "give everyone who subscribes refunds for every month they don't love everything." That way lies financial dissolution. A subscription means you're paying for access, and you had access, so...

This is the problem with a linked subscription. As it is, they don't seem capable of even giving a partial refund, which is what I asked for in February myself - and as such, when I pressed the point, they gave a full refund for the month even though that wasn't what I was requesting.

So the problem, I think, lies in their end.

As it is, February failed to deliver a single Dungeon adventure despite the website advertising "2-3 adventures every month". 25% of the Dragon/Dungeon articles for the month were released in March rather than February - which meant someone like Askanipsion would not have access to them.

Thsi isn't even about the reduction in magazine content, which has diminished to close to half of what it was a year ago. This is about the fact that of that reduced content, only 3/4 of it was actually posted during February. A customer losing out on the articles they should be entitled to - or having a magazine that fails to deliver certain advertised content - does seem grounds, to me, to request a refund.

And WotC's inability to only give a partial refund or extension is, in the end, their own fault, and not a reason to further deprive the customer.

As it is, I'm guessing we'll see a wave of even more refund requests in March. Since right now, three weeks into the month, they have not yet posted a single Dragon magazine article for subscribers, and have only posted two Dungeon magazine articles - a total of 10 pages of material, itself completely absent of any mechanical content at all.

Now, perhaps the next week will see them unleash all their remaining articles for the month in a torrent of content. If that doesn't happen, though, I'm expecting people to be asking for refunds.

The subscription says it includes the magazines, the Compendium, and the Character Builder. That doesn't mean it is reasonable to completely fail to deliver one of those things and then claim that, because you are getting the rest of it, you don't deserve a refund.

 

[AntlerDruid]

which meant someone like Askanipsion would not have access to them.

Exactly!

Now I don't have access to those articles that I should have gotten in Feb.

Even if it was a paper magazine and suddenly I only got 5 pages of the magazine during a month, I think it would be fair for any subscriber to ask for a refund. Because WOTC keeps getting away with ripping off customers, they will continue to do so.

Here we are more than 1/2 through March and they are still behind in the articles. It isn't getting any better....it is actually worse now.

Sorry I don't like paying for nothing.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I do not subscribe, but I was hoping to hear about the Warlord article here. I'm quite interested in how they do this article, especially as warlord did not make it into essentials.

In addition, I have been considering subscribing for a month after all the Hero's Option articles are finished to grab them all.

I assume the article is written as the book was to have been out about now, but I guess the quality testing is taking a long time.

 

[Primal]

It certainly isn't radically disproportionate. Pick random months since the release of both systems though and tell me that Paizo is always outdoing WotC. I don't think that's true. I don't think it is even nearly true. I think WotC has generally buried Paizo to be honest. Now, assuming Paizo is putting out more stuff at the moment the question is still if that is a trend or not. I tend to think most publishers have their up and down periods. Only time holds the answer.

In any case quality is more important, but can only be evaluated subjectively. Not being a PF player I don't have a lot of perspective on that aspect of things anyway. The PF APs I've read through seemed nice to me, but in some respects WotC's adventures are better (they definitely have better encounter design). The Paizo ones are overall better written though for sure. OTOH at best I don't see Paizo being ahead in quality of 'crunch', but again subject, I don't really care for PF that much...

Initially, yes, because Paizo has said they don't want PF RPG to suffer from rules bloat; they've announced from the start that they will publish 3 PF RPG hardcovers per year, plus any setting-related books such as 'The Inner Sea World Guide'). However, take a look at what they've been consistently doing: monthly Gamemastery products, Pathfinder Modules, Adventure Paths, Player Companions, Pathfinder Chronicles -- the last three alone amount to 128 pages per month. No cancellations, although some books have occasionally been pushed back a few months ('Inner Sea World Guide' being one).

If we only count hardcovers, then it's a no-brainer; but outdoing WoTC in the amount of published crunch was never Paizo's goal, as I said earlier. Rather, Paizo maintains a steady, reliable publishing schedule; a schedule that they feel is optimal for everyone. And yet now they are publishing more material than WoTC.

If we talk about quality, you're absolutely correct; it is a matter of personal preference. Rules aside, I happen to think Paizo is doing better in terms of editing, art and layout, and quality of writing -- and publishing better adventures than WoTC (without delving too deep into this matter, I don't think cool and balanced encounter design is my #1 definition for what makes an adventure "good"). And I've seen quite many posters saying they feel 4E adventures published by WoTC can't hold a candle to their 3E modules -- likewise with adventures and delves published in 'Dungeon' these days.

I think there's one product line (in addition to miniatures, which I was very sad to see cancelled ) that is far, FAR superior to Paizo's equivalent: namely, 'Dungeon Tiles'. No matter how many sets/boxes I buy, I'm always positively surprised by the next announcement (for example, 'Witchlight Fens', just as my campaign is going to involve a few adventures in a huge swamp), and the visual quality and utility/flexibility (for the lack of a better term) of these tiles.

I don't know if this will/has become a trend or not; I know that according to ICV2 Paizo is toe-to-toe with WoTC in sales, and my own regular anecdotal observations (a few times per week for the last couple of years) of Amazon's best-selling RPG list has convinced me that it's more or less accurate. And Paizo is hiring former WoTC designers these days as freelancers or even staff members (such as SRM). Managers and lead developers aside, how many designers does WoTC have in their RPG team now? I heard that Steve Winter seems to be doing 'Dungeon' on his own, so it's no wonder if there are problems with content. Still, how long can WoTC maintain this "no-deadlines" policy -- especially if they want to publish magazines that actually contain material enough to justify the cost? For me it's a weird thing if an issue of 'Dungeon' does not have any adventures beyond a few stiched-together encounters.

But even though I'm a Paizo customer and a Pathfinder GM, I'm not happy about this. As I've said on other threads, I'd like to run 4E, but at the moment it all seems to be in a flux with non-errataed core rulebooks and Essentials thrown in to the mix (and it's such a mess that even a veteran DM such as myself thinks it's confusing as hell). I truly hope WoTC will get their act together, and publish revised core rulebooks. Also, I think they need to get more freelancers working for them; I just cannot believe that they're not getting decent adventure/article proposals for their magazines.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I admit to being puzzled about what it is they ARE doing over at WotC. The programming group is obviously hammering away on stuff, but it is kind of hard to understand what the development people are actually doing. We don't seem to be getting articles so far, there are a few other products on their schedule but presumably HoS is a done deal and probably off to the printers already. The Feywild book is obviously coming, along with the Shadowfell boxed set, etc, but it seems like they were managing to put out a good bit more stuff with the same number of people, and better stuff, last year.

As for 'hiring freelancers', well they have been using them obviously, as Klaus can attest amongst others. OTOH if they have a very small budget for that then maybe there's really the main answer there. In the past they were forking out a lot of cash for outside work. Without that resource available we are just seeing what basically the core people can put out on their own without much additional help. I don't exactly how many people they have in their dev group that are focused on 4e stuff specifically. I don't know how that compares to what Paizo has for manpower either. Somehow I really doubt that the WotC people are less productive than the Paizo people or that they are just sitting on their butts. Maybe they have some as-yet-unannounced big project they're all hammering on. Or they are just reduced to a low level of manpower and doing everything they possibly can. Heck if I know.

Overall it seems to me that there's a big difference between the two companies. WotC seems to spend a lot more time working on big new things. Paizo seems to spend most of its time putting out another book, adventure, whatever that is pretty much more of the same kind of stuff they did last month. Not saying one is better than the other, but they are different approaches. WotC has a more varied product lineup. Paizo has a lot of similar stuff. If you like the stuff Paizo is producing and that's the kind of stuff you want, then they're doing it right. If new interesting cool stuff of different kinds is more interesting, then maybe what WotC is doing looks better. It seems to be a matter of taste to me. It is pretty obvious both groups know how to do their jobs. I mean if Paizo hires an ex-WotC guy, well that kind of tells us they don't think WotC is staffed with fools and lard-asses. They are just different companies doing different things.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Articles last year however were not controlled enough. There are things that were outright bad. Better no contend than bad contend... the new columns are cool, but as was already said: no contend for a paying customer is not that great to say the least...

 

[MrMyth]

Articles last year however were not controlled enough. There are things that were outright bad. Better no contend than bad contend... the new columns are cool, but as was already said: no contend for a paying customer is not that great to say the least...

I might disagree there. I saw complaints about articles last year, but honestly didn't feel there was a ton of truth to them - the content had diminished a bit from the first two years of the online magazine, and they didn't have as many truly amazing articles, but there was plenty of articles of decent quality over the course of the year.

And the handful of problems that cropped up tended to get fixed in errata. Which remains the case - even with the new design process, we've had errata and fixes to mistakes that still show up.

I don't think the new design process is causing the delay. I think it is clear the magazines are currently way understaffed. I don't know where other resources have been diverted to, but it seems likely that is what has happened.