Editorial from D395?

[Nemesis Destiny]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Thank You, John Lydgate)

Well, here we are, going into week 2 of February, and what should be Dragon 396, and we're only now getting the editorial from 395. And we're still missing an article (according to the ToC page).

Yesterday we got nothing.

The article takes a really cautious tone, trying to please everyone and offering the closest thing we're going to get to a mea culpa from WotC on the flagging content of the "magazines."

At least they acknowledge that rules bloat is a major issue.

Now, how about some content. I don't care if it's fluff, crunch, a delicious mixture of both, but give me something. I'm paying for this.

Edit: Looks like this was probably a typo, as pointed out. That doesn't change the fact that we're still waiting on articles that should have been published two weeks ago. Even if it is one that hardly anyone reads.

 

[TirionAnthion]

This looks to be a misprint. We already had an editorial for Dragon 395. This looks like it should be the editorial for 396. Somebody goofed. Also the page is not up for the ToC for 396 yet either. The editorial itself seems to be talking about content for Feb.

On the whole I felt like Jan was an improvement. I felt like the articles were more useful and interesting than prior months. I think the online content is moving in the right direction again, something I would not have thought a couple of months ago.

I wish they would put up the ToC for 396 soon, though.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Good catch. My bad.

Still, according to the ToC page there is one article missing from 395, in week 2 of what should be 396 content. So here we are in week 2 of 396, which has been a little sparse still, and a couple of days with nothing on the calendar, and some vague promises of something.

Results, dammit, results! Money talks and bull**** walks.

 

[Incenjucar]

They at least recognize that -balancing the magazines- is important. It was rather worrying when they were making it sound like the magazines would become story hour.

 

[Jhaelen]

Still, according to the ToC page there is one article missing from 395, in week 2 of what should be 396 content.

If it's the article I'm thinking of, it's already available if you look into the article archive. It's been erraneously filed as 396 content...

It really sucks there are no longer compiled issues. A messy collection of web articles is not the kind of thing I'd want to pay subscription fees for. Since I expect illegal compilations to become available, WotC's really shooting themselves in their foot with this.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If it's the article I'm thinking of, it's already available if you look into the article archive. It's been erraneously filed as 396 content...

It really sucks there are no longer compiled issues. A messy collection of web articles is not the kind of thing I'd want to pay subscription fees for. Since I expect illegal compilations to become available, WotC's really shooting themselves in their foot with this.

I'd be already happy if they put all the articles in a single ZIP file. No need to assemble a full PDF, but I want the ability to get all articles at once. If they keep a consistent naming convention for articles, it would be easy to "navigate" the PDFs still. But clicking around on the website to catch all articles is a slow and cumbersome process.

 

[Klaus]

I'd be already happy if they put all the articles in a single ZIP file. No need to assemble a full PDF, but I want the ability to get all articles at once. If they keep a consistent naming convention for articles, it would be easy to "navigate" the PDFs still. But clicking around on the website to catch all articles is a slow and cumbersome process.

Write 'em and tell 'em.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Write 'em and tell 'em.

Yes, I actually thought about doing that. Will I do it?

Depends on my magical superpower of procastination.

 

[Scribble]

I don't mind if they put them in a zip file- but I also don't mind the articles just released as individual pdfs...

I don't usually download them, unless something seems particularly can-read worthy.

Why bother DLing it when I can just as easily pull it up off the site when I need it?

 

[MrMyth]

On the whole I felt like Jan was an improvement. I felt like the articles were more useful and interesting than prior months. I think the online content is moving in the right direction again, something I would not have thought a couple of months ago.

We've been seeing some good content, but honestly, the only period in which I felt the quality of the online magazines was really an issue was for a few weeks in December. Before and after that, we've had decent articles, though few that really knock it out of the park. Mainly due to article length - the Modron article was good, but if it had been twice as long, it could have been great.

My big concern is that the January magazines, even counting the late articles, was a huge reduction in overall content. We saw a combined ~100 pages of content. Over the past six months, ~160 pages was the average, and for the first two years of the magazine, ~200 pages was the average.

We have been told, going forward, that 50,000 - 60,000 words is the new goal for the magazine content. Compared to the 80,000 - 100,000+ words we have previous received.

I'm not sure why they have suddenly shifted gears to such a lower amount of content, but it is definitely frustrating news.