Editorial from D395?

[MrMyth]

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...

No, I imagine the article in question is "Eye on Dark Sun", a January article that is still not available. They had mentioned it would be released yesterday, which didn't happen, and it remains scheduled for the current week.

Write 'em and tell 'em.

I can't emphasize this enough. Some of the issues may be due to management decisions they can't change, but I'm confident the magazine staff does want to do what they can, and the more feedback they get, the better!

 

[Stoat]

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

I downloaded the compiled issues primarily because I found it easier to find a specific article that way. 'Frex, I might remember that WotC published an article about a primordial that was just a big head a couple of months ago. I don't remember the thing's name or when it was published. But I can pull up each of the compiled issues and quickly scan the table of contents to find it. The alternative is to scan through a long, long, long list of individual articles, which I find to be slower and less efficient.

Further, WotC only keeps a half-dozen or so articles on its main page at a time. I don't necessarily check the site everyday, and its not uncommon for an article to drop off the main page and into the archive before I notice it and read it. I'm somewhat more likely to catch all the articles if they're compiled for DL at the end of the month.

 

[Scribble]

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

My guess is budget overall in both money and time.

They want to improve the quality of the magazine, and the DDI offerings, but they don't have the resources to commit more time, and they don't have the money to get more resources, nor are they at a point where they can raise the price of the DDI in order to bring in more money (especially in regard to a part of the DDI many people consider just an ad on.)

Smaller size is for some reason easier to swallow for most people then a raised cost- often going unnoticed (check out the packaged food industry sometime...)

So, they reduce the size of the articles, and focus on doing them well.

Once the magazines get up to an acceptable level of quality, if there is a demand they can bring in a bigger budget and increase the size of the magazines through either added subscribers or a raised subscription cost.

My guess is though we won't see a subscription hike until the various tools are all humming away and the "this tool is brokenz!" threads are well in the minority. (AKA once people start thinking of the subscription as a no brainer.)

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

Write 'em and tell 'em.

I did. I guess it didn't work. Any other suggestions?

 

[Riastlin]

I did. I guess it didn't work. Any other suggestions?

Yeah, keep letting them know (politely). Obviously, they'll need more than just one person telling them what they don't like (as the editorial suggests), but keeping up the stream of communication and/or speaking with your wallet (and then telling them why you've cancelled) are the easiest ways to get your message across. Simply cancelling won't help much. Sure, they'll know you are unhappy, but without knowing why it reached the breaking point, they will be left guessing.

As for the reduced length, I agree that its a concern. Obviously, we are getting less magazine for our buck (though in theory, this will hopefully soon be addressed throught the increase in tools). I also think that part of the issue is the fairly clear decision to reduce the amount of new crunch published. It seems obvious that they are not big on new feats and powers at the moment and this naturally was a big part of some of those earlier issues. In order to keep the same amount of content then, they have to have that many more "flavor" articles and finding good ones that they are willing to pay for and put their endorsement on may be easier said than done, particularly if they are trying to appease as many people as possible.

Of course, none of that means that we are still getting the same bang for our buck.

 

[Echohawk]

It looks like they have now fixed the issue numbering on the editorials and moved the delayed Eye on Dark Sun article back into January's TOC. It's annoying that their quality control didn't pick up those problems sooner, but at least they are fixing errors.