Gleemax
- Thread starter Mark
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LightPhoenix
First Post
I'm not sure I entirely understand the question. Do you mean what happened to Gleemax? What happened to the Wikipedia page?
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
Yes, I'm pretty sure that it was meant to complement DDI.
Mostly, I think that it was a cool but over-ambitious idea, given the available resources.
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Other than being sparse, I don't see much wrong with the wiki page. So I guess I am more curious about what happened to Gleemax.
Was it meant to eventually compliment the DDI? Was it a matter of bad timing? Was the concept flawed from inception?
I think that you hit on the real problem with Gleemax. Nobody seemed quite sure what it was supposed to be, from its developers to the consumers who were ostensibly supposed to buy into it. Hell, I had an account at the Gleemax forums and I still wasn't sure why it/they existed or what purpose it/they was/were supposed to accomplish.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Other than being sparse, I don't see much wrong with the wiki page. So I guess I am more curious about what happened to Gleemax.
Was it meant to eventually compliment the DDI? Was it a matter of bad timing? Was the concept flawed from inception?
It was supposed to be a social networking site for gamers, and in the early hype of MySpace, apparently someone in management thought it was an awesome idea and then, Step 3: Profit!
Its sad story is bundled together with the still vaporware portions of the DDI (VTT, Visualizer, Dungeon Builder), since they were all originally being developed by the same design studio that WotC outsourced it all to: Radiant Machine. WotC tossed a metric ton of money at the project, with according to people I've spoken with, not exactly a firm idea of what they wanted, management that didn't provide the developers what they needed, and other developers that weren't up to the task. Fiasco. People could write pages about what went wrong. Most of the management responsible for it is no longer part of WotC as I understand it.
-Lots- of money down the drain later, Gleemax was dead in the water, and none of the DDI was ready for release. Hasbro was woken from slumber and turned an eye towards WotC, and it was not apparently pleased by how much had been spent and what had been produced. Heads rolled. Radiant was dropped (it no longer exists, and Gleemax/DDI was its first project), DDI was moved in-house, and a new team took over (with only one developer from the original group moved over) and in what's honestly a good measure of the in-house developers they created the character builder on rather short notice. Probably salvaged the entire project with that. Of course a lot of those folks who did some really nice work were also laid off, or hit by the Hasbro hiring freeze when contract-to-hire deals came to their limit. It was a mess, and arguably still has problems lingering from the original epic screw up.
MichaelSomething
Legend
I have no idea either. All I can do is guess that it suffered a horrible, horrible death that ravaged the WOTC boards...
Henrix
Explorer
Unclear directives, crappy programming (it kept going down) - frankly, it deserved to die.
If what I remember can be trusted I think Wizards wanted everyone to put up their gaming blogs and stuff (not just WotC-related) there, which also meant signing away the rights to it to Wizards. That wasn't very popular.
If what I remember can be trusted I think Wizards wanted everyone to put up their gaming blogs and stuff (not just WotC-related) there, which also meant signing away the rights to it to Wizards. That wasn't very popular.
Jack7
First Post
I admit freely that I never go there. I visited maybe once or twice and thereafter abandoned it for some of the reasons stated above (plus some others, it seemed terribly disfunctional to me, for one thing).
Eventually I found this place which seemed a much better idea far better executed.
In any case, what took it's place at WOTC? Or did they just go back to the old forums?
Eventually I found this place which seemed a much better idea far better executed.
In any case, what took it's place at WOTC? Or did they just go back to the old forums?
MarkB
Legend
The forums are about all that's left of it - and they weren't a product of Gleemax in the first place. The existing Wizards Community forums were simply imported wholesale into the Gleemax system.
They still run on gleemax.com, which is probably more or less the last vestige of the project.
Personally, I think it was crippled from the start by that silly name. It's based on some obscure Magic: The Gathering in-joke, and sounds more like the name of a designer drug than an all-purpose gaming website.
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