I seem to be missing the point on the online CB

[renau1g]

Be thankful Wizards gives you ANYTHING.

I pay them for that, they give me nothing. They provide something that I pay them money for. Giving is charity, they are not being charitable. They have provided one of the best tools for character generation ever and as such I paid them for that tool. They are now changing that tool into a service.

 

[Prism]

Here you bring up a valid point that I completely reject! As a consumer I don't give a darn whose fault it is; I want from WotC a product that will work on my iphone and ipad. I don't care in the least what Apple's policy is, I care that WotC can and should create a product that works on these near-ubiquitous mobile devices. Even with the likely iPad product coming, I find some of their business choices frustrating.

I leaning the other way on the use of silverlight. I'd take a bet that without it and given the same timeframe/cost the app would have been of lower quality with the existing dev team and for that reason I'm happy the simple approach has been taken.
I can envision a version of the app where the front end is eventually HTML5 (once its decent enough) and the back end calculation/data elements are silverlight. MS aren't dropping silverlight...just moving away from it within the browser

 

[renau1g]

Wasn't Flash also moved away from like MS is doing with silverlight? It seems to be working ok.

 

[drothgery]

Can't wait to see the new builder, though. We'll see how it is, and I'm excited and hoping for the best. After all, doesn't Netflix Instant Streaming use Silverlight?

The standard web client (and possibly some others) for Netflix does; the iOS client doesn't (and some others).

 

[mudbunny]

Ditto for my "open source guy" player - he finally no longer has to keep his old PC around strictly for the CB. He's running Silverlight in Chromium on his Linux distro. He can run the Character Builder.

Would it be possible for you to get more info on how your Linux guy gets Silverlight working?? That is something that I would love to be able to share with others.

 

[Ryujin]

I leaning the other way on the use of silverlight. I'd take a bet that without it and given the same timeframe/cost the app would have been of lower quality with the existing dev team and for that reason I'm happy the simple approach has been taken.
I can envision a version of the app where the front end is eventually HTML5 (once its decent enough) and the back end calculation/data elements are silverlight. MS aren't dropping silverlight...just moving away from it within the browser

Could have used Java which, while cludgy, is about as cross-platform as you can get.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Would it be possible for you to get more info on how your Linux guy gets Silverlight working?? That is something that I would love to be able to share with others.

I'm sure there's a hack involved in there somewhere or something...I'm not a Linux guy at all, but I'll ask him what he's planning on doing, and send you a PM.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Ok, so we can not longer download a CB once every few months to get ALL THE UPDATES and NEW STUFF. I get it.

My question is, what about the online Dragon and Dungeon mags, and other pdfs and articles? As it stands now, you can do the same... Subscribe to DDI once every 6 months, and get all those pdfs.

So, is that also going to change? I would assume so. After all, if they are going to make you pay a montly fee for constant CB features, what about having constant access to Dragon and Dungeon mag?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Be thankful Wizards gives you ANYTHING.

Wizard GAVE me something? Hell, I thought I was paying for it. I'll immediately ask Wizards to return the years of CB updates I'd been paying for all this time. Sheesh. Silly me. Thinking I was paying for a product.

Like those dummies who bought PDF's from DriveThruRPG and had 'em yanked. Wizards must have GAVE them something too eh?

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Yeah, macs as old as 4 years can run the regular character builder. Anything with an intel chip inside can run windows.

To be clear, Macs can run the old Character Builder by (a) buying a second OS, a copy of Windows, and (b) either buying virtualization software (VMware or Parallels) or rebooting every time you want to switch between Windows and Mac OS X.

I own several Macs, but the hassle and expense was great enough that I was forced to use our ancient Windows XP machine for the Character Builder. The new Character Builder is a big win for me personally.