Cool, perhaps I was trying to hard to draw a connection between it and the post of mine that you quoted. Though even in your situation, server outages would be a problem as well.
Sorry you couldn't make the connection... Yes server outages will be annoying.
I couldn't login on Wotc this morning... I'm wondering what will happen when people want to use this *wonderful* online toy and servers are offline... even allmight Blizzard servers go offline, why Wizards think they can handle it?
I'm guessing they will flip out and post angry posts, then when the site comes back up they'll continue on as normal.
This is a good step for them as a company... but I wish they were humble enough to say "we are aware that this may cause some annoyance for some of you guys, but we needed to do it"...
They kind of did in the podcast.
Perhaps that's up to individuals to decide, I think it has in some ways significantly reduced in value, Dragon and Dungeon have been on a general downhill trend, and a rented CB has less value than one you get to keep. On the other hand the content on the compendium constantly increases so it could be seen as always gaining in value.
It's one of those weird states right now I think... For some people it's a significant decline in value... For others it's an increase...
My friend on a Mac is excited.
Another friend of mine is annoyed since he used to do the one month download thing.
I have a yearly subscription, only ever access the CB from locations with internet access, and don't make a ton of characters, so I don't anticipate a huge change in my functioning, but at the same time, now my subscription no longer gets me downloadable content...
But... since I've maintained a yearly subscription, and have until next October for this one to be up... It doesn't really impact me much.
What they REALLY need to do though is start adding to the number of tools they offer pretty quickly to replace that downloadable content.
If they're going to move from a digital content provider to fully a service provider, then give me more services to replace the Downloadable content my subscription once offered.
From things they've said though, I get the feeling it will be offered relatively quickly.
Puh-tay-toe, puh-tah-toe... are we really being this pendantic now. If so... unless you can actually create at least 1 character from level 1 to level 30... I would claim what you got for free was a demo version of the CB, the same as you would with a demo version of a videogame... No one I know would claim they got the software for free and paid for an update with a demo version of a videogame... that is getting a limited version of the software and then receiving the full software by purchasing it.
Really depends on how you look at it. It's not like you had to pay an extra fee to get the CB. Your subscription money went towards getting the downloadable content behind the pay wall. Without that, the CB would be an empty database. (I mean you still have the current DB, but it's less useful now without the constant updates...)
Before they sold you the digital content for a certain fee. Now they charge you a monthly fee for access to that content.
Before they sold a product, now they sell admission.