Important: Please Read! Changes Are Coming!

[Oryan77]

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to be snarky, because you're certainly being sincere. I think I'm just misunderstanding.

No problem man. You've always come across as a respectable mod without having an attitude (it's much appreciated). So I'm glad to know you recognize my post as being sincere. Sometimes it seems like no matter how hard I try, my post will be misinterpreted as if I'm trying to be a whiny jerk.

Hey, how do you get from "you'll need to be a member to have a sig" to "I'll get nothing else out of visiting the site unless I pay for it"?

After I wrote my post I realized that I wasn't thinking about the fact that subscribers will still be showing a sig & non-subscribers will still see their sig. So if I find something useful from a subscribers sig, that's great. Stuff like blogs, other gaming sites, other stores, or just links to resources & gamer aids are good finds. But it would still be nice to not be limited to just subscribers. I'd hate to miss out on a good link just because the guy is like me and doesn't subscribe. And on the flip side, I don't get to share my D&D resources with people. Maybe nobody ever uses them (I don't know), but it felt good to be able to throw them out there via my sig. I've had 1 user here contact me once to ask if he could link to my resources from his own website...very flattering!

Then we may lose the ability to find players for our games or find games to join? These are things that I use ENworld for. Now I'm being told they may not be available unless I pay. So for me, I'm losing a lot of what I had always got from ENworld. Being a regular on other sites would be more beneficial to me if that is the case (that is not meant to be a lame threat in any way).

The reason for the change is that it improves the signal to noise ratio while making sure that everyone still has access to all the threads and discussions. Unless you mean the lack of advertising from your sig?

How much are sigs burning into the cost of maintaining the website? Enough to call it noise? I may be stating the obvious, but taking sigs away from non-subscribers seems like nothing more than someone who is trying to make money being upset over others also making money (off sigs). If that's the case, then that's fine...greed is nothing new to me. I've had a powerful man take an entire business from me when I was just 19; a business that made no more than $75 a week. He did that for no other reason than because he's a greedy old man and because he could. If I'm wrong about the intent of restricting sigs, then I truly apologize for the accusation.

Yes, I'm not going to deny that I don't also appreciate being able to advertise a link to my website. I was upfront about that in my original post. But don't get me wrong, I posted here for years before I started advertising anything via a sig. I credit ENworld as being a reason I started selling gaming stuff online. If it wasn't for the ENworld Marketplace forum, I never would have bought my first batch of D&D minis. And after keeping the ones that I thought would be great for my campaign and reselling the minis that I didn't want on the same forum, I wouldn't have realized that I enjoyed the experience and tried to see what could come of it if I did it again.

And honestly, I'm lucky to get 2 people using my website a week via ENworld (or 2 people from anywhere for that matter). I have a full time job that has nothing to do with gaming or my website. So it's not as if I'm counting on a link in my sig to support me financially. It's just a small perk while I'm enjoying myself on the forums.

I don't know if my ramblings have cleared any misunderstandings about my original post, but this is my attempt.

 

[Jack99]

$6 a month is about what I pay for my DDI subscription. You better have something better than not taking away my awesome signature if you want that kind of money from me.

 

[DaveMage]

But taking away something that users have now and are used to, rather than adding kewl new content for that $3 seems to be the wrong way to take the business model.

I'm currently on the annual subscription (which ends this coming October).

I've been a community supporter for several years, and now it will cost even more to keep what I have?

Not too thrilled about it.

In fact, I'm more likely to not pay anything rather than "renew" at $3/month and get less.

 

[jasonbostwick]

I have found lots of great D&D resources that I was able to use to better my own D&D game from other peoples signatures.

I agree with this sentiment, and it makes me skeptical of plans to take away free access to signatures.

Most signatures are just noise and I've learned to ignore them, but there are a number I've seen that contain very helpful links to posts and material that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Taking signatures away from non-subscribers would remove this utility from ENWorld.

 

[TheYeti1775]

If you didn't draw me in with $3/mo, how do you think you can draw me in with $6/mo???

Honestly the fault of yours for not balancing the books to say, "ok this $36 is equal to $3 a month over the year" shouldn't stop you from offering the deal.

Now if you want to take the responsibility of doing the said annual thing, make it a $50 for the year thing. $14 of it being the inconvenience for you to maintain your books.

Losing Sigs, Avatars, having ads on the site aren't big enough issues to want to pay you for. And if you took it further than that such as posting new thread ability, I'm betting you would see traffic come to a stand still on here except for those trying to figure out how to end their subscriptions.

Search feature, yup haven't ever had it on here. Was annoying as heck when I first signed up. But Search Engines (Google/Bing/etc) all easily handle it for me. So I'm not losing anything there.

Personally I would be annoyed with $3 charge each month on my account. And at $36 a year you aren't actually cheap for the hobby market. Even my Jeep clubs are only $20/yr, and one of them I help run is free to the members. Those of us on the Board of the Directors pay for it out of pocket, members only pay for swag (stickers/shirts/magnets/etc). Even that one with 8 BoD only runs me $50 out of pocket, thou this year's swag sales have us looking at about $30 out of pocket at the current rate.
And that $20 gets me access to member's knowledge and them helping work on my vehicles along with vendor specials and offers to club members.

Now if you want ideas about how to have features for members but keep it fairly open still.

Limit Image use. Non-paying posts can only have 3 images including Smiley's. Vbull has this function. I use it on other sites I help maintain.

Sigs - Restrict size and URL'ing within them. A non-payer like me can have xx characters with no active url. While a paying member can have a larger sig with active url's.

Ads - their an annoyance, but once you get used to them no one pays attention to them really. Hiding them for payers is a good thing.

Search function - this is the only site I've ever been on that restricts it to paying members. But again its a good benefit of membership to have.

Give-aways - If your going three-tier (non / pay / milked) I would restrict it to the higher tier. The products you have listed as giveaways are a good quality if you can keep it up on a regular basis than you could find a good niche with the multi-tier.

Now if you want to have a Game/Player Finder you might want to take a page from Pen & Paper's site. There Finder is a major draw to their site on the basis it is free.

Another method of tiering is Normal users like myself, paying members tier, and a vendors tier. Now vendors get ad space and what not. Their tier is more a one on one basis weather it be with product give aways or prize contests or a straight fee.


But now I'm rambling.

Though you still haven't convinced me why I should subscribe when there are plenty of places out there they provide the same stuff for free.
You have to remember making paying memberships out of a niche market is further drawing down your market.

Now for an idea worth paying for, make your own RPGA and promote it. That can be your $6/mo tier. Use $2 of that extra $3 to pay for materials and events/campaigns etc.

 

[Oryan77]

I understand the sentiment, but to be clear the mods have every right to censor anything said here. You have no free speech rights here. ENWorld is not a government, and they don't have to let you say anything on their boards.

I understand that. And as annoying as it can be for such a cool, down-to-earth, great personality, well fed, handsome, intelligent, and nice smelling guy as myself, I can deal with it. I can respect it, but I won't pay for & support it is all I'm saying.

 

[Scotley]

My 2 coppers worth, first I am glad to hear that the site is doing well financially. I happily pay my $3 a month. I come here mostly to game. Based on the number of users active in the different forums at any given time it seems most people here don't run or play games. At least the number of folks on the 'playing the game' is very low relative to the discussion threads. For example there are 50 people viewing 'playing the game right now' and more than 300 in the general discussion. Nearly a hundred are discussing 4e as I post this.

I'd pay a little more for features that significantly enhance the gaming experience. Especially a quick user friendly way to post combat maps and a reliable, track-able dice roller. A nice tool for keeping up with mini-stat blocks that had conditions might be useful too. Unfortunately, these things would only be useful if everyone had access. Perhaps a DM's subscription that allowed one to invite players to use those features for his or her games? Maybe these things are too complicated to implement, but they would certainly garner my $$. My busy schedule fits play by post well, but some might pay for enhanced features for chat type games.

I use my signature to keep a link to a post with all my games in it. I would hate to lose that. Maybe you could charge extra for sigs with images and such that eat up bandwidth? I might pay more for a tool that allows me better access to character sheets. Instead of having them scattered across rogue's galley threads, being able to link to all one's characters and the characters in games I run in a simple way would be nice.

The other thing I'd spring for is reliability. Maybe paragon tier subscribers could still get access even when the site was down for everyone else? Obviously this would require some sort of back up server. Users have been very generous in the past when the site has needed an influx of cash due to hardware and bandwidth issues. Maybe you could have a special patron account where the extra couple of bucks would be set aside only for hardware, software and tech support? They should get some spiffy recognition for their generosity.

Anyway, the ads don't much bother me. I have fast access and a nice big monitor, so I don't turn off the ads and I even click some of them. It would be nice to tone down the cleavage laden ads that draw derisive remarks from my wife.

Keep up the good work! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

 

[Henry]

Honestly the fault of yours for not balancing the books to say, "ok this $36 is equal to $3 a month over the year" shouldn't stop you from offering the deal.

Having been on the inside for a while, I can tell you it wasn't so much an inability to balance books, as a maddening tendency for people to let subscriptions lapse when they were due to be re-upped. For some reason, it's human nature to take that "big" $36.00 dollar charge off before it's due and you can't afford it, versus leaving that measly $3 charge on your credit card month after month. People will bleed money more readily than they will lose the same amount in one "hit". It's not Russ' fault, it's the psychology of the average consumer.

Besides, If I really want to keep a lump sum each year instead of a subscription, I could easily just buy a pre-paid credit card from my local department store, Target, or Wal-mart, and charge it to that. Not a big deal.

But I am looking forward to seeing what transpires - I'm just glad to hear that the subscription model was such a great success!

 

[Mistwell]

I can see charging for full graphic ad banners in people's sig lines. But text and hyperlinks? I doubt people would pay for that, and I think it would hurt the quality of the board to charge for them as others have pointed out.

Maybe swag? Send people an EnWorld mouse pad, mug, cap, T-shirt, dice bag, dice, something like that?

Or, like I said, hard copies of EW publications, like WotBS.

 

[Hereticus]

The way this works, you use the PayPal ritual and for $6.00 you magically get a month's subscription.

Should you change your mind and want your money back, use the Reverse PayPal ritual and you get a $1.20 refund.