billd91 said:
And probably lost a lot of data in the process. I have Dragon Magazines that are over 20 years old that I can easily get to (whether or not they are boarded and bagged). What are the odds of being able to easily access DI stuff 20 years afterwards? If the other computer media and files I've that long are any indication... low.
I have Commodore 64 games well over 20 years old. They worked fine on the C-64 20th anniversary in 2002, despite being on rather fragile 5.25" floppies and being subjected to Florida wet heat, Colorado dry heat and cold, and years of storage. I admit, I haven't hooked up my C-64 in a couple of years, but as of the last time I did ('05, I think?), I actually hadn't lost one game.
I have word processor files that are going on 20 years old - I didn't have a word processor until the late '80s and my first x86 IBM-compatible, so I doubt they're quite that long-lived yet. They've survived transitions across a half dozen computers (to say nothing of innumerable backup disks, and later backup CDs). The last time I referenced one? January of this year. Needless to say, it worked fine and is still compatible with MS Word.
billd91 said:
WotC can make whatever choices it wants when it comes to the services it wants to provide but there are trade-offs they are making. Sure, the DI will be easy to access for people over a wide geographical area who have access to the internet, which implies a variety of other criteria as well. But a significant number of these factors are also pretty much necessary to ensure continuing access to the materials, even when already paid for.
Barring the near-total collapse of the industrialized world (in which case I, for one, expect to have considerably graver concerns than whether my D&D collection is safe), people who have computers now are unlikely not to have them in the future for more than a brief span.
Even if, by some imponderable chance, a substantive portion of the world's population lost access to computers but still had time and security enough to engage in 4-8 hour liesure activities, you could always have printed the material out and likely still paid less for it.
billd91 said:
Gaining access to the print media may also have requirements (knowing they exist and having contact information to get a sub or finding a reliable sales outlet being primary), but the bar is significantly lowered to have continuing access to the information. All I have to do is take reasonable care of it and I have the information as long as the paper survives. WotC may not ultimately care about that from a business model point of view since, once we buy the information, it's ours to deal with (one hopes). But as a consumer and long-time player of D&D, it is a concern I have and informs my preferences for format.
Me, too.
I've lost access to probably MILLIONS of printed words over the years because I didn't have the storage space for hundreds of books and magazines. I've lost maybe a hundred thousand digital words over the years because I was lazy about backing up my computers.
If you're speaking as a COLLECTOR, I can understand your objections and even sympathise with them. Insofar as magazine collections have value (and to be fair, a quick glance at ebay indicates they do), the Digital Initiative is a bad way to go. Insofar as having access to the materials for gaming purposes, however - I'm not seeing it, at all.
