How in the world is it abusing the system? It's not some loophole. It's not copying copyrighted material. WotC is well aware that someone can have access to years worth of material by purchasing a one month subscription. It's been like that from the beginning. WotC is aware of it, and their customers are aware of it. I would even say it was a selling point for the CB. Clearly, is was designed to work that way because WotC could have done it differently or changed it much sooner than now. They chose not to.
New Character Builder from WotC!
- Thread starter Dausuul
- Start date
How in the world is it abusing the system? It's not some loophole. It's not copying copyrighted material. WotC is well aware that someone can have access to years worth of material by purchasing a one month subscription. It's been like that from the beginning. WotC is aware of it, and their customers are aware of it. I would even say it was a selling point for the CB. Clearly, is was designed to work that way because WotC could have done it differently or changed it much sooner than now. They chose not to.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
I think most of the objections voiced in this thread would be solved by the ability to export your characters - which WOTC says they are working on.
Once you can export (you can already import) your character no longer just lives on their servers. You can subscribe just when you are actively playing, and use all your old characters even if it's more that 12 months since your last subscription (assuming you exported them before shutting your subscription down).
Once you can export (you can already import) your character no longer just lives on their servers. You can subscribe just when you are actively playing, and use all your old characters even if it's more that 12 months since your last subscription (assuming you exported them before shutting your subscription down).
Herremann the Wise
First Post
ProfessorCirno is a well known supporter of both 4e and Pathfinder and as far as I have seen has no axe to grind in regards to WotC vs Paizo or any other such rubbish. He just seems to be calling it as he sees it.
Shidaku, you assume too much and need to take the WotC defender shields down. Can you at the very least see why "some" people might be upset regarding this? Do they need to have their opinion corrected by you? Some people do not like and will not tolerate a subscription model. Wotc must have at least sensed that this move would be somewhat controversial.
[And as an aside so you don't confuse my direction, I am a subscriber to the DDI and have been since its inception and will more than likely continue to be into the future. This move will not affect me, however, I agree with many of ProfessorCirno's points as well as others such as Rodrigo Istilindur.]
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
falcarrion
First Post
Now your being silly. Just because your ink has lasted a year doesn't mean it is the same for everyone. It depends on the person using it, how often they use it, the size of the cartridge and the cost of replacing it. For some people 20 or 30 dollars a month is alot. With the way things are right now, alot of people are looking for ways to save money any way they can.
As a Mac user, I look at this and give it: two thumbs sideways. It may improve over time- I'll keep looking- but I'm no fan of having my stuff almost exclusively in someone else's hands. I've got 3-4 terabytes of storage to work with, a few hundred PCs won't take up a blip of space.
I like to be environment friendly too (I was in Greenpeace for a while, I recycle, etc.), but as yet, its not exactly clear that computers, etc. are greener than books, at least not yet.
Look at the list of stuff that it takes to construct and power a computer: precious metals like gold or platinum (mostly strip-mined), copper and sometimes aluminum (also strip mined), solvents & carcinogens to produce the plastics (petrochemical and paper production run neck & neck as polluting industries), and the fuel to run them, either in batteries (rechargeables use rare elements like lithium, largely found in nice places like China, whose record on environmental and human rights issues is well-known) or in DC (coal, gas, oil, nuke, etc.).
And lets be honest...even if the stuff is electronically stored, we're still printing a lot of stuff up anyway, so we're not exactly paperless.
As for recycling, both paper and computers have recyclable elements, but the infrastructure for recycling paper is currently far more well developed than for computers and all the stuff that goes along with them. I have a recycling bin in my yard, and another half-dozen paper recycling locations within a few blocks of where I live, at churches, schools and what have you. I have to drive miles to recycle a computer, and a few more to recycle a rechargeable battery.
Oh, there may come a time when computers are green, but that time isn't now.
I like to be environment friendly too (I was in Greenpeace for a while, I recycle, etc.), but as yet, its not exactly clear that computers, etc. are greener than books, at least not yet.
Look at the list of stuff that it takes to construct and power a computer: precious metals like gold or platinum (mostly strip-mined), copper and sometimes aluminum (also strip mined), solvents & carcinogens to produce the plastics (petrochemical and paper production run neck & neck as polluting industries), and the fuel to run them, either in batteries (rechargeables use rare elements like lithium, largely found in nice places like China, whose record on environmental and human rights issues is well-known) or in DC (coal, gas, oil, nuke, etc.).
And lets be honest...even if the stuff is electronically stored, we're still printing a lot of stuff up anyway, so we're not exactly paperless.
As for recycling, both paper and computers have recyclable elements, but the infrastructure for recycling paper is currently far more well developed than for computers and all the stuff that goes along with them. I have a recycling bin in my yard, and another half-dozen paper recycling locations within a few blocks of where I live, at churches, schools and what have you. I have to drive miles to recycle a computer, and a few more to recycle a rechargeable battery.
Oh, there may come a time when computers are green, but that time isn't now.
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tuxgeo
Adventurer
How about fictional characters? If WotC can bring novels in-house and republish them, they must own them.
If I write a novel about humans and elves and dwarves who are fighters and clerics and mages, with names like Mogsquith the Divulginator, or whatever I like, but use the online character builder to create and store their specifics, could WotC sue me for royalties for using those characters if I ever get it published?
S
Sunseeker
Guest
Oh, I am vehemently against cloud computing. I have spent long hours of heated debate arguing against it with anyone from the casual user to the experienced IT professional. It's a dangerous slope that leads us deeper into the ever growing dependence upon others for what should be things we can accomplish ourselves. It allows people to distance themselves from knowing how things actually work in favor of allowing "someone else" to deal with it.
The reason I have seemed to closed to hearing their opinions is that this topic started out with the pirate talk of "how dare they prevent me from stealing from them!" with posters freely admitting that they, and others they know, pay 10 bucks for thousands dollars in books worth of data. With that as setting the stage for this discussion, I simply can't stand it, I am in fact, in the process of buying more books because the new game i'm starting the DM has made it clear that we can do whatever we want, so long as we have a book to take it from.
And while I don't like THAT either, I enjoy playing D&D, and so I make sacrifices to continue playing the things I enjoy. Given this choice, I would rather not have my characters stored on their servers. And I'm certainly not writing any backgrounds into my characters if I have to store them remotely.
BUT, I do enjoy the service the CB provides, and even if it's online, I'll still pay to use it, and the other tools, and will always remember that mathematically, it's a much better deal.
If 20-30 is too much a month, you may want to consider a cheaper hobby, or start telling your players to chip in for ink if they want to use your printer. But then, that would make you like WotC, charging for the use of a service.
No, they didn't. Now, they did. Maybe it simply took them longer than they were planning, perhaps the dip in sales others have mentioned really made them get this out sooner than they had planned. No matter how you roll it, we all know that what was going on was abusing the system. Even if it was "ok" to do, simply because nobody stopped you, doesn't make it the right thing to do.
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Herremann the Wise
First Post
Do you think that WotC would not have planned and built this option into their model? What you are calling piracy and abuse, would seem to be more a concession to less affluent gamers. Without that option those gamers would not have as fully embraced 4e - perhaps significantly enough so that WotC's market research decided that that option must be in the model. By taking away that option, WotC are obviously moving to "phase two" of their digital plan.
There is a huge gulf of difference between paying WotC to gain access to the resources they make available, and not paying WotC and downloading those resources from the internet. I'm almost positive that it could be reasonably argued that this phase two move will increase/encourage higher levels of genuine piracy of their material.
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
falcarrion
First Post
Thats just funny.
First I'm a player not a DM. The groups I play with don't play at my house.
They don't use my ink or my printer. I have been playing since 1982. So I know the expence of this hobby. But i understand how tight things are for people now adays. 20 a month can be alot for some people right now. For who the money can be spent better elsewhere. If you think this hobby is for the rich your wrong.
Vartan
First Post
That would be pretty sweet.
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