November 16th release for Web-based Character Builder

[Plane Sailing]

Hey guys,

I can understand that the announcement is annoying some of you, that's OK. What is not OK is to throw around the 'fanboy' word, as it is being rude to anyone who has a different opinion to you.

If that isn't clear, please email me.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, the CB is losing a lot of functionality for most users, which is unfortunate, but not really a surprise. WOTC needed to bring things in-house more to disallow the 10 a year people from downloading to 5 different people and using all the content for a pittiance.

Also, bringing mac people online was a good idea. Lots of them out there.

In the future, I think this will encourage WOTC to develop more tools online now that the data is safer for them.

And yet wouldn't it have been better to get the iPad users on board?

One step forward, one step back.

 

[Plane Sailing]

In fact, by removing the character builder from me you have pretty much assured that I am leaving D&D all together.

I'm not sure that I understand your rationale here - even if you never buy anything from WotC again for the reasons you give, why not continue to use your current investment in rules, adventures, campaigns etc? There isn't anything that stops your existing stuff being great for running fun games for years to come - it's what we all did in the pre-internet days anyway!

So I'm not entirely sure that I understand your rationalisation?

Cheers

 

[thewok]

They're too busy forgetting anything they said before to now defend WotC by explaining why it's suddenly a good thing that they did it.

Apologist on Monday: WotC would never do such a thing.
Apologist on Tuesady: Wow, about time that WotC finally did this. It was totally necessary and is so great for us customers ...?

This "fanboy" "apologist" always has believed that the CB should be online-only. Giving people permanent access to material they didn't purchase was likely an unintended drawback to the builder, and it made horrible business sense.

DDI is a companion to the books--not a replacement. People forgot that. They told people on WotC's own forums to buy a couple of books, then get a month of DDI to get all the data. It was foolish to think Wizards wouldn't respond.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

An open letter to WoTC

To whom it may concern at Wizards of the Coast:
I was among the very first subscribers to DDI, and as a person who gets his players to use his copy of character builder to make their guys in a role-playing space void of internet access, I am extremely disappointed.

I have been putting up with a lot of fumbles from WoTCs customer service lately. I USED to buy PDFs so my players could build their guys easily; WotC took that away from me. I USED to pay for my players to build characters when we play, WoTC took that away from me. I'm just thankful WoTC can't break into my house and take my books away, because I'm sure they want to do that to me too.

As a person who has purchased THOUSANDS of dollars of books from WoTC, who payed HUNDREDS, if not more THOUSANDS of dollars on WoTCs PDFs while they were still available. As a person who DIDN'T ask for a refund by choice when DDI updates were missed. Not to mention the potential TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars I’ve spent buying Magic: The gathering.

Not only that, but throughout my years of loyalty to you I have also taught HUNDREDS of people how to play your games, and have brought HUNDREDS more in as fellow consumers of your products.

I’ve had enough.

I never once complained when a new edition or “edition update” came out just a year or two after the most recent edition came out. I never complained when it seemed like the newer books were needed in order to have a balanced game. I never complained about the printer quality, I never complained about the prices, and I never complained about the directions WoTC chose to go before.

I’m done.

This has finally been the straw that broke this camel’s back. WoTC, you have just lost an extremely loyal and valuable customer.

I hope your future endeavours work well for you, and I still hope you succeed, you’re just going to have to do it without me.

Sincerely
Lord Xtheth

 

[drothgery]

And yet wouldn't it have been better to get the iPad users on board?

Turning a .NET WPF Windows app into a Silverlight app is a much, much smaller development effort than turning it into a pure web app.

 

[AndrewDB]

a person who has purchased THOUSANDS of dollars of books from WoTC, who payed HUNDREDS, if not more THOUSANDS of dollars on WoTCs PDFs while they were still available. Not to mention the potential TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars I’ve spent buying Magic: The gathering.

What's the exchange rate where you live? I would love to know how much you spent in USD.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Turning a .NET WPF Windows app into a Silverlight app is a much, much smaller development effort than turning it into a pure web app.

You'll notice I didn't ask about the development effort, but the size of the audience.

Then again, there's another old saying. In For a Penny, In For A Pound.

 

[RigaMortus2]

And of course the unnecessary additions of side products blatantly made to increase sales, including Essentials and Gamma World.

Dude, you almost made me piss myself! Hilarious...

How dare a company make new products to keep its customers interested and to turn a profit! First MicroSoft (really, what was so wrong with MS-DOS that we needed to switch to a GUI?) now this!

 

[Scribble]

I'm guessing they did the math and decided that, if someone like me is disappointed by the change but will keep paying for DDI because they support the product in general (as I will), then what's the down side for them? Pretty cold, but accurate.

It just feels like a bad business practice to make your product worse for your best customers. Maybe they decided that it had to be done to combat piracy, but making the user experience worse for good customers seems like a mistake in my opinion.

Eh...

It's only bad business practice if not making the product "worse" was good business sense.

What I mean is:

No support for Mac users was bad business sense.

Essentially letting people pay 10.00 a year to download all of the released rules was bad business sense (and probably actively pulled away from book sales.)

Delivering it in a format that was easily pirated was bad business sense.


So... with one swoop they can offer support to more people, return the DDI to more of a set of tools designed to support the game (as opposed to replace the hard back books at a lower cost) and help protect themselves against pirate torrents of the CB updates going out.

I'm sure there will be some people who quit subscribing and playing D&D altogether out of spite... But my sense is this will be far offset by people who:

Buy a subscription now that they can use it on their mac

Change to a year long subscription now that it no longer makes better sense to just wait and subscribe every few months


In a way I'm not sure if I consider it punishing their best customers, as opposed to punishing those who took advantage of an unintentional "good deal."

Their best customers probably already had a year long subscription to begin with.