Only ten articles in Dragon this month?

[Nikosandros]

It shouldn't have to be that choice as they've scrapped out a few books, which presumably would be very far into the development cycle (if not completed) to draw from. The content from them alone should cover a few months of the magazines with good quality content.

In the last podcast Mike Mearls (IIRC) talks about the canceled books. He doesn't mention DDI at all, but he talks about how they decided to reduce the amount of material they are putting out in order to increase its quality and develop and test it more accurately. Quite possibly, the current stage of developments on those books was considered unsatisfactory and therefore the material is not yet deemed ready.

 

[Dannager]

Well if WotC are trying to leverage MMO-style subscription pricing, they are behind the curve. The MMO industry is starting to move away from the monthly subscription model and into the free-to-play with microtransactions model. Turbine (makers of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online) have already switched over, and they're making a killing. Asian MMOs have been doing it for years, and more US titles are at least thinking about it. Per usual, WoW is the exception that proves the rule.

This is not an accurate description of what the MMO market is going through.

Yes, free-to-play is becoming more and more common, and yes, this is because a monthly subscription model has not worked well for many (even most) MMOs. But this is not because monthly subscriptions are an untenable business strategy. This is because it is a tenable business strategy, and WoW has already capitalized on it to the extent that the market can handle.

WoW is the market leader in the MMO department. It's immensely popular and rakes in $texas for Blizzard-Activision every month. Most gamers, however, are only willing to pay for a single monthly subscription, even if they might like to experience more than one MMO. I have (by way of anecdote) four different MMOs installed at the moment, and I dabble in the three that aren't WoW. But I only pay for my WoW subscription.

What the free-to-play model does is allow people to experience MMOs and enrich their player base without demanding an investment from the players (an investment the players are often reticent to buy into, given that MMOs shifting to free-to-play models are typically of poor quality compared to WoW). The dedicated players will pay more than they once did on the subscription model, and those dedicated players cover costs. The more casual players get to experience the game, and the developers try their hardest to convert them into the former demographic.

WoW, on the other hand, doesn't need free-to-play, because all those players who are in the casual demographic for the other MMOs are in the dedicated demographic for WoW.

This is why you can't take the MMO free-to-play shift and apply it to D&D. D&D is the market leader, much like WoW is. D&D doesn't need to go to free-to-play with microtransactions because its players are sufficiently dedicated as-is that a subscription model will work well for them. Furthermore, going free-to-play wouldn't necessarily broaden their audience, because price of admission isn't really a deterrent for trying out D&D. There are much, much larger factors to be overcome than monetary investment that are preventing more people from picking up D&D as a hobby.

 

[Scribble]

I don't think I can accept that premise without a lot more proof. They had two years of the magazines running at full strength without any indication they were burning past their budget - I don't think this is a case of that amount being unsustainable. Similarly, given the numbers some have presented on how much money DDI should be pulling in, I am dubious about it not having the budget needed for that amount of content.

I don't think it is getting the budget needed, but I suspect that is due to management decisions from above, not because of the 'quality/quantity/price' limitation.

It really doesn't matter why it's not getting the budget. They have a budget with which to work.

We didn't see a significant impact my guess is because one the workforce (and man hours) was larger, and two you can overwork your people for a short period of time to overcome the lack of man hours... Especially when those people are watching others get laid off, and are fighting for survival...

Sooner or later though, the over work takes its toll- people just can't continue at the overdrive pace, and more and more errors happen.

AKA lack of quality.

My guess is we're seeing the effects of the restructuring. They tighten up the workforce, then tighten up the output until the reach a level where the can output quality at a price people want to pay, which (hopefully) increases customer satisfaction and size- at which point you have a much better case for how increasing your budget will increase value.

 

[moxcamel]

This is not an accurate description of what the MMO market is going through.

So I think we both just pretty much said the same thing: The mmo industry is going free-to-play (in part) because of WoW, who is the planetary-sized gorilla of the industry and doesn't have to.

But you can't just say that because WotC is the largest player in the PnP industry, it's equivalent to Blizzard. It's not. Not even close. Blizzard could release 5 expansions in a row that completely blow, and they'd still be making eleventy thousand times as much money as their nearest competitor. You can't say this about D&D. One or two bad moves on WotC's part and the industry is a new ballgame. (and I'm pretty sure they've used up one of those bad moves at least with the multitude of DDI fiascoes.) I think it's fair to draw some comparisons to other industries, but it's very difficult to draw 1:1 comparisons.

I also think it's dangerous to assume that the D&D fan base is dedicated enough to keep paying premium prices. Pathfinder has shown that a very VERY significant number of devotees will bail if given a decent alternative. For now, D&D players are willing to pay what I consider to be a pretty high subscription cost for DDI. That could change on a dime, and WotC should be forward-thinking enough to see it coming and react apropriately. But as I said in my previous post, I see them playing catch-up instead.