Rate WotC as a company

[El Mahdi]

I'm sure they are crying all the way to the bank.

So what . . . Paizo rocks!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

4) Online content. I'm not sure if I even need to go into this. Charging for virtual minis in the DDI we'd ALREADY have to pay for...assuming they ever get it up, which looks more and more unlikely. The horrifyingly bad message board quality. Nor is this anything new; WotC online content has been a joke - a BAD joke, but a joke - for quite some time now.

Haha, nevermind. Delete me.

Gotta love irony.

I've seen a number of people talk about how bad the Gleemax boards are and how many problems there are with WOTC's sites. But, come on, let's do a bit of comparison shall we?

EN World has been up and down like a toilet seat for the better part of a year. Tons of double posts, dropped connections and other problems. I know I'm not the only one having issues because I see "delete me double post" posts all over the place.

Paizo's boards, at least the last time I looked, were borked. You couldn't search the archives, so anything that slipped off the front page of a forum was pretty much gone.

White Wolf's boards are drek. Just really, really bad.

Who else? Green Ronin's boards are brutal to navigate. Canonfire has been down for a while.

I mean, compared to just about EVERY RPG site out there, WOTC's doing at least as well, if not better. And has considerably more traffic to contend with.

 

[Orius]

Frankly, the C&Ds from Palladium have always been just this side of the rantings of a madman.

From what I've read of Palladium, that does not surprise me.

The best one is the complaint over the character sheets. For the love of all that is good just print out the PDF… who in their right mind would buy those sheets in the first place? Really? LOL

Like I said earlier, I think it's a holdover from older pre-web editions of the game. Either that or maybe they did sell enough 3.x character sheets that they felt prepackaged 4e sheets were warranted. I have no idea why since not only were there .pdfs in 3e, but the PHB had a photocopyable sheet, making the packaged ones utterly redundant.

Sounds kind of paranoid to me. If this is an important idea coming down from corporate, it could influence why they would choose to see 3rd party publishers as competition instead of partners.

Maybe, but that was a statement by Hasbro, not WotC. Hasbro has lots of IP, and D&D is just a small part of that. I'm sure a lot of it is probably focused more on knock-offs of their various toy lines and board games than anything 3pps are doing with the OGL/GSL. Those toy lines and games probably pull in a hell of a lot more money than D&D.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Gotta love irony.

I've seen a number of people talk about how bad the Gleemax boards are and how many problems there are with WOTC's sites. But, come on, let's do a bit of comparison shall we?

EN World has been up and down like a toilet seat for the better part of a year. Tons of double posts, dropped connections and other problems. I know I'm not the only one having issues because I see "delete me double post" posts all over the place.

Paizo's boards, at least the last time I looked, were borked. You couldn't search the archives, so anything that slipped off the front page of a forum was pretty much gone.

White Wolf's boards are drek. Just really, really bad.

Who else? Green Ronin's boards are brutal to navigate. Canonfire has been down for a while.

I mean, compared to just about EVERY RPG site out there, WOTC's doing at least as well, if not better. And has considerably more traffic to contend with.

To be fair, it wasn't a double post. MY internet hiccuped while that post was loading, and I didn't know if it went through or not, so I semi-retyped it and posted it again before going "OH HEY THAT LOOKS FAMILIAR" at the post above it.

The complaint at Wizards' online stuff isn't just limited to Gleemax though. Wizards has a long and pretty much not-that-awesome history with the internets in general.

 

[Jack99]

For about a month, it takes me around 5 minutes to load a page on ENworld. Sure, Gleemax is down occasionally, but when it is up, at least it runs smoothly. I love ENworld (as much as one can love a messageboard), but if this keeps up, I am gone, supporter account or not. It simply takes up too much time to read and reply, when it takes 5 minutes or more to load a page.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Maybe, but that was a statement by Hasbro, not WotC. Hasbro has lots of IP, and D&D is just a small part of that. I'm sure a lot of it is probably focused more on knock-offs of their various toy lines and board games than anything 3pps are doing with the OGL/GSL. Those toy lines and games probably pull in a hell of a lot more money than D&D.

Maybe. I don't think its likely that they were referring specifically to D&D with that statement, but it could be an indication that they want tighter controls over all of the IPs that they own, D&D being one of them. Again, this looks like the type of statement that would be indicative of some high level communication from corporate headquarters telling brand managers in all areas to reign in their IPs and licenses. Or it could be that I'm reading entirely too much into it.

They definitely have a lot of valuable IPs. Me, I'm looking forward to the GI Joe movie, so it isn't like I have no appreciation for any of their properties. At least with GI Joe, I have no personal stake in whatever direction they decide to take with the brand. I can just sit back and eat popcorn.

 

[Errant]

I gave them a 2. I find the quality of their books ok, at least on par with most comparative books but their fail miserably on the web based element that they've effectively forced on us.

It was bad enough that they didn't renew CodeMonkeys' license for eTools before their was an official replacement electronic character generator available, but they STILL haven't provided a replacement and their much advertised web tools are effectively vaporware.

Most of the time I can't even see access their forums.

I've bought the 4E core books. I like 4E, but there's no way I'll be spending any more money on WoTC products until they make good on the electonic support side of things.

 

[MerricB]

Mmm... popcorn.

As I recall, Wizards got into a lot of trouble by overcommitting on Pokemon back in the day. They were warned by Hasbro about it, but they were extremely unprepared for the bottom falling out of the market, leading to the Great Purge of... some year I can't recall (2001?). It hurt the entire company badly, and led to a lot of good RPG people losing their jobs despite being good employees.

Cheers!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Maybe. I don't think its likely that they were referring specifically to D&D with that statement, but it could be an indication that they want tighter controls over all of the IPs that they own, D&D being one of them. Again, this looks like the type of statement that would be indicative of some high level communication from corporate headquarters telling brand managers in all areas to reign in their IPs and licenses. Or it could be that I'm reading entirely too much into it.

They definitely have a lot of valuable IPs. Me, I'm looking forward to the GI Joe movie, so it isn't like I have no appreciation for any of their properties. At least with GI Joe, I have no personal stake in whatever direction they decide to take with the brand. I can just sit back and eat popcorn.

I think your excerpt from the annual report is interesting. I don't know if it really means that Hasbro is interfering more with WotC or not, but I think it might indicate that Hasbro will use its IP more "agressively", too, now that it has been officially added as an asset.

Can it be there will be a Dungeons & Dragons movie that will not just plain suck? If you have IP, you should use it and it should establish the quality of the associated brand!

Well, I can dream...

 

[DaveMage]

So what . . . Paizo rocks!

Well, I do agree with you there.