Some Information on Gleemax social networking

[Jonny Nexus]

I'm getting used to it. It's not that I like it. I've just stopped not liking it.

Or to (mis)quote Churchill:

"This is not the liking. It is not even the beginning of the liking. But it is, perhaps, the end of the unliking."

 

[Jonny Nexus]

I smell a poll in the making... I won't make it but maybe someone else could come up with a poll on opinions on the visual displays from gleemax....

Well I'm not quite sure how to do a poll, but if someone else is doing one could I humbly request that "Dear god, my eyes! My eyes! They're burningggggggg!" be included as one of the options?





(And with that I think I'll stop flogging a horse that quite clearly dropped dead several hours ago, and whose little horsey soul is now galloping free through the misty green landscapes of an equine valhalla).

 

[Khairn]

The recent list of Gleemax centered functionality listed in Randy's recent blog is only the 2nd bit of positive news I've heard from WotC in over 2 months. The other piece of good news was the board game portal which I thought was a nice concept. And its free which is also good.

Even though a lot of the eventual functionality of Gleemax is apparently a simple copy and paste of existing programs (blog, wiki and my space cloning), it does have a certain amount of logic to it and I can definitely see how it can be used to support the RPG community. With over 30+ features currently slated for eventual inclusion in Gleemex it will be a very busy year + for the WotC programmers and outside contractors.

Aside from that, apparently we shouldn't expect anything new regarding the future of D&D support (D&D specific DI updates etc) until Gen-Con where some kinds of previews of something will be on display.

 

[tomBitonti]

You're right that it raises some issues, but I disagree that it would have been better to wait. This is one of those classic cases where it's easy to cite the downsides of a decision, without acknowledging the worse situation that would have happened with any other course of action.

If we hadn't announced Gleemax until the site was ready to launch:

- The first people to show up would see that it was empty and devoid of any form of critcal mass.
- Our first month would have been spent with people saying they refuse to use it because of the name.
- Tons of people would be totally confused and would have countless questions about what the heck this Gleemax thing was.
- We would have designed and launched the site in a vacuum without taking suggestions and feedback from customers.
- Customers would be very upset that WotC sprung a major change in direction on them without any notice.
- There would be a huge outcry about how "This is the End of (insert product) as we know it!"

So while I agree that there are plenty of downsides to the launch of the promotional site, I think they far outweigh the alternatives.

Ok, that is confusing. Are you addressing the announcement of the site, or the launch of the promotional site, or the readiness of the eventual production site?

In regards to the promotional site, my basic read is that the site was badly done, and that a more defensible response would be to agree, and to say that the company didn't think the site was very important anyways.