State of Gleemax: Patch-Dark-Done?

[small pumpkin man]

Prior to Gleemax, was there even such a thing as an "open alpha"?

It does seem to invalidate the entire point of the alpha stage, yes.

 

[Shemeska]

Honestly, given that there's a 30+ page thread of complaints over on Gleemax that appears to be largely directed against Gamer_Zero, the guy they hired as a community liason, they might have more issues than a non-functional site in terms of people's opinions of Gleemax.

 

[smetzger]

IMO they should not have a public alpha.

When was the last time WOTC produced a quality software product for D&D?

I think we have to go back to the Dragon archive CD, and that was just an archive. The 3e character generator was terrible and that was supposed to be a preview for Master Tools.
We heard good things about Master Tools and how it was gonna be better than he Char Gen, but they ended up biting off more than they could chew and it was dropped even before we saw it.

WOTC does not have a good track record for managing software development and defining requirements. This public alpha is just one more black spot on their record.

WOTC is going to have to change something if the D&D Game Table and Character Visualizer are going to be quality products. Plus they are dividing resources between a new version of D&D and D&D Minis.

The odds are against this being a good product this summer.

 

[hong]

Honestly, given that there's a 30+ page thread of complaints over on Gleemax that appears to be largely directed against Gamer_Zero, the guy they hired as a community liason, they might have more issues than a non-functional site in terms of people's opinions of Gleemax.

Ooo. Link?

 

[PeelSeel2]

WOTC is going to have to change something if the D&D Game Table and Character Visualizer are going to be quality products. Plus they are dividing resources between a new version of D&D and D&D Minis.

The odds are against this being a good product this summer.

On the character generator and game table. Time will tell.

They are not dividing resources between D&D and D&D mini's. They are making them complimentary products. In previous version of DDM, people who played 3.5e or 3.0e found it kinda foreign, and that worked the other way too. Now they are more correctly aligned. Those familiar with the new DDM will not find 4e foreign, and 4e players going into DDM will also find it familiar.

 

[Rhiannon Star]

Ooo. Link?

I think this is the thread in question.

 

[Zaukrie]

how will marketing get me to the site, if I have to pay to use it?

My experience with ANYTHING software related from WotC (other than the dragon archive, which is actually better if you just read the pdfs) is terrible.

Why would I trust them at all? The alpha just confirmed all of my fears about their inability to deliver content on line. Gleemax was so bad that it lowered my expectations for their ability to deliver even lower than it was before, which was hard to do - this was a major accomplishment, lowering my expectations even lower.

 

[keterys]

You don't need to pay to use Gleemax - you'll have to pay for certain premium games (like DMing a D&D Game Table), but you can blog and play desktop defense (and who knows what else, long term) for free.

It's pretty clearly marked as an alpha and oh-my-god is it horribly alpha. I am stunned they put the developer blogs onto gleemax when they could have cheerfully left it puttering along without drawing attention to it in such a way that forced die hards to experience it.

That said - beyond actual bugs*, what's wrong with it? Or, I guess, what key functionality would be required for it to be adequate at its basic functionality. They're actually asking specifically for such information, so I can try to pass it on if there's anything constructive in this thread.

* Ie, things that don't work right. For example, -ever- seeing the error page, -ever- being logged out without meaning to, losing a post in any way, having text or links acquire extra spaces or wrong formatting, etc.

 

[Mistwell]

So the site was "in alpha" all along, and we just didn't tell anybody. To, uhm, pre-test the functionality ... all part of the plan, which is ... uh, oops, I guess the dog ate my homework there ...

Yeah, right.

It always said alpha, right at the top, if you went direct to the site. It's not that they didn't tell anyone, it's that you never noticed it. People discussed that it was alpha on the boards there as well.

 

[MerricB]

That said - beyond actual bugs*, what's wrong with it? Or, I guess, what key functionality would be required for it to be adequate at its basic functionality. They're actually asking specifically for such information, so I can try to pass it on if there's anything constructive in this thread.

Image and File Hosting. Better sorting of blogs/articles. Recommendation system for blogs (thumbs up). See boardgamegeek.com for what they should be striving for.

Cheers!