State of Gleemax: Patch-Dark-Done?

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Gleemax combines horribly ugly site design, tons of errors, and piss-poor functionality. It's literally worse than just posting all their info on a standard, free phpBB message board.

Even giving them a free pass on how "alpha" it is with the technical issues, they hired somebody and paid them money to come up with that site design. How is it even POSSIBLE to force all the developers to blog on that site and not even have a "developer blog" link from the main Gleemax menu? (Yes, I know there's a link to it from the D&D website, but a whole lot of people aren't gonna figure that out.)

 

[humble minion]

It's looking worse as time goes on to be honest.

When the news came out that Dungeon and Dragon mags were to be absorbed into the DI, the WotC line was that when Gleemax went live access would be free until the big 4e release, just to give people a taste of what the DI, digital Dungeon/Dragon etc was all about in the hope they'd be impressed and be more willing to shell out their hard-earned when the site went pay-for-access.

But now we're told that the current Gleemax is only an alpha (not even a beta!), that previews are going to slow down or stop for the immediate future, and that the 'real' thing is coming and when it does we should pay up and be amazed at how staggeringly better it is than what we're seeing now.

This is bad because it's transparently obvious that things are not going to plan over there. Gleemax's technical issues are still significant (and we haven't even seen the virtual game table and other gimmicks that are going to be significantly harder to implement), Dungeon and Dragon content is coming out in dribs and drabs, promised features (compiled pdfs for instance) are either months behind schedule or have been quietly dropped, and as a free sampler of what the DI has in store this whole package as we see it now is a long, loooong way from enticing.

My completely uninformed guess is that the DI has fallen victim to the old WotC-can't-do-software-worth-a-damn disease that so many of us are bitterly familiar with. Signs would seem to point that way...

 

[CharlesRyan]

I gotta agree that things are not moving along as quickly or well as I had hoped, but I'm withholding judgement until after D&D XP. I sorta expected that they'd take the wraps off some new features at that point, and Randy's comments seem to suggest that as well.

 

[cthulhu_duck]

My completely uninformed guess is that the DI has fallen victim to the old WotC-can't-do-software-worth-a-damn disease that so many of us are bitterly familiar with. Signs would seem to point that way...

Or it could be a big complex IT project that doesn't have the support or backing from upper management beyond the odd speech about it - and a lack of funding and other resources.

I'm not sure I was aware that Gleemax was an open alpha - and if I'm supposed to consider subscribing to site that randomly wants me to login again, well...

 

[Moonshade]

I was reading Gleemax when I got that message: "The Wizards community website is currently down for daily maintenance. Please check back again later."

I really, really hope this is something they're planning to fix with the official launch. I don't know any other huge forum that requires as much downtime as Wizards. If Gleemax is going to be marketed as an improvement, it should at least get rid of the most annoying aspect of the old WOTC boards - reading a thread or trying to post and finding myself looking at those two adventurers and their map yet again.

 

[humble minion]

Or it could be a big complex IT project that doesn't have the support or backing from upper management beyond the odd speech about it - and a lack of funding and other resources.

There are many possible reasons why WotC could be lousy at getting software products funtional and out the door. This might well be one of them. But from a (potential) user's point of view, the whys and wherefores don't matter as much as the final result, and omens are not promising for the final result at this point.

 

[devoblue]

A sofware development project _requires_ a different project management methodology than an RPG design project. Large software development projects must be run using an iterative project mangement methodology. It's not hard to imagine that WOTC would have difficulties running such a project, given that their project experience expects a linear development model.

 

[Bagpuss]

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!

Or Obsidian Portal for the campaign blogging aspect (although did they say that was part of DnDInsider, rather than Gleemax).

At the moment Gleemax is pretty pointless.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I gotta agree that things are not moving along as quickly or well as I had hoped, but I'm withholding judgement until after D&D XP. I sorta expected that they'd take the wraps off some new features at that point, and Randy's comments seem to suggest that as well.

*crosses fingers*

New TOS, new TOS, new TOS, new TOS, new TOS....come oooooooooooooooon baby.....

 

[smetzger]

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.

By resources I mean people, time, and money.
WOTC only has so much of each and they are releasing 3 new products at the same time. DDM may be complimentary, but there is still a lot of work to do, and making it complimentary requires work in itself.

For DI to be truly effective they are going to need to devote the same amount of resources to it that they have for 4e. Do you really think they have done this?