The Casual group and online pay content

[Phasics]

Seems a little presumptuous to me charging a monthly fee for access to the online content.

I mean the monthly fee looks close to MMO prices but do we need 24/7 access ?

would it not be more reasonable to also offer a 24 hours access pass or 48hr access pass to cover prep and a gaming session and then another pass 36 days later when your group is all free again to play.

Maybe even buy hourly blocks of access time that has a 1 year expiry from date of purchase. buy say 50HRS 100HRS or 200HRS . obviously less cost effective than monthly fee if you use it alot in which case you get th monthly fee, but if your access or sporadic surely there are more user friendly options.

Unless of course its all about $$$ in which case you shouldn't try to avoid the language filter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Unless of course its all about $$$ in which case you shouldn't try to avoid the language filter.

See, this is where you lose their attention and any chance of actually changing things. Party on, Garth.

 

[Tquirky]

The assumption might be that you'll be playing a lot online, using the virtual miniatures you've bought from them.

One drawback is that this is relatively easily rendered redundant by someone out there making a freeware clone of the paper and pencil D&D online software, because official miniatures are much less of a need for play with regard to D&D than official cards are for M:tG. Lumps of coloured glass make excellent D&D miniatures, for instance, and the digital equivalent will be easy to create as well. Free will probably trump pretty.

(Note that there's plenty of precedent - there's already been a lot of movement on these fronts for freeware for playing both M:tG and D&D. This is a natural consequence of geeks being the target market I guess.)

Building new D&D IP protected rules into the client may be one way to attempt to close that door...e.g. by making WOTC's character creator the only legal one available which has all the new stuff in it.

 

[Cbas_10]

Seems a little presumptuous to me charging a monthly fee for access to the online content.

I mean the monthly fee looks close to MMO prices but do we need 24/7 access ?

would it not be more reasonable to also offer a 24 hours access pass or 48hr access pass to cover prep and a gaming session and then another pass 36 days later when your group is all free again to play.

Maybe even buy hourly blocks of access time that has a 1 year expiry from date of purchase. buy say 50HRS 100HRS or 200HRS . obviously less cost effective than monthly fee if you use it alot in which case you get th monthly fee, but if your access or sporadic surely there are more user friendly options.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I'm sure that the cost of the infrastructure or whatever type of system needed to sell and track "time" like that would make things, in the long run, more expensive for the casual once-a-week gamer. Not to mention wanting to read articles, read up on past articles that we didn't have a chance to read before, toying around with character creation, and on and on.

Unless of course its all about $$$ in which case you shouldn't try to avoid the language filter.

The dusty one was right.

Hmmm....contrary to popular online belief, hundreds upon thousands of man-hours are needed....along with copious amounts of money for authors & cartographers, licensing, taxes and other fees, support staff, and...wow....lots of other things. That little cable sticking out of the back of your computer connects to something far greater in the world. It doesn't pipe totally free magical images onto your computer screen from magic fairyland.

 

[neceros]

I haven't seen prices yet, but assuming that it's $15 a month (which I think would be steep, and doubt they would do this.) I wonder who would pay it? I know quite a few people that would. I also know people that would pay it when they needed it, then canceled subscription until they needed it again.

If it's monthly, then I'd be pretty indifferent towards a 5-10$ a month price -- especially if they offered content not available in the books, the character generator, an online table top to play with people whenever you want (my gaming buddies tend to do other stuff more then actually want to play, sadly, or get into big fights about rules, etc) so I'm one of those people that is happy to pay for recourses online.

Depends on how it's implemented.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

We don't allow foul language on the boards. And if we can tell what you're saying, it is still foul, even if you try to obscure it with random symbols. Please, keep the language clean.

In addition, if you're quoting a post that uses foul language, don't quote the foul language. Even if you didn't say it, repeating it isn't helping keep things clean.

Thanks for your time and attention. If anyone has questions on it, please feel free to e-mail one of the moderators.

 

[Hussar]

The assumption might be that you'll be playing a lot online, using the virtual miniatures you've bought from them.

Can someone please take this rumour out and shoot it in the head? They are NOT GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY FOR VIRTUAL MINIS! This has been stated pretty clearly already.

 

[KingCrab]

Can someone please take this rumour out and shoot it in the head? They are NOT GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY FOR VIRTUAL MINIS! This has been stated pretty clearly already.

But they thought about it and discussed it once, so we just can't turn around and forgive them.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

But they thought about it and discussed it once, so we just can't turn around and forgive them.

I believe they also thought about and discussed turning it into Pretty Pretty Princess Dress-Up the RPG; but it was swiftly shot down.

-TRRW

 

[Phasics]

Folks,

We don't allow foul language on the boards. And if we can tell what you're saying, it is still foul, even if you try to obscure it with random symbols. Please, keep the language clean.

In addition, if you're quoting a post that uses foul language, don't quote the foul language. Even if you didn't say it, repeating it isn't helping keep things clean.

Thanks for your time and attention. If anyone has questions on it, please feel free to e-mail one of the moderators.

You are of course correct, apologies for the language oddly enough I don't even remember what I wrote.

And thinking about it further left unsaid makes the point all the better since anyone who reads it will insert their own offensive comment , far more effective than anything I could dream up. Cheers