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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8894253" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean, I mostly agree with what you're saying here, but I think we have to allow that this is a big "if".WotC are investing far more heavily than anyone has ever done in VTT, by a huge margin, but as [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] so often cautions us, software projects have a very high rate of budget or time overruns, failure to achieve major objectives, or just outright failure to produce a functional product. That WotC have an exceptional history of failed software projects and have never attempted one on even a quarter of this scale before does not bode well.But it could happen!I think it needs to do more than "be there". It will also need to be pleasant and easy to use, cheap to get started with - or use continually, even, if you don't want pretty minis - and fairly flexible. It'll also need to be quite full-featured at the "basic" level.Otherwise it'll gradually or even rapidly dwindle, like so many online projects.The killer app for it is probably an AI DM that's reasonably reliable and not prone to "deviance" lol (but people are getting better at stopping that). It's a little perverse because one of 5E's goals was to recognise the DM and make their decisionmaking truly integral to the game, but I think 1D&D is going to want to gently reverse course on that, as it'll make the game more accessible and easier to "digitize". An AI DM, even a fairly simplistic/dim one that could, say, only run official WotC (TM) adventures would potentially bring in a whole bunch of new players, and potentially sell content. Like, your DM doesn't have/want to run Curse of Strahd 2: The Strahddening? But you'd like to play it? Just buy it and get the AI DM to run it for you (you'll need to up your sub to Master tier to access the AI DM of course!). Our novel "autoscaling" tech will ensure the encounters get rescaled for your group size and/or let you control multiple characters! Huzzah now D&D is a subscription-based computer game of a particularly overpriced kind! And you're heavily invested in it! Let's see you Sunk Cost Fallacy your way out of this one!NB: The people who would be keen on the AI DM will be a very different lot to the sort of people inspired to play by Critical Role or the like, but that's fine, you've just got more audiences for your product!Yeah and that's a very interesting question to me. Will they? We don't know if they're a company that thinks like that. They've never shown any sign that they are, but we've had recent management changes, and they've brought in huge numbers of people to work on the 3D VTT, and depending on who is in charge, that culture could have come with.One thing I would caution people against reading as a failure re: the 3D VTT - if they get it up and running and functioning properly, and then suddenly we hear like 30-60% of the 350 people they hired for it got fired/let go, that is not necessarily indicative of anything but the project being complete. That's normal in an AAA-style software development cycle. Even World of Warcraft, which succeeded far beyond the wildest dreams of Blizzard, let hundreds of people go once it launched. If they get let go before it's functioning properly, that's a bit more concerning.</blockquote>

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