Wizards: Musings on the new DDi disaster

[Sunseeker]

Evil Empire? Hardly. A big business trying to ramp up revenue and maximize profit from their IP fits perfectly and it isn't evil.

Exactly, and yet, many people here consistently express the opinion that WotC should NOT be doing that. And that any attempts to do so are "bad".

The basic problem with this comparison is that D&D is a tabletop roleplaying game and WOW is an MMO. These problems are largely due to WOTC's efforts to try and get a tabletop roleplaying game to produce the kind of revenue stream that an MMO would.

More revenue is good for everyone. Their products become better, they become more frequent, the price goes down. The idea that a tabletop game MUST be unprofitable is a false one.

...MMO rant...

Thank you for decidedly ignoring the point I was making and instead decrying the limitations of MMOs.

The point I was trying to make was that WoW is a massive game, comprable in scale, if not in scope, to D&D. It is published in a digital format, and it STILL has bugs and updates and moficiations and tweaks and nerfs, almost EVERY week since it's release.

D&D is just as big in scale, if not bigger, and larger in scope as well. But it is published in a format that is unfriendly to updates, even small ones, even bug fixes.

Wizards didn't fire anyone (any customers that is ) but their actions have certainly caused customers to fire them as a provider of desired product.

And that's a customer decision, I'm sure their actions have gained them customers as well.

Supporting Wizards? A company receives support from customers by providing those customers with something they want to buy. Wizards doesn't have to provide anything they do not feel like providing just as customers don't have to give Wizards a dime if they don't feel as if the product offered is worth it.

Last time: please read what I write before responding.

If you don't like what WotC does, feel free to show it with your money. But if they then do something you find favorable, show them that you support that move, with your money. When the dog doesn't sit, you smack it. When the dog does sit, you give it a cookie. Eventually, the dog will always sit.

 

[Solvarn]

And I think this herein lies WotC biggest problem with selling people on the new CB... no one wants to pay the same price for an inferior product. WotC is charging the same amount for replacing a tool they had gotten to a relative levelof stability and that much of their customer base had become use to and proficient in it's use... with something that is less.

IMO, it would have been a better marketing plan to announce it as a Beta product in a final "testing" stage that was free to use in order to log defects on it for a month than to release it the way they did.

The problem with this was that they didn't have their existing producting working. Giving away their product for free for a month would have had their subscriber base up in arms.

In addition to making the Character Builder free for a month, they should have credited everyone a month on their subscription, to allow for "testing" and because their regular update schedule was interrupted.

 

[Scribble]

I keep reading this, how big are we talking about? Like a 10 foot-tall human? 'cause I've made several who are over the size "average" limit by a couple inches and it doesn't crash.

To test this, I just made a 1000 foot tall halfling thief... I'm thinking Chrome must be a super star when it comes to resisting the urge to crash, or they fixed this one?

 

[Sunseeker]

To test this, I just made a 1000 foot tall halfling thief... I'm thinking Chrome must be a super star when it comes to resisting the urge to crash, or they fixed this one?

Perhaps it just thought it too awesome?

 

[Umbran]

Folks, a couple of you thought that making references to real-world political figures would be an okay thing to do on these boards.

You should be aware that we've got a pretty strong no-politics rule. Please don't go there. Thanks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1000 foot tall halfling thief

I remember his older brother, MC 900 Foot Jesus had some great albums back in the 1990s.

 

[ggroy]

Addicted to schadenfreude? Kinky!

.... They think they can stop anytime they want.

 

[Osgood]

This same exact thing was said when they announced that to start with, you could only make 20 characters on the online CB.

This same exact thing was said when the Dark Sun and Essentials updates were not done in the other CB in September.

This same exact thing was said when Essentials was announced and people thought the main game was being "discontinued".

This same exact thing was said when they discontinued development on the Gleemax suite.

This same exact thing was said when the druid, barbarian, gnome and orc were not going to appear in the first Player's Handbook.

This same exact thing was said when they announced they were releasing 4E and they would no longer support 3.5.

This same exact thing was said when they announced they were releasing 3.5 and that they would no longer support 3.0.

In other words... WotC has done years of things that were supposed to result in the downfall of their company and the downfall of the Dungeons & Dragons game.

And yet, here we are... still playing it. Still using their tools. Still buying their books. And still being hyperbolic about how the sky is falling and how THIS TIME they've gone too far.

Best of luck to all of you who are definitely, absolutely, finally, this time we mean it, giving up on D&D forever. And I'll be sure to wave 'hi' to you come January when WotC releases another product that doesn't work 100% correct right out the chute and most of you are all back here on ENWorld saying that they've really done it this time, thus proving you've still been using and playing with their products the entire time.

While individually none of these things have put WotC out of business, there business strategy in the past year or so suggests a measure of desperation. I think many of these events have had a major impact on the business...

WotC lost revenue with refunds and canceled subs after the Sept. DS/Essentials debacle.

WotC lost potential sales from guys like me and the dozen or so other gamers I know who typically buy almost everything, but have no interest in the Essentials (a risk I think they were willing to take in hopes of hooking new/lapsed players).

WotC lost a lot of revenue when the fan base split between 4E and Pathfinder (which may have been averted if the GSL had been on time and closer to the OGL).

I don't think there is any one apocalyptic event that will destroy the hobby, I think it may keep dying little deaths as it has done since its peak in the 80's. If you are WotC, you have to realize that every sale is important, especially in these economic times, and they just can't afford this mismanagement.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Nope. I still have perfectly good D&D material going back 30 years that is in no way damaged by any of this mess.

I don't really care what Wizards wants to do from this point forward. As a hobbyist I will spend my gaming dollars where I believe the best value can be found. The direction Wizards has taken leads in the opposite direction from that for me.

Proper contrition? Everything they have done has been an effort to squeeze every bit of cash out of gamers that they can. Being part of a large company means that they owe it to the shareholders to do exactly that. Why apologize for attempting to achieve their main objective?

Making money is what companies are in business to do after all. With the old DDI system 5 out of our group of 7 had separate accounts. The 2 that didn't are kind of casual players so I built characters for them on my account. The ones with accounts could play around and try different combos then mail me their updated character file after deciding what they wanted. What is funny is that under the new system, if we all want to do what we have been doing then we will have to share an account. Keeping the same level of functionality as we had before involves giving WOTC less money than they were getting under the old model.

I don't mind paying for something but when value keeps getting stripped away and the price remains the same it's time to stop buying.

So, we will continue to use the old CB for now, which will involve paying nothing. You can't beat that for value.

Much in the same boat as you. I've got plenty of dead tree material to last me years. Have yet to buy any 4e product for myself as of yet (unless you count minis on occassion).
I would fall into that casual gamer for 4e in your group. I'm all about 3.5e. But the DM for the 4e game let me have a copy of the CB to let me try a few different builds than email him the character file so he had a copy and could recommend a few things that I missed or might be a better fit for my play style.
That experience really opened me up to playing in a 4e game.

Moving to an online only format, you lose players like myself. I'll just stay in the older editions and be happy doing it.

...snip...
And yet, here we are... still playing it. Still using their tools. Still buying their books. And still being hyperbolic about how the sky is falling and how THIS TIME they've gone too far.

Best of luck to all of you who are definitely, absolutely, finally, this time we mean it, giving up on D&D forever. And I'll be sure to wave 'hi' to you come January when WotC releases another product that doesn't work 100% correct right out the chute and most of you are all back here on ENWorld saying that they've really done it this time, thus proving you've still been using and playing with their products the entire time.

Or they will be like those of us that still lurk around EnWorld, though we have purchased nothing after our point of breaking.

For me, I quit buying new books (deadtree) after 4e was announced. I still shop the secondary market mainly for older versions. I'm sure if I found a collection of 4e ones for $5 or so on Craigslist or a yard sale I would pick them up. But I don't actively look for them.

The downloadable Character Builder actually made me consider getting a DDI subscription after my 4e DM let me have a copy to try out so I would give it a go in our groups game.

Taking it (CB) online, pretty much knocks off that thinking of mine.
Have any of you given thought to past actions of WotC with stuff posted/saved to their servers? It was a policy of their's not so long ago anything on them was their IP. Many of us scrubbed our accounts of our house rules, various worlds and whatnot when that change in the ToS came out.

With a downloaded copy, you were protected in a way from that. And you could freely share a character with anyone in the world you wish that had the Character Builder as well.
What happens when 5e comes out, does this version stay available or does it just simple go away and is replaced with a 5e version of it? What happens to all your characters you have stored on their servers at the time of the switch?

Voting with $$ is the best way to have their attention.
Honestly the change won't affect me much at all and I would have never known about it had the 4eDM hadn't mentioned it during our Star Wars game.

That is a good case point in itself now that I think about it.
Apply this to Star Wars.
What if the Character Builder had been for SW.
Than they moved it online.
Now when Lucas pulls SW back from WotC and they can't have anything SW on their site now.
Your Character Builder for SW just went away.

O but that couldn't happen to D&D you say to yourself.
Ask yourself "Why couldn't it?".

 

[Sunseeker]

Taking it (CB) online, pretty much knocks off that thinking of mine.
Have any of you given thought to past actions of WotC with stuff posted/saved to their servers? It was a policy of their's not so long ago anything on them was their IP. Many of us scrubbed our accounts of our house rules, various worlds and whatnot when that change in the ToS came out.

And anything you create still is.

With a downloaded copy, you were protected in a way from that. And you could freely share a character with anyone in the world you wish that had the Character Builder as well.
What happens when 5e comes

Except, it was still their IP. Did you build a Deva? Oh! Guess what that's Wizard's IP. Did you build a tiefling rogue? oh! Look more WotC IP. You don't own your characters, they are at best, fan-art, which is only legal so long as WotC says it is. If WotC were to say "we officially announce that any rule, any character, any world you create with out system is ours." then they would be legally within their rights.