Wizards: Musings on the new DDi disaster

[Kurtomatic]

Haha, agreed. WotC has always (even before Hasbro) been a two-steps-forward, one-step-back (or even, in this case 1-forward, 2-back) kind of company. This really is just par for the course with these guys, so in a way its not surprising. Unfortunately.

This mess will all get cleaned up eventually, its just a matter of cost in time, effort, and customers. Makes one wonder what they could do if they didn't royally sabotage themselves about every other year.

 

[Imaro]

I suppose this may depend on your definition of "new" players, but I do know a couple of people who while not new to D&D, did transfer to 4th Ed because of Essentials, whereas they had previously been playing older editions.

I would say this closely describes my situation, though not totally. I didn't like 4e initially and went with Pathfinder... now however essentials has drawn me back (somewhat) and I play and run both.

In our area, the Gamedays were also fairly well received though I don't know how many of those players have since decided to stick on.

Yeah, I didn't get to go to the gamedays and the schedule for encounter (Wednesday night) conflicts with work so I pretty much have no data, not even anecdotal, on how these events are going.

One ironic thing to me though is that I personally tend to think that its unlikely a new player would immediately sign on to DDi anyway. Rather, it seems more likely that they would try out the game for a while and see if they like it, and only then start to consider a DDi subscription. I know that I didn't pony up the money for DDi until I got into a game and realized that I did like the new edition. Then the money seemed worth it to me (though at the time more for the Dragon/Dungeon content than the CB -- MB had yet to be released at that time).

Not sure how well the subscription thing is going to go over with new players... and I especially wonder, for those that do jump in early, how a buggy character builder is going to affect their perception of value (though as was alluded to above, without prior exposure to CB1, it may not be negative.). It certainly would be interesting to see what the DDI numbers look like over the next couple of months.

 

[Shazman]

Once again WotC has failed spectacularly, and in a way guaranteed to alienate a good portion of their consumer base. The sad thing is that it isn't surprising. In fact, it's predictable by now. Quite frankly, the degree of contempt shown for both their employees and customers coupled with a shocking degree of incompetence over the past few years, shows that their failure is well earned. You sow what you reap WotC. I have no confidence in WotC, and have no desire to purchase anymore of their products, especially the now useless ddi with it's buggy CB with far less functionality than the old CB. Farewell WotC. Embrace your failure!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It may very well have been a "death march" programming project.

Death march (software development) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I get the impression that 'Death March' is the default approach at Wizards, in that when they create new product they chug along and ramp up to the final release with lots of pressure and overtime. Now this may be fine publisheing books (though with the errata, that is questionable) but in software development it can be disasterous..

Basically they have poor project management and it would appear a senior management layer that does not get software development at any level.

It remains to be seen, can they learn, and is there a worthwhile strategic vision driving this?.

 

[mudbunny]

FWIW - I didn't see any of the posts as being directed at me. I am pretty sure that most (if not all) of thhe regulars know what I do for WotC. But, the CB problems are drawing a lot of new people to the forums, and I wanted to make sure that some people didn't get the wrong idea.

 

[Sunseeker]

I love how WotC is made out to be such an "evil empire" in topics like these. I mean, they might as well be kidnapping our children and clubbing baby seals(I'm looking at you Canada!...or should I say Evilada?).

In any case, I'm not happy with the new CB, but I don't hate it. And I hardly have the energy to feel so maligned as some of you do against WotC. Yes, books get updated rather quickly, D&D is a living, breathing game that is constantly in flux. Look at WoW, it's a fixed system(in that you can only play it one way), and they push out updates, bug fixes, changes, minor patches every week. With a comprable number of people playing and an even greater amount of information(IMO) it's hardly surprising that a book, a printed, uneditable document, would get updated rather frequently and rather often.

Wizards will recat to our words(when they're not blind rage), and our spending habits. So yes, if you are unhappy with their moves, tell them this and stop spending your money on them. However, if you're going to bop wizards on the nose and scold them, remember that you must likewise reward them when they do what you want.

If you take the "Wizards fired us!" attitude, you're not going to get anything because the more you play games based off Wizard's systems without supporting Wizards, the more they're going to clamp down on those other games. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

As for the CB2 in particular, it was the FIRST DAY guys. Really now, there hasn't been a single program in the last 20 years I can think of that ran PERFECTLY on day one. Even the CB1 crashes and randomly closes sometimes, and it's been out for nearly 2 years now? The fact that you can recover an unsaved character, IMO, makes up for a lot of that as even the old CB will lose all your data if a crash happens, NO recovery.

I'm not saying you need to love everything WotC does, far from it, but stop expecting perfection, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[the Jester]

So, going with the online version wasn't a bad idea. Is it ready? Absolutely not. However, it does give me an idea of its potential. In my opinion, if we all come together as a community and offer Wizards our opinions and work with them to correct these problems, the new CB could be a fantastic tool. Already, I've noticed a few of the bugs being corrected.

It's great that it has potential, but the existing tool worked great. What people are objecting to (as I read it) is that tool being replaced by one that is substantially less functional.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it and all that.

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.

Yep. They should have maintained "Classic" CB updates until the new one was ready, not until the new one would be *grits teeth* ready enough in a couple of months.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Once again WotC has failed spectacularly, and in a way guaranteed to alienate a good portion of their consumer base. The sad thing is that it isn't surprising. In fact, it's predictable by now. Quite frankly, the degree of contempt shown for both their employees and customers coupled with a shocking degree of incompetence over the past few years, shows that their failure is well earned. You sow what you reap WotC. I have no confidence in WotC, and have no desire to purchase anymore of their products, especially the now useless ddi with it's buggy CB with far less functionality than the old CB. Farewell WotC. Embrace your failure!

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.

 

[Riastlin]

I love how WotC is made out to be such an "evil empire" in topics like these. I mean, they might as well be kidnapping our children and clubbing baby seals(I'm looking at you Canada!...or should I say Evilada?).

In any case, I'm not happy with the new CB, but I don't hate it. And I hardly have the energy to feel so maligned as some of you do against WotC. Yes, books get updated rather quickly, D&D is a living, breathing game that is constantly in flux. Look at WoW, it's a fixed system(in that you can only play it one way), and they push out updates, bug fixes, changes, minor patches every week. With a comprable number of people playing and an even greater amount of information(IMO) it's hardly surprising that a book, a printed, uneditable document, would get updated rather frequently and rather often.

Wizards will recat to our words(when they're not blind rage), and our spending habits. So yes, if you are unhappy with their moves, tell them this and stop spending your money on them. However, if you're going to bop wizards on the nose and scold them, remember that you must likewise reward them when they do what you want.

If you take the "Wizards fired us!" attitude, you're not going to get anything because the more you play games based off Wizard's systems without supporting Wizards, the more they're going to clamp down on those other games. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

As for the CB2 in particular, it was the FIRST DAY guys. Really now, there hasn't been a single program in the last 20 years I can think of that ran PERFECTLY on day one. Even the CB1 crashes and randomly closes sometimes, and it's been out for nearly 2 years now? The fact that you can recover an unsaved character, IMO, makes up for a lot of that as even the old CB will lose all your data if a crash happens, NO recovery.

I'm not saying you need to love everything WotC does, far from it, but stop expecting perfection, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

But its the age of the intarwebs u n00b. Now that they can talk to us so much more easily and that we can rant . . . i mean talk to them too, everything must obviously be perfect for everybody. Gosh, u a total fanboi! omg!11111win!!

 

[Jack99]

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.

He knows. Pretty sure it was Shaz on every single occassion

Mod Edit: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a prime example of getting personal in discussion. It is one of the basic building blocks of being a jerk. Please, don't do this. The world has enough jerks in it without us having to add to it. ~Umbran