WOTC: Making a statement is not making a promise

[Kristian Serrano]

OK, I'm bored.

 

[The Little Raven]

The absolute statements made during the 2007 GenCon presentation made it sound as though the tools were nearly complete, especially with all the screenshots and videos.

They openly said that the tools weren't even in the alpha stage as late as November 2007 (when they were advertising for an in-house developer to take it over), which drew criticism from people who felt that it should have been farther along. So, if you assumed that they were nearly complete at GenCon '07, it was based on something entirely separate from what information WotC actually released on the topic.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I think it's a lack of faith. The absolute statements made during the 2007 GenCon presentation made it sound as though the tools were nearly complete, especially with all the screenshots and videos. At least that's when I thought, "Wow, they finally got this digital thing right!" after struggling with E-Tools and other products for so long (consider the lack of continuing support for official data sets by that point).

Now, there is nothing that has been shown or communicated that leads me to believe that the D&DI tools are anything more than what MasterTools were. I equate the current tools to be the equivalent of the Character Generator that came with the 3e PHB, and I won't be surprised if that's all we'll ever get. That's not to say that my opinion is that we will never get the other tools.

For me, it's more like my wife telling me "Go ahead and have dinner without me, I'm going to be really late. In fact, I will probably be home some time tomorrow, but I can't give a definite time."

More like my wife telling me she'll be home at 6, and indeed, coming home at 6 - three days later and smelling of cheap men's cologne and denying she lied - after all, she DID come home at 6....

 

[Kristian Serrano]

This will be my last post in this thread.

1. I wasn't being aggressive in any of my posts. I'm not raving mad about this topic. I'm simply presenting arguments from an understanding perspective.
2. Whether they were promises, plans, words, statements, or whatever semantics you want to use, WotC pushed D&DI as a major component of 4e. Granted, they also kept saying you don't need D&DI to play, but for many, including myself, D&DI was the only real compelling aspect of 4e. So It was reasonable to assume that D&DI would be launched with 4e. All updates regarding the tools went from "It will do...; here's how it looks" to "It's in the alpha stage with in-house testing; here it is being used," to "It will not be ready in a month; look at our screenshots," and then to "Coming 2009 because we really want to do it right."

They weren't necessarily promises, but WotC was certainly stringing some of us along.

And yes, there are some, myself not included, who had gotten excited about the use of the online tools, sold all their 3e stuff, ended their campaigns, and were specifically looking forward to playing 4e with all of these fancy tools that WotC had been promoting heavily for a whole year.

Again, I'm not one who is up in arms about the whole thing, but I certainly recognize that WotC switched us from hype to hope, and I understand why some are upset with the outcome compared to what was being promoted a year ago.

 

[catsclaw227]

More like my wife telling me she'll be home at 6, and indeed, coming home at 6 - three days later and smelling of cheap men's cologne and denying she lied - after all, she DID come home at 6....

Do you seriously think this is how WOTC has handled the PR around the DDI?

 

[Tewligan]

And how is that relevant to my point that Tewligan's claim of "radio silence" is verifiably false?

Yes, yes, Mourn, you're right - it wasn't TOTAL silence on WotC's part. Of course, I didn't actually say that, either - my wording was "pretty mum". I think the "pretty" part implies that it's not absolute, wouldn't you agree?

And they did not make much of an effort to get the word out that DDI would not be ready until scant days before the release. Hell, in the blog posting that the WotC guy put up (was it Bill Slaviscek, I think?), he apologized for not getting the word out more - the excuse he used was, in fact, boiled down to them "forgetting" to communicate with people better and let them know what the status is. That is verifiably true.

 

[Vocenoctum]

As I wander through threads past and present, I am seeing a trend that doesn't seem to make any sense.

It appears as though posters are attributing statements by WOTC as promises. I even saw in a new thread today (in a good thread BTW) a statement that "if WOTC keeps their word"...
<snip>

Why is it that we hang so heavily on the words of WOTC, ascribing their plans as promises?

It's all semantics. change "if WotC keeps their word..." to "if WotC does what they said..." and it's the same meaning. Whether it's a "promise" or a "statement" or whatever, if the customer is told that "this is how X will be", then they have a reasonable expectation that it will happen, whether it's a "Promise" or "statement of intent" or whatever.


I mean, it's a discussion forum, argueing over semantics of whether something was a promise or not doesn't mean an expectation is any different.

 

[The Little Raven]

And they did not make much of an effort to get the word out that DDI would not be ready until scant days before the release.

So, 30 days is considered 'scant' on forums. Gotcha.

Hell, in the blog posting that the WotC guy put up (was it Bill Slaviscek, I think?), he apologized for not getting the word out more - the excuse he used was, in fact, boiled down to them "forgetting" to communicate with people better and let them know what the status is.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20080507a

You mean this post where he actually makes the announcement, and never actually says anything you just claimed?

That is verifiably true.

The irony...

 

[Umbran]

I mean, it's a discussion forum, argueing over semantics of whether something was a promise or not doesn't mean an expectation is any different.

I think a major part of the point is that the expectations should be different.

 

[The Little Raven]

I mean, it's a discussion forum, argueing over semantics of whether something was a promise or not doesn't mean an expectation is any different.

The expectation is based on particular people relabeling any statement made by the developers as a promise. There is a world of difference between discussing an in-development project that changes all the time (which they were doing) and making direct promises about what the final product will be like. The only actual promises they ever made were about what 3.5 problems 4e would address (the list Mearls showed that he said they were dedicated to addressing). Everything else was just glimpses into an ongoing development cycle.

Anyone trying to claim that peeks at development mean promises, and changes during development mean broken promises, is just trying to find something to get upset over.