I mean C'mon, lets face it the only reason that your not posting it on the main page is that you don't want to lose the sales of all the people that are buying the game because they think that they will get to play DnD online.
and to let Flyers go out advertising D&Di when you KNEW that it's time tabe was MONTHS away! almost Unpardonable! some one should lose a job over that.
how stupid do you think that we are!
this tactic is Immoral and should cease instantly!
you can easily overcome the fact that the software is delayed, that happens all the time - who cares.
you can get over the price structure for the online products - what ever you charge, some folks are going to pay it.. it will just be up to your marketing dept. to sell enough of it to meet your dev. / maintenance costs.
It's gonna be a long hard road getting over the betrayal that people will feel as they find out how you have deceived them by making your main page look and feel like either you had a D&Di product for them, or that it was 'just around' the corner - now you have your main man Ken's (Exec. producer of D&Di) post in the threads where he finally breaks the news that your months and months away from a final product... you really need to get that on the main page.
in all honesty that needed to be on the pages months ago - your betrayal is complete - your plummet to the dark side all most total!
I already think of the folks that have purchased the game thinking that they'd get to play their buds in another state when they got home, and the disappointment that they are going to feel and I feel outrage on their behalf.
Wade. -out.
I spent the last half hour trying to figure out where i screwed up in typing the host name, searching forums for any clue why the ddi links front me to the wotc page, and generally relogging to countless different google links in hopes of knowing why i cant get to character creation.
And the damn vaunted online garbage isnt coming out for MONTHS!
I'm already having a hard time reading through the phb, wondering whether wotc's intent was to spend their time complicating 3.5 processes or waiting for them to change my diaper. Apparently the presentation of the core rule books are really a campaign setting in disguise. Seriously, I dont want to learn where dwarves fit into the societies of your new world, I WANT TO MAKE A CHARACTER!
I agree completely, you've crossed a big line with not announcing that the two parts of your vaunted 4dventure wont even begin to co exist until the summer's over, and how can we rely on you upholding even that vague target.
You've become some sort of uncaring mega corp to me. sell the game back to some private, small time company and gtfo my game.
You've become some sort of uncaring mega corp to me. sell the game back to some private, small time company and gtfo my game.
Come up with $12M and it's yours.
It's funny. Half the complaints are that the game is becoming too much like an MMO, and the other half of the complaints are that they can't get access to the online multi-player game. :D
I look forward to the day when I can come on the Boards and find people discussing the game.
I was looking around last night, after completing my Eberron collection order from Amazon (I'm now only one book short of all the releases!) and I saw the "coveted" D&Di. With no hesitation, I click on the character creation and am rewarded with a breakdown of what it's supposed to look like. Not what it is currently, or what it will be next week/month, apparently. But months away.
My wife recently asked me what I wanted for Father's Day this year. As I'm an incorrigible gamer, the prospects were whittled down to an Xbox 360 game that I've been waiting for a while, or the D&D 4ed gift set. I'm glad now I told her to hold off on the gift set. I was willing to give WotC a chance with 4ed, despite all the bickering and paranoia. I believed that the naysayers had it all wrong and the company was moving with the best intentions. It seems that I was incorrect. I (and obviously others) feel a bit betrayed by this...shadiness. I just can't find another word that properly describes what seems to be nothing more than a "bait and switch", only there's no switch, just more bait.
Perhaps it's just paranoia, but if ALL this really is just an accident, why not post it directly on the homepage? I understand there's like 50 different webpages (Gleemax/D&Di/D&D/Whatever else they decide to put up for us to chase) but if you know that the majority of your customers go to one site, post it there.
P.S. Stop with the shadiness. Not every complaint warrants an answer from the company, but stonewalling your customer base is a good way to watch your business implode.
P.S. Stop with the shadiness. Not every complaint warrants an answer from the company, but stonewalling your customer base is a good way to watch your business implode.
If people would send their complaints to customer service (where the company employees can be found), they might find an answer from the company more likely.
These are the message boards, for players of the game to discuss the game.
Want an answer from the company?
Ask the company.
I guess they could have delayed the core books in order to get DDI and 4e simultaneously released? I, personally, would rather have the books in my hand and already know the game when DDI comes up. That way I can focus on learning the game table interface instead of trying to learn the game at the same time.
Everybody could probably stand to relax a little bit.
Its a lovely story of poor communication, misleading marketing, foot dragging, and incompetence all around.
This little thread here
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1042707
is a post from the Exec Producer of DDI explaining that they tried (though he admits not really hard ) to tell everybody that the DDI they had promised all year wouldnt be ready at launch. Though if you read the ampersand article that came out last moth it says the compendium will be up and guess what its not!
For those of you who are always saying that you wish the company would listen to you, and that you want to be able to affect things a bit more than just posting on the forums check out THIS thread:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1043721
Where we are encouraging folks to email every blog, magazine, podcasts, newsoutlet etc, that covered 4e or that might be interested.
WotC got lots of favorable press and free publicity due to DDI that encouraged LOTS of people to buy books. This has led to a HUGE number of books sales for WotC and lots of people being misled by the same company.
So until WotC gets more than a little Coming soon graphic up, keep the emails flooding out.
Cheers!
Check the main D&D archives and you will see a fully readable version of the news posted today.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insidernews/20080610a
Thanks Ken Troop for adding that important news, and please make sure that it remains the TOP article until such time as there is something actually ready, and then indicate which are still not ready.
however, I tried to find it as if I was some one that just typed in www.dndinsider.com as I'm instructed to do on page 11 of the PHB. From there you get re-directed to the main D&D Page.
I clicked news, and (it may have just needed a sever refresh.. but I'm not sure on that,) the latest news article was the seattle game day one...
the good news, when I clicked on the left side menu (the news 'archives') then, the article was there - here is what it says (same as the link above but I figured I'd drop the news in this thread.. it's short n sweet.):
---
The D&D Insider applications are currently in development. However, content for Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine is now available to our 4th Edition players, free of charge. We’re hard at work on all the applications, and the D&D Online Compendium will be the first online tool available for free preview while we finish work on D&D Insider. We hope to have the rest of the D&D Insider applications (Character Visualizer, Character Builder, and the D&D Game Table) available throughout the coming year. A FAQ will be posted later this week with more details.
Ken Troop
Executive Producer
D&D Insider
---
While not the glowing read banner that might be one way to go, at least it doesn't seem quite so nefarious as no communication at all.
now you can sleep a tad better at night, AND still reap the reward of book sales based on folks wanting to use the online tools.
though that sounds like another 'jab' honestly I do think it's better to have that in the news -it somehow seems more 'respectable' than nothing at all, like before.
thanks,
Wade -out.
There is a couple threads in the D&Di forums that are going over many aspects - let me post the comments from Ken (executive producer for the D&Di project, here as they are specifically relevant to this thread [/zw]
[ken]
1) Order of Release for Applications
Someone asked about what the likely order of release would be for the applications. This list assumes the Compendium is already out there.
a) Character Visualizer -- this application is currently the closest to being done.
b) Character Builder -- this application is also close to being done, but slightly farther away than the Character Visualizer. I understand that for many people, the Character Builder would be great to have as soon as possible...if we can get it out first, we will, but the way that things look right now, it's likely to be second.
c) Game Table and Dungeon Builder -- many people are very excited about the Game Table...but it is also the most complex of all of our applications, as well as the one that needs the most "game" and user polish of all of our applications. This is the application that will take the most time to complete and for which the schedule is least reliable..."is it done" is not the only question that needs to be answered, but also "is it fun?"
[/ken]
[zw]here is Ken talking about the delay of the announcement of the D&Di delay. [/zw]
Ken
3) No mention of "Applications coming soon" on the front page or the D&D Insider application list page.
I absolutely agree with this. It should have been done today but we were busy all day fighting fires with our back-end forums (signing on was down for most of the day). I can't guarantee it will be there tomorrow, but it should be there either tomorrow or Wed.
This dovetails with issue 3a --
3a) Players' anger over the lack of D&D Insider at launch.
Some players are very upset. They feel that, at best, Wizards was negligent or incompetent. At worst, they feel that Wizards deliberately lied.
I'm not sure there's anything I can say here that's going to appease people when they're this angry. But I'll try. At the very least, at some point later down the road when emotions are not so high, this information might be useful. Or not.
First, it wasn't intentional in any way, shape, or form. There's not much else I can say. Either you take that statement at face value, and we move on, or you don't take that statement at face value, in which case I'm surprised you want to read anything else I have to say.
As a general rule, 99.9% of conspiracy theories aren't true...we as humans evolved to see patterns and connections even when there are none...witness the poster above who insinuates that I chose the pricing question first to avoid talking about this issue -- actually, when I read through the first page of posts, the pricing issue came up first, so I addressed it first. I'm not defending myself here, I'm merely pointing out that if you want to see some type of malign intent in all this, you can, but it isn't true.
Second, I will admit that I have a very different perspective on this issue than many of you. Hearing all this emotion and vitriol makes me wish I had come to a different answer before...I hate that people are this upset and I understand why they're upset. What I'm about to say probably won't make those of you are angry any less angry, but they're honestly how I felt about the issue --
a) Our sole goal over these last few months has been to get D&D Insider out the door as soon as possible. When it became apparent that the majority of applications would not be ready at launch of 4th edition, we put up Bill Slavicsek's Ampersand article. But my mind was not feverishly worrying over the problem of how players would perceive this on launch day, it was obsessed with how to get out our applications as soon as possible.
b) Because D&D Insider has always been an extra subscription, it never occurred to me that some players might feel misled about not having tools available at launch. Instead I've always thought it was great that we were willing to give away Dragon/Dungeon content, and soon hopefully some of our Compendium content, away for free. I'm not saying I'm right and those who are so angry are wrong. I thought 4th edition D&D was a great enough product on its own http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008...ns-dragon.html , and that most people were buying the books for the books, and only then may be willing to check out this D&D Insider, not the other way around.
Believe me, we want to get the full Insider into your hands, both so that you can enjoy it, and that you can start paying us for it, as soon as possible.
To be clear, we'll be putting "Coming Soon" more prominently on the product pages and the D&D Insider page. Whatever confusion there's been has been the result of us paying attention to different things. I wish I would have addressed this before launch. Mea culpa. We'll address it as soon as we can this week.
[/Ken]
[zw]
Ken, you had me at 'conspiracy' - no way do I want to be one of those nuts! I mean there's only 00.01% of them anyway! and who wants to be lumped in with that kind of a demographic anyway!
but seriously, you struck a chord, and in all the posting that your doing and all the negative responses that you get to all of your work you may wonder sometimes if it is even worth it - I just want to stand up and say yes, it's worth it to me at least.
I was one of the most vile vitriol spit-ers of the bunch regarding this topic, and I choose to believe that there is good in the world, that humans seek good rather than evil most of the time, and that, in this case, you truly did, just underestimate the waves that the decision not to be more vocal about the delay would cause.
Bottom line - your communicating with the community (me in particular,) does make a difference, and that I, for one, am swayed by your arguments, be they just a level of spin, or sincere - I want to believe that they are sincere, and so, thus do I choose.
Yay, I'm a wizards fan again! -looks like I'm an easy persuasion roll for ken - I think Ken has a +8 to persuasion.
(I do hope that there will be a bit more though, -that little news blurb realy wasn't quite enough -
)[/zW]olf / Wade -out.
They don't care. "They" being a corporation. Someone messed up on the planning, and execution, but people that bought 4e still got charged cash $.
No DDI? Pfft. Doesn't matter to the people that didn't buy into the 4e hype.
Recall, this is the same outfit that killed off / starved Dungeon Magazine, Dragon Magazine, Birthright, Alternity, Dark Sun, 3.0, 3.5e, etc.
How many slaps in the face does it take till you consider divorce?
Well, guys, it says "Coming Soon" on the DDI page. Which to me pretty much means "when it's ready", which I very much prefer to the more popular "as soon as we can get it out the door" method.
and how long did it take them to get that "Coming Soon" added to the graphic on the page??? was it there on June 6th when the books started being sold and people went to the site??? Nope, that graphic didn't get changed for several days... this despite the fact that they knew that they weren't going to be done on time...
Agreement on being needing to relax however.