I'm not entirely sure that limiting people to 20 characters prevents a DoS (Denial of Service) attack as has been claimed. Sure, it may take a while to create/import/load a lot of various characters and you could write a 'script' to do that...
...but you could just as easily write a script that makes calls to any of their addresses. It's too simple.
In C#,
public void Run()
{
while (true)
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://vecna.wizards.com/D20WorkspaceService.svc");
IAsyncResult result = (IAsyncResult) request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(Callback), request);
}
}
private void Callback(IAsyncResult result)
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.EndGetResponse(result);
}
Preventing DoS attacks are done through IP load-tracking, not limiting users to 20 characters.
I think it's just storage space. They don't want to commit to storing an infinite number of characters for exery subscriber.
Because more than 20 == infinite. If they had chosen 200 then yery few people would have cared. but 20 is an insult.
Not that it really matters right now. The fact that it is basically unusable for any number of characters trumps caring about the number of characters you can save...
I think they're waiting to get better usage data before they decide what the number will be. In their position I'd have picked a low number too. If they decide to raise the number of characters, everyone will be happy (or at least not unhappy). If they'd started high, and discovered they needed to lower the number, how loud do you think the screaming'd be?
Yeah. I was originally planning on filling up my 20 spaces quickly to help nudge the usage data towards needing more space, but I have yet to find a character I wanted to make that I could make in the new CB but not the CBC (note that only includes characters I was wanting to make). I can't even motivate myself to try to convince them that they should give us more space because space is useless without a good program.
I think they're waiting to get better usage data before they decide what the number will be. In their position I'd have picked a low number too. If they decide to raise the number of characters, everyone will be happy (or at least not unhappy). If they'd started high, and discovered they needed to lower the number, how loud do you think the screaming'd be?
Then perhaps they should have started reasonable. 20 is not reasonable. If the system is not capable of handling at least 100 characters per account then either the programmers or the project managers need to be fired. Enterprise storage, while more expensive than the consumer storage drives, is not that expensive. And the data that needs to be stored for a character is not that much (epically when they are not even allowing us to upload our own character images - since those images are actually likely to take up more room than the characters themselves.
I think they're waiting to get better usage data before they decide what the number will be. In their position I'd have picked a low number too. If they decide to raise the number of characters, everyone will be happy (or at least not unhappy). If they'd started high, and discovered they needed to lower the number, how loud do you think the screaming'd be?
Yeah. I was originally planning on filling up my 20 spaces quickly to help nudge the usage data towards needing more space, but I have yet to find a character I wanted to make that I could make in the new CB but not the CBC (note that only includes characters I was wanting to make). I can't even motivate myself to try to convince them that they should give us more space because space is useless without a good program.
As I noted. The fact that the program does not work well at all trumps the need for storage.
Nobody wants to use this thing enough to fill up 20 characters.
If the CBwas actually usable there would be a lot more people complaining about the 20 character limit - but as it is it would be a bit like complaining how many seats there are on a sinking boat.
If the CBwas actually usable there would be a lot more people complaining about the 20 character limit - but as it is it would be a bit like complaining how many seats there are on a sinking boat.
I just wanted to let you know that I love this analogy.
Yeah, they prevent DoS attacks by having it just crash every few minutes for no apparent reason. Hard to mount an attack under those conditions.
As a DM running multiple campaigns, I NEED more than 20 characters.
I store each character, at each level for all my players. This limitation just kneecapped me.
I add notes, keep track of changes, and add goodies for all characters along the way, no hassles, no need to save separate PDF character sheets, just open chars within builder. It used to be so easy....now Wizards killed my storage system.
If they do the same to Monster Builder, I'm jumping ship for good.