Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zwolf Jun 08, 2008 17:32:41	This is an Open Letter to Ken Troop - I have used a Ken's first post on the D&Di General Forums to help give the letter a format. Ken's comments are verbatim from him, and labeled with his name in Bold. I just cut some out to make it easier to read. (I inserted a word for clarity in one place as noted with [] ) My Letter is made from the parts with my name beside the comments. here it is: --- Ken: Hi. My name is Ken Troop. I work at Wizards of the Coast. Specifically, I am the executive producer for D&D Insider. Wade: Hi My name is Wade Hone. I am a potential Client of Wizards of the Coast. Specifically, I am a member of the audience that your wanting to pay money’s each month for the privilege of Accessing D&D Insider. Ken: I ultimately have the responsibility of leading and coordinating the various efforts of a lot of people here at Wizards who are getting D&D Insider off the ground… I hope and expect [there] to be a fruitful dialogue between the D&D Insider team and the community. Ken: a few ground rules – Ken: 1) Flaming -- I don't mind being flamed. Wade: *sigh* I don't have the energy to deal with this properly right now. Insert generic refutation of your points 15%, mockery of your spelling and punctuation 25%, bitter sarcasm 60%. Consider yourself flamed. (-stolen from jimthegray's sig.-) But on a more serious note… WTF man? I mean you claim responsibility for this… even if your not ‘it’ right now, isn’t there ANY ONE there that had the torch passed on to them? There is no way to pay you money on the front page, nor is there any mention of HOW to pay you money, for the services, which leads me to believe that there are no services available for purchase at this time. If that is the case, WHY IN THE heck, isn’t there some information on the main page about WHEN it’s going to be available with a link back to an article about what went wrong, how cool It’s going to be in the future etc. etc. and most of all – WHEN THE F it’s going live. Ken: 2) Constructive Feedback -- That said, while I can understand expressions of anger and frustration, it doesn't mean it's going to lead to better results for D&D Insider. What will most help D&D Insider evolve the fastest into its ultimate awesome state is constructive feedback. Wade: ok ken, here ya go: #1) get some one to take ownership of this, <-probably you, if your still the Exec. Producer. There has obviously been a break down in anyone thinking that they have responsibility to communicate to the fans – so make this assignment to some one, and inform them of the situation. the situation being that the fans are rabid and angry right now (though slightly mollified as we page through the pretty new D&D books we all bought yesterday...) but that mollification will wear off quickly as we go online to play (as promised,) and find a confusing mess of a web page that is really just an advertisement for features that we expected would be usable. So expect some hostile feelings and attempt to sooth them a bit. Any effort would really be appreciated. Some basic PR skill would be great for this individual – but most importantly would be this persons willingness to actually communicate to the fans of D&DI. #2) Fix the home page www.dndinsider.com -Link- the honest truth is that the website needs to be created still, right now, it just forwards to DnD's main page and that my friend is extremely confusing. Please visit it your self, putting yourself in the position of some one that is goign there specificaly to check out the features that they read about in the book, or from the flyer they picked up at Game Day. My book (and the flyer,) tells me (on page 11) about all these cool online features that I'll find online when I go to that dndinsider.com website, but when I get there, I get the full jumble of DnD and it's just too over whelming and diluted, especially for some one that just bought the player guide and is interested in starting out so once you get a dedicated web page for dndinsider.com – make the first thing that people see an announcement that says WHEN this is expected to be out – update it religiously if any changes come about to affect that date. If the date has to be pushed back, all that you need to do is write a letter (that is linked to right from the announcement of the push back,) that announcement should be the first thing that people see when they go to www.dndinsider.com until the product is launched. when the potential customer clicks the link and reads the letter it takes them to, the letter should include copious amounts of apologizing mixed in with a dash or two of hype about how much better the ‘end product’ will be once it is finally released. Say things like: “we refuse to release an inferior product" – "we won't release this until it is ready," "We are fans too, and we all have high expectations for D&DI and we are dedicated to meeting and even exceeding those expectations." Look we fans get this ALL of the time, we are used to hearing, it started clear back with Diablo for me. Fans will eat that crap up! We are so forgiving it’s ridiculous! We still gotta hear it though, once we do, it sure goes along way at decreasing the hateful feelings that a fan base can quickly develop when facing a missed deadline. C’mon we’ve been trained to expect this – your Pavlov there ringing the bell, we ‘the fans’ are like his dog, sitting here salivating for the chance to play online, and there’s no product! And not only that, your not even telling us when dinners gonna arrive – or that it’s even still being cooked!!! (oh wait.. I’m slipping back into rant mode.. sorry.) Ken: 3) The Contract -- I look at D&D Insider and whether people should like it or not, believe in it or not, pay for it or not, very simply...at a certain point we will decide D&D Insider is ready. Or enough elements of it are ready that we think have enough value to players to charge them for it. At that point, players will decide if, indeed, those elements do have value. They will then pay for it. Or they won't. It's a fairly simple calculation. As above in ground rule #1, I don't mind being flamed. Or D&D Insider being flamed. And if D&D Insider isn't for you, for whatever reason, I respect that. I wish you luck in whatever you find that is for you. Truly. But, if what you truly want to say is, "Ken, D&D Insider should be for me. I want it to be for me. But it isn't because of X, Y, and/or Z..." then say that. Because that's a conversation I want to have. Wade: “Ken D&D Insider should be for me. I want it to be for me. But it isn’t because – I can’t find the darned place to pay for it!!!” Ken: 4) The Truth -- I like being straight and honest in my communications to an audience. ... I also love explaining details...writing long, copious messages that go into great detail about why we did what we did. …there will be times, … when I can't go into that detail. …I'm not asking you to give me a free pass... …I want to be upfront that there will be times that we will do things that, on the surface, make less sense than they would if I were able to explain everything... C'est la vie. (There will also be times in which we just made a bad decision...in this, alas, we are not immune to being, like the rest of you, human) Wade: ok Ken lets call a dog a dog here, this is one of those times that some one made a bad decision not to communicate with the fan base – please fix it, re read the first part of that paragraph and do some of that straight and honest communications that you were talking about there. It doesn’t even have to be long, the communications not even copious with great details… just anything stating when we can expect this to be released, or even If we can expect it to be released! If not, the fans need to get busy making projects on source forge to make up for it. C’est la vie – but you can make 'la vie' better for us! You can do it man! Ken: 5) Responses. Pretty much everything that gets posted gets read around here...whether by me, another producer, community, R&D, Brand, etc...we have a lot of people who are very interested in what you have to say. That said, we usually don't have time to respond to most of the posts we see. At times we'll be very present on the boards, at other times, less so. Again, this is not to get you to accept it, but just to be clear that is reality, and that reality is not likely to change. Wade: great! If pretty much everything that gets posted gets read – please some one that works near ken ask him to review this post and ask him to please make an announcement (or direct some one to,) that states when this product (That is looking more and more like the vapor / slim ware that we’ve been offered before,) is going to be released. Thank you for your time, Sincerely, A wanabe customer that has nothing to consume... yet... ?. Wade.
#2 zwolf Jun 08, 2008 18:47:10	ahem, so apparently, the Ken Troop ground rules post was made just today - heh *sheepish grin, I thought it was written in Feb of 2007 and that some one had dug it up and commented on it recently... Apparently, the whole 'letter part' that I asked for in the 'constructive feedback' portion of my post was the second post that ken made, just below the 'ground rules' post that he made. I'd love to have a valid excuse for why I didn't read that -but I'll just admit it, I figured there would be 5 pages of comments from users - little did I know that Ken's post continued and had exactly the kind of PR stuff I was looking for in it. sooooo - all that needs to be done now is to fix the main web page! yay, then we can all be happy and run in the sun. As for me, I'm going to go ahead and duck back into the sand, get some user made tools going and play some DnD online! there are several places that are doing it already, I'll just head back to those communities, and count this big hype machine that DDI was up to great marketing from DnD. Austa. Wade -out.