Appalled pt. 2 - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 brotherjgizmo Jun 02, 2009 18:12:29	story Honestly I am, amazed, dismayed and appalled at what has been happening to me for the past two years. Unfulfilled expectations, false conclusions, little to no motivation to be informed. I paid, willingly, for DDI since I got my 4e books paying for tools that with limited reading I would have know weren't available at the moment and had no release date at all. I paid for a character builder I didn't like (though I could play around with a free demo), magazines I thought were crappy (despite the four free issues I could peruse before deciding to pay for them), I didn't really care too much that they canceled the pdf version of books that are not part of the DnDi service I decided to pay for; because I thought that I would get a VTT with DnDi, even though there was ample news by the time all of the afore mentioned thing were released that the VTT wasn't on the release schedule. But boy, I refused to be an informed buyer. First the content was delayed, then removed from the site, then announced as on hold and— since I fell the need to jump before looking and ignore the facts around me— I think they will be cancelled, despite news that they are simply on hold until there is enough demand for them. And they dare expect me to realize that by the time the MM was being printed is was too late to delete the announcement and that by simply taking a look at the DnD website I could see that the VTT wasn't available and under development still, shame on them for expecting us to be rational participants of our economy! Furthermore with the announced pause in development of the VTT and Visualizer, Wizards has refused to take care of it's IP by not giving away all of it's content to third parties. Now my player's and I are forced to respect copyright law instead of being able to post complete segments of book all over the internet. Again, how dare they protect their IP! It's like they are prohibiting us from talking through the phone or Skype by sending ninjas to our rooms to kill us if we even dare to talk about the PHB in a IM, without actually prohibiting us from doing so. I have been a compulsive buyer of Wizards, my collections of MTG and Pokemon cards would likely make economically sensible people's heads blow up due to the immense monument they are to instinctual consumption. Not only that, I bought almost every published 3e and 3.5 book, but I seem to finally have come to my senses and realize that I, like many gamers, am a consumerist. I know that common sense dictates that DnDi is priced for the current content and if I pay for it it is because I agree that the pricing is fair for the product given. (Of course I canceled my subscription a long time ago so I'm not getting anything as all, as is to be expected.) But I, now an informed participant of this market, come back about once a month to see if what I think DnDi should be priced and what they think DnDi should be priced match and is within my means. From my economic standpoint, it is not. An announced price increase with the chance to avoid it for a whole year and a non-existent mythical drop in content that has actually been increasing—with every book released and added to DnDi, with every new feature, with all the new playtests and all the previews— leading to the change in the date the Compendium and Character builder are updated, causing a delay so that mags are still added a month after their release and books six weeks after theirs. Not only is the schedule virtually the same but they dared to incorporate hybrid classes and the monk to the Character Builder ahead of time, shame on you WotC. I refuse to consider the previews of PHB3 as the new content that they are because they are just like the preview of new comics they give at the end of some comic books that are meant to be read to see if you would enjoy buying that comic before actually paying for it; or like private showings of the next big geek film at Comic-con that you can see before seeing it in theaters; or like videogame trailers or tv-show commercials. So in reality you are just paying money to see something before it is released so you can pay for it again— it's like going to the cinema watching The Dark Knight and then buying the DVD, who does that?!. And I know that it has been said that the price increase has nothing to do with the PHB3 previews and that's fine, I can ignore the fact that a price increase would come after the release of the CB, and that WoTC didn't immediately raise the price though they had every right to do so; because by ignoring those facts i can complain about WotC wanting to make more money, something that is completely contrary to business sense) I know that I'm ranting over here, that's the purpose of this post. And I'm sure I've ignored the reasons and substituted my own for what Wizards is doing, but I have convinced myself that the reasons I've made up are unjustifiable, and we all know that it is my fault that I didn't inform myself and that Wizards should run business as I say.

story

Honestly I am, amazed, dismayed and appalled at what has been happening to me for the past two years.

Unfulfilled expectations, false conclusions, little to no motivation to be informed.

I paid, willingly, for DDI since I got my 4e books paying for tools that with limited reading I would have know weren't available at the moment and had no release date at all. I paid for a character builder I didn't like (though I could play around with a free demo), magazines I thought were crappy (despite the four free issues I could peruse before deciding to pay for them), I didn't really care too much that they canceled the pdf version of books that are not part of the DnDi service I decided to pay for; because I thought that I would get a VTT with DnDi, even though there was ample news by the time all of the afore mentioned thing were released that the VTT wasn't on the release schedule. But boy, I refused to be an informed buyer.

First the content was delayed, then removed from the site, then announced as on hold and— since I fell the need to jump before looking and ignore the facts around me— I think they will be cancelled, despite news that they are simply on hold until there is enough demand for them. And they dare expect me to realize that by the time the MM was being printed is was too late to delete the announcement and that by simply taking a look at the DnD website I could see that the VTT wasn't available and under development still, shame on them for expecting us to be rational participants of our economy!

Furthermore with the announced pause in development of the VTT and Visualizer, Wizards has refused to take care of it's IP by not giving away all of it's content to third parties. Now my player's and I are forced to respect copyright law instead of being able to post complete segments of book all over the internet. Again, how dare they protect their IP! It's like they are prohibiting us from talking through the phone or Skype by sending ninjas to our rooms to kill us if we even dare to talk about the PHB in a IM, without actually prohibiting us from doing so.

I have been a compulsive buyer of Wizards, my collections of MTG and Pokemon cards would likely make economically sensible people's heads blow up due to the immense monument they are to instinctual consumption. Not only that, I bought almost every published 3e and 3.5 book, but I seem to finally have come to my senses and realize that I, like many gamers, am a consumerist.

I know that common sense dictates that DnDi is priced for the current content and if I pay for it it is because I agree that the pricing is fair for the product given. (Of course I canceled my subscription a long time ago so I'm not getting anything as all, as is to be expected.) But I, now an informed participant of this market, come back about once a month to see if what I think DnDi should be priced and what they think DnDi should be priced match and is within my means. From my economic standpoint, it is not. An announced price increase with the chance to avoid it for a whole year and a non-existent mythical drop in content that has actually been increasing—with every book released and added to DnDi, with every new feature, with all the new playtests and all the previews— leading to the change in the date the Compendium and Character builder are updated, causing a delay so that mags are still added a month after their release and books six weeks after theirs. Not only is the schedule virtually the same but they dared to incorporate hybrid classes and the monk to the Character Builder ahead of time, shame on you WotC.

I refuse to consider the previews of PHB3 as the new content that they are because they are just like the preview of new comics they give at the end of some comic books that are meant to be read to see if you would enjoy buying that comic before actually paying for it; or like private showings of the next big geek film at Comic-con that you can see before seeing it in theaters; or like videogame trailers or tv-show commercials. So in reality you are just paying money to see something before it is released so you can pay for it again— it's like going to the cinema watching The Dark Knight and then buying the DVD, who does that?!. And I know that it has been said that the price increase has nothing to do with the PHB3 previews and that's fine, I can ignore the fact that a price increase would come after the release of the CB, and that WoTC didn't immediately raise the price though they had every right to do so; because by ignoring those facts i can complain about WotC wanting to make more money, something that is completely contrary to business sense)

I know that I'm ranting over here, that's the purpose of this post. And I'm sure I've ignored the reasons and substituted my own for what Wizards is doing, but I have convinced myself that the reasons I've made up are unjustifiable, and we all know that it is my fault that I didn't inform myself and that Wizards should run business as I say.