Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 nalrak Jan 26, 2009 7:24:24	When DDI was first offered free, and there was no content (June 08), I thought it had great promise, but I worried the DND site had frequent hiccups. It still has frequent hiccups. I get SQL errors every other day coming to the "http://www.wizards.com/dnd" page. How technically reliable does the DDI site seem to be in terms of availability and functionality? Better then the DND page? I'd love to have access to all of D&D in a database rather then having to own all these books (in 3.5 era, the stack of books was, well 2 stacks, 4 feet high each), but I am afraid to commit money to it without knowing if its reliable. Not that I couldn't just create my own database application to emulate the same effect, but that's a lot of typing.
#2 Mock Jan 26, 2009 10:01:08	I never had more than a few problems with uptime when I was a subscriber (there were some notable occasions where the site wasn't available, but only a few). The larger issue is Wizard's inability to figure out what to do about making autorenew either go away, or one-click shutoff.
#3 Artifact Jan 26, 2009 10:04:50	Here's my personal experience: I must complete a 'work-around' in order to download and view Insider content. This is briefly addressed in Digital Insider #12 as a problem by WotC (haven't heard mention of it since). If I don't do a work-around, all I see is a page of gibberish. So, there's the possibiliy (however minor) that you could be one of the 'lucky' few; you could pay for a subscription and then not be able to download or see stuff you've paid for (until you find a work-around that works for you). Also, sometimes the 'email us' link to Customer Service works for me, sometimes not (currently, it's working fine-- has been for the last week or so). This has also been acknowledged as a problem (check the D&Di forum). For the record, I am using an older browser and PDF reader (IE 6 and Adobe Reader 6). More up-to-date configurations may make a difference, I don't know. I've seen several configurations mentioned as having similar hiccups, some more recent than mine. It's hard to tell what will work and what won't-- even WotC doesn't seem to know.