I have checked out the other threads and I see all the issues of a Gaming company trying to be a software and internet service provider.
My biggest complaint is that they failed to post anywhere on the Wizards site that that DnDi was not ready and post a date when they were planning on rolling it out.
If you can't roll it on the orignal date, simply set a new date and create a new marketing event around the new date!
My son and I were looking for the DnDi this morning since we purchased the DnD 4.0 yesturday. It was listed in the left hand menu of the Wizards site. We could see all the descriptions, but no where did it say how to join. This was so frustrating.
Finally my son noticed the "Join DnD insider" next to the login at the top of the screen. I clicked on it and was taken to a very unfriendly screen that said if I needed a gleemax account and if I had an old one it may or may not have migrated. I clicked to register with Gleemax and got my confirmation email.
I then clicked on my confirmation emal and got the following message
[INDENT]We could not activate your account because the registration link is not valid. There are a few reasons why this may happen.
The link was generated more than 24 hours ago. Activation links expire to help prevent false registrations.
Your e-mail client has split the activation link over several lines. Please try again with the full address from the e-mail that you received.
Your ISP may not always correctly parse e-mailed links. You can copy the URL from e-mail and then paste it into your browser window instead of clicking on the link.
If you are still having problems activating your account, please contact us at Customer Service. Be sure to provide your registered e-mail address.[/INDENT]
Well it turns out that I had non of those problems. My problem was that I was using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser instead of the Firefox browser that apparently the software company who created the site assumed everyone would use.
I am not sure who is doing there software development, but it comes across as somewhat amature. I work in the software industry and know that 53% of users primarly use the IE that came installed on thier computer. Only about 40% of users are using Firefox. If you cannot support IE, you basically do not have a product.
It was the other ugly features of how it was attempting to render in IE that made me realize that someone failed to test it with IE and I should try Firefox. This insite got me onto the system.
To salvage this mess. I would recommend the following:
* Admit that the system is not ready. Set a release date, make a new marketing event. Then post that clearly to customers so they can know what is going on.
* Find someone to audit your software supplier. Particularly have them check for the use of estabished best practices in development and test.
This is such a common senario for rolling out a new service. It need not be a disaster if some quick action is taken and some decisive messaging is provided.
Welcome to the Disappointment Club, here is your membership card.
IE is for morons.
Every tool has it's place and you shouldn't be callign some one a moron simply for the tools they use. You should be callign people morons because they can't release a product in a suitable fashion though
While I largely agree with you, if you in software development you should be using firefox anyways. You should be ashamed of yourself.
IE is for morons.
While I largely agree with you, if you in software development you should be using firefox anyways. You should be ashamed of yourself.
IE is for morons.
Rather than turn this into a browser war, the point is that if you are a company who is out to make money and market your product, you cannot have any technology bias. IE users are not morons, they tend to be computer appliance users. For these users the computer is simply an appliance, "it came with IE, therefor I use IE". Remember this represents about 53% of the users. If you are trying to make money by developing a new online service. I have been assuming that all these services for DnDi will be subscription services. The question is simply, "do you want to alianate half your market from the start?" Regardless of technology, not a smart marketing move.
BTW the computer I am using has IE7, FireFox, and Safari. IE is primary, my wife likes it that way. She is used to it and is one of those computer appliance users.
my apologies, Firefox is just nicer, no one can really argue that and if everyone would switch over things would run smoother.
but anyways thats off topic.
Wizards really needs to stop slacking on this stuff, one development at least is that the head of the DnDi toolset made a post recently about how its going to probably take months to get everything up and running.
Here is what they have done.
They did launch something, even though it was not what they said they were going to launch. They said they would launch the functioning DDI with the game table and all that cool stuff. Instead, they gave us a bunch of descriptions and a couple of Dragon articles.
While that is far from a crisis, here is how they created a crisis because of this. They failed to alert consumers that would have gladly paid on that day for their stuff. People like me. People like some of you. Instead, they are probably preparing something to do on Monday, or even more likely no one is even around to really do anything because they have been working non-stop to get everything ready for the 'Gameday' that occured. The best thing they could have done is show us a splash page with new information and why we are having the delay. Project transparency is guaranteed to produce positive favor in the majority of clients and customers.
This splash would instantly answer you and make it feel like they addressed the issue.
Now, imagine a worse scenario. A game table that was released that was horrible and kept crashing or a bug riddled character generator. Issues like this could be even worse. It could be that they have found some errors and working hard to fix them or they fixed what they could, called it a weekend and rolled home to enjoy game day and some time with their family before they returned to 12-14 hour days trying to get this running.
On another note, you have not paid for anything you have not received and you get a few things free already - warforged for one. I am not defending a poorly planned execution, as a project manager in situations very, very similar to this one a million things can go wrong - this could be something small and we will be online Monday because of payroll issues or it could just be that the project team decided to enjoy a weekend... or it could be huge and the entire development team is off the project or something crazy like that.
I am a bit unhappy about not having the dungeon tools because I would like to get some dungeons up and ready for games because planning takes some time. The character generator might be nice also. I plan on paying for all this stuff and I really hoped to get a taste of that this weekend as I have no time for it during the week.
Here is to hoping it is up next weekend.
Here is to hoping it is up next weekend.
Well, the post by their project manager leads me to believe that it'll be up within the next couple of months.
A marketing success, that's turned into customer service disaster. Y'all should keep up the good work; now if only there was some way to measure the quarterly $ value of purchases made by satisfied customers versus the $ value of purchases made by dissatisfied customers.
In the restaurant biz this is the part where you start comping meals and giving out free drinks.