Dragon 427
p3 Editorial
"In years past, when we found ourselves at the lonely crossroads between game editions, the magazines
simply went from one edition to the next with nary abreath in between. This time is different. As we turn
our attention to the next D&D® rules set, we’re putting Dragon® and Dungeon® on hiatus.
The D&D magazines are going dark beginning in January. In other words, the December issues (#221 of
Dungeon and #430 of Dragon) will be the last issues you see for a while."
Just wow...
This means the price of my DDI subscription goes down right?
whoops. double post. wizards, your new site sucks.
Going dark...so will our DDI subscriptions be lengthened by the same length of the "dark" period?
Lame. It'd be nice if the price of a D&D Insider subscription went down too, but we all know that will never happen. At most I'll hope that the online Compendium and Character Builder will be updated for all content by January or so.
That's unfortunate. 
I was expecting to see previews of the new edition in the magazine's pages but this won't happen unfortunatly.
I have a feeling they're pulling Dragon/Dungeon magazine out of DDi and will keep DDi for the 4E tools only (that's if they don't just kill it) and sell the magazines seperatly in the future, either online or paperback. Just a wild guess...
I'll miss the DDI articles.
Some favorite articles of mine (in no particular order): Game changers (#419), Abyssal Genasi (#380), Get Familiar (#374), Intelligent Items (#367), and my all-time favorite 4e article, Ecology of the Deva (#374).
A lot of great stuff, if i could only remember it all as I type this: Mithrendain (one of the free articles as I recall), the Domains of Dread a rticles (sans Ravenloft) were all excellent. An excellent article on Bane (I used the paragon path from the article for my PC).
I could ramble on but just let me say thanks to all the writers and artists who made it fun for me. When the print mags were canceled I was furious (as a long-time, loyal reader). The idea of ezines just didn't appeal to me at all. And there were ups and downs: Compiled PDFs, uncompiled web-articles, then back to compiled PDFs again. As far as the *service* part of DDI went, it was hit-n-miss IMHO. Still, there were many great articles to out-weigh the bad. Thanks again to everyone involved.
= = =
One thing I won't miss is fiddling with auto-renewal. I prefer to buy the ezines a month at a time. I was always having to remember to cancel the auto-renew. At first, it was a real pain in the ass but it eventually got better. I bought this month's issue just a few minutes ago and had to figure out (again) how to turn off auto-renew. Finally got it. Yeah, I won't miss that ;).
RIP 4e Dragon/Dungeon, and RIP official 4e support.
That's not necessarily a terrible thing. The Ed article is just horribly written.
Looking back over various D&D® game editions,Elminster said: “His true measure is unknown
to me, but beyond what ye gamers have betimes in the
past called 22nd level.”
Mommy_was_an_Orc wrote:
Has anyone attempted to get word from Trevor, or any of the other mods on waht is likely to happen to the DDi once the Dragon&Dungeon mags go dark?
Yes, its been asked hundreds of times. They basically act like they have no idea what they are going to do with them.
This is the death-knell for DDI. I will not renew.
It will be incredibly difficult to get me to renew.
the person who made this decision deserves to be fired. And everyone who agreed with this decision deserves to be fired as well.
Tried to cancel my auto-renewal but the system would not accept the change.
figures.
Auto-renewal cancelled
now they have to figure out how to get me and my subscription back.
incredibly, magnificently, beyond comprehension, top-tier display of incompetence
These are the sorts of decisions that lead me to think D&D Next will be D&D Last.
Galahad67 wrote:
Galahad67 wrote:
It looks bad. First daily D&D became sort-of daily with crappy cartoons, uninteresting articles abiut art, not funny jokes etc. Column after column perishes and franly, only Ed's articles are good quiality. Now, with Dragon and Dungeon going dark, my question is will price for using character builder (whioch is only function of DDI I use) will be lowered, or am I supposed to pay the same amnount of money for less content? Second question: what future is ahead of CB? It seems to me, despite Mike Mearl's reassurance, it will be dropped too.
Palladinae wrote:
Mike Mearls is just a lowly game designer. He has no say over what happens to 4E online tools, and on that question, as on basically any business decision WotC makes, his hopes (My hope is that we can keep them up and running.) and ideals (ideally, we'll keep them up as long as there is sufficient interest) are basically worthless.
As is true for much in business, old things are frequently discarded simply because they are old things. We're clearly in a phase-out period of DDI.
Palladinae wrote:
Not even worth trying to shove reason into WotC. Wonder what moniker will they try to come out with when 6e is announced in 2016.
I'm going to tell my gamers to start bumping their characters up to 30th level so they will have copies ready when CharBuild does go dead.
Have already switch to Hero Lab which is less buggy and can be used to track in-game resources including power uses, action points and ammo etc. The CB will be canned soon, especially if the hiatus in Dragon and Dungeon means a Gen Con 2014 release of D&D Next.
The thing I will miss most is the Compendium as tracking down every specific creatures or magic items is a nightmare with the volume that was put out during 4E's brief existence. It's one of the tools that every D&D type game system could do with, including PF.
Medriev wrote:
IIRC, Hero Lab requires you to have an active DDi subscription in order to import the game elements into the program for 4e. I'm not sure how often you have to do that other than when you first start to use it or when HL updates to allow new 4e options. I would imagine if you have to reinstall Hero Lab you'd have to do it and if you don't have an active subscription you'd be stuck, but don't quote me on that. I'm working under the assumption that if you don't have an active DDi subscription, HL is going to become impractical.
I don't know about Essentials characters though. I only use Hero Lab for PF and I have my bases covered for future 4e character building using other avenues.
I will continue to subscribe to DDi though as long as they offer the CB, the Monster Builder and the Compendium. The magazines are cool, and I have used them, but not nearly as much as those other three tools.
RedSiegfried wrote:
Bomberg wrote:
[quote="OCAMPO"]
Not even worth trying to shove reason into WotC. Wonder what moniker will they try to come out with when 6e is announced in 2016.
[/quote]
D&D Zero
This is all speculation. I'm pessimistic and about as far from being a fan boy as one can get, especially when it comes to WoTCs singularly inept attempts at anything digital, especially this grift scheme known as DDI - but consider the following;
The powers that be eventually saw reason, and PDF sales were resumed - Not only that, but rather than inflicting some half-arsed inhouse DRM infected crappily supported monstrousity on the customer base, they wisely subbed it out to one of the main outfits that were selling the pdfs before, going as far as to honor purchases made prior to the pdf blackout. They listened - yes, it took a while, but they listened.
Then there's what's being marketed as "The Sundering", which is essentially a rollback. a reset - a mop - to cleanup the massive dump that was taken on the Realms when 4E rolled out***. So we're getting a realms reset. Book series, storylines, the whole enchilada, it actually sounds as cool as the "event" they did with the transition from 1st to 2nd ed - the authors certainly seemed excited and on board, as well as really happy to get back to a more 'classic' take on the realms.
5E's last test packet is out, it'll likely be in print sometime next year.
So, given all that, there's good reason to believe the mags aren't dead after all, and that the hiatus is just that - a hiatus. Taking abreak to regroup and rebrand.
It is entirely possible that we may see Dragon & Dungeon magazines return as actual publications worthy of the name, in tandem with 5E's roll out next year.
[edit:] TLDR version: Things are improving, good stuff is happening.
***While I have my preferences, I'm pretty much edition omnivorous myself. I suspect the initial dislike of 4E that got hotter as time went on, at least in some quarters, was less about rules changes and more "WTF!! IS NOTHING SACRED - WTF ARE THEY DOING TO MY SETTING - KEEP THIS SPELLPLAGUE CRAP IN YOUR HOMEBREW!!!"
tomakaze wrote:
tomakaze wrote:
I am just incredulous that the powers would suspend the magazines.
it's a strange business decision. As a harbinger of things to come, It bodes ill for the next year.
Galahad67 wrote:
Why was the download link for Dragon 427 removed? It was there this time last night.
Kaviyd3 wrote:
foolishly i just renewed my annual subscription today. it had expired in september. i didn't know the magazines were being phased out/going on hiatus, whatever is happening. i feel robbed and cheated that i wasn't informed of this when I made my renewal. i am filing a complaint w/ customer service and if that doesn't go anywhere then i'm taking it to the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
i do not want to pay for annual subscription if the magazines are not being made during the time of the subscription
my DDI annual subscription ends in April '14, so that's 25% of my money going to the can ... how do you say "ripoff" in corporate lingo?
That is a rip off indeed. Can't US residents take legal action? Because WotC has been asking for it for some time now.
Like many of you I do not know what they are thinking. In addition, my subscription goes dark with Dungeon and Dragon like so many other subscriber.
Actually, I do understand that with the new edition they have other things to worry about. 4th is dead more than a year ago, which is fine for me, I couldn't expect to find content for my favourite edition for ever. Till now, I have gathered a lot of books and I have hundreds of adventures and articles to support it.
However...
I just made an annual subscription two months ago. I didn't know that there would be no more magazines after a while, otherwise I would have subscribed for three months only. However, as I just said, I understand that they have to use their personel for the new big thing, I don't want my money back, I just want to be able to use the character builder for as long as I pay for it (even if it doesn't update any more) and I expect a gift from wotc, to cover the loss of the magazines.
I don't know what it could be. All the "encounters" adventures in pdf could be a solution or something else, but they have to give us something!
I am more interested to the other tools however. I could still play without the magazines, but not without the character builder. All these years that I play with the 4th edition rules I wasn't able to create a single, correct character using pencil and paper. "Hero Lab" doesn't do the job, just try to create an essentials character and you'll see that half of the feats just don't work.
So please wotc, if you care for what we want and if you respect us as customers, give as the chance to use your tools and give us something to be excited about, for the time that we wont have the magazines.
PS: Sorry for my english.
OCAMPO wrote: