So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
What does this mean for article updates? We will continue providing rules updates. However, rather than make the compilations the place where folks get errata, we’re going to update the individual articles whenever errata is called for. The goal is to eliminate confusion. We will no longer have two different versions of an article on our site — the compiled version with errata and the uncompiled version without errata. If an article needs errata, we’ll update the article and let folks know.
That’s about all I’ve got on those compilations – if you have any other questions just drop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.
One other idea would be to publish the compilations in an epub format and make it available to subscribers.
thanks
-Scott
I guess I can compile my own magazines, taking the articles each month and just using Acrobat to bind them together? Meh. I thoughts that what we were paying you guys for. If I wanted to write my own magazine, I would just do it. If you guys don't think you're getting payed enough to compile a magazien into an actual magazine, well, charge more.
Having a library of magazines on my computer or on my bookshelf was one of my favorite things. You have no idea how much I flip through those PDFs once I have them downloaded; I'm constantly designing D&D adventures or looking for inspiration, so rather than log on and reread the individual articles, I open the actual magazine PDFs. I don't read the compilations every day, but I do read the compilations every day that I'm designing adventures.
Maybe I'm unusual. But I think that if I had a subscription? The amount of time I would spend reading and enjoying Dragon and Dungeon just took an extremely rapid plummet.
Of course, I'm not an insider right now, and don't intend on being so until the magazine/CB quality goes up + I get some money... but since this represents a sudden drop in the quality of the magazine (in that, it's no longer a magazine...) I guess that's just a little later i'll be waiting for the CB to gain some quality? One day, when it meets the offline builder I still have installed on my computer, I'll consider it.
* * * *
All in all, I think it was a poor decision. Perhaps it saves Wizards some time at the end of each month, but honestly? I think it's a lazy decision, and it will negatively impact my decision when and if to resubscribe. The magazine was something I was paying good money for (until recently), and I'm disappointed that Wizards no longer sees it prudent to actually give me my happy little compilations at the end of each month. A better decision would have been to raise the price of D&DI so that you can afford the time each month to do your compilations.
Maybe it's just me? But meh, that's my vote, and since I'm not a subscriber, it has twice the value since unlike constant subscribers, I'm actually going to vote with my wallet.
...that's my vote, and since I'm not a subscriber, it has twice the value since unlike constant subscribers, I'm actually going to vote with my wallet.
...and this is where you lost all credability in your statements.
...that's my vote, and since I'm not a subscriber, it has twice the value since unlike constant subscribers, I'm actually going to vote with my wallet.
...and this is where you lost all credability in your statements.
Really? That doesn't make any sense.
You've already bought a subscription. Wizards could literally just stop putting out product, not give you a refund, and they would make exactly the same amount of money from you as if they kept up the good work.
Me? I haven't payed them yet. I'm eager to, I want to, I just don't have the money right now to. Between you and me, Wizards is more actively seeking my yet-to-be-payed subscription than your already-paid subscription.
My intentions were to pay them as soon as I had the money in the bank. Now I'm going to wait longer, possibly until next summer or even next fall. That's money they have lost as a result of this decision.
That's what speaking with your wallet means. It doesn't mean "I already paid, therefore my opinion matters!" no. The opposite is true. As most video game companies could tell you, once you pay? They don't care about your opinion at all. It's the people who have yet to pay but might who matter.
Not strictly legal since, even if it's redistributing to people who own the content, it's still redistributing... except, like, that's a product that I was (hypothetically) paying for, so, I'm going to get it one way or another...
Wizards might not believe I was paying for them to compile the magazines, but I certainly considered that part of the money dropped each month over the last two years, and had I been a subscriber this year I would consider it part of the money I dropped this year.
At least they should lower the price, if they're canceling so many books and decreasing the number of services they're providing...
I'm more concerned with the apparent lack of articles this week; I understand that there're changes being made on your end and it will take some time to iron the wrinkles out, but no articles for several days in a row and then news that my preffered method for saving articles is gone has made me a little edgy.
I'm a little disapointed by this. I typically downloaded any articles I found interesting during the week, read them, and deleted them. I always downloaded the compilation at the end of the month so I could have something convenient and compact for my digital library. I understand this makes it easier on your end, and it doesn't affect most subscribers(I guess I'm an outlier), but it still seems like it shifts the work over to my end.
I'm more concerned with the apparent lack of articles this week; I understand that there're changes being made on your end and it will take some time to iron the wrinkles out, but no articles for several days in a row and then news that my preffered method for saving articles is gone has made me a little edgy.
Heh, you have 1 post... at least this is making insiders register on the forums XD But yeah, I agree: It's making me a LOT more edgy about subscribing or even assuring people on the forums/real life that D&DI is a good investment... much less assuring myself it's a good investment... "Edgy" is a good word for my attitude about Wizard's decision-making ability as of late.
You know, I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theories weaved by some people on these forums, about D&D ending or Wizards being the devil or anything. But I'd have to agree with them on one thing: Wizards seems Hell-bent on (unintentionally) removing every single thing about D&DI that I liked.
First they came for the Character Builder, making a less functional product... then they came for the Monster Builder, leaving it buggy and broken... then they came for the products, removing ones I was looking forward to... then they came for the magazines, removing one of the features I really liked, the compiled issue I could add proudly to my digital library and Kindle each month.
The only good I've seen Wizards do lately is announce the Virtual Tabletop beta, and publish Essentials (which I think is a fantastic, very nostalgic line of goods; I hope they enhance it with more stuff in the future). Everything else? Well... as I mentioned, even if I had the money to resubscribe, last year at this time I would have immediately done so without a second thought, but this year? ...well, Wizards, you've made me think twice.
Try putting out a press release with good news... heh.
I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that compilations will no longer be offered, but I understand it from a logistics/manpower standpoint. Could we get a small compromise in perhaps offering a zip of all the articles from an "issue" offered at the end of the month?
This wouldn't be a bad compromise. Actually, what I'd much rather prefer? They just do the compilations quick-and-dirty. Offer it on an obscure sub-link, not the main page (because that'd bad PR), but let me simply click a button and it downloads a PDF with the articles slapped together. No page numbers, table of contents, or smooth transitions necessary--basically, this takes 10 minutes to do (I could do it at home! just download articles, hit 'import multiple files' in Acrobat, and bam, cheap compilation), and would be infinitely superior to not having an option (1 Option / 0 Options = div 0 error, so the limit as x->0 is infinite. Infinitely superior =P)
It doesn't help that the articles aren't actually on the website. In order to read a month's worth of Dragon, I'll have to download 10-14 PDFs, then redownload them later when they're fixed. That's almost too much to bother with. Perhaps a zip file containing all of the articles? That wouldn't be too much to ask, would it?
Now, if there were some kind of iPad app that allowed me to read the articles as they came out, I would be more than happy with this setup, but as it is, this is just another thing added to the growing pile of reasons I would consider not renewing my DDI subscription when it comes due in a few months.
I say we just go back to no articles and just deliver the PDF at the end/start of the next month like the magazines used to be...
I'm thinking their stats are correct, but they made the wrong assumptions with the data. For example, during a typical month I will look at ~60-75% of the articles as they come out to see if it's worth reading, delete the article, then at the end of the month I'll download the complete PDF to read on my iPad or something... So as I count it, my account downloaded 10 single articles vs 1 compiled PDF which supports their statement, but failed to correctly interpret the data.
I say we just go back to no articles and just deliver the PDF at the end/start of the next month like the magazines used to be...
Exactly.
I'm thinking their stats are correct, but they made the wrong assumptions with the data. For example, during a typical month I will look at ~60-75% of the articles as they come out to see if it's worth reading, delete the article, then at the end of the month I'll download the complete PDF to read on my iPad or something... So as I count it, my account downloaded 10 single articles vs 1 compiled PDF which supports their statement, but failed to correctly interpret the data.
I say we just go back to no articles and just deliver the PDF at the end/start of the next month like the magazines used to be...
That wouldn't be a bad change.
And yeah. When I had a subscription? I would download articles 3, 4, or 5 times during a month each. NOT because I found it particularly useful or convenient; quite the opposite. I would lose track of which ones I had seen, redownload them because I don't archive individual non-errata'd articles, and so on. I can look at my Google Chrome 'Downloads' directory and see things like "Assassins.pdf" "Assassins(1).pdf" "Assasins(2).pdf" "Assasins(3).pdf" or stuff like it. Again, not because I really, really liked downloading the article, but because I would lose track of it because of how inconvenient individual articles are
And then at the end of the month I'd download a single compilation, archive it, and never have to download individual articles ever again.
So for me? I'd really just rather prefer Wizards do as you mentioned: one compilation, end of month, I don't need daily articles. I'd willingly sacrifice daily articles for a single, cohesive compilation at the end of the month...
I'm thinking their stats are correct, but they made the wrong assumptions with the data. For example, during a typical month I will look at ~60-75% of the articles as they come out to see if it's worth reading, delete the article, then at the end of the month I'll download the complete PDF to read on my iPad or something... So as I count it, my account downloaded 10 single articles vs 1 compiled PDF which supports their statement, but failed to correctly interpret the data.
I say we just go back to no articles and just deliver the PDF at the end/start of the next month like the magazines used to be...
Exactly.
Add me to one of these. I sometimes look at individual articles, but always download the compiled issues - sometimes months after release. :-(
I haven't checked, but are the separate articles security free so that we can at least stitch together our own mag from the files? If not...
Very disappointed by this news. You take away the paper copies of our favourite magazines and now even dispense with compilations too! Sad day indeed. I for one, read the articles as posted.. and then download the compiled pdf. And it is this compiled version that sits on my pc and I refer too, not the individual articles. Re think this decision oh mighty Wizards.
WoTC will save ca$h on the art cover by not having to commission artwork anymore, at least for the cover. But how much time it really takes to gather 9-10 PDF files and put it into a single PDF file ? Less than an hour ? is it really worth it ?
These magazines have run for a few decades. Going digital was already a hard blow. Killing them will be the final coup de grace. Please don't. Just come back on your decision.
Please continue Dungeon & Dragon Magazine compilations. Or you will loose more DDi subscribers than you were before. Thus loose more revenue than what it really cost to commission an Art cover and compile a dozen PDF files, by a single employee at the Studio.
Plague
wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg...
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
This is a terrible decision. Your right, content doesn't change but your taking away a level of service that you previously provided.
This whole move throws reason to the wind. Your not going to take the time to compile the ARTICLES for a MAGAZINE into a single ISSUE because it takes too much time? Then what am I paying you for? The last I checked I was subscribing to Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. (E-zines, whatever.) But now your telling me that I will have to download each article and somehow piece them together myself? That would make me some kind of editor...right?
$75 a year for a second-rate Character Builder product and two piecemeal digitial magazines?
Are you kidding?
I feel that the wrong conclusion is being drawn regarding the number of downloads for an individual article versus the number for the compiled issue of Dragon or Dungeon. I tend to download an individual article and open it immediately for viewing rather than saving it somewhere and then opening it. I do this because I know that the final version of the article will be coming out at the end of the month, so I don't need to clutter up my hard drive with product which is likely going to change before the "final" version.
As a result, if I want to look at that article multiple times during the month (maybe because I'm discussing it on the forums, or with friends at LFR), I download it again and open it for viewing. While it looks like I'm making more use out of the individual article by the downloads, I actually get much more out of the compiled issue.
I'm also concerned that the updates to individual articles will fall by the wayside with the new process. When there's no deadline for errata, there's less pressure to get that errata done in a timely fashion. The wording in Ampersand (updates will be made "a few weeks after the original posting") doesn't fill me with confidence. It's also going to require communicating the existence of those changes in a piecemeal fashion. Before, we knew to look for those changes at the end of the month.
If WoTC can't justify the expense of compiling the articles I would like to see them give Paizo back the job.
I can say, the act of compiling the PDFs into one file, isn't that hard or time consuming, at best, 5 minutes, worth of work for any one person.
How much work to get that up on the website, I can't say. But in my job, I've had to take many PDFs, and combine them into one file, and it's so easy. There is a combine PDFs option in Acrobat, which once you have all your files selected, you can make sure they are in the order you want them to combine, and click ok.
So I'm not sure why they feel not taking all the articles for that month, and combining them into one file can't happen.
If WoTC can't justify the expense of compiling the articles I would like to see them give Paizo back the job.
I can say, the act of compiling the PDFs into one file, isn't that hard or time consuming, at best, 5 minutes, worth of work for any one person.
How much work to get that up on the website, I can't say. But in my job, I've had to take many PDFs, and combine them into one file, and it's so easy. There is a combine PDFs option in Acrobat, which once you have all your files selected, you can make sure they are in the order you want them to combine, and click ok.
So I'm not sure why they feel not taking all the articles for that month, and combining them into one file can't happen.
Page numbers? Table of contents? Cover art? Transitions that don't include blank pages? Honestly, none of these really seem that time consuming either... I mean, the articles themselves don't include blank sections at the bottom, so the transitions aren't a big deal, page numbers are automatically inserted if you set it up right, and table of contents might be really easy or really hard, depending.
Also, disappointing, in another thread we were discussing how Wizards should be cut some slack on their obfuscation of the calendar because normal magazine companies don't show off their schedule to thousands of customers breathing down their neck... and, er, now Wizards has declared it's no longer a magazine publisher.
So there goes that argument.
* * * *
As a side thought.
Wizards, you know how you go through extensive effort hyperlinking the table of contents, and inserting URL links in your PDFs and all that jazz? .. .. .. If you find it too time-consuming to put out PDFs each month, maybe you should stop doing all of that useless stuff that nobody ever uses. Seriously. Table of contents: "This article is on page 5. Either type '5' onto the bottom of your PDF viewer, scroll down five pages, or click this dandy hyperlink we set up! Also, you could have just ignored the table of contents altogether, and just scrolled down until you saw pictures that looked like what you wanted."
We don't need them bookmarked either. Dunno if you still do that...
There seems to be a dial of effort, from 0 (None) to 11 (Super-interactive-awesomeness!), and Wizards was like "Wow, 11 is really high... time to turn it all the way to 0!"
That's the biggest time-consumer I can think of however. WOTC, feel free to chime in and tell us what was so time-consuming about compiling your PDFs that you had to abort the production of a 25-year-old magazine.
If that were the case, it's okay WotC: you don't have to give us errata the day of publication! Here, we can compromise: release compiled PDFs, no errata, and you have exactly one month to go over the previous month's magazine for errata. That gives you four weeks, instead of like 24 hours. We get our PDFs, you get your errata, everyone wins! Everyone!
...sounds like a better plan to me. And I'm not even getting paid for my plans.
As for the products dropped from the schedule: the place for the answer that's in the FAQ mudbunny pointed us to is in the Ampersand article. Along with more specifics -- "I know I gave you a preview of the Class Compendium. We've dropped it from the schedule because X. You will instead get the information therein from Y."
You've already given us a tiles preview earlier this week (or was it last?). A more complete explanation of the catalog changes would have been appreciated, especially for those of us for whom attending DDXP at the end of the month isn't an option.
If WoTC can't justify the expense of compiling the articles I would like to see them give Paizo back the job.
I can say, the act of compiling the PDFs into one file, isn't that hard or time consuming, at best, 5 minutes, worth of work for any one person.
How much work to get that up on the website, I can't say. But in my job, I've had to take many PDFs, and combine them into one file, and it's so easy. There is a combine PDFs option in Acrobat, which once you have all your files selected, you can make sure they are in the order you want them to combine, and click ok.
So I'm not sure why they feel not taking all the articles for that month, and combining them into one file can't happen.
This. If by trying to save work they are talking about just the effort to combine the PDFs, ... then there must a be lot of work that I don't get.
But, if they are trying to save the work of -correcting- and -editing- the content once it is out in the article form so that it isn't completely overpowered or broken or just plain ... bad, then yeah, I guess they could save some effort there. Or they could do it right the first time.
I suspect that this is solely to save themselves their content being re-distributed. And that's all well and good for them. But what that means is that once more we are not getting the straight story from WotC. Which would make me unable to believe any further words out of the machine.
I'm lucky though. I have access to Adobe Acrobat so I will be able to create my own compilations. I just wish I didn't have to.
I also wish to echo the sentiments of one of the other posters - I worry that they are misinterpreting their statistics. I subscribe to the RSS feeds, and I usually view the articles as they become available. I scan them to see if they are of immediate interest or of timely content (like ampersand). If so, then I read them. If not, then I wait and read it later as part of the compilation. My reading pattern means that I end up downloading both the article *and* the compilation PDF. This means that the article download counts will always be higher than the compilation download counts.
It would be nice if someone posted the ratio of downloads of a single article vs. downloads of the compiled PDF that contains that article, just so that I could understand how big a gap there is.
One last note. It seems to me that it wouldn't be hard to automate the compiling of the PDF, especially using Acrobat X's new "Actions" facility. Surely it would be worth it for Wizards to automate the compilation and upload it for the customers who want the compilation but do not have access to Acrobat.
Rob
If WoTC can't justify the expense of compiling the articles I would like to see them give Paizo back the job.
I can say, the act of compiling the PDFs into one file, isn't that hard or time consuming, at best, 5 minutes, worth of work for any one person.
How much work to get that up on the website, I can't say. But in my job, I've had to take many PDFs, and combine them into one file, and it's so easy. There is a combine PDFs option in Acrobat, which once you have all your files selected, you can make sure they are in the order you want them to combine, and click ok.
So I'm not sure why they feel not taking all the articles for that month, and combining them into one file can't happen.
It's frustating to see the answers they made up and then read you Dane.
Not because not all their Paying customers don't consume or use a service they pay for means they can take the service away from other Paying customers who use or consume this service.
Having the various articles compiled was another service, now that's gone. If the articles are ever to be compiled, I'll need to do the work. Then (as always) if I want a hard copy for any reason, I'll need to print things out myself.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not above doing this all myself; I've done it before and maybe I'll do it again in the future. More and more though, I feel like I'm getting less and less service out of my subscription. Less value, less enjoyment.
That's how I feel about this. When it comes time to re-new in April, that's what I'm gonna remember. Do I really want to spend my hard-earned money on a product that was once print (but is now digital)? is a product that used to be put together for me (but is now patchwork) really worth it? Do I want this? No, not at all.
I'm a huge fan of D&D but I can no longer call myself a fan of Dragon/Dungeon (they lie in ruins now). More than just disappointing, it makes me sad. I was a long-time, loyal reader of the magazines.
/\ Art
The nebulousness of article updates is a point of concern for me. What notification mechanism will be used to tell subscribers that an article has been updated? A robust channel of communication for this needs to be established otherwise I'll have to revisit all of the articles I found most interesting or useful on a regular basis, wasting more of my time than looking for an updated version in the compilation at the end of the month.
This is the latest in a rapid series of degradations in the service quality for DDI, and while there are some promised future improvements (eg the online monster builder and the VTT), those aren't part of the subscription now and can't offset the reduced depth of magazine content and the reduced support for the available digital tools.
I turned off my auto-renew last week because I was really dissatisfied with how the DDI suite has been going since around August of 2010. I should lose my DDI icon sometime this week. After receiving the news about the magazines, I have great satisfaction in knowing that they will not be receiving another cent from me for their "online services." I will continue to peruse their printed material at the bookstore, and will make my purchasing decisions on a case-by-case basis, but they will no longer receive a monthly stipend from me.
Although the magazines weren't 100% of my activity in DDI, I would estimate that they held close to 90% of my interest. I will revise my subscription decision if they do go back to a compilation, or even better, back to print, but not before then. They had it relatively easy with me - maintain the current course. Unfortunately they weren't able to achieve that.
I'll do the final layout for free. If you don't have the time to do it, well, I'll take up the torch and do your job for you. I won't charge you a bloody dime, either. Because I know for a fact that I could do the job in about 2 hours one evening.
And I'm not just blowing smoke. I've worked on a good half-dozen ENnine nominated books. I've done just about every layout job for Paradigm Concepts for about 6-7 years now. The job isn't hard, it's valuable, and I'm volunteering to do it.
Like most opinions voiced here, I am also disappointed by this. I usually read Dungeon/Dragon while I'm at work. Since the D&D website is behind the firewall, I download the compiled magazine, and upload it to Google documents so that I can access it. I would be very much in favor of a zip file, or a way to select a number of files, and have them download in one shot.
The question I have in regards to all of the changes being made is this. What is Wizards doing with this extra time and resources? I understand the need to streamline and make the operation more efficient, but while they are doing that, the quality of the product is also declining.
What I mean is, the articles are going through the full R&D process, just like the books do, so that by default should reduce the amount of mistakes and need for errata right there. Now by eliminating the end of month compilation, they will just make the changes directly to the article.
On a separate note, how will we be notified of a change to an article? If I've downloaded an article, and then it receives an errata, will there be some notification system? Perhaps an "Updated" tag or something.
Now the content of Dragon/Dungeon has been on the decline for a while now (as evidenced by numerous threads, and general feedback about the articles as they are released). We have a CB that is less functional than its predecessor (released to combat piracy). A moderately functional Monster Builder, that is going to be replaced with an online Beta version that will probably, like the CB, be less functional than its offline counterpart (if that's even possible). A Compendium that doesn't include everything that's been released, and a VT that won't be ready for general use for at least a year. Oh yeah, and then there is the Suite of tools "NOW WITH ONLINE FORMAT!!" that will be coming out "SOON", which is the same response we've been getting for a year and a half.
I really would like to hear a more candid response from Bill and others as to what the actual plan is to improve the D&D product (sort of like what Trevor has been doing with DDi), and not some heavily moderated sales pitch. (Piracy?! Who are you? Lars Ulrich? and when did we travel back in time to 2000?)
Will there be more adventures released? Will the campaign worlds see more support, both in adventure form, and fluff articles that provide more specific information on a region/city/area? Will we see an increase in support for classes/races that need it (Seeker, Runepriest, etc)?
That is what I'm hoping (and most like a false one) for in the future.
Ramius
I look at the individual articles online, several times sometimes, to see what they're like, for comment and critique, and to suggest alterations. I don't download them, permanently.
Then I download the compiled article, ONCE, and read it on my computer, infinitely.
At least, that's what I do when I have a subscription, and this is going a long way to persuade me not to freaking bother ever again.
Way to screw up interpreting your data. Face it, this isn't going to be a magazine any more. It's going to be a website masquerading as a magazine. Just go the whole hog and change the format properly, don't do it by halves.
Yuck.
As I stated in the article thread about this month's Ampersand, I have the strong suspicion that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the stated reasons, and everything to do with making it more awkward for the pirates to post rips of the PDFs on file sharing sites.
I'm curious how they got this data, since I download the complied issue once and keep it on my hard disk. Individual articles I will download several times as I read them in the browser. Hence it will always look like I download individual articles more than the complied issue.
Improving the quality and quantity of the content will make people more willing to pay for it. Making it more difficult to use will make them less willing to pay for it. Jeez.
I mean who will be happy about NOT having compilations anymore?
The Articles were always nice to quench my curiosity and to have something new to brighten my day. But I never took them seriously until I had the finaly PDF. First because the PDF is the finished Version, second I can much better read them, third they felt like a Magazine and last but not least they were easier to store and search than using the Website.
I mean who will be happy about NOT having compilations anymore?
The chap that had to compile them, and WotC_Trevor?
Q: Why have you decided to stop compiling the monthly magazine issues?
A: We have found that fans favor our articles individually as opposed to downloading monthly compilations. This is not a reduction in content, just a clarification of presentation.
This is a strange marketing decision taken here. Just because one of two options is favored by the users, doesn't mean they want to loose the other one. If 90% prefere to download articles you are still cutting of those 10 % that don't want to do so and you will also give those users a blow that did both. What makes it even worse: You don't specify which projects will benefit from this move, making it hard for people to accept it.
If you procede that way with other services, you might end up with only half the number of customers you could have and all that was done in order to save a small mount of overall time.
Unless there is a really small number of customers that downloads the compilation (lets say maybe <5-10%), you better keep on providing a service your customers are used to, especially if the effort to do so is rather small (putting some PDF's togehter and edit the layout is a one man job taking some hours at most).
I mean who will be happy about NOT having compilations anymore?
The chap that had to compile them, and WotC_Trevor?
HA HA HA HA!
Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?
I mean who will be happy about NOT having compilations anymore?
The chap that had to compile them, and WotC_Trevor?
Actually, I think that guy just got tired of having to make end of month deadlines, while everyone else around him was able to miss theirs. He figured out a way to spin it to management, and this is what we have.
Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.
Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?
I suspect that's precisely the reason they've chosen to stop producing them - if it's more difficult to download back issues, it's more difficult for the people who subscribe occasionally in order to get back issues, and the logic would seem to be that this makes them more likely to subscribe continuously.
Which is so stupid I struggle to believe it, except that it's pretty much exactly what happened with the CB.
Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.
Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?
I suspect that's precisely the reason they've chosen to stop producing them - if it's more difficult to download back issues, it's more difficult for the people who subscribe occasionally in order to get back issues, and the logic would seem to be that this makes them more likely to subscribe continuously.
Which is so stupid I struggle to believe it, except that it's pretty much exactly what happened with the CB.
Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. The only thing I can see is that they save the money cost on a few pieces of art.
Well done!
Because now only a fraction of these evil hack0rz will upload the individual articles for illegal download, because it's too much of a hassle, and not worth the effort.
Will you at least stick to the PDF format, or is it to much work to click on "print to pdf", as well? And hey, if you don't publish pdfs at all, the upcoming articles probably won't be read by non-paying readers at all!
In fact, they won't even be read by me!
Back then, when I used to be satisfied with my ddi subsription, I usually read the individual articles when they appeared on the wizards.com/dnd page, scan for stuff that I deemed interesting.
Once every couple of months, I downloaded the back issues so I'd have them for later reference.
Oh boy, once you've started messing up the ddi suite, you just don't stop, do you, guys?
Well, my subscription ends soon, and for the remainder of our 4E campaign, I'll just stick to the offline CB. Luckily, Dungeon didn't provide me with anything exciting, and dragon - I can do without "Fortune Cards" Previews, and whatever else you're going to come up with in the future...
Thanks for a great 1,5 years of ddi. It was fun while it lasted.
You know WoTC, if you want to do that, to help prevent piracy, ok fine.
But you should move making things customizable in CB to the top of the list. With the standalone, I was able to take the Character sheet PDFs and edit them to fit the customization in my game.
You know, how DnD is meant to be played, with the ability to make it your own and add your own touches.
I'll toss in my vote for bad idea. I like the compilations.
I hate to be an ogre about this but this was what finally pushed me to disable the auto renew on my DDI account. I can no longer see a benefit to paying 75 a year to a company that is going to continue cancelling and making things more difficult for the people that are paying them.
I had such hopes for 4e and while I think there are many places that make me enjoy the game I cannot fathom renting my RPG when there are others that are just as good and in some aspects better which the company has a different model for staying afloat.
I see no future in fortune cards (at least not a positive one) and that seems to be the way the company wishes to go as opposed to coming out with compelling "role" playing material we only see stuff that is there to benefit "roll" playing and I can get enough dice slinging from playing craps or a board game.
And to stop this compilation of the magazine then they are no longer a magazine. It now has become a glorified blog which you pay 75 bucks a year for.
I wish you luck and I hope that at some point I feel that this direction shifts back to where I feel comfortable in investing in it again.
I feel a fool for purchasing every book that is published in the 4e line and for throwing my money into DDI thinking that some day it is going to be a great thing while now it is obvious that it just keeps moving in the opposite direction.
First, WotC changed the exceptional Character Builder into a shadow of what it was. Really, the CB was the dream of every programmer: Something so essential that almost every user can't see themselves playing without it anymore. The tool was that good.
Second, they stopped to update the Adcenture Tools. Now it will go online "soon". My hopes aren't high that it will not follow the fiasco that the web CB is now.
Third, the VTT is worse than Maptools (a free VTT) and Fantasy Grounds 2 (a paid non-subscribbing VTT). Sure, its on beta, but they need to improve it a lot for it be worth a subscribtion from me.
And now the mercy shot with the compilation of the magazines. As Mindshadow said, now we have a paid blog, not magazines anymore. And we have a good number of good blogs about general RPG and D&D 4e around the net.
My subscription goes until May, but I doubt I'll renew it anythime soon. I am a first-day DDIer, and jumped on joy when the magazines went online (I'm brazilian, so get the original magazines isn't something I can do easily and cheap). For months I sustained DDI only because I still liked the magazines. Now I can't even use it as an excuse.
Not saying about every one, but you lose me on this move, Wizards.
Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.
Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?
Don't forget what will soon be discovered as the real reason. Piracy.
Its a lot easier to pirate and find the entire magazine at once than have to hunt down a dozen individual articles. I can't even imagine the hackers want to do that and compile it.
Okay, this move pisses me off. I think that the complitations are extremely valuable and getting rid of them is a terrible mistake. However, rather than bitch and moan I have an alteranative solution:
I'll do the final layout for free. If you don't have the time to do it, well, I'll take up the torch and do your job for you. I won't charge you a bloody dime, either. Because I know for a fact that I could do the job in about 2 hours one evening.
And I'm not just blowing smoke. I've worked on a good half-dozen ENnine nominated books. I've done just about every layout job for Paradigm Concepts for about 6-7 years now. The job isn't hard, it's valuable, and I'm volunteering to do it.
Please take this man up on his offer.
I've already written that the simple move to stop compilations has my subscription in jeopardy. Is Wizards listening?
My sub runs out in May, you have until then to impress me.
I would not be surprised if the next step was to make it so that the articles aren't PDFs anymore, but only accessable via Silverlight, and printing them turns them into images, rather then text, like it does with the Character Sheet. And will more then likely do with the Monster Builder.
Which would be even more monumentally stupid. Especially given that some of their audience might well use screen readers and the like - it would be actively illegal, in the USA, as I understand it, to produce magazine content that such people couldn't use.
I would not be surprised if the next step was to make it so that the articles aren't PDFs anymore, but only accessable via Silverlight, and printing them turns them into images, rather then text, like it does with the Character Sheet. And will more then likely do with the Monster Builder.
Which would be even more monumentally stupid. Especially given that some of their audience might well use screen readers and the like - it would be actively illegal, in the USA, as I understand it, to produce magazine content that such people couldn't use.
As far as I know, that law only applies to gov't publications, or gov't sponsored publications, like schools, which get gov't funding.
Its been awhile since I reviewed it though. Not sure how accurate my info is at this point.
I don't know how they can keep reducing the service they offer and expect to keep customers.
Take this for example. All of this information was known when they first announced the change to how they are delivering magazine content. It's probably been an idea for 2-3 months, and inacted in the last month.
And while it was going to be addressed in the Ampersand article, they once again chopped up information on a subject, over several weeks. This is where they really need to get it together. If their plan was to slowly introduce the information, well that doesn't work, because all it does is come across as one screw up after another.
Had all this been at one time, we would have been past this by now. Heck, some of might have not have been as annoyed.
I'm not a child, so you can tell me the whole thing all at one go. I think not compiling articles for one easy download is a bad move, because it's hardly time consuming. If it's to prevent piracy (Which I think is highly unlikely, honestly) then you need to stop releasing them as PDFs, as I can simply take the PDFs now, and use them anyway I want.
If the plan is to move them into a digital reader, just come out and say it. I'm sure that if that's the plan, you are using the magazines as a way to test that out, as a precursor to putting the books into such a format so that people can have their electronic versions.
See, there is so much we don't know, that we would like to know that if we knew, we could make an informed choice about paying you WoTC.
I've said it before, I think moving into a digital format is the smart thing to do. Your next wave of customers and fans are going to fully expect this, and more, and you are one fo the few publishers that are actually trying to make a product that straddles both print and digital, and I think that's right.
So I want to know if that's where you are trying to get to, because I can get on board with that, only I don't want to be giving you money to take 2 more years to get there. I want to give you money because you are there.
PS. A thought came to me as I wrote this. If they are going to a digital reader format, I wonder if the books that got cancled, did so because they are going to use them as a testing ground for selling versions of books in a digital format only. They did say there were going to still bring us this content, just in different ways.
And to stop this compilation of the magazine then they are no longer a magazine. It now has become a glorified blog which you pay 75 bucks a year for.
That's untrue, and an unfair statement.
*beat*
Blogs don't have quite so many advertisements in their posts.
* * * *
You know, I've been recently seeking out some house rules for my 4E game--things to speed up combat, make players feel more like action heroes, etc. Basic stuff. So I started looking on Google, searching for DM tips and things like that.
Do you know what I found?
...
I found giant blogs filled with such things. Huge, collaborative blogs with many users working together to put all sorts of theories and practice on how to have more fun playing 4E. And then I found the smaller blogs, containing the same content on a smaller scale...
And something about it has been nagging me since yesterday. And today, I finally realized what it was.
The content was of higher quality than Wizards of the Coast. I think it's been a full year since I've read a dragon magazine article and gone "OH MY GOD That article was a world changer! I can't believe I've never thought of the stuff in it! I have to put this into my game right now, where's my House Rules document. Bookmark this post! It's great! *starts sharing on Facebook and with friends over AIM*"
And when I was reading those private blogs, I was doing that every single time I read an article. Such great insight, such great DM-to-DM conversation with intelligent folk.
I wish Wizards had content which rivaled the free blog business...
But here's the thing. Now that Wizards is becoming a blog themselves? The fact they're charging $75 a year for it, the fact that most of the articles are advertisements for future products, the rest are too setting-specific for me to care about, and never are they as game-changing as some of those blogs I read yesterday? ... I'm not willing to pay for that.
And if you want an extra slap in the face, Wizards? I'd be willing to pay for it if it was a magazine. Print or online. I'm not paying for a blog of such extremely low qualities, but I'm just irrational and nostalgic enough that when I look at the dusty, torn, well-thumbed giant stack of Dragon and Dungeon magazines on my bookshelf... it makes me want to resubscribe to get more of that content.
* * * *
I'm not sitting here and claiming that compiling was such an extremely grand service and that it's the equivalent of throwing out the character builder or something in terms of "I'm not resubscribing!". No, it's not even a big thing.
But Wizards, when you decided to cancel the magazine and turn into an expensive, low-quality internet blog? You highlighted your inadequacies. Before, I was willing to overlook your low quality mags and wish I was a subscriber almost purely because I was so fond of the old magazines. Now that you've killed my nostalgia by becoming a blog, I suddenly realize just how low quality you really are, and how little I'm willing to pay for it.
As mudbunny has proclaimed loudly over and over in another thread, "branding is everything". Dungeons and Dragons is a household name, which is great brand name recognition! But guys? Amongst D&D players... Dungeon and Dragon magazines themselves have huge brand name recognition. We're willing to pay for it, not because the content is good but because it's Dungeon and Dragon. The title, the compilation... buying it is a very different experience than subscribing to a blog. It's something we yearn to do, largely because of the history behind the name.
I don't know if I'm quite expressing myself correctly. So I'll just tl;dr, if only because I can sum up my thoughts real quickalike in it:
tl;dr: I bought Dragon and Dungeon because it was a magazine I've loved since a child. Now that it's an expensive blog with low-quality content, I'm not willing to subscribe to it. If you went back to compiling it into magazines again, it wouldn't be a low-quality blog... it would be my childhood magazines again! Brand name recognition is everything, nostalgia is everything, and while your business model technically makes sense, and is the rational move to make, we are not rational customers. We are nostalgic about our old D&D days. That's why you see so many sacred cows beloved by D&D fans... and to us, having Dungeon and Dragon magazine was a sacred cow that we don't want to see go, replaced by Dunegon and Dragon mediocre advertising blogs.
It isn't a particularly big, change but for me it is one change too many.
Won't this decision actually promote piracy? I mean, severely, to the point that it'll be almost as laughably pirated as the time that EA put super-obtrusive-piracy-protection on Spore and as a result made it the most pirated game of the year?
Here's my logic. Unlike corporate pirate logic, I browse torrent pages enough to have some actual insight on this matter.
Crackers/hackers/whatever are extremely devoted people. Whether they're slicing the pages out of a book so they can get a clean high-res scan, whether they're spending weeks cracking the code on a mediocre game that nobody plays just to say that they did it... the people behind most of the stolen content will stop at nothing to get the job done.
As Dane_McArdy pointed out, it takes like 5 minutes to slap a compilation together. Tell Acrobat to take the pile of PDFs and put it into one, save, done.
I think the thieves on the internet can manage that...
So what will happen, I predict, is that piracy websites will become the sole source of compiled magazines. Wizards had thrown a really, really easy job aside... and pirates will be there to pick it up. Piracy will skyrocket, because if people want a copy of the magazines they f***ing own and paid for, they can't buy them from Wizards (no matter how much they want to!) because Wizards is a blogger now, not a magazine company. So, people will start turning to piracy...
Usually, the reason don't turn to piracy is because of guilt. They don't like stealing from their beloved companies, they'd much rather have actual products to support the developers. But Wizards, people will not feel guilty about downloading these things from pirates. It's a product they've paid for, it's a product they want and you refuse to sell. In most people's minds, "Hmm. I've paid for it... and the only way to get it is through this third-party distributor... I think I'll be fine with that. Wizards won't know, I'm not depriving them of products, and I've paid them already so everybody wins."
Now, I personally hate slippery slope arguments. I think they're silly and almost always wrong. BUT I know how extremely anxious and Chicken Little corporations get about "slippery slope" arguments, so I'm going to use one anyway:
It's a slippery slope where you, you personally Wizards, are inviting people to go pirate the magazines they paid for, to those people discovering "Hey... I can download any D&D book on here! I can download out of print books, or books that cost $100 on Amazon due to lack of supply but it's still technically theft! ... Wow! This is cool!"
I think that people going to pirate the magazines that pirates will inevitably compile for you, and then discover the world of theft. And at that point... at that point Wizards will see a gigantic dip in its profits as people stop buying print books like the PHB3 or DMG2 in order to just steal them.
* * * *
Again, slippery slope arguments are stupid, and most predictions of piracy springing up are wrong... but I think in this rare case, Wizards, you've actually exposed yourself to an extreme amount of potential piracy. People want their magazines... and they'll get them, one way or another, and maybe pick up other products while they're there...
I'm going to add my displeasure at this announcement and that's not something I do lightly (I like to lurk).
I read each article as it goes up and will often open it from the website multiple times to read/reread it. Sometimes i'll read half an article at home and read the rest at work during my lunch. I don't intentionally download and archive individual articles though, I just let it open in browser and then forget about it. I'd assume this style of interaction is fairly common and thus you do see a higher click count on the articles themselves above and beyond the compilation (which everyone downloads once). The thing is (as is evident here) I like it this way. Once I have the magazine compilation I won't open an individual article unless I'm accessing from somewhere other than home.
I'd been positive, i'd praised the potential in the new character builder (if not the current implementation) and accepted a lot of the recent decisions as necessary from a business perspective but this seems excessive to me.
This is the moment where I consider that the hordes of naysayers have a point, a good point and a valid one. I'm awaiting something that makes me reconsider this assessment.
Blinkey ;( (An increasingly disillusioned customer)
Unless there was something said about that changing... Nope, just that they're cutting back on book releases, which people are inferring means that material is going into Dragon.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not... But what I see is:
Lack of Dragon content + Lack of book releases + move to online character builder =
I think dieffenbachj said, they can stop providing anything, and keep making the same amount of money off of me.
Looks like I'm going to have to work to get more use out of the VT Beta, if I'm going to justify this expense.
Making this a separate post simply because it's such a conversation shift:
Won't this decision actually promote piracy?*snip*
Yes. You make a very good point.
Like so many of Wizards' recent decisions about DDI, the logic seems to be very corporate, without even the SLIGHTEST apparent comprehension of the motivations of their end-users. These sorts of strategies have already led to piracy. Applying them further can only make it worse.
Cost cutting costs you customers. I won't repeat it again and you likely won't see me subscribing again in the future.
Time will tell what happens next, but it's some sort of facinating how one single company with such a strong brand like D&D can make so many wrong decicions in such a short time.
I to read individual articles multiple times, download compilation once for archiving and am dissipointed by this change.
If anybody at the DDI team is reading this, I have a suggestion:
Since the articles are no longer being compiled into full issues, can we get some decent tagging, categorization and search capabilities? I might not even have to download this stuff to my hard drive if I could find it reliably.
Isn't there a way you can attach article preferences to my DDI login? Some ideas:
the ability to mark articles I like and/or categorize them in to custom categories and list views
the ability to search by keywords in the articles (ie race/class/monster names/item types)
the ability to search on level relevancy (ie heroic/paragon/epic/1-30)
If you could do that, I wouldn't mourn the loss of the compiled issues so much because I could actually find the information I'm looking for.
Hey lets be honest here folks: The magazines have been sucking for the last 6+ months. There's maybe 1 good article everyone can use, and maybe a couple more used by certain classes/races.
Now you don't have to wait 5 minutes for an entire issue of crap and can just download the one article that matters. You know the one with 5 pages of a story that doesn't fit your campaign but has the 1 feat your elf wanted...
At least Dungeon still prints adventures, and now you just download the adventure you need, not all of them at once.
I'm already fascinated with Essentials, and find them to be a solid enough standalone pen-and-paper product that I don't really want the compendium, or the character builder... only the fact I was getting two magazines and lots of little digital toys was tempting me to resubscribe.
With the magazines turned into blogs, as I've ranted about, I'm really not going to resubscribe until I have a good reason to, like the VTT coming out or the CB actually being worth spit.
But if they announce that I would not even get the magazines then? That it would be an online-only, no-download thing?
Forget it. That's $75/year I can spend on literally so many more valuable things. Like actual magazines. Or subscriptions to far superior (if less name-brand) virtual tabletops.. or ACTUAL D&D books!
I can buy like 2 or 3 D&D books with $75 a year, and those are things I can SAVE and keep on my SHELF! If I buy used or old books, I can get even more!
I don't want to get in too much of a tiff, however, because they haven't announced that. But I have no doubt that the subject came up in a meeting. If they decided to go through with it? And are just preparing us by easing us out of the convenience of actual magazines?
Well.. again. My chance of ever resubscribing drops to 0.
So no compilations is really no skin off my back.
But for some reason, this announcment has me all kinds of upset and here is why:I don't mind the service changing - I'm not so nieve as to believe that it would stay the same if the profit margins are not there. What has me upset is that I dont see where my favorite hobby is headed. Its been shrouded in mystery and keeps changing. It seems like every week a new "change of direction" for the company is released, and I can only handle so many to be honest.
I almost think DDI would have been better served by "going dark" for a month or two (where they would refund any subscribers) and then just starting with a fresh re-launch. This way people could have gotten the "This sucks, I want my DDI" out before getting a fresh new system, complete, polished and ready for the potential wave of new subscribers.
I'll be honest, I've only ever downloaded a compilation maybe once or twice, I've got the RSS feed plugged into google reader so when an article gets put to the site I get a notification of it, I then either read it or mark it as read and say 'No thank you.' I would then just wait for the compendium or CB to be updated to use the content. And BTW, anyone that is interested in how set up google reader like this, drop me a PM and I'll get you some instructions. So as long as the updates/errata to the articles hit the RSS feed I'll be in the know.
I've got Google Reader too... usually, I would click on an article's link to check it out when it first comes out, then I would shut it down and click into it later in the evening to read it, and if I actually liked the article I might open it to show a friend, or open it the next day to reread it.
I guess that added up to a lot of clicks? So maybe it's my fault? Heh.
But just because I opened it four or five times doesn't mean I didn't like the compilation at the end of the month.. quite the contrary, I needed the compilation so I could stop navigating to the articles page and reopening it every time I wanted to see teh article...
Anyway. I think a lot of people use RSS to navigate to the articles, but still depended on the compilations once the month was over.
I've got Google Reader too... usually, I would click on an article's link to check it out when it first comes out, then I would shut it down and click into it later in the evening to read it, and if I actually liked the article I might open it to show a friend, or open it the next day to reread it.
I guess that added up to a lot of clicks? So maybe it's my fault? Heh.
To be honest, opening a file mulitple times shouldn't thow off a metric like this. If done correctly a company can get a pretty good read out of how many of its subscribers have actually downloaded a compilation vs how many of them (on average) download the articles.
Plus, I have a feeling this decision was made in conjunction with the survey they put out a while back that had several questions on it about how you use the magazines. Things like rating how often you download indiviual articles or how often you download compilations.
Anyway. I think a lot of people use RSS to navigate to the articles, but still depended on the compilations once the month was over.
In this point I will have to disagree. My experience (not emperical by any means, of course) has shown me that most average users don't even read the magazines, instead they just use the compendium/CB and when new content shows up for their character/campaign there they are pleasently suprised. The problem here is that the minority of users that frequent these boards tend to also be the ones that enjoyed that compilation. Therefore, it seems as though "a lot of people" are upset by this.
My assumption (and we all know what assuming does) is that wizards wont actually see as big of a hit to their bottom line as everyone is making it out to be. Quite a few of their subscribers wont even realize that a change took place, and the other part wont care.
Does any of that mean that I think this is a good move for PR? No. Those of us on these boards are their vangards in the real world. We push their products for no other reason then that we love them. So keeping us (the vocal minority) happy would benefit them too. But I'm sure that was all discussed at some boardroom meeting in the frozen wasteland they live in and deemed a resonable loss.
In this point I will have to disagree. My experience (not emperical by any means, of course) has shown me that most average users don't even read the magazines, instead they just use the compendium/CB and when new content shows up for their character/campaign there they are pleasently suprised. The problem here is that the minority of users that frequent these boards tend to also be the ones that enjoyed that compilation. Therefore, it seems as though "a lot of people" are upset by this.
Hm. I don't know... in my experience with these forums, there is always a very vocal side of both debates. It seems reflexive: no matter what the topic, no matter how stupid Wizards is being or how brilliant Wizards is being, there is always a very loud argument from both sides.
Yet in the topics I've seen springing up on this, it seems that there is a significantly smaller minority of people who like Wizards' decision. Strike that, I don't think I've seen anyone who likes it, simply people who don't mind it.
My sense is that there's a lot more agreement than there normally is.
In any case, I know a lot of players who are enthusiasts of D&D, whether they like 4E or not, who have fond memories of Dragon and Dungeon magazine and would be sad to see it go like this. I agree that selection bias of these forums is important to consider, but I also believe that there is a large, statistically significant, quantity of D&D players out there who would never log on to these forums, but who would be upset by this change.
Will this affect Wizards' bottom line? I think the short-term answer is no. People who are subscribed will remain subscribed; people who canceled auto-renew probably did it due to other recent fiascos like the sub-par CB or a lack of magazine quality. People who aren't subscribed probably will remain unsubscribed.
I don't think there will be an immediate change... but Wizards is not at all maintaining their good name. A year ago, when you said "Wizards of the Coast" I had very different impressions, and much more positive feelings, than I do today. And it's only going to get worse tomorrow, for a lot of people.
When Wizards announces 5th Edition, if they intend to do a digital distribution for it, if they announce any big events like Essentials 2.0 or something like that... I think it's then that all of these shenanigans will hurt their bottom line. Their sales will not be as high as they could have been, because people will be associating Wizards with Bad Quality and Bad Decisions.
As you say, it's all about PR. And PR never has an immediate effect, it has an effect 4 or 5 months later when people are considering buying another stack of books.
Wizards just doesn't seem to care about their PR anymore.
In general, WotC seems to have been moving away from many value added portions of the DDI subscription.
Not Value Added:
- Nebulous release calendar
- 2+ month delay between magazine content release and appearance in CB/Compendium
- More restrictive CB (house rules, number of characters, character sheets, etc)
- Fewer and shorter magazine articles.
- Fewer rules/game elements in magazine articles for the D&D game.
- No compiled magazines at the end of the month.
Frankly the compiled magazines were just barely acceptable as it was. They did not feature bookmarks, links or any other basic features that I would expect of an original electronic document.
Compiled magazines were far more useful than individual article downloads, because I had an entire library of them. If in the course of researching or building my character, I find an obscure potion in Dragon 386, I simply only need to open that pdf. Now, I will have to hope that I downloaded the article (unlikely as a short article w/ probably 5 potions is uninteresting to me) and if I do not, then I have to get online, log in to the website, use the clunky magazine archives and download the article. All that, just to find out if the potion or rules element makes sense for my character.
I mean, they didn't even really try to spin it.
No "But because we are moving to a more strenuous release/vetting schedule with better content we had to drop something"
No "This will free up some hours so we dont have to hire new staff, so we don't have to raise the cost of subscriptions"
Nothing to lessen the blow. There was that whole "We just don't think it's worth our time" arguement, but that isn't really a "here is why this is a good thing for you"
Maybe I missed it though...
But then, I am of the pursuasion that when it all comes down to it a company as big as Wizards/Hasbro wouldn't make a move like this without taking a real good look at how it would truely affect their bottom line and image in the long run.
I just hope that all the changes lately will eventually pan out and that we'll get a working model established soon.
If in the course of researching or building my character, I find an obscure potion in Dragon 386, I simply only need to open that pdf.
The Search feature in PDF readers is such a boon. I recall recently going to the compendium (even without a subscription it's a good index) and finding an artifact I wanted to look up and see if it'd be good for my campaign. Found in Dungeon 16#, so I just went to that magazine and searched for the name of the artifact. Found it, less than 5 minutes.
Can you imagine, trying to find the artifact any other way? You go to a Dungeon magazine table of contents and it's just a bunch of adventure names and generic titles like Dungeoncraft. That means that if you want to find this one artifact in one of those adventures? You have to open all of those adventures and key in the search in each PDF.
Even a print magazine doesn't face that issue. It's so fast to flip through a magazine until you find pictures or maps that look like what you were looking for, it's almost faster than doing a PDF search.
So, at least for the purpose of finding particular strings of text, like a particular feat or a potion or an artifact or an unusual monster you want to read the text on? This is the worst possible situation.
But then, I am of the pursuasion that when it all comes down to it a company as big as Wizards/Hasbro wouldn't make a move like this without taking a real good look at how it would truely affect their bottom line and image in the long run.
Almost the entire history of D&D 4E and D&Di really, really begs to differ.
Everything from their initial proposal to put out the first three books over three months, to their lack of care with the original character builder to their lack of care with the new one to their unapologetic attitude toward most of their mistakes to the monster builder to GLEEMAX...
"Thinking ahead of time about their bottom line" doesn't seem to be their strong suit.
Hell. If they want me to believe that they are capable of finishing a product and thus are capable of looking after their own PR in the long run, know what I would like?
Take the community site out of beta. Do whatever changes you need to make, fix it up, and finish at least one digital product in their life. If they could just finish their website, I would have a lot more confidence in them and their 'new changes to D&Di'
*sigh*
But then, I am of the pursuasion that when it all comes down to it a company as big as Wizards/Hasbro wouldn't make a move like this without taking a real good look at how it would truely affect their bottom line and image in the long run.
Almost the entire history of D&D 4E and D&Di really, really begs to differ.
Everything from their initial proposal to put out the first three books over three months, to their lack of care with the original character builder to their lack of care with the new one to their unapologetic attitude toward most of their mistakes to the monster builder to GLEEMAX...
"Thinking ahead of time about their bottom line" doesn't seem to be their strong suit.
So you're position on this is that what they have done in the past has not worked, so when they change it (ie what they are doing now) is obviously more of the same?
I agree that a look at history can show how the future will unfold, and that Wizards has not had a good track record in the history department. But I guess to me that the recent changes seems more like a corperation making changes they feel will garner more success in the long run.
Every move they've made has implimented a new monitization technique to their product. Collectable cards, revamping a product line targetting new players, board games, and a new model for subscriptions that requires continued payments (much like an MMO would). All these things lead to a supposed growth in revenue streams. Now whether this will work is yet to be seen, but I'm of the pursuasion that Hasbro (more than WotC really) wouldn't let an IP as big as D&D languish in the mediocre zone for too long.
Just my opinion tho. ;)
Sad, but them's the facts.
Edit: I also add my voice to the disappointed with the loss of the compilation
Can you imagine, trying to find the artifact any other way? You go to a Dungeon magazine table of contents and it's just a bunch of adventure names and generic titles like Dungeoncraft. That means that if you want to find this one artifact in one of those adventures? You have to open all of those adventures and key in the search in each PDF.
Thank you! I had completely forgotten the horror of not knowing which article said potion is in. If there is not a clearly labled potion article, it may be found as loot in some obscure adventure that snuck its way into Dragon that month.
I'm personally against the failure to compile the issues and I think that rather than this being evidence of laziness we are in the intermediary phase before they pull the PDF files off the web completely to "protect the content".
WotC have done some things I liked and some things I didn't. I like 4E, I'm fairly comfortable with the online CB, and I like the Essentials line. I'm a local DM at the D&D meetup every month and I'm regularly recruiting new players to the game so it isn't like I'm just venting my spleen.
I have been playing D&D for a very long time and the two magazines have been part of that as brands unto themselves or even icons. It is a real shame to see the state of the two magazines today because I think they do read like mildly interesting blogs with a large number of advertisements and product announcements tucked in as filler. As others have stated, it is true that other independent blogs are writing better articles than what we are seeing here.
If I were to try add something positive to the discussion it would be a recommendation to license the properties to a 3rd-party publisher who can dedicate some time to both magazines. Goodman Games, Green Ronin, Paizo, or another publisher would provide a much needed jolt to two brand names that are really taking a beating.
Does this mean that there will no more posts of the entire Dungeon and Dragon magazines as a PDF file at the end of each month?
Hey all. As you may have noticed by now (check out Bill's Ampersand article),The Dragon/Dungeon compilations we did at the end of Decmeber will be our last. I’m here to give you a little bit more information about the change.
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
What does this mean for article updates? We will continue providing rules updates. However, rather than make the compilations the place where folks get errata, we’re going to update the individual articles whenever errata is called for. The goal is to eliminate confusion. We will no longer have two different versions of an article on our site — the compiled version with errata and the uncompiled version without errata. If an article needs errata, we’ll update the article and let folks know.
That’s about all I’ve got on those compilations – if you have any other questions just drop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.
A zip file compilation of images or articles is NOT the same as downloading the entire magazine PDF files for Dungeon and Dragon.
Does this mean that there will no more posts the entire Dungeon and Dragon magazines as a PDF file at the end of each month?Hey all. As you may have noticed by now (check out Bill's Ampersand article),The Dragon/Dungeon compilations we did at the end of Decmeber will be our last. I’m here to give you a little bit more information about the change.
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
What does this mean for article updates? We will continue providing rules updates. However, rather than make the compilations the place where folks get errata, we’re going to update the individual articles whenever errata is called for. The goal is to eliminate confusion. We will no longer have two different versions of an article on our site — the compiled version with errata and the uncompiled version without errata. If an article needs errata, we’ll update the article and let folks know.
That’s about all I’ve got on those compilations – if you have any other questions just drop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.
There will be no more entire magazines at the end of each month.
Nobody really wants zips of the articles, but since Wizards is taking the lazy route out we're trying to convince them to do anything better than their current decision. Between a zip of the articles and what they plan on doing, which is 'if you want a compilation, do it yourself', I'd rather take the zip.
I can see why they'd do 'em separate.
And if it only takes a few seconds to merge PDF's, I bet we could make our own custom compilations with the articles that matter to you.
Keep in mind, these guys are tracking every click and download on the website - I bet there's some major data here to back up this decision.
Just my .02 cp.
All I know is that it would suck to go back and change something in two separate files, every time there's a change, then republish and relink everything.
I can see why they'd do 'em separate.
And if it only takes a few seconds to merge PDF's, I bet we could make our own custom compilations with the articles that matter to you.
Keep in mind, these guys are tracking every click and download on the website - I bet there's some major data here to back up this decision.
Just my .02 cp.
They only ever corrected the final product, they never put errata in the original files.
So they still only have to correct one article. Nothing in that regard has changed.
Now with this new news perhaps they will see a spike in the downloads and change their minds again.
Do you think they are lying to us about the lack of downloads of the compiled issues?
WOTC has the data and it appears that people were not downloading the compiled issues.
Now with this new news perhaps they will see a spike in the downloads and change their minds again.
Do you think they are lying to us about the lack of downloads of the compiled issues?
I don't think they are lying, but I don't think they are giving full disclosure over why this choice.
WOTC has the data and it appears that people were not downloading the compiled issues.
Now with this new news perhaps they will see a spike in the downloads and change their minds again.
Do you think they are lying to us about the lack of downloads of the compiled issues?
Where have you been?
Wizards of the Coast blatantly and unapologetically lying to its customers is the standard.
I honestly don't know why you expect anything else out of them.
- "We're having trouble integrating content to the Character Builder... for three months..."
- "We're going to have [almost any product] out soon! (repeat for three or four months)"
- "This product will be available on launch (advertised for months after the launch date was missed)."
I'm sure I'm missing quite a few. I didn't feel like thinking any more up because it was depressing.
So yeah. I am not cutting Wizards of the Coast any slack. When they offer me a line like "We're doing this, because of this extremely vague reason that doesn't quite make sense" my "Wizards of the Coast is lying to us, again" sense tingles. Or rather, not tingles, but flares up so badly it puts me into a seizure.
I love Dungeon and Dragon magazines. There is a large amount of VERY useful content published on a regular basis. Much of it is free. Much of it is behind that loathesome "pay wall". I come to the home page of these magazines almost daily. I've run material from them for years for my players who have often loved it. I've seen content added and changed based on community feedback. I've also never downloaded a compilation issue. No one I know, has ever downloaded a compilation. Anecdotal? Yes. But according to WoTC, pretty normal.
I find it sad that whenever WoTC tries to make a change, even a relatively minor one like no longer doing article compilations, the people start calling out "WoTC Lies!" etc.
But honestly, if you stop and think about this, it makes sense. If only a handful of people are downloading the compilations, why should they burn man hours on it? When those man hours could be put to a use that benefits the entire community, or a significantly larger portion of it. And if huge numbers of subscribers are consuming the content this way, why on earth would they want to stop doing it?
Now, I"m not calling to silence those who are upset by this. I know what it's like to have something you like taken away. But c'mon people. Lets try to be a bit more civil in voicing our distaste.
This community should be a place where we can come together, not in some rant against WoTC, or Essentials, the character builder,or whatever, but as gamers, and people who enjoy the same things.
If anything were to push me away from this great hobby I love, it wouldn't be losing a feature here or there, but rather the self-entitled attitudes of non-paying subscribers.
There will be no more entire magazines at the end of each month.
Again, where does it say the magazine PDF files will not be available at the end of the month?
That magazine PDF is the exact same file they send to the printer each month, so there is no such thing as a "file compilation" where that is concerned.
This is VASTLY different than say a zip file compilation of images and articles.
If anybody at the DDI team is reading this, I have a suggestion:
Since the articles are no longer being compiled into full issues, can we get some decent tagging, categorization and search capabilities? I might not even have to download this stuff to my hard drive if I could find it reliably.
Isn't there a way you can attach article preferences to my DDI login? Some ideas:
the ability to mark articles I like and/or categorize them in to custom categories and list views
the ability to search by keywords in the articles (ie race/class/monster names/item types)
the ability to search on level relevancy (ie heroic/paragon/epic/1-30)
If you could do that, I wouldn't mourn the loss of the compiled issues so much because I could actually find the information I'm looking for.
Ahahaha!
Sorry, but c'mon, if they aren't willing to take the time to compile the articles into a single pdf, do you really think that they are going to go through and do all that?
And besides, isn't that what the "compendium" should be used for as well?
There will be no more entire magazines at the end of each month.
Again, where does it say the magazine PDF files will not be available at the end of the month?
That magazine PDF is the exact same file they send to the printer each month, so there is no such thing as a "file compilation" where that is concerned.
This is VASTLY different than say a zip file compilation of images and articles.
Wizards of the Coast does not do a print magazine anymore. There is no Dragon or Dungeon hard copy.
Also, if you check out the ilnk that you originally quoted, it will have this line on the page:
Finally, I wanted to let you know that we’re making a change to the way we handle D&D Insider content. Subscriber data informs us that the vast majority of you consume our articles individually, when they are posted, as opposed to downloading the monthly compilations. So, starting this month, we’re just providing the articles. There won’t be any more monthly downloadable compilations. This is not a reduction in content, just a clarification of presentation and putting the emphasis where the majority of you are using it. Corrections and updates to articles which used to appear only in the compilations will now be made to the individual articles a few weeks after the original posting.
If anybody at the DDI team is reading this, I have a suggestion:
Since the articles are no longer being compiled into full issues, can we get some decent tagging, categorization and search capabilities? I might not even have to download this stuff to my hard drive if I could find it reliably.
Isn't there a way you can attach article preferences to my DDI login? Some ideas:
the ability to mark articles I like and/or categorize them in to custom categories and list views
the ability to search by keywords in the articles (ie race/class/monster names/item types)
the ability to search on level relevancy (ie heroic/paragon/epic/1-30)
If you could do that, I wouldn't mourn the loss of the compiled issues so much because I could actually find the information I'm looking for.
Ahahaha!
Sorry, but c'mon, if they aren't willing to take the time to compile the articles into a single pdf, do you really think that they are going to go through and do all that?
And besides, isn't that what the "compendium" should be used for as well?
The compendium contains nothing but crunch... and I like having some roleplaying fluff in my D&D. I can't imagine it without it; so if the magazines have fluff and the compendium has crunch... it's important we be able to quickly look through the magazines. Er, blogs.
There will be no more entire magazines at the end of each month.
Also, if you check out the ilnk that you originally quoted, it will have this line on the page:Finally, I wanted to let you know that we’re making a change to the way we handle D&D Insider content. Subscriber data informs us that the vast majority of you consume our articles individually, when they are posted, as opposed to downloading the monthly compilations. So, starting this month, we’re just providing the articles. There won’t be any more monthly downloadable compilations. This is not a reduction in content, just a clarification of presentation and putting the emphasis where the majority of you are using it. Corrections and updates to articles which used to appear only in the compilations will now be made to the individual articles a few weeks after the original posting.
ARGH!!! You are NOT getting it.
A compilation and/or a zip file is NOT the same thing as a PDF file.
That PDF file they put out at the end of each month for Dragon and Dungeon? Yeah, that is NOT a compilation.
Sigh....
There will be no more entire magazines at the end of each month.
Also, if you check out the ilnk that you originally quoted, it will have this line on the page:Finally, I wanted to let you know that we’re making a change to the way we handle D&D Insider content. Subscriber data informs us that the vast majority of you consume our articles individually, when they are posted, as opposed to downloading the monthly compilations. So, starting this month, we’re just providing the articles. There won’t be any more monthly downloadable compilations. This is not a reduction in content, just a clarification of presentation and putting the emphasis where the majority of you are using it. Corrections and updates to articles which used to appear only in the compilations will now be made to the individual articles a few weeks after the original posting.
ARGH!!! You are NOT getting it.
A compilation and/or a zip file is NOT the same thing as a PDF file.
That PDF file they put out at the end of each month for Dragon and Dungeon? Yeah, that is NOT a compilation.
Sigh....
O-kay... I don't think you're quite conscious of what's going on...
They don't put out zip compilations of the articles. Never have. And even if they did, the only thing they ever have errata'd is the final monthly PDF that contains that month's articles, the official magazine. And from context, we can deduce that that is what they are talking about, because they are talking about how with this 'final compilation including updates' no longer being there, they promise to include errata in the weeks after each article is put out.
It's... please explain why you think that this many page thread which several WOTC employees have read and, according to you, have not chosen to correct anyone on their mistake and put a PR nightmare to rest before it starts, is not about what we think it's about? I guess.
I don't know, I'm confused right now. I don't think it's that terribly complex.
If only a handful of people are downloading the compilations, why should they burn man hours on it?
Because 100% of subscribbers pay for this service among other things. Wether some people don't download the compiled magazines at ther end of the month, i can understand. I don't understand why the rest who does should see this taken away from them. I see a reduction in service paid, without any reduction in fee. I don't see a refund.
And why not stopping Dungeon entirely, since not all subscribbers are downloading them ?
If only a handful of people are downloading the compilations, why should they burn man hours on it?
Because 100% of subscribbers pay for this service among other things. Wether some people don't download the compiled magazines at ther end of the month, i can understand. I don't understand why the rest who does should see this taken away from them. I see a reduction in service paid, without any reduction in fee. I don't see a refund.
And why not stopping Dungeon entirely, since not all subscribbers are downloading them ?
This is definitely "the glass is half empty" thinking. They clearly say that the man hours used to create the compilation will go towards efforts that are more useful, improvements. So technically, there will be no net loss. You're trading one thing for another. And in most users case, they give up nothing but instead they may gain something.
I don't understand why people are so negative.
I think its pretty clear that not many people were taking advantage of this, and that it was generally a waste of our subsription dollars to pay people to do it. Is it not sensible that WoTC could put our subscription dollars to better use? Don't you want your subscription dollars to go towards those features that benefit the most users? In seeking to provide for the vast majority of users, they increase the likelihood that a greater number of subscribers will be happy, keeping revenue up and enabling them to keep doing the things that people are actually taking advantage of. If they bend over backwards to placate the vocal minority, the silent majority will go underserved and the future of the service will be in jeopardy.
...Now, I"m not calling to silence those who are upset by this. I know what it's like to have something you like taken away. But c'mon people. Lets try to be a bit more civil in voicing our distaste....
I haven't picked up any incivility in this thread. I'm actually of the feeling that some very well thought out reactions and articulate posts are being shared here. Sure, there may be some stong emotions here and there (and this is more than understandable), but they are on the whole respectful of both parties involved.
And then there are some people who are saying "It's not that hard; even if the majority don't use it, the minority is extra upset because it's a relatively easy task we're asking, slap cover art on a stack of already-made PDFs". Sure, this is technically time and money spent pleasing a few people... but it's not that much time and money, so the fact Wizards isn't willing to spend it on the apparent minority is insulting to the people who do want to pay for it, and makes those people want to take their business elsewhere. Wizards' loss.
But again. I would refute that we're a minority. It doesn't feel like it, or if we are, we're not a small minority.
As I mentioned earlier, in almost every raging debate I've seen on these forums, there have been vocal people on both sides. Here, I'm seeing mostly silence by the 'anti-magazine' crowd, if there is one. This tells me (though obviously it's not a scientific conclusion) that the people who are upset by this are a lot larger than a simple minority. Maybe, maybe not a majority; but not at all as small as the minorities you see in some of the other debates in this thread.
And lastly, I would refer you to "Tyranny of the Majority", a concept which, in this instance, refers to the majority getting what they want by kicking the minority in the face. Sure, it's democratic, and it's technically fair, but it's not just. A lot of people have paid to receive magazines, and Wizards is taking it away. Sure, they may be the minority, but that doesn't mean the don't deserve the service they were paying for!
* * * *
I would also like to point out, that when Wizards first put out D&Di, a lot of people raged because they didn't care about the other products, they just wanted the magazine and nothing else, and insisted over and over and over and over until they ran out of breath because Wizards kept saying "no" that all they wanted was to buy the magazine, and nothing else.
Taking that into account... Wizards is being kind of dickish to those people who once wanted just the magazine and nothing else.
"Can I just buy the magazine?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing"
"Please?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing"
"Pleaaase?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing. *beat* Hm. Not a lot of people are devout readers of the magazine, it seems! I guess we can shut down Dragon and Dungeon, since nobody wants to read them."
"*dying off in the corner* We want to read Dragon and Dungeon, but you charge too much..."
"Yup. Looks like nobody wanted the magazines."
"We would happily pay your writing staff what they need to make the magazine if you would let us buy only that..."
"Too bad nobody wanted the magazines."
"Why won't you listen to ussss..."
I don't understand why people are so negative.
Sorry for not showing more positivity in my disappointment. I liked a service that i was using, and see it go away because not enought people were using it.
Unless you can really demonstrate how much dollars it was costing to them to compile a dozen PDF articles into a single one and load in up for download, than can justify the cancellation and re-investment into more productive efforts, i wouldn't question people's objectivity. I heard possibly one man workhour, figure a rate....
People tend to react negatively to negative change. Even if a service is improved, it won't replace the features that were lost and make people less unhappy about their loss.
That PDF file they put out at the end of each month for Dragon and Dungeon? Yeah, that is NOT a compilation.
Sigh....
Erm...that PDF file? That's called the issue compilation (in fact, if you follow the "Issue Comp." links in the content calendar, they specifically call the PDF file the "compilation PDF"). That PDF file is what they are no longer producing.
But honestly, if you stop and think about this, it makes sense. If only a handful of people are downloading the compilations, why should they burn man hours on it? When those man hours could be put to a use that benefits the entire community, or a significantly larger portion of it. And if huge numbers of subscribers are consuming the content this way, why on earth would they want to stop doing it?
It takes minutes to combine the PDFs. There are no internal links (not even the Table of Contents, which is EASIER to do if you automate it, and if automated it comes out as a set of links!). There is the cover art and table of contents layout to make combining the PDFs complicated. But I don't care at all about either of those. If they have even a handful of customers who only reads the compiled issue rather than individual articles that's enough to pay for compiling it to the extent of having a single PDF with a table of contents.
And by a handful I mean five such customers is more than enough.
I don't download individual articles. I do download magazines. Since I do so while logged on Wizards KNOWS that this is the case. So that's one of the three or four customers needed to pay for a few minutes each month.
And just what is my DDi subscription for?
A crappy character builder that doesn't work even fractionally as well as the one I still have on my box from last october?
A monster builder they've stopped updating?
A VTT that I have little interest in and can't access anyway?
Articles I don't read except in a version that no longer exists?
I haven't yet asked for a single refund, nothing they did last year, not months without a character builder update, not breaking the monster builder and then not fixing it, none of that got me to cancel or ask for a refund.
But what am I actually paying for?
I'm seriously considering cancelling over this. I mean, there's simply no value being given. I'll give them a month and see if they do SOMETHING to make this tolerable, but I don't plan to download dozens of articles every month, and I don't want to have to open 20 PDFs to find the one with a particular bit of content. If this change means that I'll have to do one of those things, then I'm gone. It's not that I'll be getting too little value for money, it's that I'll be getting ZERO value for money. I certainly won't resubscribe if this "works" the way I think it will.
...Now, I"m not calling to silence those who are upset by this. I know what it's like to have something you like taken away. But c'mon people. Lets try to be a bit more civil in voicing our distaste....
I haven't picked up any incivility in this thread. I'm actually of the feeling that some very well thought out reactions and articulate posts are being shared here. Sure, there may be some stong emotions here and there (and this is more than understandable), but they are on the whole respectful of both parties involved.
"Where have you been?
Wizards of the Coast blatantly and unapologetically lying to its customers is the standard.
I honestly don't know why you expect anything else out of them."
"my "Wizards of the Coast is lying to us, again" sense tingles. Or rather, not tingles, but flares up so badly it puts me into a seizure."
"It is fun to watch the continuing... ineptitude."
"why would I specifically download articles that suck?"
"Which would be even more monumentally stupid."
At the risk of stating the obvious, I think you and I have very different understandings of what "well thought out" and "respectful" means.
I'm sure I would have found more respectful comments had I bothered to go back through more than a couple of pages.
I've never downloaded a compilation issue... but it is the most important feature of DDI to me. Even over the character builder (heck, since they totally gutted the character builder anyway, WAY more important).
My collection of Dragon and Dungeon issues goes back to issue 25. The magazines, even as digital files, are important to me. I now feel an impending axe... worry that the existing files will be taken offline. I know I can't trust anything Wizards says anymore, so even if they promise not to take the files down, I know I can't believe it. So what does this mean... not only do I get to be disappointed, but now I have to spend a fair amount of time sitting and downloading the compiled files that are available before they decide to take them down.
What am I paying for? A spectacular gaming table... except that's gone and the replacement... well, frankly MapTool or Fantasy Grounds look like better options right now. A character builder... except they gutted it. Seriously, a character that would have taken five minutes to build on the old offline builder can take 30 min or more... between that, lack of customizable power cards, lack of any meaningful journal feature, lousy character sheets - a character builder in every way inferior to what they had... so not the character builder. The monster builder... that was good. Except a bug messed that one up and they never fixed it. Oh right, the reason I subscribed... the venerable magazines that would still be compiled monthly for those of us who cared. Oh wait.... not being compiled.
Is D&D dying? I have to ask. Between these announcements and the product cancellations.... I'm begining to wonder.
I should clarify: the dragon collection goes to issue 25. The Dungeon collection is complete to issue 1.
And in case I didn't make it clear... I'm not just unhappy. I'm pissed. The products I've been looking forward to are cancelled and I miss my old character builder.
Unless I misread my credit card bill, I paid more the last time for DDI than for the year before, and it seems to be delivering less. Paying more for less is generally not something I like to do.
Yes. It's quite usual for companies to lie to their customers to justify changes that only serve the company itself.I don't mean that the WotC guys are bad persons, I have lied to customers too when I was told to do so and will do so again in the future.
will all articles going forward (read:next month and beyond) still be downloadable pdfs or can we not dl anything anymore
What am I paying for? A spectacular gaming table... except that's gone and the replacement... well, frankly MapTool or Fantasy Grounds look like better options right now. A character builder... except they gutted it. Seriously, a character that would have taken five minutes to build on the old offline builder can take 30 min or more... between that, lack of customizable power cards, lack of any meaningful journal feature, lousy character sheets - a character builder in every way inferior to what they had... so not the character builder. The monster builder... that was good. Except a bug messed that one up and they never fixed it. Oh right, the reason I subscribed... the venerable magazines that would still be compiled monthly for those of us who cared. Oh wait.... not being compiled.
You know, its just when I read posts like that that I stop to think: "Hell, he may be right! Am I throwing money out the window?"
Gave a new try to the new CB yesterday (after reading about bug fixes). Still disappoiting :P. Seems to me they're busy bugfixing and restoring lost features is secondary. Well, my subscription has some months until the expiration date.
Hope they turn this table around and make me wish to renew my subscription! :P
I'm a bit disappointed as well. Though I can see the logic. I certainly haven't been downloading the compilations lately (I will now before they get taken down, I guess).
What's funny is I didn't know the compilations were erratta'd! If I did I would probably had downloaded them more. But I have to wonder how hard it will be to find the source article from something we find in the Compendium. Right now, if I want to check out a power from Dragon , I click on the link and it takes me to the Dragon Mag that had that power. Are they really going to give the data entry people more work by having to link individiual articles?
i will ask though it may not get answered
will all articles going forward (read:next month and beyond) still be downloadable pdfs or can we not dl anything anymore
Theoretically, you will have access to individual file downloads still.
However, many of us are nervous (perhaps with no foundation) that Wizards is going to take that from us, too.
I don't understand why people are so negative.
I think its pretty clear that not many people were taking advantage of this,
I think that is incorrect, I wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable number of people actually kept copies of the complete complied issues on their hard disk for reference. They don't download that every time they want to check something, but they do download articles more frequently.
and that it was generally a waste of our subsription dollars to pay people to do it. Is it not sensible that WoTC could put our subscription dollars to better use? Don't you want your subscription dollars to go towards those features that benefit the most users?
Great idea I think they should stop all development of the Monster Builder since only about one in six of their customer based are DM's so it make no sense to support them. Best to scrap Dungeon completely as well for the same reason.
I imagine the majority of D&D players only play face to face as well so they might as well scrap all development on the VT again, before they waste any more of our subscription dollars.
They certainly shouldn't bother fixing things like the printing bug they introduced last update because only a handful of people have complained about it in the forums. No point introducing inherent bonuses again since only a minority of players use it, or many of the other features removed in the transition to the new online character builder. In fact don't bring any of those features back because it is clear than no one has been using them the last couple of months so they can't be that important.
Right now, if I want to check out a power from Dragon , I click on the link and it takes me to the Dragon Mag that had that power. Are they really going to give the data entry people more work by having to link individiual articles?
I imagine it will just like to content page (like it does currently) they you will have to guess which particular article on that page it is referring to or open them all and search each one for it.
I don't understand why people are so negative.
I think its pretty clear that not many people were taking advantage of this,
I think that is incorrect, I wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable number of people actually kept copies of the complete complied issues on their hard disk for reference. They don't download that every time they want to check something, but they do download articles more frequently.and that it was generally a waste of our subsription dollars to pay people to do it. Is it not sensible that WoTC could put our subscription dollars to better use? Don't you want your subscription dollars to go towards those features that benefit the most users?
Great idea I think they should stop all development of the Monster Builder since only about one in six of their customer based are DM's so it make no sense to support them. Best to scrap Dungeon completely as well for the same reason.
I imagine the majority of D&D players only play face to face as well so they might as well scrap all development on the VT again, before they waste any more of our subscription dollars.
They certainly shouldn't bother fixing things like the printing bug they introduced last update because only a handful of people have complained about it in the forums. No point introducing inherent bonuses again since only a minority of players use it, or many of the other features removed in the transition to the new online character builder. In fact don't bring any of those features back because it is clear than no one has been using them the last couple of months so they can't be that important.
Your melodrama is noted. Thank you for that. It's incredibly useful
1 in 6 are DMs, but I'd wager closer to 1 in 1000 are downloading the compilations, maybe less. If those ratios extend to the use of the monster builder or the VTT once its released, then I think you have a point. However, I think your drama queen style post is way off the mark in correlating the ratio of customers who use the Monster Builder or who are interested in using the VTT to those who are clearly not utilizing the articlar compilations. The VTT in particular is something designed to bring in NEW customers. The compilations pretty obviously weren't doing that. They don't offer any new content, just a different format that most people don't use. There's no way Wizards would dump a large quantity of potential new customers by no longer doing the compilations. THere's no question they have the numbers of who is downloading it and how often. My guess is that they see people subscribe occasionally and then grabbing everything they've missed. Its clear they want to discourage this type of behavior as it's unsustainable long term. The VTT on the other hand stands to bring in multitudes of people who are currently using 3rd party tools and would prefer a simpler more user friendly experience like what we're getting with the new VTT.
I don't understand why people are so negative.
I think its pretty clear that not many people were taking advantage of this, and that it was generally a waste of our subsription dollars to pay people to do it. Is it not sensible that WoTC could put our subscription dollars to better use? Don't you want your subscription dollars to go towards those features that benefit the most users? In seeking to provide for the vast majority of users, they increase the likelihood that a greater number of subscribers will be happy, keeping revenue up and enabling them to keep doing the things that people are actually taking advantage of. If they bend over backwards to placate the vocal minority, the silent majority will go underserved and the future of the service will be in jeopardy.
The reason you don't mind this service to be canceled will very likely be a result of either not taking advantage of it or even not using it at all. However try to understand that there are some users out there, who liked this part od the DDI product and made use of it very often.
A company like WotC has a responsibility to all of their customers, not only the majority of them. As I tried to explain in an earlier post, only favouring the majority of customers will have negative effects on your buisiness, for each time you damage your reputation and work against the interests of some of your customers.
Whoever subscribers to a service don't expect that service to be reduced fore the time you are using it, especially if you paid in advance for it. After mre than two years of existance and an increase in subscribtionfee, the user expects the service to be increased, not to reduced, for the company should have earned enough experience over time to deliver its product more efficient and with lower investments. As a result of this, normally long time products like this one add or maybe modifie their service, not cut off part of it. It is simple "learning by doing". On this point of view, it rather surprises me, that WotC seems to have learned little from what they have done to their product in the last months.
The least thing they could do, is to actually tell the customers, which part of the service will improve from this change, like for example: "We will use those resources to add one more article to the product each month." Otherwise it looks to the user like a "we win, you loose" decision.
Wizards need to stop looking at their Data, and start talking to their existing customers.
Work hand in hand with the existing customer base to develop a product that will bring in new customers.
Right now the methodology appears to be to honk off the existing customers (myself included), while taking wild stabs in the dark about how to draw new customers in.
1 in 6 are DMs, but I'd wager closer to 1 in 1000 are downloading the compilations, maybe less.
Welcome aboard the HMS Make Crap Up, your captain today will be mbeacon.
You're pulling stats out of your derrierre. Have you read this thread? It's by no means a representative sample, but in every thread discussing this issue, including this one, I've seen at least half the respondents, probably more like 75 to 90% of them, saying they DO download and use the compilations, and correspondingly fewer saying they don't. Most of them say they also tend to download the compilation only once, to read from their HDD or other devices, whereas they might read the articles online multiple times.
Unless you have access to WOTC's stats (and can interpret them properly to avoid spurious hits from one person rereading the same article multiple times, and downloading the compilation once, apparently unlike WOTC), don't make stuff up like that. It isn't informative.
Around one in 6 being DMs is a reasonable extrapolation, on the other hand, since the average group size is 6, and one of those people is likely to be the DM most or all of the time. I'd not be surprised, however, if the number of DMs using the MB was quite low, however, given the number of pre-generated modules available.
1 in 6 are DMs, but I'd wager closer to 1 in 1000 are downloading the compilations, maybe less.
Welcome aboard the HMS Make Crap Up, your captain today will be mbeacon.
You're pulling stats out of your derrierre. Have you read this thread? It's by no means a representative sample, but in every thread discussing this issue, including this one, I've seen at least half the respondents, probably more like 75 to 90% of them, saying they DO download and use the compilations, and correspondingly fewer saying they don't. Most of them say they also tend to download the compilation only once, to read from their HDD or other devices, whereas they might read the articles online multiple times.
Unless you have access to WOTC's stats (and can interpret them properly to avoid spurious hits from one person rereading the same article multiple times, and downloading the compilation once, apparently unlike WOTC), don't make stuff up like that. It isn't informative.
Around one in 6 being DMs is a reasonable extrapolation, on the other hand, since the average group size is 6, and one of those people is likely to be the DM most or all of the time. I'd not be surprised, however, if the number of DMs using the MB was quite low, however, given the number of pre-generated modules available.
I didn't make anything up. I said "i'd wager" and I would. Given the opportunity, I would literally put money on it. That's all. Can I not say what I think now? Guess not if you disagree with people on here. I notice you take no issue with the melodrama of "why don't we just cancel all the big projects" when thats clearly not my point. Nevermind. It's hard to be heard in an echo chamber of angry voices. Reading threads like this one, it becomes clear why WoTC has to depend on their numbers rather than the "community" if this thread is any representation of said community.
I'm fully onboard with most DDI-focused negativity in recent months, but not this time. I see this as a good thing. I have always despised the whole "monthly compilation" concept. DDI isn't releasing magazines, and I don't think it should be treated like one. I think it's high time for WotC to take the whole idea of "issues" or "compilations" out behind the barn and shoot it.
I haven't read through this thread, but I've skimmed it enough to see that there's a lot of negativity here.
I'm fully onboard with most DDI-focused negativity in recent months, but not this time. I see this as a good thing. I have always despised the whole "monthly compilation" concept. DDI isn't releasing magazines, and I don't think it should be treated like one. I think it's high time for WotC to take the whole idea of "issues" or "compilations" out behind the barn and shoot it.
I fail to see your logic: they are a magazine publisher. Dragon and Dungeon are magazines. They have been for 25 years, Wizards took sole license holder on the magazines, and they billed them as magazines in their advertisements, people payed for magazines, people desire magazines, and for the last two years they've been given magazines.
Just because they're electronic doesn't make them magazines.
The only reason they no longer technically qualify as magazines is because they no longer will be compiled as such--which is a bit like saying that you can take the New York Times and cut it up into tiny pieces before shoving it into someone's mail box, and say it's no longer a newspaper. Yes, technically that's true, newspapers are one solid piece and you've given us confetti... but it was and always has been a newspaper.
Dragon/Dungeon was and always has been a magazine. Only now that this announcement has come through has it ceased to qualify.
Though I'd be interested to hear your response. Not trying to shut you down, just explain how my opinion differs, I'd be interested to hear the same.
* * * *
In other news responding to other posts, don't feed the trolls.
Fine then. I'd wager it's more like 50%. Neither of us has any solid evidence. We must both be correct ;)
Not sure if you'll consider this "evidence" but I went through the thread and tallied the data. Wizards can use it or not.
So far.
49 commenters have voiced a definite opinion on this one way or the other
41 of those 49 are AGAINST the loss of compilations
36 of those 41 are actually paying customers
26 of those 36 paying customers admit to having downloaded the compilations
10 admit to not using it or not caring, but are still against it.
So basically, on this thread, assuming all comments are being honest, we have evidence of 26 paying customers being effected. So 26 online paying customers/forum readers care enough about the service to make their voice heard in this thread. Thats not much.
Even if all 26 cancelled tomorrow, WoTC would only lose about $1800 over the course of the next year.
Considering how much activity some of the anti-change threads get on here, I would say interest in this topic is pretty low.
I haven't read through this thread, but I've skimmed it enough to see that there's a lot of negativity here.
I'm fully onboard with most DDI-focused negativity in recent months, but not this time. I see this as a good thing. I have always despised the whole "monthly compilation" concept. DDI isn't releasing magazines, and I don't think it should be treated like one. I think it's high time for WotC to take the whole idea of "issues" or "compilations" out behind the barn and shoot it.
I fail to see your logic: they are a magazine publisher. Dragon and Dungeon are magazines. They have been for 25 years, Wizards took sole license holder on the magazines, and they billed them as magazines in their advertisements, people payed for magazines, people desire magazines, and for the last two years they've been given magazines.
Just because they're electronic doesn't make them magazines.
The only reason they no longer technically qualify as magazines is because they no longer will be compiled as such--which is a bit like saying that you can take the New York Times and cut it up into tiny pieces before shoving it into someone's mail box, and say it's no longer a newspaper. Yes, technically that's true, newspapers are one solid piece and you've given us confetti... but it was and always has been a newspaper.
Dragon/Dungeon was and always has been a magazine. Only now that this announcement has come through has it ceased to qualify.
Though I'd be interested to hear your response. Not trying to shut you down, just explain how my opinion differs, I'd be interested to hear the same.
* * * *
In other news responding to other posts, don't feed the trolls.
They were magazines. I wouldn't say they are anymore.
Fine then. I'd wager it's more like 50%. Neither of us has any solid evidence. We must both be correct ;)
Not sure if you'll consider this "evidence" but I went through the thread and tallied the data. Wizards can use it or not.
So far.
49 commenters have voiced a definite opinion on this one way or the other
41 of those 49 are AGAINST the loss of compilations
36 of those 41 are actually paying customers
26 of those 36 paying customers admit to having downloaded the compilations
10 admit to not using it or not caring, but are still against it.
So basically, on this thread, assuming all comments are being honest, we have evidence of 26 paying customers being effected. So 26 online paying customers/forum readers care enough about the service to make their voice heard in this thread. Thats not much.
Even if all 26 cancelled tomorrow, WoTC would only lose about $1800 over the course of the next year.
Considering how much activity some of the anti-change threads get on here, I would say interest in this topic is pretty low.
However,
If those on the negative side are representative of a percentage of the 44000+ subscribers, Wotc has a very serious problem on the horizon.
Keep in mind the number of lurkers that choose not to voice their opinions on these boards.
I haven't read through this thread, but I've skimmed it enough to see that there's a lot of negativity here.
I'm fully onboard with most DDI-focused negativity in recent months, but not this time. I see this as a good thing. I have always despised the whole "monthly compilation" concept. DDI isn't releasing magazines, and I don't think it should be treated like one. I think it's high time for WotC to take the whole idea of "issues" or "compilations" out behind the barn and shoot it.
I completely respect your opinion that you see this as a positive, but Wizards themselves have called these online "magazines" ever since they went digital. They may have, on occasion, referenced them as compilations, but generally they used the Dragon and Dungeon magazine titles in hopes of keeping that strong brand tradition going. There are numerous articles from 2008 through 2010 which back this up.
Fine then. I'd wager it's more like 50%. Neither of us has any solid evidence. We must both be correct ;)
Not sure if you'll consider this "evidence" but I went through the thread and tallied the data. Wizards can use it or not.
So far.
49 commenters have voiced a definite opinion on this one way or the other
41 of those 49 are AGAINST the loss of compilations
36 of those 41 are actually paying customers
26 of those 36 paying customers admit to having downloaded the compilations
10 admit to not using it or not caring, but are still against it.
So basically, on this thread, assuming all comments are being honest, we have evidence of 26 paying customers being effected. So 26 online paying customers/forum readers care enough about the service to make their voice heard in this thread. Thats not much.
Even if all 26 cancelled tomorrow, WoTC would only lose about $1800 over the course of the next year.
Considering how much activity some of the anti-change threads get on here, I would say interest in this topic is pretty low.
However,
If those on the negative side are representative of a percentage of the 44000+ subscribers, Wotc has a very serious problem on the horizon.
Keep in mind the number of lurkers that choose not to voice their opinions on these boards.
I'ts pretty well documented that the negatives are far more likely to chime in. Its the people who don't have a vested interest who don't comment. If there are 44000 subscribers yet only 26 find the time to care about this, then it probably was a service that was going underutilized. I mean, you can make a small rule errata/update and get more angry responses from paid subscribers than 26.
And even with that amount of massaging, the figure still represents more than 50% of the people in your final sample.
Seems pretty clear-cut, to me.
41 out of 49 being against the removal of compilations is probably the key statistic. Discounting people who are no longer subscribers seems disingenuous. DIscounting the people who dislike the change but haven't 'admitted' to downloading the compiled editions seems equally disingenuous.
And even with that amount of massaging, the figure still represents more than 50% of the people in your final sample.
Seems pretty clear-cut, to me.
Funny, because it seems clear cut to me too.
A good start is reading and understanding this page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size
Or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
40-ish people does not a representative sample make. But it's a good start. If you honestly wanted to set up a proper statistical argument, you would need something a little less abstract and open to interpretation.
The website Qualtrics.com allows for the creation of very nice and scientifically valid surveys. You can optionally set it to disallow people from taking the survey twice, you can make optional or required questions, cross-compare the final results, etc. etc.
Maybe I'll set up a survey since I already have a free account there. A little busy today, though, maybe tonight.
Not sure if you'll consider this "evidence" but I went through the thread and tallied the data. Wizards can use it or not.
So far.
49 commenters have voiced a definite opinion on this one way or the other
41 of those 49 are AGAINST the loss of compilations
36 of those 41 are actually paying customers
26 of those 36 paying customers admit to having downloaded the compilations
10 admit to not using it or not caring, but are still against it.
So basically, on this thread, assuming all comments are being honest, we have evidence of 26 paying customers being effected. So 26 online paying customers/forum readers care enough about the service to make their voice heard in this thread. Thats not much.
Even if all 26 cancelled tomorrow, WoTC would only lose about $1800 over the course of the next year.
Considering how much activity some of the anti-change threads get on here, I would say interest in this topic is pretty low.
Trouble with that is you assume 26 people are all the people that care. It's safe to assume that they represent a fraction of the people that care, as similairly the 7 (from your numbers) that aren't against the loss of the compilations represent a fraction of the people that don't care.
Supposedly there are about 45,000 D&D Insiders with forum accounts (members of the group) So if we say each poster represented about 1,000 customers that could not be bothered to post, then upsetting 41,000 out of 49,000 customers would be a very stupid move.
Still chances are they don't represent equal amounts (as people that aren't bothered are less likely to post) so it isn't as bad as that, it still seems very sort sighted.
As for low interest 8 pages in a couple of days, seems pretty interesting to some people.
reference
Would like to add my voice to those who are against the ending of compilations. The end of month compilation firstly gives a single place to look for flavour info if the Compendium says an item is from that issue.
Secondly, and seemingly less importantly but it's important to me, it makes me feel like I am still getting a magazine. I was against the move to online publication from the start but I have got used to it and bascially, we had little choice. This is going to mean my PC is filled with a bunch of articles nominally assigned to a monthly magazine but realistically, they could be from anywhere.
This, along with the wholesale removal of books from the publication schedule and the farce that is the new method of article publication has taken me right back to the bad old days of September / October where I feel that WotC is not listening to anyone. The simple fact is, if they'd rather publish accessories and board games while treating loyal customers this way then I'll spend my money elsewhere.
My suspicion is that many of the differences here come down to whether or not you have any logical/emotional/whatever ties to the entities as actual magazines. I still do, and I have an overly large collection of Dragon and Dungeon going back to the late 70's.
I do think it's a cost cutting measure clearly, if they're being spared the negligible time to compile/publish the pdfs. I'm more dubious of it being an anti-piracy effort, unless they'll also prevent any future downloads, since anyone could combine the article downloads themselves.
Sorry, rambling. I am having a really hard time understanding why they're killing the brand entities that are Dragon and Dungeon magazines. It just seems odd, and as someone else pointed out, they're doing it with no fanfare. Dragon is a brand instrument which has existed alongside the game almost from the beginning of what we now think of as the RPG industry.
- Fact: 26 people have directly voiced an opinion that they want the compilations.
- Fact: A yearly subscription has cost as little as $60/year.
- Fact: 26 subscribers represents an income of $130/month in fees at a minimum without considering any other subscribers.
((60 x 26)/12) = $130
Observation: If we assume that it takes about one hour to compile the two monthly issues, that employee's total hourly wage could potentially be $130/hour and D&D Insider would break even.
The truth is that there will be more than 26 subscribers that want this feature because, as has been stated, this online community is a mere fraction of the total community. It isn't a question of who potentially wants a feature but rather why we are losing a feature that is frankly a trivial expense in time and money. I'm having a hard time seeing the upside of this decision.
Maybe you want it, maybe you don't but getting rid of it to save money doesn't make much sense. I pay my money and I still want the compilation. Others have also voiced the same opinion. It's a trivial expense so what is the issue? Running out of server space?
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
Forget the statistics for a moment and look at the cost benefit analysis only considering the facts on the table.
- Fact: 26 people have directly voiced an opinion that they want the compilations.
- Fact: A yearly subscription has cost as little as $60/year.
- Fact: 26 subscribers represents an income of $130/month in fees at a minimum without considering any other subscribers.
((60 x 26)/12) = $130
Observation: If we assume that it takes about one hour to compile the two monthly issues, that employee's total hourly wage could potentially be $130/hour and D&D Insider would break even.
The truth is that there will be more than 26 subscribers that want this feature because, as has been stated, this online community is a mere fraction of the total community. It isn't a question of who potentially wants a feature but rather why we are losing a feature that is frankly a trivial expense in time and money. I'm having a hard time seeing the upside of this decision.
Maybe you want it, maybe you don't but getting rid of it to save money doesn't make much sense. I pay my money and I still want the compilation. Others have also voiced the same opinion. It's a trivial expense so what is the issue? Running out of server space?
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
Thank you puck_curtis I was just about to toss this out there and you summed up exactly what I was thinking in response to the "statistics".
i will ask though it may not get answered
will all articles going forward (read:next month and beyond) still be downloadable pdfs or can we not dl anything anymore
This is what I fear. Right now it is the compilations being removed, but I fear that soon all Dragon/Dungeon will only be viewable online.
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
This is exactly why I think WotC has another reason up its sleeve for removing PDF's. They are moving towards a total pay-per-view model. No downloadable content, just view only.
Guys, can we focus less on the statistics of the matter? There's an entire field of science dedicated to the study of statistics, and nobody here is involving it.
A good start is reading and understanding this page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size
Or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
40-ish people does not a representative sample make. But it's a good start. If you honestly wanted to set up a proper statistical argument, you would need something a little less abstract and open to interpretation.
The website Qualtrics.com allows for the creation of very nice and scientifically valid surveys. You can optionally set it to disallow people from taking the survey twice, you can make optional or required questions, cross-compare the final results, etc. etc.
Maybe I'll set up a survey since I already have a free account there. A little busy today, though, maybe tonight.
Studies have shown that using posts from forums are often way to small to get any reading and tend to be slanted in view, because of the nature of people who use forums enough.
If the ultimate unstated goal is to make the content viewable only to subscribers and only online, this decision makes some sense.
Forget the statistics for a moment and look at the cost benefit analysis only considering the facts on the table.
- Fact: 26 people have directly voiced an opinion that they want the compilations.
- Fact: A yearly subscription has cost as little as $60/year.
- Fact: 26 subscribers represents an income of $130/month in fees at a minimum without considering any other subscribers.
((60 x 26)/12) = $130
Observation: If we assume that it takes about one hour to compile the two monthly issues, that employee's total hourly wage could potentially be $130/hour and D&D Insider would break even.
The truth is that there will be more than 26 subscribers that want this feature because, as has been stated, this online community is a mere fraction of the total community. It isn't a question of who potentially wants a feature but rather why we are losing a feature that is frankly a trivial expense in time and money. I'm having a hard time seeing the upside of this decision.
Maybe you want it, maybe you don't but getting rid of it to save money doesn't make much sense. I pay my money and I still want the compilation. Others have also voiced the same opinion. It's a trivial expense so what is the issue? Running out of server space?
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
This is an excellent argument.
This change essentially represents the removal of a service that costs next to nothing to provide. For my part, following the comms blitz on D&DI and the new tools that came at the end of October and into November, I was basically on side again having complained vociferously before this.
This issue, along with the farcical implementation of the new publication method and the distinct lack of books next year has pushed me right off side again. I almost feel like the company has a personality of its own, or rather two personalities. Sometimes the good WotC wins out while at other times the bad WotC wins (like now). It is of course possible that the bad personality is in fact Hasbro but who knows.
Anyway, ramble aside, I am usually happy to keep giving this company my hard-earned cash but they seem determined to do things that mean I don't want to do that anymore.
They have recently removed having fixed dates for any article and now they have removed the fixed date for a complete magazine, it effectively means they have now removed all deadlines for article publication. While they say they have a weekly deadline, they have show (that at least at present, perhaps because of the switch in proceedures*) they have real trouble keeping to it. Only one article published out of five this week, and if you check the Errata forum it seems going through the entire R&D process has done nothing to improve the quality of the article.
In Wizards speak, this is a good thing, because they have as long as they need to proof read and polish an article. To any sane person it's a bad idea because without deadlines to aim for things just don't get done.
*Would it not have made sense to build up a inventory of articles before the switch so they wouldn't have had this problem? Missed deadlines means poor planning no matter what the reason.
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
This is exactly why I think WotC has another reason up its sleeve for removing PDF's. They are moving towards a total pay-per-view model. No downloadable content, just view only.
This is what I fear. And they are likely to lose me as a customer if they do it, at least for DDI. I'm sick of being punished for people who pirate. I don't. The pirates will find ways to pirate anyway. Stop making things difficult for paying customers because some people pirate. Wizards is punishing the people who AREN'T pirating. And frankly, the pirates are better at this than Wizards is, which means these additional "anti-piracy initiatives" - if that is in fact what they are, and I think it likely - just cheese off the paying customers.
I in no way support piracy. I don't do it. I have paid for DDI since they started charging for it and have had a continuous subscription, so I haven't been doing the 6 months off 2 months on thing that I know a lot of people do. I pay for a service, a fee that is escalating from year to year. For a service that doesn't provide half of what was promised at launch. And what it did provide is slowly degenerating.
I subscribed not for the game table (though it interests me), nor for the character builder (which was a pleasant and appreciated surprise until about August of last year), but for the COMPILED editions of the magazines, which I have collected for some 20 plus years.
DDI keeps losing value for me, and I find that depressing. I have subscriptions to City of Heroes and Pathfinder's Adventure paths and DDI. I could easily cut DDI and add WoW or one of the many additional subscriptions Pathfinder offers. I could put that money into minis (wait... oh yeah, that money can't go to Wizards either - they cut the minis line) or into tiles (that's Wizards too... but Paizo's Gamemastery battle mats are comparable and it would be easy to move).
Wizards needs to think hard about trying to keep some customers, not just trying to stop piracy (which is mostly an excuse, I think, though it pisses me off too - I don't like people getting for free things that I pay for) and gain new ones (which I absolutely agree they should be doing).
i have another question for wizards. are you going to announce a 5th edition this year? and if not could you confirm you have no plans to announce a 5th edition this year? thanks
This is just a guess, but standard NDAs don't just cover not being allowed to confirm products, but also cover not being allowed to DENY products, either.
Otherwise, it could turn into a guessing game: "Are you announcing the Monster Builder next week?" "No." "Are you announcing the Dungeon Designer next week?" "No." "Are you announcing the Character Visualizer next week?" "My NDA forbids me from saying."
I would also like to point out, that when Wizards first put out D&Di, a lot of people raged because they didn't care about the other products, they just wanted the magazine and nothing else, and insisted over and over and over and over until they ran out of breath because Wizards kept saying "no" that all they wanted was to buy the magazine, and nothing else.
Taking that into account... Wizards is being kind of dickish to those people who once wanted just the magazine and nothing else.
"Can I just buy the magazine?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing"
"Please?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing"
"Pleaaase?"
"No. Pay extra to get everything, or get nothing. *beat* Hm. Not a lot of people are devout readers of the magazine, it seems! I guess we can shut down Dragon and Dungeon, since nobody wants to read them."
"*dying off in the corner* We want to read Dragon and Dungeon, but you charge too much..."
"Yup. Looks like nobody wanted the magazines."
"We would happily pay your writing staff what they need to make the magazine if you would let us buy only that..."
"Too bad nobody wanted the magazines."
"Why won't you listen to ussss..."
Thanks for reminding me of that. And for making me laugh.
i have another question for wizards. are you going to announce a 5th edition this year? and if not could you confirm you have no plans to announce a 5th edition this year? thanks
This is just a guess, but standard NDAs don't just cover not being allowed to confirm products, but also cover not being allowed to DENY products, either.
Hell, in some cases, mentioning that an NDA exists might be a violation of an NDA.
Magazines are published collections of articles. I guess these are still published, though not really to any schedule. I'm not sure if they still count as collections though. I mean CNN publishes news articles to their site all the time, but I wouldn't call that a magazine.
It just seems depressing to call something a magazine and not even bother to put it together. It's like your crazy friend calling his 200 page word document a 'novel'.
And if you are an 'old timer' like me you can check out this link and recall what all we used to get for free on the D&D site.
web.archive.org/web/20040203042840/www.w...
Guys, can we focus less on the statistics of the matter? There's an entire field of science dedicated to the study of statistics, and nobody here is involving it.
A good start is reading and understanding this page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size
Or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
or this page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
40-ish people does not a representative sample make. But it's a good start. If you honestly wanted to set up a proper statistical argument, you would need something a little less abstract and open to interpretation.
The website Qualtrics.com allows for the creation of very nice and scientifically valid surveys. You can optionally set it to disallow people from taking the survey twice, you can make optional or required questions, cross-compare the final results, etc. etc.
Maybe I'll set up a survey since I already have a free account there. A little busy today, though, maybe tonight.
I have some experience with science and statiscics and estimated the numbers already: Assuming every deprecative posting in here would be accompanied by seven acquiescent opinions which haven't been posted, there is an 12.5% (rather more) rate of displeased customers of all subscribers. If only half of them cancel their subscirbtion, that leads to 3000 canceling subscribers and at least 15.000 $ shortfall per month.
What the hell is worth 15.000 $ each month to Wotc to cancel an service which cost approximately less than 30 $ a month in sustaining?
i will ask though it may not get answered
will all articles going forward (read:next month and beyond) still be downloadable pdfs or can we not dl anything anymore
This is what I fear. Right now it is the compilations being removed, but I fear that soon all Dragon/Dungeon will only be viewable online.
I think that is the end game. It is all about controlling content. Somehwere in the Obline CB thread I stated that Dragon and Dungeon would be finding a way at some point in time to be that you ream them online only. Great way to have a RPG - you have to be online to reference anything.
Forget the statistics for a moment and look at the cost benefit analysis only considering the facts on the table.
- Fact: 26 people have directly voiced an opinion that they want the compilations.
- Fact: A yearly subscription has cost as little as $60/year.
- Fact: 26 subscribers represents an income of $130/month in fees at a minimum without considering any other subscribers.
((60 x 26)/12) = $130
Observation: If we assume that it takes about one hour to compile the two monthly issues, that employee's total hourly wage could potentially be $130/hour and D&D Insider would break even.
The truth is that there will be more than 26 subscribers that want this feature because, as has been stated, this online community is a mere fraction of the total community. It isn't a question of who potentially wants a feature but rather why we are losing a feature that is frankly a trivial expense in time and money. I'm having a hard time seeing the upside of this decision.
Maybe you want it, maybe you don't but getting rid of it to save money doesn't make much sense. I pay my money and I still want the compilation. Others have also voiced the same opinion. It's a trivial expense so what is the issue? Running out of server space?
You don't want the compilation that's fine but why pee in my cheerios when I'm not asking for that much? You could hire a college kid and pay him $10/hour to do the work and still be ahead by $120/month.
It's not that easy. Overhead greatly increases the cost. That college kid probably needs a chair to sit in, a computer to work on, and a decent professional PDF generator.
Payroll has to mess with paying him, there's a supervisor, there may be other things.
Broadly, overhead means anything that person X can do in Y for $Z an hour costs a lot more than the base pay of $Y*Z. 2-3 times is a good estimate for most jobs.
So assigning this to a $15/hour intern means you're actually paying more like $40 an hour to have it done.
But yeah, aside from cover art and cover layout, the expense is utterly trivial. So you're getting $90 a month in net just from the people complaining in this thread.
Heck, you need to update with errata. Say that means doing it AGAIN at 2 month and 6 month intervals. Then you're down to JUST BARELY making a profit on the people who've actually complained. (Not really, recompiling is easier and faster since the download links and TOC all already exist so redoing it is substantially less than an hour.)
And if you are an 'old timer' like me you can check out this link and recall what all we used to get for free on the D&D site.
web.archive.org/web/20040203042840/www.w...
Wow, that was eye-opening and thoroughly depressing. How did everything go from there to here?
That's a lot of stuff. Every day. How did they afford to do that without a subscription fee?
How did they afford to do that without a subscription fee?
Splat books.
Hundreds of splat books.
Inundating the game with so many options and so much power creep that no DM could keep up and players were whipping out invulnerable level 1 characters.
I remember playing a game with the lousiest DM I've ever played with. I wanted to run an Expanded Psionics psion. He didn't allow it because he thought it was too powerful. My party members were nearly invulnerable half-this and planetouched-that who could deal upwards of 15d6 damage per round. At level 3. At-will.
...
So yeah, safe to say, while we may look back with fond memories of how much money Wizards was making in order to afford daily free articles, remember: they did it with splat books... yuck.
How did they afford to do that without a subscription fee?
Splat books.
Hundreds of splat books.
Inundating the game with so many options and so much power creep that no DM could keep up and players were whipping out invulnerable level 1 characters.
I remember playing a game with the lousiest DM I've ever played with. I wanted to run an Expanded Psionics psion. He didn't allow it because he thought it was too powerful. My party members were nearly invulnerable half-this and planetouched-that who could deal upwards of 15d6 damage per round. At level 3. At-will.
...
So yeah, safe to say, while we may look back with fond memories of how much money Wizards was making in order to afford daily free articles, remember: they did it with splat books... yuck.
While that may be partially true, it is not entirely true. Back then, they had different people. Back then, the people that were making the decisions wanted to support the game as well as make money off of it. Remember - we had the D20 license and the OGL and all the free content.
The current people who make the decisions there are not that type of people. They see no reason why they should support the game for free. They view it as their customers supporting the game, not the company supporting the game.
You can tell from all the decisions that they have made.
That is not bad - it is just a different view - a view that I think comes from Hasbro placed people at WotC. It is not about the game anymore for those type of people.
I think I read someplace that the owner that sold WotC to Hasbro regrets that decision somewhat. He was a gamer - I don't think that the current round of decisions makers are.
Truth be told I don't mind the idea of individual articles and no compilation. Truth is I download all the Dragon articles (eventually). I don't usually download adventures, it is easier to get them in the compilation as I don't need them "right now", but I download other Dungeon articles.
At the end of the month I download the compiled issues. I download them for 2 reasons: firstly to have all the content for the month in 1 spot for each magazine, and secondly to have the final versions of all the content for the month.
Now I can live without the compiled issue however there seem to be a number of things that are not well thought out in this regard.
- The compilation rolled in fixes. Now there needs to be a way to identify, and notify of, articles that have been altered from their original publication.
- The archive system is inadequate to manage individual articles as the only means of distribution, it needs to be much better organised, and far more dynamically searchable without searching the entire site, to make it easier to locate individual articles.
- The Digital Tools will need to link to individual articles not to magazine issues or months. Individual article links are required because there will be no compiled issue that a user can refer to and search in a single action to find the material.
I am disappointed that they are removing the compiled issues. Generally, I don't download individual articles unless one of my friends highly recommended one. For me, I downloaded entire issues at the end of the month (and often much later). Even when I did download individual articles, I always deleted them after getting the full issue articles as they were easier to store and access on an issue by issue basis.
This is unfortunate and I hope they reconsider. As a subscriber, it feels like they are taking away features from this subscription service (Character builder, full issues, etc) faster than they are adding new features.
Truly disappointed.
It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together.
I found out this thread only yesterday, after replaying to a similar one. (Too many irate discussions going on lately on the WotC forums.)
For what is worth, I am very sad and upset about the magazine compilations being removed. This is a feature that I have been using since the beginning of DDI and it is the one that I was thinking to take advantage after buying the iPad 2. My reading pattern during the week was to open some of the articles with the PDF reader included in Chrome, and wait for the month for the final issue with ALL the articles with those I skipped for reading just the blurb.
By the way, even if there many negative reactions to this move, I just hope that you will not also change the format of the articles from PDF to something else as it was hinted in the DDi survey on the magazines.
In my opinion, removing the magazine compilations seems just the first step in the substitution of PDF format as well. RIP Dungeon and Dragon. (I have been reading Dragon since 1989, this was the killing shot.)
Bring back the compilation of the magazines!
We download the articles frequently, but the compilations only once. That's going to make the numbers jumbled in regards to usage. That doesn't mean we don't want the magazine compilations.
Bring back the compilation of the magazines!
Thank you.
So the Community has spoken loud and clear on so many of the forums and online! Bring back the compilation of the magazines! We download the articles frequently, but the compilations only once. That's going to make the numbers jumbled in regards to usage. That doesn't mean we don't want the magazine compilations. Bring back the compilation of the magazines! Thank you.
The only way for them to know all of this for sure would be to put out non-Pdf previews of the articles throughout the month and then only release the full articles in a compiled edition.
I always felt that the articles should be done in html on the site to preview and then the only pdf needed would be the compilation at the end of the month. I think that this is a much better plan over all personally.
This I could stand behind, it just seems backwards for the compilations of the magazines to disappear.
I hardly ever visit the main site to see new articles. I have the RSS feed, so if a particular article title sounds interesting, I might click on it, but by-and-large, I just log in every month or so and download the compilations.
When I have a nice chunk of reading time, I read the compilation PDFs on my Kindle.
I will see if WotC responds to the feedback that's been provided here and elsewhere. If I don't see any indication they will reconsider this decision, I will be canceling my subscription.
I worry that the marginal costs of not creating compiled issues are so low that they are really, really hurting if they feel it is worth saving the money but upsetting so many people.
Seriously, WOTC, can you really not tell us anything? You seem to come out with bafflingly miserable decisions with no explanation over and over again :-(((
Although I do download individual articles, a also enjoy having copies of the entire magazines at the end of the month.
-TC
If this is the first step to moving the magazines into a read only, digital reader option like how the CB is, as I suspect it was.
Would the option to be able to look at everything that was published in a particular month, make up for the monthly compliations going away?
As i was skimming through this thread i started to think, "You know, i bet they're really doing this so that they can totally eradicate the magazines." Think about it, instead of 'magazines' they're merely going to post the articles, i doubt they'll even group them by "issue number" or ever call them Dungeon or Dragon anymore. In reality it no longer is a magazine at that point anyway since you CAN'T read them from cover to cover, you have to download each article... might as well just be reading the author's blog on the article... which will most likely be the next step! I call foul on this entirely. I'm just glad that i cancelled my subscription last month, now i have yet one more reason to never drop any more money into wotc's coffers again.
This is why, even as a non-subscriber, that I'm against getting rid of the compilations. For all intents and purposes, this is essentially the end of both Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The end of nearly 25 years of tradition in the former and 20 for Dungeon, IIRC.
Ok, here is a question for people.
If this is the first step to moving the magazines into a read only, digital reader option like how the CB is, as I suspect it was.
Would the option to be able to look at everything that was published in a particular month, make up for the monthly compliations going away?
No, not really. If that's the way things are going it makes it even more certain that I won't be resubscribing at all. If I'm going to subscribe to periodical content, I want to be able to keep that content.
For me, the value of the compilation was being able to access all the content in one easy package, on my HDD (and that it gave a solid and definite point at which the content became rules-legal, meaning that after the compilation was out, one could be sure that any further changes would be in errata and not need to look again at the articles, unlike the new model). If I can't do that, I'm not interested.
Ok, here is a question for people.
If this is the first step to moving the magazines into a read only, digital reader option like how the CB is, as I suspect it was.
Would the option to be able to look at everything that was published in a particular month, make up for the monthly compliations going away?
No, not really. If that's the way things are going it makes it even more certain that I won't be resubscribing at all. If I'm going to subscribe to periodical content, I want to be able to keep that content.
For me, the value of the compilation was being able to access all the content in one easy package, on my HDD (and that it gave a solid and definite point at which the content became rules-legal, meaning that after the compilation was out, one could be sure that any further changes would be in errata and not need to look again at the articles, unlike the new model). If I can't do that, I'm not interested.
Well, a digital online version won't stop you from being able to print it out. It just won't be the nicest print out, like the current PDFs are.
You would still be able to access the content in one easy package, on top, you would probably be able to do searches, such as if you wanted all articles on a certain class.
True. Nothing to keep you from printing to PDF either. But the point is, I shouldn't HAVE to. It ought to be part of the service, because evidently many customers want it, and are stopping or have stopped subscribing because of its absence.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't say, let me see all of march 2010. And ta da, there are all the articles.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't do the complelations. The reason being they take a lot of time and not worth it, I'm not buying.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't do the complelations. The reason being they take a lot of time and not worth it, I'm not buying.
It takes less than a minute to take a handful of pdfs on my desktop and put them into a multi page document. Even less if the files are already together in a common place.
This isn't the reason.
Also, as a web developer, I know that everytime you read a PDF on my site, it's downloading to your broswer, and my logs say so. As such, if I read it 5 tims a day, 12 times a month, those numbers will be significantly larger than my 1 time compilation download. I assume Wizards knows this so with luck they filter it out by unique IP, but even that is flawed for shared IP.
Anyway, none of these hold water, there is more to this we don't know yet.
it has to stay pdf, im not going to sped money on a sub AND print stuff out thats just waaaay too expensive
That doesn't really make sense. If you are only reading them online and not printing them out, then how is an online digital reader any different for you?
i can downlaod the articles to my laptop and read them without being connected to the internet
Well, more then likely, you would be able to print them as PDF, they are just going to be low rez if they did go with an online reader.
About the statistics that can be derived from the forum users: Nothing. Since you're talking about a subset of a subset (all DDI members vs. DDI members that actually post on the forums). I'm in the statistic of never having downloaded Dungeon or Dragon compilations. I consume the content when it makes it into the builder or compendium.
Me neither. I really wish they actually felt they could be honest with us about their reasons. We really wouldn't mind.
Of course we'd mind. But at least we'd appreciate them leveling with us.
Unless there was an article that really interested me from the get-go, I always read the magazines at the end of the month, so that's a bummer.
It's also the last step that sends me over the edge in regards to my insider account. Unfortunately it has become a waste of money for me.
Liars figure and figures lie. Ok...now that that's out of the way. The only number that matters here is the ratio of compiled PDF downloads to total customers. I wanted to add this because quite a few have talked about the ratio of individual article downloads compared to the compiled PDF which means nothing. This is a number that WotC will know. Depending on how sophisticated their system is they may know even more like which user(s) and when. If I had to guess I'd say that less than 1% of their customers download the compiled PDFs OR as some others have suggested they did it to make subbing once every 6 months to download all the back issues less appealing.
About the statistics that can be derived from the forum users: Nothing. Since you're talking about a subset of a subset (all DDI members vs. DDI members that actually post on the forums). I'm in the statistic of never having downloaded Dungeon or Dragon compilations. I consume the content when it makes it into the builder or compendium.
Based on the straw poll that is this thread (and the many like it) I'd say you're dramatically underestimating. At least half the respondents have said they value the compilations. Now, I recognise that far fewer people will come out to post support of a decision, than to complain, but even so... Going as low as 1% seems to be pushing it.
And even if it is only 1% of the customers, that's still 400 or so people at a bare minimum (not factoring in all the people who have DDI subs but no forum account) who aren't being served appropriately. Who are losing a service they value. Who, if this thread is any guideline, are fairly likely to cancel their subs. If 400 subs can't pay for one person to sit down for one hour each month to compile a PDF of the magazine, WOTC are dramatically overpaying their employees.
Even if someone was only subbing irregularly to pick up all the back issues they'd missed, that's still money DDI wouldn't have made if those compilations weren't there, at virtually zero cost to the company.
The marginal cost of compiling versus not is negligible. The cost of providing those compilations online is even more negligible.
Which is what leads me, yet again, to believe that the stated reasons for the decision have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual reasons for the decision. And that the likely actual reasons for the decision demonstrate that WOTC have a fundamental disconnect in their understanding of their customers.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
So, I tried to contact the Dragon/Dungeon folks and volunteer my services to compile issues for free. I didn't hear back from anyone at all.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
You do realize it's illegal for a company to do something like this?
Pay, taxes, benefits, putting IP at risk, and more.
i can downlaod the articles to my laptop and read them without being connected to the internet
Well, more then likely, you would be able to print them as PDF, they are just going to be low rez if they did go with an online reader.
print to PDF does not give me search ability unless i also run them through a character recongnition software program. I use desktop search to look through all the PDFs of Dungeon and Dragon Magazine for "Paladin" and I get a nice set of links to all the magazines that have references to paladins. Moving everything online has no additional value to me as a consumer of WoTC products it only makes it more difficult to use by requiring an internet connection. It makes sense to WotC, sure but as a consumer I have other choices that have fewer requirements and allow me to use the content on my own terms.
If WotC wants to make DnD an MMO then they should just do it, move everything online require a subscription to play the game...do away with dead tree books all together and just have all the rules in a Virtual Table top.
i can downlaod the articles to my laptop and read them without being connected to the internet
Well, more then likely, you would be able to print them as PDF, they are just going to be low rez if they did go with an online reader.
print to PDF does not give me search ability unless i also run them through a character recongnition software program. I use desktop search to look through all the PDFs of Dungeon and Dragon Magazine for "Paladin" and I get a nice set of links to all the magazines that have references to paladins. Moving everything online has no additional value to me as a consumer of WoTC products it only makes it more difficult to use by requiring an internet connection. It makes sense to WotC, sure but as a consumer I have other choices that have fewer requirements and allow me to use the content on my own terms.
If WotC wants to make DnD an MMO then they should just do it, move everything online require a subscription to play the game...do away with dead tree books all together and just have all the rules in a Virtual Table top.
I never said that moving it online adds value. I'm just guessing that there is a good chance that will be the next step. Use the magazines as a testing ground for an online reader.
Liars figure and figures lie. Ok...now that that's out of the way. The only number that matters here is the ratio of compiled PDF downloads to total customers. I wanted to add this because quite a few have talked about the ratio of individual article downloads compared to the compiled PDF which means nothing. This is a number that WotC will know. Depending on how sophisticated their system is they may know even more like which user(s) and when. If I had to guess I'd say that less than 1% of their customers download the compiled PDFs OR as some others have suggested they did it to make subbing once every 6 months to download all the back issues less appealing.
About the statistics that can be derived from the forum users: Nothing. Since you're talking about a subset of a subset (all DDI members vs. DDI members that actually post on the forums). I'm in the statistic of never having downloaded Dungeon or Dragon compilations. I consume the content when it makes it into the builder or compendium.
Based on the straw poll that is this thread (and the many like it) I'd say you're dramatically underestimating. At least half the respondents have said they value the compilations. Now, I recognise that far fewer people will come out to post support of a decision, than to complain, but even so... Going as low as 1% seems to be pushing it.
And even if it is only 1% of the customers, that's still 400 or so people at a bare minimum (not factoring in all the people who have DDI subs but no forum account) who aren't being served appropriately. Who are losing a service they value. Who, if this thread is any guideline, are fairly likely to cancel their subs. If 400 subs can't pay for one person to sit down for one hour each month to compile a PDF of the magazine, WOTC are dramatically overpaying their employees.
Even if someone was only subbing irregularly to pick up all the back issues they'd missed, that's still money DDI wouldn't have made if those compilations weren't there, at virtually zero cost to the company.
The marginal cost of compiling versus not is negligible. The cost of providing those compilations online is even more negligible.
Which is what leads me, yet again, to believe that the stated reasons for the decision have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual reasons for the decision. And that the likely actual reasons for the decision demonstrate that WOTC have a fundamental disconnect in their understanding of their customers.
What I was suggesting was that if more than 1% of WotC customers are downloading the compilation PDFs then no longer providing them is stupid and therefore there must be a different reason and I supplied a likely alternative (bolded for your convenience). I'm not clear why you're disagreeing with me.
So, I tried to contact the Dragon/Dungeon folks and volunteer my services to compile issues for free. I didn't hear back from anyone at all.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
You do realize it's illegal for a company to do something like this?
Pay, taxes, benefits, putting IP at risk, and more.
Where are you getting this from?
Illegal for companies to accept free work from someone? Not at all. As long they have a signed legal document agreeing that no money was changing hands and outlining what work was being done. Taxes and benefits are based on paid employment, not volunteer work. With regards to IP risk, that is an internal matter for WotC and there is no law that makes it illegal to have a volunteer handle IP. Remember, illegal means that if you do it, it's a crime. If WotC is willing to take the risk and share IP, it's not illegal.
What I was suggesting was that if more than 1% of WotC customers are downloading the compilation PDFs then no longer providing them is stupid and therefore there must be a different reason and I supplied a likely alternative (bolded for your convenience). I'm not clear why you're disagreeing with me.
Ah, it appears I misread. Agreed on this point.
However, I would still argue that trying to stop people subbing and downloading back issues on an irregular basis is a bad move. Those subs are ones which DDI get at no extra cost to themselves, and which they are far more likely to lose for good than gain at a more frequent rate, by making this move. Those subs might not come as often as DDI would like, but they come more often than not at all. Taking away what they're subbing for takes them away too.
It's a shame.
So, I tried to contact the Dragon/Dungeon folks and volunteer my services to compile issues for free. I didn't hear back from anyone at all.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
You do realize it's illegal for a company to do something like this?
Pay, taxes, benefits, putting IP at risk, and more.
Where are you getting this from?
Illegal for companies to accept free work from someone? Not at all. As long they have a signed legal document agreeing that no money was changing hands and outlining what work was being done. Taxes and benefits are based on paid employment, not volunteer work. With regards to IP risk, that is an internal matter for WotC and there is no law that makes it illegal to have a volunteer handle IP. Remember, illegal means that if you do it, it's a crime. If WotC is willing to take the risk and share IP, it's not illegal.
Wrong. It's not volunteer work if the company makes a profit off of it. WoTC is a for profit company, and as such, can't take something for nothing.
If you want, say violation instead of illegal, either way, it's against the law.
Writers provide/submit free material to "for profit" companies all the time, particularly magazines, newspapers, and software companies. The exposure for the writer is typically what the writer is aiming for, and as such, is more than enough compensation. As long as both parties agree, then both parties benefit.
It is not illegal as long as it is agreed upon.
Writers provide/submit free material to "for profit" companies all the time, particularly magazines, newspapers, and software companies. The exposure for the writer is typically what the writer is aiming for, and as such, is more than enough compensation. As long as both parties agree, then both parties benefit.
It is not illegal as long as it is agreed upon.
Um...I've never heard of that, and I work for many, many magazines. What writers do is work ON SPEC. Meaning they write the articles, and if it gets published, they get paid. It's not something for free. Or more then likely, they get a kill fee, if they complete the article as per the editors revisions, and then the magazine doesn't use it.
And expousre isn't nothing. It's very valuable, for an up and coming writer/artist. The problem is that quite often a company offers what we call PIE (Paid In Exposure). The agreement being that by providing X work, the writer will get X exposure, and can list the company as a "client". Payment doesn't always have to be monetary. You also get credit and and a byline for your work. Which is valuable as well.
Magazines that publish the writings of authors without paying them, also state so up front. It's not hidden. And again the writer gets something out of it. Exposure. Also, you generally get a few copies of the magazine, for tear sheets.
The problem most freelancers have is that quite often the PIE isn't very good. I flat out refuse any logo work, because I don't want to do that kind of work. Even for my friends. And of course they always say, it will be good exposure for you. No it would not, because I will not take that work and try and get more work designing logos. And they certainly don't want to pay the going price for logo design.
PIE is only good if it's actually the kind of exposure you want. For example, my friend asked me if I would color a 5 page comic he was including as additional material in one of his books. I was happy to, we are friends. The exposure I got from that, helped me land work at Marvel. They saw the work, and like my coloring of his art, and thought it would work great on the story he was writing and drawing for their X-men anthology.
As we say, That was some gooood PIE.
In this case, what is this person getting for volunteering their time and work to WoTC? Nothing. And WoTC makes money off of it. Now if they offered him something for his work, that would be completely different.
But they can't just take volunteer work for nothing.
There are some laws (from California) that WotC must follow when it comes to volunteers and how they interact with paid personnel.
As well, they have *no* idea of how skilled the person will be, nor do they have any way of enforcing/preventing the person who is getting the IP from sharing it directly. For WotC employees, they can fire them. A volunteer really has nothing that WotC can do to them.
(Note, not saying that the person who volunteered to do so would have done so.)
But I am confused...
Um...I've never heard of that, and I work for many, many magazines.
then...
problem is that quite often a company offers what we call PIE (Paid In Exposure).
So you have heard of it, and even have a term for it? FYI, I knew the term, but didn't include it in my description since the description was the pertinent information.
But they can't just take volunteer work for nothing.
This really depends on what your definition of "nothing" is, which is in essence, what this latest incarnation of this discussion has evolved to.
I think that everyone is pretty much in agreement that all types of contracts can offer various forms of compensation. So essentially, there can never literally be a "nothing" in any contractual agreement anyhow, so it's a completely moot point.
PIE article which uses another excellent example of a web designer - webdesign.about.com/od/pricing/qt/paid_i...
Just because you haven't heard of something does not mean that it does not or cannot happen.
All types of contracts exist for all types of work. Not all is monetary.
And yes, exposure is valuable. Almost invaluable. That's why I made mention that is what the writer is aiming for by providing his work free of charge. Many lawyers practice pro bono work for this very reason.
But I am confused...Um...I've never heard of that, and I work for many, many magazines.
then...problem is that quite often a company offers what we call PIE (Paid In Exposure).
So you have heard of it, and even have a term for it?
I have never heard of a (legit) magazine asking a writer to write for them for free (though I'm sure it happens). They are given an assingment and submit their draft for the article. They are paid on publication, and if the article doesn't get published, they are free to take that article and shop it around to other similiar magazines. They still own it.
A magazine asking for writing submissions, are looking for existing works, to publish to give exposure to authors. They aren't asking for new work to be created, and they don't go through rounds of edits, (Though they may ask for mistakes to be corrected, or just correct the mistakes themselves).
So we have two things. One where a magazine is commissioning new work, and one where they are asking for existing works.
In either case, they are not offering nothing for this work. It's either money or exposure or both. The problem with exposure is often it's not worth it. It's either the wrong kind, or it's too little.
Your point was that they do it completely for free. Sorry, but PIE isn't working for free, like you seem to suggest.
I recently had my comic book reviewed in USA today. I got far more emails from people I know in the industry about the review, then I did extra sales from that exposure. Though I did get a huge amount of traffic over the week to my site.
But I can take that review, and link to it, along with all the other reviews, to show how my work is viewed. Oh and the reviewer bought a copy of my book at NYComic Con. So I got the $5 for the book AND exposure.
Your point was that they do it completely for free. Sorry, but PIE isn't working for free, like you seem to suggest.
I never suggested this at all, as is apparent in my original contribution to this discussion:
As long as both parties agree, then both parties benefit.
My point was obviously quite the contrary of what you think it was. I am not sure why you want to argue this anyhow, since you described exactly the point I brought to the table, and as such are in complete agreement on it.
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
Am I the only one confused by this first off "were not doing this anymore because it's too hard and takes time" really, really did you guys forget its a JOB its not supposed to be fun. Oh and you mentioned a lack of downloads recently....thats not because we dont like the mags its because of two reasons A) they've been very light on anything useful lately B) if you havent noticed the amount of Insiders has been plummenting..although I'm sure removing MORE content will help that judging from how well we took the unannounced removal of all RPGA related stuff (which also removed a bunch of non-rpga stuff BTW)
Second with all these things that are supposed to be "streamlining" things like putting the CB Online (to make it more "portable" yeah right...needing to be plugged into something does mean portable especially if its not readily available), ditching the magazine,etc. why hasn't anything improved the updates are still few and far between the Staff,etc. are rarely seen except to give us their next genius idea than flee back to wherever the hide (except the ORCs of course who are always ready to silence us...so congrats to them on doing their job)
So how long Wizards until all these "Time-saving" "Strategic" (see i can use pointless buzz words too) decisions actually amount to well anything useful and whats next in your "It's tooo HARD" list..."We've decided it's too time consuming to fix bugs for the CB so were no longer doing that" or "Paying People costs too much so were firing all our writers and bringing in volunteers from the local college" (actually that would be hilarious if the writing improved)
Oh and before I forget I love this line "We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating it" ummmm...ok did you even proofread that.
What I was suggesting was that if more than 1% of WotC customers are downloading the compilation PDFs then no longer providing them is stupid and therefore there must be a different reason and I supplied a likely alternative (bolded for your convenience). I'm not clear why you're disagreeing with me.
Ah, it appears I misread. Agreed on this point.
However, I would still argue that trying to stop people subbing and downloading back issues on an irregular basis is a bad move. Those subs are ones which DDI get at no extra cost to themselves, and which they are far more likely to lose for good than gain at a more frequent rate, by making this move. Those subs might not come as often as DDI would like, but they come more often than not at all. Taking away what they're subbing for takes them away too.
It's a shame.
So the long and short of it is every decision WotC has made lately has been based on the premise of protecting them from "evil evil pirates" but what they don't get is regardless of what they do its nigh impossible to protect against pirates because they eventually find a way to circumvent any DRM,etc. leaving the paying customers to either jump through hoops to use a the program legit or say screw it get the pirated version that's easier to use. So all it ends up doing is decreasing the amount of subs (either become pirates themselves, switch to something like hero labs, or just forget about it) and INCREASING the amount of piracy
Your point was that they do it completely for free. Sorry, but PIE isn't working for free, like you seem to suggest.
I never suggested this at all, as is apparent in my original response:As long as both parties agree, then both parties benefit.
If both parties benefit, then it's not for free. If it's not work for free, then there isn't a problem with them acceptting that work.
That's competely different then someone volunteering to do work for them. Which is what the person was offering to do, which WoTC can't accept, because of laws.
One day. I'm not surprised at all.
Dane: When normal people say "Free"; they mean that there's no money or physical goods involved for a service/item; not that there aren't perks to doing work for free.
I know what they mean. But by legal definition, if there is a benefit for both sides, it wasn't done for free.
And that's what matters in the end. Did both parties benefit from this?
Because when you donate time to a charity, if you want to write that off, you need to provide an hourly rate, proof of the hours you worked, and get paperwork from the charity.
Just like if you donate money, items or anything.
Dane: When normal people say "Free"; they mean that there's no money or physical goods involved for a service/item; not that there aren't perks to doing work for free.
I explained how the "free" work was "compensated" in my original post, but he insists I said otherwise, though I can't for the life of me find where.
Whatever. I brought it to the table and its valid. I don't know why someone wants to argue with me about something we are in agreement on.
Dane: When normal people say "Free"; they mean that there's no money or physical goods involved for a service/item; not that there aren't perks to doing work for free.
Strangely enough, the article that I posted is titled "Working for Free." And while they use the word "Free" in the title, they describe oodles of different compensation and rewards for doing it.
On a related/side note, the word "freelancing" has nothing to do with "free" either. The work is done upfront with hopes of being compensated later. But the word "free" is a prominent part of the entire word.
Here is another good article from Time Magazine regarding volunteers. Of interesting note, the author himself recognizes the volunteers within their own company (which is a "for profit" magazine publication).
I certainly don't want to be replaced by volunteers. But then, this magazine couldn't be produced without the volunteers, such as Yochai Benkler, who allow us journalists to interview them.
Read more: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,917...
If I were compiling PDFs for free, no credit or cash, then I would have no incentive not to backstab Wizards somehow, even if it's only walking away one month and not doing the work I was volunteering for.
One of the fundamental purposes of paying employees is as a bribe: "please don't screw this up for us." So one of the biggest reasons most of us have never heard of people doing volunteer work willingly is because companies refuse to allow people to handle their property that they aren't actively bribing with cash to not screw it up. Or bribing with good words to future employers. Or blackmailing by saying they'll defame your good name if you damage the company somehow.
Of course, we use 'paycheque' instead of 'cash bribe', 'references' instead of 'bribes of good words' and 'bad resumes and bad references' instead of 'blackmail', but the concept is the same. Companies don't want to have people doing their work for them unless they can hang those bribes or blackmail over their head.
* * * *
Also, there's a word for unpaid people with 0 job benefits doing labor for a company on a regular basis. It's not called 'volunteering', it's called 'an internship'. From that perspective... yeah, there's nothing illegal about contracting an intern, considering it's done in almost literally every company in the U.S.
I consider this second point much more valid than my first, but, I found the first one more amusing to write.
Here is another good article from Time Magazine regarding volunteers. Of interesting note, the author himself recognizes the volunteers within their own company (which is a "for profit" magazine publication).
I certainly don't want to be replaced by volunteers. But then, this magazine couldn't be produced without the volunteers, such as Yochai Benkler, who allow us journalists to interview them.
Read more: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,917...
One of the fundamental purposes of paying employees is as a bribe: "please don't screw this up for us." So one of the biggest reasons most of us have never heard of people doing volunteer work willingly is because companies refuse to allow people to handle their property that they aren't actively bribing with paychecks to not screw it up.
Volunteers are abundant in all walks of life. People do it willingly at profit and non-profit companies alike. So I am not getting where this stance comes from, so feel free to share.
Also, there's a word for unpaid people with 0 job benefits doing labor for a company on a regular basis. It's not called 'volunteering', it's called 'an internship'.
Both types of employees are valid. You may as well throw in "slavery" as a third.
So, again, while they aren't being paid, they are still getting something in exchange.
Which I never disputed, and actually explained in my original contribution in this thread. What exactly are you trying to prove wrong in my post? We are in agreement that there is a form of compensation. My initial post said this. I don't understand why you are arguing a point we actually agree on.
___
I am done discussing the semantics of this with you. You're arguing the same thing as I initially stated and claiming I am somehow wrong. You "win." Good luck going forward.
Example: the person takes such information and gives it out for free. In this case, they would need to provide the PDF files, he would need to do the work, and then send the final work back. That would mean he could also post those files to the web to be downloaded for free.
This opens WoTC to legal actions, because as a publically traded company, they have put the companies IP in danger, and could effect the value of the stocks, because WoTC is engaging in a practice that has caused a paid for product to be out of their control.
And WoTC can't do anything to the person, because they accepted the offer to work for free. Can't fire, and can't really sue. Even if there is a contract, traditionally courts don't uphold contracts between parties where one side has no compensation for their work, because such contracts are often considered done in bad faith on the side of the party that benefits. If there is no expectation of compensation for said work, there is no expectation of penalty for failure to complete that work, or upholding the contract.
Asking for submissions for publications isn't the same as asking someone to create original work for your magazine. Asking people to volunteer for an interview isn't free either. The person gives up their time, yes, but they are doing so for the exposure.
Writing software which you then release to the public to for free use, isn't the same as having a company ask you to write it for free. People do write such software, because they are hoping to get more work by show casing what they do. It's not like IBM came and asked them to write software for free.
This just in WOTC fans and dissidents meet in a public forum.... More at 5...
LOL!
So, I tried to contact the Dragon/Dungeon folks and volunteer my services to compile issues for free. I didn't hear back from anyone at all.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
You do realize it's illegal for a company to do something like this?
Pay, taxes, benefits, putting IP at risk, and more.
As an alternative, perhaps Save-vs-DM could be allowed to compile the pdfs and post the file in the DDI Group? I haven't seen any way upload files directly to the site for ftp, but there might be a method available or the option could be enabled if the boards support that. Barring that, a link to an external ftp could be provided.
So, I tried to contact the Dragon/Dungeon folks and volunteer my services to compile issues for free. I didn't hear back from anyone at all.
Does anyone know how I'd go about talking to someone about this? I plan on compliing issues for myself and would like to share them with other subscribers in a legal way. I feel strongly about this but so far my offers have been ignored.
You do realize it's illegal for a company to do something like this?
Pay, taxes, benefits, putting IP at risk, and more.
As an alternative, perhaps Save-vs-DM could be allowed to compile the pdfs and post the file in the DDI Group? I haven't seen any way upload files directly to the site for ftp, but there might be a method available or the option could be enabled if the boards support that. Barring that, a link to an external ftp could be provided.
I am poking some people to see if this is an option.
I appreciate that... but don't. Seriously, this is a service that they should be expected to provide. It's not expensive or difficult for them to do. They need to rise or fall on their decisions. They've decided that it's a good idea not to offer monthly compilations. If they don't reverse this decision, they will lose customers. If they do reverse the decision they stand to lose fewer customers. Some will leave anyway, because they don't appreciate being taken for granted, ignored, and generally not appropriately communicated with. How long they take to reverse the decision may have major impact on how much bleeding of customers they experience.
Wizards, when developing DDI, made a huge mistake... they went into an extremely customer service oriented business with clearly little or no practical customer service experience. This is really the equivalent, seriously, of going to burger king, and ordering a double cheeseburger. The customer doesn't get cheese and complains to the manager. The manager then says: well, we've decided cheese is not essential to the experience of a cheeseburger, so we're not going to fix it, but we're still going to call it a double cheeseburger. Then, when offered payment for the cheese well in excess of the cost STILL NOT BEING WILLING TO PUT CHEESE ON A CHEESEBURGER.
Try getting a double burger fixed into a double cheeseburger sometime. Any decent burger king will fix it in about 15 seconds. Why? because even if you didn't pay for the cheese, they will lose way more business from you being pissed off than it costs to put cheese on your burger.
There's no model that doesn't cost them significantly more for discontinuing this feature than for continuing it (because of lost revenue due to subscribers leaving), UNLESS there are other factors at work they aren't willing to tell us.
One of my biggest problems with Wizards customer service, as seen in their communications to customers, is that they think we're stupid. And their customers (myself included) by and large are nerds and geeks and people who got beat up in school for playing D&D, and those sorts of communications mostly just piss us off.
I hope wizards understands THIS IS ALREADY COSTING THEM MONEY. I have already stopped recommending DDI. I have already stopped talking up 4e. I have not yet stopped buying product, but that's coming too if wizards doesn't do an about face soon. The new Character Builder is a joke. I miss the old one. The Dragon/Dungeon articles are barely worth compiling lately, but they MUST BE COMPILED for me to consider them valuable. Otherwise they're just web articles... the kind we USED TO GET FOR FREE. I paid mostly for a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon magazines. That's why I subscribed. I will not take it lightly if they cancel them this way. Because that's what it is -- canceling the magazines.
Mudbunny:
I appreciate that... but don't. Seriously, this is a service that they should be expected to provide. It's not expensive or difficult for them to do. They need to rise or fall on their decisions. They've decided that it's a good idea not to offer monthly compilations. If they don't reverse this decision, they will lose customers. If they do reverse the decision they stand to lose fewer customers. Some will leave anyway, because they don't appreciate being taken for granted, ignored, and generally not appropriately communicated with. How long they take to reverse the decision may have major impact on how much bleeding of customers they experience.
Wizards, when developing DDI, made a huge mistake... they went into an extremely customer service oriented business with clearly little or no practical customer service experience. This is really the equivalent, seriously, of going to burger king, and ordering a double cheeseburger. The customer doesn't get cheese and complains to the manager. The manager then says: well, we've decided cheese is not essential to the experience of a cheeseburger, so we're not going to fix it, but we're still going to call it a double cheeseburger. Then, when offered payment for the cheese well in excess of the cost STILL NOT BEING WILLING TO PUT CHEESE ON A CHEESEBURGER.
Try getting a double burger fixed into a double cheeseburger sometime. Any decent burger king will fix it in about 15 seconds. Why? because even if you didn't pay for the cheese, they will lose way more business from you being pissed off than it costs to put cheese on your burger.
There's no model that doesn't cost them significantly more for discontinuing this feature than for continuing it (because of lost revenue due to subscribers leaving), UNLESS there are other factors at work they aren't willing to tell us.
One of my biggest problems with Wizards customer service, as seen in their communications to customers, is that they think we're stupid. And their customers (myself included) by and large are nerds and geeks and people who got beat up in school for playing D&D, and those sorts of communications mostly just piss us off.
I hope wizards understands THIS IS ALREADY COSTING THEM MONEY. I have already stopped recommending DDI. I have already stopped talking up 4e. I have not yet stopped buying product, but that's coming too if wizards doesn't do an about face soon. The new Character Builder is a joke. I miss the old one. The Dragon/Dungeon articles are barely worth compiling lately, but they MUST BE COMPILED for me to consider them valuable. Otherwise they're just web articles... the kind we USED TO GET FOR FREE. I paid mostly for a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon magazines. That's why I subscribed. I will not take it lightly if they cancel them this way. Because that's what it is -- canceling the magazines.
QFT. Could not agree more. Nice analogy too.
Oh, for open, honest communication. I fear Open Source has spoiled me on that score >.<
On the other hand, the monthly PDFs added value by giving me an asset I could store *easily* for future use. It also made it feel worth paying for as part of the DDI "package".
I now see that DDI costs the same as it did before, but between the (to me) unusable online CB and the half-hearted attempt at a virtual tabletop, with the loss of the monthly PDFs there isn't much value left.
It's hard to believe, but in my eyes the WOTC of 2011 is now like the TSR of 1995.
Shifting to a model of non-compilation makes the DDI articles more like blog posts and newspaper articles. That is, content expected and consumed by most people for free. Pay-wall models for chunks of content just haven't worked in the Internet world-at-large.
On the other hand, the monthly PDFs added value by giving me an asset I could store *easily* for future use. It also made it feel worth paying for as part of the DDI "package".
I now see that DDI costs the same as it did before, but between the (to me) unusable online CB and the half-hearted attempt at a virtual tabletop, with the loss of the monthly PDFs there isn't much value left.
It's hard to believe, but in my eyes the WOTC of 2011 is now like the TSR of 1995.
Unfortunately enough, it's true. I think if you were to go through Wrecan's list of good blog posts and compare them to the magazine articles, you'd likely get more value for free than what you'd out of Dragon or Dungeon.
The only difference is that those aren't official.
It's hard to believe, but in my eyes the WOTC of 2011 is now like the TSR of 1995.
In many ways yes, in other ways no. In 1995 TSR was cranking out content faster than anyone could buy it. Compare that the current 2011 D&D release schedule where there is minimal releases planned.
They may have learned something from the past. But maybe not.
Check out this article from wikipedia. The best part is the following quote from the Vice President of Wizards of the Coast:
" [TSR failed because of] a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. "
I wonder if that same vice president has been reading the DDI general forums lately?
" [TSR failed because of] a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. "
I wonder if that same vice president has been reading the DDI general forums lately?
Yes, this is what I was thinking of. Nice use of a link to support what I think many of us here want to tell the decision makers at WOTC about D&D.
I'm going to do it for myself anyway. This is utterly legal for me to do on a personal basis, doesn't take me a ton of time, and is a fun way to practice what I do for a living: RPG Print Design.
Gee, a lot of people are sad about them stopping the compiliation of Dragon/Dungeon. Rather than complain about it I'd rather just share my work with others. I'm going to do it anyway, why shouldn't everyone else benefit?
I don't want to violate any laws in doing this. Which means I need to go through official channels to do this. So far official channels have netted me no repsonses. Which is understandable. But why is it so hard to help the other fans in a legal way?
This is my thinking about volunteering to do the layout.
I'm going to do it for myself anyway. This is utterly legal for me to do on a personal basis, doesn't take me a ton of time, and is a fun way to practice what I do for a living: RPG Print Design.
Gee, a lot of people are sad about them stopping the compiliation of Dragon/Dungeon. Rather than complain about it I'd rather just share my work with others. I'm going to do it anyway, why shouldn't everyone else benefit?
I don't want to violate any laws in doing this. Which means I need to go through official channels to do this. So far official channels have netted me no repsonses. Which is understandable. But why is it so hard to help the other fans in a legal way?
I say go for it. The worst they'll do is give you a cease-and-desist order like they did to Masterplan. You've asked for feedback, they havn't responded. Try until they make you stop.
They scrapped it.
I seldom bothered to download single articles, but archived only the compilations of the magazines.
They are gone.
I collected about ten tons of D&D Minis. I hate Monster Tokens. I usually use Dwarven Forge stuff for indoor and modelling terrain (not made by me but provided by a good friend) for outdoor encounters.
The Minis won't be no more.
Well I don't want to go back into that horrendous character builder debacle.
Who the heck is managing this company? It seems that they really try hard to scare away all customers so that they can finally close down the RPG branch and use the D&D brand to sell beer and brezel games. Ok, Hasbro did this to Avalon Hill, too (oh these sad scary memories)
Maybe any hobby that requires a little bit of imagination will finally go the way of the dodo...
Am I that old?
To keep this on topic; yes, Dragon & Dungeon are no more (at least as something I would call a "magazine"). Yes, it is my opinion that there has been a DRASTIC reduction in service with D&Di that make the fees unreasonable in relation to the ACTUAL product being delivered. And finally; yes, I beleive at this point WotC is in self preservation mode, that the Hasbro juggernaut has reared it's ugly head, and that everything that was good about having D&D alive again (remember this happened before with TSR) will soon be but a memory.
I'll say it one more time. Sad...
To keep this on topic; yes, Dragon & Dungeon are no more (at least as something I would call a "magazine"). Yes, it is my opinion that there has been a DRASTIC reduction in service with D&Di that make the fees unreasonable in relation to the ACTUAL product being delivered. And finally; yes, I beleive at this point WotC is in self preservation mode, that the Hasbro juggernaut has reared it's ugly head, and that everything that was good about having D&D alive again (remember this happened before with TSR) will soon be but a memory.
I'll say it one more time. Sad...
Maybe once WotC is done driving the value of the D&D brand into the ground, another game company will buy it up, becoming the third generation of D&D license holders (after TSR and WotC). Mattel? Maybe Atari wants to go into the tabletop game business...
Or maybe WotC is secretly using all of their savings to buy the license for themselves and become an independent company?
None of those are very likely but they're all still more cheerful than WotC dirtying the reputation of the D&D license piece by piece.
* * * *
In another thought... when D&D first came out, it was a revolution of sorts, being amongst the first roleplaying games. Then TSR started to realize what they had and started becoming an actual business, and it got sour real quick. Then it got bought up by Wizards, who reinvigorated the game (from my perspective at least) with a flawed but still ticklishly fun 3rd Edition. Then they started to realize what they had and started becoming an actual business, and it got sour real quick...
Maybe we'll get lucky, and the pattern will continue. 5th edition, the license bought up by another company, reinvigorated in the way only enthusiasts aiming to at least break even on their investment can reinvigorate a license!
Or not.
It's hard to believe, but in my eyes the WOTC of 2011 is now like the TSR of 1995.
In many ways yes, in other ways no. In 1995 TSR was cranking out content faster than anyone could buy it. Compare that the current 2011 D&D release schedule where there is minimal releases planned.
They may have learned something from the past. But maybe not.
Check out this article from wikipedia. The best part is the following quote from the Vice President of Wizards of the Coast:
" [TSR failed because of] a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. "
I wonder if that same vice president has been reading the DDI general forums lately?
Since he's not a VP anymore, nor works for WOTC anymore I kind of doubt it but you never know. He left the company in 2001. Here he is on linkedin.
Joe
Maybe once WotC is done driving the value of the D&D brand into the ground, another game company will buy it up, becoming the third generation of D&D license holders (after TSR and WotC). Mattel? Maybe Atari wants to go into the tabletop game business...
Sure, they can sell it to Microsoft and we'll have a flop of a D&D first person shooter in a couple of years.
www.microsoft.com/games/pc/shadowrun.asp...
It's hard to believe, but in my eyes the WOTC of 2011 is now like the TSR of 1995.
Hmmmm.....WoTC has willingly and without remorse killed Dungeon & Dragon...all that remains is the S at the end of each....when are they gonna murder them
Personally, I think that if they are going to stop doing compilations, then they very much need to create a better system of organising articles, so that I can find things easily.
PLEASE reconsider this decision and compile the issues as you have for the last few years. I am basically begging you
I think that "time" is an excuse. I am afraid that there will be less content, less articles, less pages. One might not notice the difference between 10 and 7 articles in one month, but will surely understand that 10,2 MB Dungeon #155 with 109 pages (or #156 with 129 pages) is different than 2,4 MB Dungeon #185, with 76 pages... 33 pages less content or -30%... with the same prize!
I really don't care for 33 or 53 or 103 pages, what is important is the quality, but please, give me some motives to continue my subscription...
OK, how difficult or time consuming is to open Acrobat and then go File>Create PDF> From multiple files, then navigate to the specific folder where all your articles are, select them and click Next and then Save...
I can't tell if you are requesting DDI to continue doing this or if you are telling the users how easy it is to do (Trevor said it was very time consuming in his original post, btw) ...
But since it is so easy, having one person perform this task at DDI to produce one PDF file is far easier than asking each user to do this on their own.
Personally, removal of PDFs is likely going to be the straw that broke the camel's back for me and DDI. There just isn't anything else that really goes any distance to make my job as DM any easier. Dragon and Dungeon were my primary reasons for being a member.
I can't tell if you are requesting DDI to continue doing this or if you are telling the users how easy it is to do (Trevor said it was very time consuming in his original post, btw) ...
I was reffering to DDI, but anyone could do it... I own Acrobat Professional, not sure if Acrobat Reader is able compile pdfs, but surely you can find some programms out there...
OK, how difficult or time consuming is to open Acrobat and then go File>Create PDF> From multiple files, then navigate to the specific folder where all your articles are, select them and click Next and then Save....
I think that "time" is an excuse. I am afraid that there will be less content, less articles, less pages. One might not notice the difference between 10 and 7 articles in one month, but will surely understand that 10,2 MB Dungeon #155 with 109 pages (or #156 with 129 pages) is different than 2,4 MB Dungeon #185, with 76 pages... 33 pages less content or -30%... with the same prize!
I really don't care for 33 or 53 or 103 pages, what is important is the quality, but please, give me some motives to continue my subscription...
I can't see it being that hard, actually, since this is exactly what I do for a living sometimes.
First, they can have one file for the whole issue. If they want the page numbers to always start at one for each article, they can do that from the page numbering/section with InDesign.
Once the monthly issue is done, you simply remove that, or change the starting number for each section. Ta Da, the page numbers are now in order! Export to PDF, done.
If they are keeping each article it's own file, you simple have each article start on the correct page number, out put PDF, which takes a few minutes for a large file, but is simply, EXPORT as PDF, because by now, they have all their PDF settings made and saved, it's not like you have to re-enter them each time.
Then like you said combine PDFs. Done.
At best, I can't see this taking more then 10-15 minutes, 20 at the tops. At that point, they know how many pages each article is, and figuring out the correct page numbering isn't hard.
I was reffering to DDI, but anyone could do it... I own Acrobat Professional, not sure if Acrobat Reader is able compile pdfs, but surely you can find some programms out there...
I'm not interested, to be honest, but I appreciate the thought. This is a service that they should be providing to us with our subscription.
I just don't have the time to hunt and peck through each article to compile this for myself. It's not worth my time to spend 1-2+ hours to do actual work (downloading/copying/pasting/organizing/laying out) for something that I already had available to me before. They are simply removing value to the DDI service.
I was reffering to DDI, but anyone could do it... I own Acrobat Professional, not sure if Acrobat Reader is able compile pdfs, but surely you can find some programms out there...
I'm not interested, to be honest, but I appreciate the thought. This is a service that they should be providing to us with our subscription.
I just don't have the time to hunt and peck through each article to compile this for myself. It's not worth my time to spend 1-2+ hours to do actual work (downloading/copying/pasting/organizing/laying out) for something that I already had available to me before. They are simply removing value to the DDI service.
Not to mention that it's not really worth it to spend 2-3 hours of your own time to get content you paid for in a format that is portable(even without internet) and complete.
To be clear: If someone decides to combine the PDFs themselves, it isn't going to take hours to do so. If you are downloading as the articles come out, then if you want to combine them it's very easy.
However, since it's so easy, it's something WoTC should continue to do, even if they say not that many people use them.
If you are downloading the articles as they come out, compiling them yourself into one PDF at the end, isn't an hours worth of work, but again, since it's not that hard, they really aren't saving gobs of time on doing something no one uses.
Not everyone has the spare time to maintain this on a daily/weekly basis and this would be an unreasonable expectation of subscribers. DDI is strongly intended to be a service of providing convenience to users. No user-compilation of documents adds any convenience, at any level, or with any explanation.
"Ease of use" directly corresponds to individual experience. "It's not hard" means it's not hard for you, thanks to your experience. Most, if not all, subscribers know how to download and open a PDF. Most would not know how to efficiently compile a PDF for their own use from various ariticle locations.
With this change the compendium is the only thing I'm left using often enough to warrant paying a subscription. The current pricing model however, doesn't make any sense with the lack of forward progress. Unless they start charging about $25 a year I'll probably be done with DDI in a few months when my current term runs out.
Of course the only way to send the company the message that they are being utterly stupid is for all of us to cancel our subscriptions right now and not purchase any DD4E product until they change. Many will talk of doing that, but I doublt many will actually do it, even me. Hopefully someone with a bit of sense will come along and fix things, but its not looking too good for us.
Other then the compendium, they have removed everything I thought I was previously paying for. I honestly don't know what I am getting out of this money exchange anymore.
I read the compiled magazines when I have time, which is at work where I have no internet connection. The same problem, as I am sure you have guessed, goes along with using the online character builder. In fact even the compendium you need internet to use, but that still sees some use during sessions at home where I do have the internet.
Unfortunately, the compendium alone is not worth the 76 dollars a year or whatever it is now.
Not that my voice will be heard from the masses. Or cared about.
Pathfinder is looking a lot more user-friendly every day.
With this change the compendium is the only thing I'm left using often enough to warrant paying a subscription. The current pricing model however, doesn't make any sense with the lack of forward progress. Unless they start charging about $25 a year I'll probably be done with DDI in a few months when my current term runs out.
Of course the only way to send the company the message that they are being utterly stupid is for all of us to cancel our subscriptions right now and not purchase any DD4E product until they change. Many will talk of doing that, but I doublt many will actually do it, even me. Hopefully someone with a bit of sense will come along and fix things, but its not looking too good for us.
I'm talking about that and doing that right now.
I finally have that bundle of cash that, a month ago, I was trying to save up so I could eagerly resubscribe to D&DI. My debit card is burning a hole in my pocket with so much money on it... I was so very excited to give a year's subscription worth of cash to Wizards only a couple weeks ago.
I would have done it!
I wanted to do it!
I still want to do it!
...but I'm not. So, congratulations Wizards, let me be the first one to give you a quantifiable, definite loss of money: $71.40.
That's how much money I was so happy to hand to you a mere month ago. Today, now that I have the money to spare? You're $71.40 less rich than you could have been.
Not a lot of money to Wizards, maybe, but unless you people are giving yourself ridiculous paycheques, that represents several hours that one guy could have spent gathering the PDFs in one place and compiling them with page numbers.
Than you for your patience. Unfortunately we are unable to grant you a refund for what you see as reduced service. If you would like, we can cancel your subscription and give you a refund for the remainder of time you have left.
It seems WotC has given up listening and wants me to cancel. I have replied and said I don't want to do this if at all possible but I will if it is the only option they are offering.
I am utterly fed up with this now having thought for a few brief weeks that things had changed. If I cancel, that will be it for me with WotC. All my book money will go on catching up on Paizo Adventure Paths I am missing and their other products. I will likely still use 4E but I'm not forking out more money on a company that seems intent on burying its head in the sand when its customers are clearly unhappy.
Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.
Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?
Don't forget what will soon be discovered as the real reason. Piracy.
Its a lot easier to pirate and find the entire magazine at once than have to hunt down a dozen individual articles. I can't even imagine the hackers want to do that and compile it.
"Hackers" as you put it, are more than willing to do this work. I guarantee it. Example? How about all of the DnD books that are available in the nether regions of the interwebs that have never been available digitally, and are on the internet as pdf's. How did they get there? Somebody took the time to frickin SCAN them. If that's any statement on pirates' willingness to do work, I doubt splitting up the pdf's will have any significant effect.
"Hackers" as you put it, are more than willing to do this work. I guarantee it. Example? How about all of the DnD books that are available in the nether regions of the interwebs that have never been available digitally, and are on the internet as pdf's. How did they get there? Somebody took the time to frickin SCAN them. If that's any statement on pirates' willingness to do work, I doubt splitting up the pdf's will have any significant effect.
I have to agree with you here. If the quality of the work in Dragon and Dungeon magazines are worth something... anything... it will be pirated regardless. If it's not worth being pirated (and even The Fountain likely exists out there to download, as bad as that movie was), it's sure as hell not worth paying for.
And for the record, before someone tries to misinterpret my words, I absolutely abhor piracy in all its forms (except good pirate movies).
Is there anything official yet on when articles will actually be updated? IE: By the end of the month, two weeks after being published, when they can be bothered? etc?
Article correction clarification
Joe
Thanks, that makes it so clear.
Of course, they also promised five articles a week, more communication with customers, that they were definitely going to add Dark Sun/Essentials to the offline character builder but were having "technical troubles" doing so for like three months...
So... while it might be good news that they intend on updating the articles on a regular basis... well, here you go:
That is, frankly, a very poor line to take with someone who has been a loyal customer throughout the ownership of the D&D brand by WotC. I don’t really care whether my subscription promises a certain level of content, the fact is that a certain level has been delivered for the last 2-3 years. Now, that level has dramatically declined. In addition, the reason given for the increase in price last year was that we had been given a Monster Builder and would be provided with more tools. We now no longer have a supported Monster Builder and so we actually have less tools.
How any company can justify that without offering a corresponding price reduction is frankly beyond me. Your attitude seems to be “These are the changes we have made. We won’t explain them so if you don’t like them get lost.”
My latest (and last) e-mail to Customer Service sums up my feelings on this once and for all:
That is, frankly, a very poor line to take with someone who has been a loyal customer throughout the ownership of the D&D brand by WotC. I don’t really care whether my subscription promises a certain level of content, the fact is that a certain level has been delivered for the last 2-3 years. Now, that level has dramatically declined. In addition, the reason given for the increase in price last year was that we had been given a Monster Builder and would be provided with more tools. We now no longer have a supported Monster Builder and so we actually have less tools.
How any company can justify that without offering a corresponding price reduction is frankly beyond me. Your attitude seems to be “These are the changes we have made. We won’t explain them so if you don’t like them get lost.”
I can't tell if you are requesting DDI to continue doing this or if you are telling the users how easy it is to do (Trevor said it was very time consuming in his original post, btw) ...
I was reffering to DDI, but anyone could do it... I own Acrobat Professional, not sure if Acrobat Reader is able compile pdfs, but surely you can find some programms out there...
They did more than just put all the articles into a single file. It had "cover art", a table of contents, full pagination, a layout and style, and, of course, updated so as to be the "final" versions of the articles. Yes, work. But it also added VALUE to the DDI subscription.
I am at the same train station as you Medriev and just about to get on your outbound train. Enough is enough. I'll come back if I find things have changed enough to warrant paying again.
I am glad in a way that others feel the same but it saddens me in another way.
I have been loyal to this brand for most of my life and this decision was tough. In the end, I decided that loyalty ultimately has to be a two way street and this one isn't. If things get dramatically better then maybe I'll reconsider but right now I'm finding it quite nice to be an outsider. So are Paizo as it happens since that's where I'm spending my refund
.If things get dramatically better then maybe I'll reconsider but right now I'm finding it quite nice to be an outsider. So are Paizo as it happens since that's where I'm spending my refund .
I can relate to that, spent my funds on FFG's fantasy RP system. Wow, I am impressed.
OK, how difficult or time consuming is to open Acrobat and then go File>Create PDF> From multiple files, then navigate to the specific folder where all your articles are, select them and click Next and then Save....
I think that "time" is an excuse. I am afraid that there will be less content, less articles, less pages. One might not notice the difference between 10 and 7 articles in one month, but will surely understand that 10,2 MB Dungeon #155 with 109 pages (or #156 with 129 pages) is different than 2,4 MB Dungeon #185, with 76 pages... 33 pages less content or -30%... with the same prize!
I really don't care for 33 or 53 or 103 pages, what is important is the quality, but please, give me some motives to continue my subscription...
I don't think that is the reason for the time. I think the real reason for the time is that they have said the compiled isues have the errata. If they are not compiling issues anymore, there is no real time frame to go back and errata the articles anymore.
OK, how difficult or time consuming is to open Acrobat and then go File>Create PDF> From multiple files, then navigate to the specific folder where all your articles are, select them and click Next and then Save....
I think that "time" is an excuse. I am afraid that there will be less content, less articles, less pages. One might not notice the difference between 10 and 7 articles in one month, but will surely understand that 10,2 MB Dungeon #155 with 109 pages (or #156 with 129 pages) is different than 2,4 MB Dungeon #185, with 76 pages... 33 pages less content or -30%... with the same prize!
I really don't care for 33 or 53 or 103 pages, what is important is the quality, but please, give me some motives to continue my subscription...
I don't think that is the reason for the time. I think the real reason for the time is that they have said the compiled isues have the errata. If they are not compiling issues anymore, there is no real time frame to go back and errata the articles anymore.
Which worries me. Their errata was already pretty shoddy, major balance problems that people rave about never getting corrected in the final version while tiny issues like spelling get fixed...
Not only do they now have less time for errata now on average (think about it. An article on the first week of a month had four weeks to get fixed; second week, three weeks; third week, two weeks... and finally anything in the fourth week has one week to get fixed before publication. So, while week 4 gets an additional week and week 3 doesn't have any changes, week 1 and 2 now have a shorter timeframe of 2 weeks to receive errata), but if they happen to forget to errata 1 article this month... and then next month they don't fix two... and then the next month half the articles don't get fixed up...
Well, guess what? Suddenly, without a fixed-magazine to compare against the unfixed-articles for us, the consumers, to examine and review for changes... we won't be able to notice Wizards' seemingly inevitable descent into laziness.
I can very easily see Wizards ceasing to errata articles. Since magazines were such a huge component (being both a deadline and a means for us to check what they did and did not fix) of the errata, now that they're now advertisement blogs, if they did just stop errataing the articles (without telling anyone of the new policy of course!), well, very few people would notice.
OK, how difficult or time consuming is to open Acrobat and then go File>Create PDF> From multiple files, then navigate to the specific folder where all your articles are, select them and click Next and then Save....
I think that "time" is an excuse. I am afraid that there will be less content, less articles, less pages. One might not notice the difference between 10 and 7 articles in one month, but will surely understand that 10,2 MB Dungeon #155 with 109 pages (or #156 with 129 pages) is different than 2,4 MB Dungeon #185, with 76 pages... 33 pages less content or -30%... with the same prize!
I really don't care for 33 or 53 or 103 pages, what is important is the quality, but please, give me some motives to continue my subscription...
I don't think that is the reason for the time. I think the real reason for the time is that they have said the compiled isues have the errata. If they are not compiling issues anymore, there is no real time frame to go back and errata the articles anymore.
Which worries me. Their errata was already pretty shoddy, major balance problems that people rave about never getting corrected in the final version while tiny issues like spelling get fixed...
Not only do they now have less time for errata now on average (think about it. An article on the first week of a month had four weeks to get fixed; second week, three weeks; third week, two weeks... and finally anything in the fourth week has one week to get fixed before publication. So, while week 4 gets an additional week and week 3 doesn't have any changes, week 1 and 2 now have a shorter timeframe of 2 weeks to receive errata), but if they happen to forget to errata 1 article this month... and then next month they don't fix two... and then the next month half the articles don't get fixed up...
Well, guess what? Suddenly, without a fixed-magazine to compare against the unfixed-articles for us, the consumers, to examine and review for changes... we won't be able to notice Wizards' seemingly inevitable descent into laziness.
I can very easily see Wizards ceasing to errata articles. Since magazines were such a huge component (being both a deadline and a means for us to check what they did and did not fix) of the errata, now that they're now advertisement blogs, if they did just stop errataing the articles (without telling anyone of the new policy of course!), well, very few people would notice.
Well, I just read the update about article updates.
While 2 weeks would be nice, I find it hard to believe that this does not take MORE man hours to do than what they were doing before.
I guess I won't know though. My sub is up next month. There is nothing that I am interested in DDI anymore. I really am not interested in playing D&D online. I want tools that I can use to facilitate my game. I want to be able to use these tools how I want to use them, I do not want to have to worry about how much bandwidth that these tools are taking, and I certainly want to be able to use them if something like my internet connection or my router goes down for some length of time.
Does WTC/Hasbro even care? I would say not as they haven't bothered to respond to this post even though it has 28 pages worth of customer comments.
Gamers are on average a smart group of people and statements such as "it's to time consuming" are seen as exactly what they are which is a smoke screen. Don't lie to us, don't ?!$$ on us and tell us it's raining, I call foul! U have stolen enough money from me with your promises of what you are going to give me ... enough is enough. Hello Pathfinder.
I will be watching and if you change direction on your latest mis-steps I will probably return but maybe not.
Please sell the D&D franchise to someone who cares!
...so you have succeeded in driving a paying customer into a non-paying pirate...
I am sorry, but I do not agree with this. Not paying for something that you think that does not worth it (and therefore you don't use it) is one thing. Stealing is another...
...so you have succeeded in driving a paying customer into a non-paying pirate...
I am sorry, but I do not agree with this. Not paying for something that you think that does not worth it (and therefore you don't use it) is one thing. Stealing is another...
Agreed.
you have succeeded in driving a paying customer into a non-paying pirate.
I disagree with your logic. If a product is valuable enough to steal, if you're so desperate for it that you are willing to pirate it... then you obviously desire the product. If you desire the product, pay for it; if you do not, do not. There is no middle ground where you believe a product is so valuable that you must have it no matter what but aren't willing to pay for it.
you have succeeded in driving a paying customer into a non-paying pirate.
I disagree with your logic. If a product is valuable enough to steal, if you're so desperate for it that you are willing to pirate it... then you obviously desire the product. If you desire the product, pay for it; if you do not, do not. There is no middle ground where you believe a product is so valuable that you must have it no matter what but aren't willing to pay for it.
You're also assuming that it is desperate to pirate. This is not the case. I hang out with many people and I see how they act. There's no remorse in pirates because they feel they are doing nothing wrong. If they pirate something they absolutely love, then they will buy it to make sure that they keep it. If they pirate something they don't like, they'll delete it. If they pirate something somewhat good, they'll keep it, but not buy it.
It may not be right or good for our society, but that is the world we live in.
You're also assuming that it is desperate to pirate. This is not the case. I hang out with many people and I see how they act. There's no remorse in pirates because they feel they are doing nothing wrong. If they pirate something they absolutely love, then they will buy it to make sure that they keep it. If they pirate something they don't like, they'll delete it. If they pirate something somewhat good, they'll keep it, but not buy it.
It may not be right or good for our society, but that is the world we live in.
Yes, the "spoiled brat" mentality. It is exactly the world we live in. People walking around with a sense of entitlement, oblivious to everything else.
Quite appalling, actually, but a discussion for another thread.
you have succeeded in driving a paying customer into a non-paying pirate.
I disagree with your logic. If a product is valuable enough to steal, if you're so desperate for it that you are willing to pirate it... then you obviously desire the product. If you desire the product, pay for it; if you do not, do not. There is no middle ground where you believe a product is so valuable that you must have it no matter what but aren't willing to pay for it.
You're also assuming that it is desperate to pirate. This is not the case. I hang out with many people and I see how they act. There's no remorse in pirates because they feel they are doing nothing wrong. If they pirate something they absolutely love, then they will buy it to make sure that they keep it. If they pirate something they don't like, they'll delete it. If they pirate something somewhat good, they'll keep it, but not buy it.
It may not be right or good for our society, but that is the world we live in.
It's an interesting system because it only exists when companies have deceptive marketing departments. Which don't get me wrong, deception is what marketing does and most companies cannot exist without them, so I'm not knocking them, but...
I do not trust reviewers to give me an opinion about whether I'll like a game or not, because they can be wrong; I do not trust demos, because for better or worse they're not representative of a game. And I certainly can't trust the box art or company website.
Which means that if I want to truly know if I'll enjoy a game? I have to shell out $60 for it, play it, then see if it's bug-riddled.
Take IGNs review of Napoleon: Total War. They gave it an 8.9. That's... not a representative number of the quality of that game, or how poor it holds up to other Total War games (Medieval II for the win!). And the demo is far too short to tell you what you need to know: how's the campaign AI, did they fix it? (no). How's the tactical, non-pre-scripted AI, did they fix it? (no). How's the economy, is it super-confusing with way too many unnecessary duplicate units with slightly different names? (yes).
And, again... box art... not terribly handy.
Nor are searching forums useful because if objectively the best game of all time descended down from on high, carried on the shoulders of Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Will Wright and Sid Meier as they rode chariots made of overclocked Pentiums, and was so entertaining that World of Warcraft lost all of its customers to it and everyone who played it lost the will to live because nothing in life could ever be as good as the game they had just played... there would still be raging cesspools of forums about how horrible it is, 4 out of 10 stars at best in their opinion.
The short of it is, I can perfectly understand why some people feel it's not morally incorrect to torrent a video game, try it, and if they like their full-version demo then they buy it for real... and if they don't like it, they chuck it. I don't necessarily think piracy itself is legitimate, but I think that some of the motivations--the complete obfuscation of whether what you're buying is quality or not--of piracy are legitimate.
*deep breath*
Having said that. That's not what this person here is saying on this forum. He has tried D&Di. He acknowledges it's a good enough product that he desires having it. He is very willing to go to extensive means to download it to his hard drive. But he's not willing to pay for it.
He has none of the motivation of our pirate friends who are tired of getting ripped off by the PC gaming industry. There's no "I want to try it first, then buy it." No, it's motivated by pure greed: "I'm not willing to pay for this product anymore, so I won't. But I'm going to steal it, instead."
Which means that if I want to truly know if I'll enjoy a game? I have to shell out $60 for it, play it, then see if it's bug-riddled.
Demos. Most new releases have them.
If you reach the end of the demo and find you want to play more, then it must be worth paying for.
Which means that if I want to truly know if I'll enjoy a game? I have to shell out $60 for it, play it, then see if it's bug-riddled.
Demos. Most new releases have them.
If you reach the end of the demo and find you want to play more, then it must be worth paying for.
Demos are marketing packages. Which means that they're combed over to make sure that only the best side of a game is presented to the public. Many times have I played the demo, thought "This is awesome!" then bought the game and found out that literally, the section of the game that got into the demo? The only part of the game that had any polish or was playable or fun. It's happened to me so many times now...
And some companies don't release demos.
And some companies only release demos 6 months after the product launch.
And then some demos actually suffer the opposite problem: they suck and the game does not. The demos are bug-riddled, crashy, the dialogue chosen for them is cheesy, the graphics use a pre-launch build that doesn't include anti-aliasing and the colors get weird if you turn the resolution up... and you lose all faith that you'll be able to play the actual game for 10 minutes without getting frustrated and quitting forever. But the demo was made 6 months before the final product, which has infinitely more polish and so the demo is unreliable.
* * * *
I pulled Napoleon: Total War out as an example because I played the demo, I enjoyed it, I bought the game... and God, have I not played more than an hour of that before getting too frustrated with how extremely buggy and flawed and unpolished the game is. And it still has yet to have any of my issues patched (like all of my cavalry teleporting inside of a house and being unable to move, or artillery freezing up, or all of my units deciding they were part of my CTRL-1 group and becoming immobilized and only are able to shoot west.)
I want my money back =/
Had I downloaded Napoleon off a torrent site (or Empire, which I also bought based on a decent-feeling demo) I would not have given them my money, and I would have deleted the torrent off my hard drive as the space-waster it is. But as it was... IGN gave it good marks, the demo seemed good, so, my money went to a company which apparently was too cheap to hire a QA department...
* * * *
Not really trying to defend piracy. I'm just trying to explain that there is completely inexcusable piracy, just stealing without paying for the sake of being cheap and selfish... and there is piracy which has a moral gray ground (still illegitimate, but has some motivations beyond "I want without paying." since I know a large number of people who pirate, and will inevitably buy the things they pirated because they liked them. These people really just consider them full-feature demos...). And my point was that whether you agree if the piracy with the 'moral gray ground' is actually a legitimate practice or not, that's not what this person was saying about D&Di.
Not really trying to defend piracy.
For not trying to, you really put a lot of effort into doing just that. Sorry, and while there are exceptions to every rule, they are exactly that. Exceptions. Not to be confused with excuses.
We're talking about games and computer games here, not stealing food to feed your (not your) starving children. There is no "moral gray ground." People are stealing/pirating purely for entertainment purposes. Slice it and skew it all you like.
Someone posted a very relevant video around here recently. I would advise sneaking a peek at it.
But yes, this is not directly relevent to this topic, only the direction it has taken. I have only shared my stance on the subject as you have yours. There are plenty of piracy discussions out there and do not wish to partake in one at this time.
Not really trying to defend piracy.
For not trying to, you really put a lot of effort into doing just that.
I have a strange tendency to form unbiased opinions and try to look at things from multiple angles while discussing things. Sorry if that went over your head.
I have a strange tendency to form unbiased opinions and try to look at things from multiple angles while discussing things.
I didn't see anything unbiased about your response. As a matter of fact, it is about as biased as you can get to excuse piracy. All the common ones are there. Now, at one point in time, you may have been unbiased. But you most certainly do not appear to be now.
Sorry if that went over your head.
Really? You are really trying to steer this in that direction? Not interested.
@Jharii: I find that anyone who needs to claim they have an "unbiased opinion" is usually trying to cover their completely biased position.
Oh, I know. That didn't go over my head.
No one is ever truly unbiased. Being biased is part of being human, after all.
I’d much rather have the magazine. Really.
I would even go as far as to say that I would sacrifice a day’s worth of content each week in order to get the end of the month compilation. I’d be willing to trade some of the time you guys do what you do in order to get the mag.
But that’s just me.
Other than that, I really love the magazines.
Cheers.
I also wanted to express my displeasure over the removal of compiled magazine content. I rarely visit articles but faithfully pick up and appreciate compiled Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The pain of collecting and organizing your content may take Dragon and Dungeon off of my reasons for subscribing. I bought a year subscription shortly before the new CB came out and feel my timing was impossibly bad, and perhaps regrettable.
Cheers.
Customer Service will give out refunds...
I also wanted to express my displeasure over the removal of compiled magazine content. I rarely visit articles but faithfully pick up and appreciate compiled Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The pain of collecting and organizing your content may take Dragon and Dungeon off of my reasons for subscribing. I bought a year subscription shortly before the new CB came out and feel my timing was impossibly bad, and perhaps regrettable.
Cheers.
Customer Service will give out refunds...
yeah but you have to jump through hoops for it...
I also wanted to express my displeasure over the removal of compiled magazine content. I rarely visit articles but faithfully pick up and appreciate compiled Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The pain of collecting and organizing your content may take Dragon and Dungeon off of my reasons for subscribing. I bought a year subscription shortly before the new CB came out and feel my timing was impossibly bad, and perhaps regrettable.
Cheers.
Customer Service will give out refunds...
yeah but you have to jump through hoops for it...
Not in my experience.
I sent them a single e-mail saying I was dissatisfied with the fact they hadn't put out any new updates to the CB and I wanted to cancel my subscription. They said how much they would refund (monthly cost x number of months left in my subscription + number of months I had been dissatisfied for) and asked me to confirm.
Sent a reply, said 'do it' and bamf, 10-15 business days later had money back in my pocket.
Not 'jumping through hoops' so much as 'actually asking for it' really.
I also wanted to express my displeasure over the removal of compiled magazine content. I rarely visit articles but faithfully pick up and appreciate compiled Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The pain of collecting and organizing your content may take Dragon and Dungeon off of my reasons for subscribing. I bought a year subscription shortly before the new CB came out and feel my timing was impossibly bad, and perhaps regrettable.
Cheers.
Customer Service will give out refunds...
yeah but you have to jump through hoops for it...
Not in my experience.
I sent them a single e-mail saying I was dissatisfied with the fact they hadn't put out any new updates to the CB and I wanted to cancel my subscription. They said how much they would refund (monthly cost x number of months left in my subscription + number of months I had been dissatisfied for) and asked me to confirm.
Sent a reply, said 'do it' and bamf, 10-15 business days later had money back in my pocket.
Not 'jumping through hoops' so much as 'actually asking for it' really.
Your one of the lucky ones... I've heard some horror stories...
I also wanted to express my displeasure over the removal of compiled magazine content. I rarely visit articles but faithfully pick up and appreciate compiled Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The pain of collecting and organizing your content may take Dragon and Dungeon off of my reasons for subscribing. I bought a year subscription shortly before the new CB came out and feel my timing was impossibly bad, and perhaps regrettable.
Cheers.
Customer Service will give out refunds...
yeah but you have to jump through hoops for it...
My friend had a friend who when he asked for a refund, they came and ate his neighbors cat, and took a dump on his lawn.
I've read some of those horror stories. And when questioned, some of them turned out to be the posters fault, but they didn't see it that way. If there is a procedure to get a refund, and you don't follow it...but still expect a refund, well of course it's going to be a bad experience.
Your one of the lucky ones... I've heard some horror stories...
Funny. Every single story that I can remember that has been posted here have actually been about nothing but a pleasant experience. Maybe you'd care to share one or two?
And for the record, "horror stories" paint a pretty graphical experience of Michael Myers or Jason Voorheis. I love a good melodrama every now and again, but I am pretty sure that even if there has been some bad experiences, nothing has reached anywhere near resembling a slasher fest.
Not 'jumping through hoops' so much as 'actually asking for it' really.
Your one of the lucky ones... I've heard some horror stories...
I think it's the other way around. The 99% of customers who get refunds smoothly and efficiently? Don't bother to post online about it. The 1% who have horror stories? (Perhaps half of which due to their own error?) They post, and you take note, and remember it.
There is nothing to suggest that most people need to 'jump through hoops' to get refunds.
Your one of the lucky ones... I've heard some horror stories...
Funny. Every single story that I can remember that has been posted here have actually been about nothing but a pleasant experience. Maybe you'd care to share one or two?
And for the record, "horror stories" paint a pretty graphical experience of Michael Myers or Jason Voorheis. I love a good melodrama every now and again, but I am pretty sure that even if there has been some bad experiences, nothing has reached anywhere near resembling a slasher fest.
The only 'horror story' that comes to mind is the poster who got a response that sorta implied they had to delete all DDI content and software before they could get a refund. Which, relatively quickly, turned out to be part of a form response that Digital River sends out since most of their products are for other software companies.
Other than that... the only other times I've even heard of issues where when people had changed their credit cards or similar, and thus WotC was having trouble getting them a refund, and the customers were being bounced between multiple CS people before they could it resolved.
Neither of those scenarios were particularly bad, and as far as I know, all of them were resolved to the customer's satisfaction. Many more posts have been recommending refunds for the dissatisfied because of how easy they were to get, and I'm sure for every post like that, many, many others got refunds without difficulties and without feeling any need to post about it.
I took it and the day after I did, they announced the MB beta and the connectivity with the VT. Very annoyed and now regretting it somewhat. Alas, this game needs electronic support due to its complexity and I am already missing not having it.
This makes me both a hypocrit and a sap but there you go
.I want my DDI subscription canceled and a refund of the unused months.
I purchased a one year DDI subscription understanding that I would have:
1)an offline Character Builder tool with online updates monthly.
2)a monthly compilation of Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine.
3)a future release of a 3D Virtual Table Top utility.
Wizards of the Coast is no longer offering those products and the replacements are not what I want to use or pay for.
Thank you,
My Name
They replied back with a request for some account info to determine that I was the account owner.
A few days after I sent them the info I got a notification that my refund has been processed.
I have now been DDI free for about a week now. No hassle at all.
My refund was very easy although I argued first of all for a reduction in price to correspond to the reduction in service. They kept offering a full refund of my remaining subs and in the end I had no real choice but to take that or go away.
I took it and the day after I did, they announced the MB beta and the connectivity with the VT. Very annoyed and now regretting it somewhat. Alas, this game needs electronic support due to its complexity and I am already missing not having it.
This makes me both a hypocrit and a sap but there you go .
(sigh)
No, the game doesn't need electronic support.
I have played over a hundred games with no electronic support--and guess what? they were fun.
I admit, the electronic tools make it a lot easier and qwuicker to run a game, but still, you don't really need them, unless you want the latest errata and powers/magic items. still, while they may be nice, they aren't really necessary, as even just the PH1 has plenty to enjoy yourself with.
I'm getting tired of people complaining about the OCB, the electronic tools, and DDI, then turning around and whining how they "need" them.
(sigh)
No, the game doesn't need electronic support.
I have played over a hundred games with no electronic support--and guess what? they were fun.
I admit, the electronic tools make it a lot easier and qwuicker to run a game, but still, you don't really need them, unless you want the latest errata and powers/magic items. still, while they may be nice, they aren't really necessary, as even just the PH1 has plenty to enjoy yourself with.
I'm getting tired of people complaining about the OCB, the electronic tools, and DDI, then turning around and whining how they "need" them.
Yes, it does need electronic support. Some of us do not have the time to devote to campaign management that is required to create a thorough campaign. Electronic support supplements this greatly, and is a time-saver that is essential for those of us that cannot conjure up excess time out of thin air. Proper electronic utilities reduce the time sink by at least 50%. That... is essential.
Without it, I would not have my campaign with 6 players and would not be forming another campaign with 5 more players. Thanks to all the time I save, I can easily run the same campaign for the 2nd group. That is 1 DM and 11 unique players all playing D&D thanks to digital support.
So, to correct your assessment, digital support is not essential for you. If you're that tired, maybe you need a nap.
(sigh)
No, the game doesn't need electronic support.
I have played over a hundred games with no electronic support--and guess what? they were fun.
I admit, the electronic tools make it a lot easier and qwuicker to run a game, but still, you don't really need them, unless you want the latest errata and powers/magic items. still, while they may be nice, they aren't really necessary, as even just the PH1 has plenty to enjoy yourself with.
I'm getting tired of people complaining about the OCB, the electronic tools, and DDI, then turning around and whining how they "need" them.
Yes, it does need electronic support. Some of us do not have the time to devote to campaign management that is required to create a thorough campaign. Electronic support supplements this greatly, and is a time-saver that is essential for those of us that cannot conjure up excess time out of thin air. Proper electronic utilities reduce the time sink by at least 50%. That... is essential.
Without it, I would not have my campaign with 6 players and would not be forming another campaign with 5 more players. Thanks to all the time I save, I can easily run the same campaign for the 2nd group. That is 1 DM and 11 unique players all playing D&D thanks to digital support.
So, to correct your assessment, digital support is not essential for you. If you're that tired, maybe you need a nap.
I was going to defend my point, but it just sounded like a bunch of insults once I had it written down, so let's skip that.
You say they are essential for you. I may disagree, but it really doesn't matter. what it comes down to is this:if the tools are really this essential to you, you(speaking to the complainers) have three options.
(1) stop complaining. the tools are obviously useful enough to keep paying for, so at that point complaining about it comes off as bitching because the car you got isn't a gold plated rolls royce. sure, it could be better, but if you are going to continue using it, all the nerdrage is ridiculous and counterproductive.
(2) Find a different game that doesn't require so much bookkeeping and stat maxing. I'd suggest Savage Worlds, simply because the entire point of the game is that you can pick it up and run a game with like 15 minutes prep time, but any game will do.
(3) continue whining about it, alienate anyone who might agree with you, and make no real difference other than to try peoples patience with impotent nerdrage.
Personally, if I got so fed up thqat I was complaining, I'd go back to doing it by hand, but then, it usually takes me no more than 1-2 hours a week of actual work to run a 4-5 hour game. Of course, I have map tiles, a couple of traps, and good improvision skills to throw down at will so I can add, change, and redo things quickly in tabletop play.
Also, I do take naps. the hypocracy remains exhausting and pointless.
My refund was very easy although I argued first of all for a reduction in price to correspond to the reduction in service. They kept offering a full refund of my remaining subs and in the end I had no real choice but to take that or go away.
I took it and the day after I did, they announced the MB beta and the connectivity with the VT. Very annoyed and now regretting it somewhat. Alas, this game needs electronic support due to its complexity and I am already missing not having it.
This makes me both a hypocrit and a sap but there you go .
(sigh)
No, the game doesn't need electronic support.
I have played over a hundred games with no electronic support--and guess what? they were fun.
I admit, the electronic tools make it a lot easier and qwuicker to run a game, but still, you don't really need them, unless you want the latest errata and powers/magic items. still, while they may be nice, they aren't really necessary, as even just the PH1 has plenty to enjoy yourself with.
I'm getting tired of people complaining about the OCB, the electronic tools, and DDI, then turning around and whining how they "need" them.
I'm in agreement with the complainging, but the game does need electronic to keep it alive and to grow.
Younger generations expect it. They aren't going to buy a product that doens't offer it. And not just ebooks and such. It has to be interactive, and have customization for their needs.
In this day and age, for DnD to continue growing, it needs to compete againts video games and card games. Both of which require little to no set up time, can be played for any length of time, and don't require a continued investment of money.
With out electronic options to make game set up faster, possible over the internet, and easier to understand, DnD as a game will become a pass time of a minor few, willing to put in the time and energy.
I'm in agreement with the complainging, but the game does need electronic to keep it alive and to grow.
Younger generations expect it. They aren't going to buy a product that doens't offer it. And not just ebooks and such. It has to be interactive, and have customization for their needs.
In this day and age, for DnD to continue growing, it needs to compete againts video games and card games. Both of which require little to no set up time, can be played for any length of time, and don't require a continued investment of money.
With out electronic options to make game set up faster, possible over the internet, and easier to understand, DnD as a game will become a pass time of a minor few, willing to put in the time and energy.
I can agree with you on this to a point, but I do think a clarification should be here--You, the player/dm don't need and shouldn't need e-tools to run a game. the game itself, however, needs e-tools to remain competitive with other games, both tabletop and video.
You say they are essential for you. I may disagree
You really can't disagree and say that they are not essential for me.
(1) stop complaining. the tools are obviously useful enough to keep paying for, so at that point complaining about it comes off as bitching because the car you got isn't a gold plated rolls royce. sure, it could be better, but if you are going to continue using it, all the nerdrage is ridiculous and counterproductive.
You are making an assumption that I am benefitting from the DDI tools. I am not. I have 3rd party programs that benefit me much greatly. The problem with that scenario should be obvious: for all things D&D, I should get the best from the source itself. I get the best paper product from WotC, why should I not expect the best digital support as well, particularly when paying a premium price for monthly support?
(2) Find a different game that doesn't require so much bookkeeping and stat maxing. I'd suggest Savage Worlds, simply because the entire point of the game is that you can pick it up and run a game with like 15 minutes prep time, but any game will do.
This is an invalid argument, particularly when there are solutions to the problems. A far better solution would be to offer a digital solution that more people benefit from. But you are more than welcome to blame the customer.
(3) continue whining about it, alienate anyone who might agree with you, and make no real difference other than to try peoples patience with impotent nerdrage.
The complaining is irritating. I do not partake in the incessant bashing and typically state my opinion and leave it at that. But just because I don't practice it, or dislike it, I completely understand it.
Personally, if I got so fed up thqat I was complaining, I'd go back to doing it by hand, but then, it usually takes me no more than 1-2 hours a week of actual work to run a 4-5 hour game. Of course, I have map tiles, a couple of traps, and good improvision skills to throw down at will so I can add, change, and redo things quickly in tabletop play.
There seems to be equal amounts of people complaining about the complainers. I guess people choose what they prefer to complain about. C'est la vie!
You, the player/dm don't need and shouldn't need e-tools to run a game. the game itself, however, needs e-tools to remain competitive with other games, both tabletop and video.
So are you saying that the problem is with the game mechanics being too complicated to manage a good campaign efficiently?
During college days, I had all the time in the world. Today, not so much. Are you still in college perchance?
No, I currently work. still takes less than 2-3 hours a week to run a campaign effectively. do you plan everything out in detail?
My campaigns are very thorough and very personal, so yeah, there is a lot of attention to detail. Everything that I create is with the intent that it is going to be used again. If not by me, than maybe by someone else.
That's how I've always approached and built campaigns, since I started DMing custom material, some 25 years ago.
I'm in agreement with the complainging, but the game does need electronic to keep it alive and to grow.
Younger generations expect it. They aren't going to buy a product that doens't offer it. And not just ebooks and such. It has to be interactive, and have customization for their needs.
In this day and age, for DnD to continue growing, it needs to compete againts video games and card games. Both of which require little to no set up time, can be played for any length of time, and don't require a continued investment of money.
With out electronic options to make game set up faster, possible over the internet, and easier to understand, DnD as a game will become a pass time of a minor few, willing to put in the time and energy.
I can agree with you on this to a point, but I do think a clarification should be here--You, the player/dm don't need and shouldn't need e-tools to run a game. the game itself, however, needs e-tools to remain competitive with other games, both tabletop and video.
IBut without the prep, you can't really run an effective game. it's kind of chicken and egg. So, to run the game, you need to prep. If you can prep a game in a few hours, and have it customized to your liking using the electronic tools, then yes in a way, you do need digital tools to run the game.
If it takes to long to prep without the tools, chances are people aren't going to keep at it too long.
My refund was very easy although I argued first of all for a reduction in price to correspond to the reduction in service. They kept offering a full refund of my remaining subs and in the end I had no real choice but to take that or go away.
I took it and the day after I did, they announced the MB beta and the connectivity with the VT. Very annoyed and now regretting it somewhat. Alas, this game needs electronic support due to its complexity and I am already missing not having it.
This makes me both a hypocrit and a sap but there you go .
(sigh)
No, the game doesn't need electronic support.
I have played over a hundred games with no electronic support--and guess what? they were fun.
I admit, the electronic tools make it a lot easier and qwuicker to run a game, but still, you don't really need them, unless you want the latest errata and powers/magic items. still, while they may be nice, they aren't really necessary, as even just the PH1 has plenty to enjoy yourself with.
I'm getting tired of people complaining about the OCB, the electronic tools, and DDI, then turning around and whining how they "need" them.
For me, I found that the game does need the electronic support. It is a massive time saver for me and I need all the time savers I can get at the moment.
As regards your last comment about "getting tired of people complaining about OCB, electronic tools, and DDI,......." if you check my posting history, I have been complimentary about the OCB and have no issues with the Compendium. The issue I had was with the abandonment of compiled magazines which I find very useful and the irregular posting of article content. I'm sorry if you've got tired of people complaining about things like that but I reserve the right to do so when I consider that the service has declined.
I took this to customer service and despite my request for a proportionate reduction in price or refund to reflect what I considered (and still consider) to be a reduced service, I was given the option to quit or suck it up. I chose to quit, got a refund, and have since found that the lack of electronic content is too inconvenient to justify not spending the money.
Perhaps I should have rephrased my post above to say "I need electronic content for the game" since I am clearly only voicing an opinion based on my own personal experience. The core of my post above is that I have, in the end, found that despite decisions that I find utterly disagreeable the content is worth my money.
Incidentally, I have been playing games without electronic support, though not the hundreds that you have, for nearly 30 years. These include Traveller (all editions), Star Wars RPG (all editions), Judge Dredd RPG (GW Version) and previous editions of D&D back to the Basic/Expert/Companion sets. I am very well aware of how much fun they are. Now, however, free time is scarce and more precious meaning that I do in fact need the electronic content.
I feel very strongly about this and have now removed the auto renew option from my subscription.
I hope that Wizards will realise their mistake and rectify the situation.
Now, if it's too much to get errata together each month, just having the issue on one download is a lot easier, so I could live with non-errata compilations.
Thank you.
From DDXP 2011 Seminar with Mike Mearls & Chris Perkins: docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1COLESXZ...
D&D Insider
- Web Metrics show that the compiled PDF was seldom being downloaded - most of the audience didn’t grab the PDFs.
- Far more downloads of the articles - which weren’t updated
- Much of the work was also going into the Compendium
- Can re-exam putting compiled issues together if/as needed.
- Could also move to a .zip file download of all articles
- No compilations means only one place to update - instead of article (old/unfixed version) and the issue (updated/fixed)
- Q: How do we tell you if we’d prefer Compilations
- A: That’s why we’re here. We knew it was something of an issue before we got here, thanks to the message boards and the like.
- A: Community Forums, Facebook, Twitter - if the conversation is going on we’ll hear about it.
- A: Don’t forget Customer Service as well.
- Suggestion: Mark on the Article if/when it was last updated
- Suggestion: Tags and Keywords to make searching the archives easier
(Thanks to Wolfstar76 for the hardwork)
Hey all. As you may have noticed by now (check out Bill's Ampersand article),The Dragon/Dungeon compilations we did at the end of Decmeber will be our last. I’m here to give you a little bit more information about the change.
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
What does this mean for article updates? We will continue providing rules updates. However, rather than make the compilations the place where folks get errata, we’re going to update the individual articles whenever errata is called for. The goal is to eliminate confusion. We will no longer have two different versions of an article on our site — the compiled version with errata and the uncompiled version without errata. If an article needs errata, we’ll update the article and let folks know.
That’s about all I’ve got on those compilations – if you have any other questions just drop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.
They are totally, completely, and utterly useless. WOTC seems to think that everyone is always connected. We're NOT. I read offline - I print them out and take them with me (much easier on the eyes too).
So, you just eliminated two key features of the membership.
How about this? Why not offer a 'character builder only' option at 1/3 the price? Or a Builder+Compendium for 1/2 the price? The "magazines" are useless.
They expected all errata to be done within two weeks of the article being released. This new method was going to allow for faster updates, rather than waiting until the end of the month.
It wasn't just introduced to ignore deadlines...
Hey all. As you may have noticed by now (check out Bill's Ampersand article),The Dragon/Dungeon compilations we did at the end of Decmeber will be our last. I’m here to give you a little bit more information about the change.
So why did we decide to do this? It takes a lot of time to compile and reformat the articles for the end of month rollups and, unfortunately, the amount of downloads we’ve been seeing hasn’t been enough to justify the time it takes to put them together. By cutting that out of the equation, we free up more time to focus on other aspects of the D&D website. We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
What does this mean for article updates? We will continue providing rules updates. However, rather than make the compilations the place where folks get errata, we’re going to update the individual articles whenever errata is called for. The goal is to eliminate confusion. We will no longer have two different versions of an article on our site — the compiled version with errata and the uncompiled version without errata. If an article needs errata, we’ll update the article and let folks know.
That’s about all I’ve got on those compilations – if you have any other questions just drop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer what I can.
They are totally, completely, and utterly useless. WOTC seems to think that everyone is always connected. We're NOT. I read offline - I print them out and take them with me (much easier on the eyes too).
So, you just eliminated two key features of the membership.
How about this? Why not offer a 'character builder only' option at 1/3 the price? Or a Builder+Compendium for 1/2 the price? The "magazines" are useless.
Selling portions of the service isn't worth the cost. It will never happen. As it stands right now you either have access or you don't have access. In order to do service granular access as you suggest they'd have to rewrite all access to their site. Something that in the end you wouldn't pay 1/3 for CB only, you'd wind up paying 3/4. A look at the price of cars vs. parts will give you a good idea what a pricing structure might be like. (Try building a car yourself after buying all the parts instead of buying a car from the dealership - I'm pretty sure you'll find that it costs 2-10 times as much)
I invite anyone displeased by the disappearance of Dragon/Dungeon Magazine compiled issues to drop them a line, how short is it. Also link this thread to your communication to WoTC.
With little hope, if they get enought people to E-mail them, they might go back on their decision.
Let's work all togheter in unison !
Plague.
Cancel your subscription, perhaps eventually they will get the message.
I gave that among the reasons for cancelling my subscription, I don't think I really need to do it again.
Cancel your subscription, perhaps eventually they will get the message.
DMaple speaks true. Regardless whether a company listens to feedback or not; the loudest and clearest message you can send to a company is to not give them money for a product you don't want, like, or are displeased with. Anything less will not be weighed as heavy.
Now I think wizards believe they can just brush it under the carpet without anyone noticing... I sent an email to dndinsider@wizards.com and am awaiting a response. However my experience with companies is that they tend to be very silent when you are complaining. I will post again if I get a response.
I think the fear that wizards is no longer compiling articles into PDF's will cause a loss in product quality is real and justified. As of 2/4/11 Dungeon 186 and Dragon 395 have not been completed. Both are missing articles, Eye on Dark sun and D&D alumni respectively. Although the old compilations werent always on time we usually got an apology or news on when they were coming.
And they were very slim anyway, half what we used to get.
Perhaps a worthwhile compromise might be to produce quarterly compilations of the magizines.
I am hugely disappointed by the loss of the Compliled issues. I always waited to print off the complied monthly magazine and would then read them at length while commuting to work.
Perhaps a worthwhile compromise might be to produce quarterly compilations of the magizines.
At this rate of content reduction, a quarterly compilation will soon be the size of our former monthly compilations =P
I just read in another thread that their monthly goal was 50,000 to 60,000 words per month for the combined magazines.
yeah, and it gets compared to the 100,000 words in previous ones...
Frankly, not only should the simple process of compiling the issues at the end of the month be done, but the issues should be emailed to subscribers. I'm not really sure what I'm paying for at this point. It's better records, it's more convenient for your subscribers, and it cannot be a difficult or costly activity for your staff.
Please please please reconsider this decision.
Thank you.
It's very convenient to grab a single download to place on my NookColor.
It's also the primary reason I keep a D&Di subscription.
I, too, would like to see compilation PDFs reinstated.
It's very convenient to grab a single download to place on my NookColor.
It's also the primary reason I keep a D&Di subscription.
What he said.
+1
Very much leaning towards cancelling now. No content and no tools, what's the point?
I, too, would like to see compilation PDFs reinstated.
It's very convenient to grab a single download to place on my NookColor.
It's also the primary reason I keep a D&Di subscription.
What he said.
+1
Very much leaning towards cancelling now. No content and no tools, what's the point?
Agreed and this played heavily into my descion to cancel in January. the other thing was the continued delays for the primary reason I subscribed which was the character builder and other tools. I will watch closely how the tools and WOTC matures.
gilwen
This was the straw that broke the camels back for me for renewing. I cancelled my auto renew, and it will be done on the 16th of Feb. Cant say as I'm even going to notice.
My guess- it's all going to the cloud. Pay to view. Removal of compiled is step number one in that direction.
Reason they gave:
1) Long process to compile... I don't know which program your using, but I tested it, and it took no more than 10 minutes! Maybe you should take an Acrobat course? Because even a children could compile 5 pdfs together in a little more time!
2) Not much download... The reason is simple. We only go check or download one time the file. The article we go much often, not downloading it, but only go check or re-read, etc. So if you compare the number of times an article is watch and a the compile file is downloaded, it cannot be compared!
Anyway... those aren't good reasons and you're only lazy and don't care about your products quality!
We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
So now this has been revealed to be untrue, that you are in fact cutting content, down to a target of 50,000 to 60,000 words rather than nearly twice that on average. Do you have anything to say for misleading folks?
We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
So now this has been revealed to be untrue, that you are in fact cutting content, down to a target of 50,000 to 60,000 words rather than nearly twice that on average. Do you have anything to say for misleading folks?
Puts on WotC speak goggles:
I'd have to interprit that to be "Eliminating the end of month compiliation has no bearing (one way or the other) on the quantity of content being supplied in either magazine" which is largely true. The fact that they are indeed cutting content is it's own issue and should not be conflated with that comment. Phrased differently: The cause of the reduction in content is not the compiliations.
The Class Acts: Knights article from last month, has been updated on the 9th Feb without any indication on the article page or the contents page, only in the artilce pdf itself.
So seems the only way to be sure you have an up to date article is to check the website and download the pdf every time.
Just so people know it appears whatever systems they but in place to highlight when an article gets update aren't working.
The Class Acts: Knights article from last month, has been updated on the 9th Feb without any indication on the article page or the contents page, only in the artilce pdf itself.
So seems the only way to be sure you have an up to date article is to check the website and download the pdf every time.
Why does this not remotely surprise me?
It's almost amusing now...
Just so people know it appears whatever systems they but in place to highlight when an article gets update aren't working.
The Class Acts: Knights article from last month, has been updated on the 9th Feb without any indication on the article page or the contents page, only in the artilce pdf itself.
So seems the only way to be sure you have an up to date article is to check the website and download the pdf every time.
Sweet.
Only this way you will be sure that the article that you used is the most recent one...
Yes, it's that easy! Don't be lazy!
Oh well...
here's a less snarky suggestion: at least post a zip file of an issue's pdf articles.
as much as i love d&d, i don't have the time to follow the site + download articles as they become available.
If I had even the slightest inclination to resubscribe (I know the VTT is coming soon, and the character builder features are coming soon, and better quality/more articles are coming soon, but... not paying for 'soon' XD) I'd totally start a community group up called "See How Easy It Is?" and each month I'd compile all the articles into one magazine PDF, and send them to all _D&DI MEMBERS_ in the group.
Oh well. Maybe one day when Wizards adds more features to their strangely consistently-priced 'product' people can look forward to getting the compilations again if I resubscribe. Unless a current subscriber wants to cover that job =P
Heh.
If I had even the slightest inclination to resubscribe (I know the VTT is coming soon, and the character builder features are coming soon, and better quality/more articles are coming soon, but... not paying for 'soon' XD) I'd totally start a community group up called "See How Easy It Is?" and each month I'd compile all the articles into one magazine PDF, and send them to all _D&DI MEMBERS_ in the group.
Oh well. Maybe one day when Wizards adds more features to their strangely consistently-priced 'product' people can look forward to getting the compilations again if I resubscribe. Unless a current subscriber wants to cover that job =P
Heck yeah, I need to follow WotC business model. Put out the bare minimum and let the community shoulder the work... Great idea thanks!
We’re not cutting back on content, we’re just eliminating an option that goes largely unused.
So now this has been revealed to be untrue, that you are in fact cutting content, down to a target of 50,000 to 60,000 words rather than nearly twice that on average. Do you have anything to say for misleading folks?
The numbers aren't as important as what they're cutting out of the articles: crunch.
They've been routinely releasing preview articles with lots of crunch, with the final version having all of it (or nearly all) cut out, with only the fluff remaining.
WOTC: I don't want fluff. I don't need fluff. I don't need your help making up character backgrounds. I want stuff I can actually use in my games, and until that changes, that hole there over to the left where the red DDI dragon icon used to be will remain.
Just a consideration:
I'll pay a subscriber fee each year (from the beginning) for a certain (supposed) service and I'm very disappointed of Wizards continuos changes. (for the most part not improving anything but worsening it somehow)
1) the decision to make Character Builder on line was the first sign that wizards begin to navigate amids the icebergs (just to make a paragon) hedless of the many warnings of deluded subscribers.
Not everyone has at his disposal a web connection where the gaming group use to play, Character Builder was one of the motives for which I decide to subscribe and...zap! They have taken out all the fun!
2) I've tryed to understand this decision and when finally I have complied with this (or more exactly passed over)... zap! Dragon/Dungeon are no more downloadable as a complete PDF format each month!
This is enough! If the things don't change soon for a better way FOR EVERYONE I will not renew my subscription when it will elapse. (worse I will stop playing with Wizards games and put my efforts to more sensitive production houses)
Regarding the quality ot the latest D&D products (they are cheap to say the least) I think Wizards is well far off the line.
A last question remains: how much time will pass before the ship will hit the iceberg and sink?
I (and many others I suppose) will not be on this ship when it happens.
Wizards you would better to pay attention to these ominous bulletin warnings....
At DDXP, they said Fighters are the most popular because that's what there are the most of on the character builder. This is a popularity falacy. In reality, there could mostly be fighters because fighters have the most options and many D&D players like to make characters as much as playing.
The magazine article/compilation seems to be the same issue. Not as many people download the compiled issue as download the article. I don't know if this goes for others, but I will download, read, and redownload an article multiple times a month as I read related forum posts, based on where I'm at, etc. The compiled issue, I only download once. I save it to my netbook and that's my resource that goes with me to game. I don't go back and redownload the whole magazine file. I like the compiled issue for the same reasons others have said, it's better to open one file on my netbook than to open 5 and with some tablets, that's the only option.
I hope they return to compiled issues. And absolutely it needs to be made clear when articles are updated. Everytime.
Please reconsider. Thanks.
ETA: My account says I was able to cancel it before the auto-renew went into effect. I'd like to resubscribe, but at present it's not a good value for me. Thanks!
Please continue making compilations, or at least offer a single download with each of the individual pdfs. Many DMs and players need to access their Magazine content offline, and now that would mean downloading each of several hundred articles individually.
I make this request not only from my own desire to see better content, and easier to use service from WotC, but because I don't want to see dnd die, even if I can get along with what I have now. I've been seeing many dissillusioned, angry customers on these forums. This would be another step down the road of low-content low-quality service, and while that lowers the bottom line, it also will whittle away the dedicated customer base WotC currently has.
Thanks guys for your replies and considerations, I hope Wotc will take this claims seriously to revise the logic behind the new politics because from what I read in the forums there are many disappointed players and DMs complaining about one thing or the other. I think the future of D&D is not bright at all, in the last ten years or so Wotc made a great breakthough in the roleplaying market with 3rd and 3.5 editions, revamping a genre that had become stagnant.
The products released was of high quality, the rules system robust and satisfying for both beginning and veteran players and I remember fondly this period as one of the best in my game history. (I play Dungeons and Dragons since 1987 and I've seen all his evolution from basic, to AD&D (1st and 2nd edition) to 3rd, 3.5 and now 4th).
Speaking of the current edition I'm sure that many players agree that it is the worse ever released.
It has many good ideas anyway that can be exploited for a more solid game (but an equal number, if not more, of faults).
I ask Wotc to bring us D&D again, the game we all loved and continue to love, not a fickle shadow of what it is now.
Thanks guys for your replies and considerations, I hope Wotc will take this claims seriously to revise the logic behind the new politics because from what I read in the forums there are many disappointed players and DMs complaining about one thing or the other. I think the future of D&D is not bright at all, in the last ten years or so Wotc made a great breakthough in the roleplaying market with 3rd and 3.5 editions, revamping a genre that had become stagnant.
The products released was of high quality, the rules system robust and satisfying for both beginning and veteran players and I remember fondly this period as one of the best in my game history. (I play Dungeons and Dragons since 1987 and I've seen all his evolution from basic, to AD&D (1st and 2nd edition) to 3rd, 3.5 and now 4th).
Speaking of the current edition I'm sure that many players agree that it is the worse ever released.
It has many good ideas anyway that can be exploited for a more solid game (but an equal number, if not more, of faults).
I ask Wotc to bring us D&D again, the game we all loved and continue to love, not a fickle shadow of what it is now.
I dunno, TSR had a good thing and they screwed it up, so par for the course for Wizards but at least Wizards is staying afloat. And every edition has had a large number of people saying "This is the worst thing ever." But I think your edition-war-mongering needs to go to a different thread. If you want to talk specifically about the magazines, though...
They were actually print magazines for years.
Then, with 4th Edition, they took them online - Releasing the articles slowly, then giving us the full magazines at the end.
At this point, they're simply headers of sections of the DDI webpage.
Soon, I expect to hear that they're being moved onto a single "Dungeons & Dragons Articles" page, without the distinction of even pretending that they're magazines anymore.
WotC is phasing out content as they cut corners, and I'm starting to get the old "T$R" vibe off the whole mess. The quality is down across the board - The website, the articles, the books, all of it. The actual products are less interesting, the game keeps losing depth, and truthfully... The game is really becoming the laughing stock of the industry.
It would be nice if you guys knew that many subscribers to D&D are peeps who loved to have complete issues on their bookshelves to be able to browse them as they did in old good times. Besides, compilation makes usage of DMs much easier. I know that it used to take your time, but still, it takes time to serve a customer properly, if you want to keep him, of course.
Now it seems as if you no longer care. Too bad, I say, I hoped my subscription would help you develop a better product, not a worse one. It's sad to see quality of once-outstanding mark being constantly demolished.
Well how to sum things up .. i have played D&D since nearly the dawn of the game. I have been
getting every issue of the Dungeon and Dragon mag since nearly day one and actually have nearly every
issue. When you shifted to PDF format i was actually very happy .. it saves a
ton of space and lasts longer. So I always looked at my DDI subscription as a offset for an offered product that I would have picked up each month any way. Thus i was not only getting the
wonderful content of the Dungeon and Dragon Magazine each month but I was also
getting the benefit of the rest of the nifty DDI tools.. Tools that of late have begun to make me feel like
the tool..
I defended the new edition from the start, said give it time it will get
better they really are working hard on this stuff. I Believed in you all. Now
not so much.
Lets take a bit of a run down ... my ten bucks use to get me a PDF copy of
the compiled Dungeon and Dragon Magazine Issue each month .. The nifty
compendium, Adventure tools and Character builder an encounter builder the
promise of a sweet looking 3D Dungeon tile Dungeon builder .. a High speed virtual
miniature builder for my pcs to be all decked out in ... last few i never really
thought were anything more then a pipe dream..
Hmmm so what do I have ..
Well im not getting my Dungeon or Dragon Magazine anymore.. unless i
want to compile my own issues from the articles that are called issues yet not
compiled for me laughable. I would imagine that the entire reason why you see so few downloads is like me many of your players check in on what you were doing from week to week on each artical. And then at the end of the month or once ever two months download both the dragon and dungon issue to pdf to keep and refer to on things like our I pods and I phones and other laptops and tablets.
I have a new Character builder IN the cloud now.. and the guys that slapped
this sucker together must have been smoking up in that cloud.. This went from a
mostly stable application to a bullet ridden corpse of its once decent self..
My adventure tools have not had an update in months .. but I keep buying my
hard back books and when the come out and wondering why My extra Ten bucks in
DDI content doesn't seem to be showing
anything from these fancy things bound in page.
The Encounter builder works last time I looked still .. oh wait that was
working when the first players handbook hit the shelves.. oh yeah and it has not
had an update to its list in .... yeah I forgot too.
So tell me please.. what exactly am I paying ten bucks a month for anymore ..
?
Is there anyone at WotC that is reading this? Are you listening to you customer base at all?
-TC
In each case:
1.) They took an existing resource and made it much harder to access offline.
2.) By doing so, deterred people from buying just a month of subscription to download everything from several months' previous.
3.) And then offered a specious argument for why they did it. In the case of character builder, they claimed the old one couldn't handle Essentials, which is provably wrong. Here they say it's too much work ... despite the fact that they're still doing all the work to make the individual PDFs, just not the final compilation.
Still. There must be some hefty corporate reasoning behind this. I can find threads scattered around these forums where Wizards decides on something, people say 'please don't do that' and either a WotC employee will log on and say something neutral OR Wizards will straight up change their mind.
But this MASSIVE, OFFICIAL THREAD filled with almost PURE complaints? We don't get even a slight peep.
So... probably there is some sort of product they intended to sell instead of magazines, like some people have speculated an 'online, no-download' application, and because that product exists WotC employees can't even COMMENT on the thread, because of their NDA's.
But that's just me wearing a tinfoil hat, which I so rarely do but come on--there's some VERY conspicuous silence in this matter. Not even a "We know some people don't like it, but we're going to try and offer great services in exchange for this loss!" or even (and we know Wizards isn't opposed to lying through their teeth, see the entire Offline->Online Character Builder chronology for proof) simply coming on and saying "We didn't realize how big of an impact this made on everyone. We'll discuss it at our offices, and reconsider in light of our customers's valid complaints." and then they could simply IGNORE the issue and never follow up on that promise, but it would placate a large number of people.
But no. Not even a placating lie like Wizards is so used to doing, not a shining used-car-salesman-like positive spin on the issue ("it's not a loss of product--it's a GAIN of QUALITY!"), not even a WotC employee logging on and clarifying exactly what went into compiling the issues so that our wild, increasingly agitated speculations would calm down.
There's some serious NDA **** going on here.
Wow, 357 posts and not one person thinks the discontinuation of the magazine compilations was a good idea.
Is there anyone at WotC that is reading this? Are you listening to you customer base at all?
-TC
Yeah you do realize that 350 or so posts to a message board is a small drop in the bucket compared to their overall customer base.
I'd guess it's less than that. But I could be wrong.
I am only a noob to all these kinds of shenanigans, but from reading various forums it seems like more than a few players are confused by most things WoTC do that would be loosely described as "marketing" in the business world.
Hoping it picks up and I gain a little more confidence in the past time that I am sinking money into.
Yeah, this thread has quite a number of people rightfully saying "Yeah, Wizards, we don't buy it, we know you have ulterior motives" so it's not a new thought =P
Still. There must be some hefty corporate reasoning behind this. I can find threads scattered around these forums where Wizards decides on something, people say 'please don't do that' and either a WotC employee will log on and say something neutral OR Wizards will straight up change their mind.
But this MASSIVE, OFFICIAL THREAD filled with almost PURE complaints? We don't get even a slight peep.
Well, they did say if enough people commented on it, they'd think about it, but IIRC (and I might not RC), they said in effect "if enough people complain in twitter and blogs and stuff" (i.e., anywhere but the forums) they might reconsider.
The forums, from everything I gather, are rather low on their priority list for feedback.
I'd like to see some %s on the customers on here vs not. My bet is that the forum base is way less.
And don't forget that people are less likely to come on and say good things vs the people who complain about stuff. I'm not saying that the concerns aren't warranted, as a matter of opinion, but just because they don't compile the issues doesn't mean that they should because some people want it. It's a service not used as much as they need to make it something they do.
Just because the forums are the loudest doesn't mean they are the most people. I have 6 people in my group and am the only one on the forums. I'd like to see some %s on the customers on here vs not. My bet is that the forum base is way less. And don't forget that people are less likely to come on and say good things vs the people who complain about stuff. I'm not saying that the concerns aren't warranted, as a matter of opinion, but just because they don't compile the issues doesn't mean that they should because some people want it. It's a service not used as much as they need to make it something they do.
Yes, but how many of your players have or have had DDi? how many are interested in DDi and would subscribe if it were more viable. I'm not saying we are 100% representative, but I think there is a good crossover because if you have DDi, its a good chance that you get on the forums...
Yes, but how many of your players have or have had DDi? how many are interested in DDi and would subscribe if it were more viable. I'm not saying we are 100% representative, but I think there is a good crossover because if you have DDi, its a good chance that you get on the forums...
My last post was from my mobile, so exept my appology for not expanding my thoughts. I knew this and other questions were possible, but my "small post" got too big to continue on my phone, hehe.
They all have DDi, with the exception of 1 guy who doesn't much like spending money, so he is a non factor. So 1 out of 5 are on the forums. You may be right in thinking that the forum goers are a majority, but It's my opinion that we are not. Unfortunately, we have no way to actually settle that one because we don't see those numbers.
I just use the logic that 20% of the people create 80% of the problems, as an analogy not as an insult to the community. We put our complaints on here and come up with ways to make the products more efficient, faster, cross platform and, for the sake of this thread, we say they need to compile the magazines for us. They have the actual download numbers. They know what % of subscribers downloaded the compilations each month.
For the record, I would love the compilations, and have downloaded them. So I feel like they removed a bit of service from me. This is something they do need to look at, but if the money into that is not worth the number of people using it, it makes sense.
Yes, but how many of your players have or have had DDi? how many are interested in DDi and would subscribe if it were more viable. I'm not saying we are 100% representative, but I think there is a good crossover because if you have DDi, its a good chance that you get on the forums...
My last post was from my mobile, so exept my appology for not expanding my thoughts. I knew this and other questions were possible, but my "small post" got too big to continue on my phone, hehe.
They all have DDi, with the exception of 1 guy who doesn't much like spending money, so he is a non factor. So 1 out of 5 are on the forums. You may be right in thinking that the forum goers are a majority, but It's my opinion that we are not. Unfortunately, we have no way to actually settle that one because we don't see those numbers.
I just use the logic that 20% of the people create 80% of the problems, as an analogy not as an insult to the community. We put our complaints on here and come up with ways to make the products more efficient, faster, cross platform and, for the sake of this thread, we say they need to compile the magazines for us. They have the actual download numbers. They know what % of subscribers downloaded the compilations each month.
For the record, I would love the compilations, and have downloaded them. So I feel like they removed a bit of service from me. This is something they do need to look at, but if the money into that is not worth the number of people using it, it makes sense.
I dunno, since one guy over the course of one day could compile the magazines (assuming you're not doing anything fancy like hotlinking ToC or setting up bookmarks or making sure there's no blank space or whatever) just fine... let's take a day's wages for him, and look at the number of people who are withdrawing from D&Di treating this as the last straw (or me, who refused to come back to D&Di because of this, when I was totally about to had it not happened) multiplied by how much they spend on D&Di per month...
I definitely think it's a valid argument that the forums are a small selection of the D&D player base, and that this thread is a small sample of that sample... but I think that those facts don't matter compared to the fact that they could take the money they lost by this decision FROM THE PEOPLE IN THIS THREAD ALONE, and use it to get an intern to compile the magazines over a day once a month, slap the PDFs together in Acrobat or whatever. That'd take 10 minutes. Then he could spend the next 7 hours and 50 minutes on that day adding page numbers if he wants. And the fan base is made happy again. It wouldn't be the high-quality super-digital magazines they'd been doing up until now... but then, I never really wanted all of those digital whatsits like hotlinked text or advertisements (not that the magazines are anything but advertisements nowadays), so I'd be happy with a simple magazine compilation.
What a spectacularly brazen lie!
I hope "subscriber data" is able to correctly inform you, that my subscription has changed in status from auto-renew to manual (and from there to oblivion...)
the minute I read about this "hardly mentionable" little change. You are truly the gravediggers of Dungeons & Dragons!
Long time reader, first time poster.
I just want to say that the lack of compilations saddens me; especially at a time when content that was meant for books will probably be published in the "magazines."
This was the final straw for me and I have disabled my auto-renew.
Please bring back the compilations!!
Hopefully WotC or even Hasbro wakes up one day and realize we aren't asking much. To compile the articles for us when we are paying for a service lets us know we are still respected and welcomed customers. I have read where people have been very upset about promised additions to DDI and have not seen them, yet we remained customers.
Just seeing things on the side of D&D getting removed from not only DDI leaves me troubled. I hope this label stays strong, but for the time being I am fairly disappointed with both the DDI and RPGA for showing dedicated gamers that money is greater than our dedication to the brand we love.
Hopefully we see a change, but till then I will be with many others in the stopping of my auto-renewal of my account till that day.
I am very distressed about the lack of compilations. I just got my computer back and downloaded all the compilations, (which I do read on my iPad) Then I find that the last two are just separate articles? Your excuse is it takes up too much time? I hardly think it should take up that much time. I put PDFs together for a living, its not rocket science.
I have to agree! It should really not take that much time to assemble a final compiled pdf with a table of contents! I work in the print industry (pre-press and production) and I assemble pdfs all the time. I personally find this descision a huge let-down!
I never read the articles until the end of the month, at which point I download the entire magazine. Doing it one article at a time is a pain.
For now, I guess I am in the same boat as everyone else... download all the articles seperately and create my own compiled set with table of contents.
Then they started announcing the content for the week, but they have routinely been missing those weekly deadlines.
And they have actually always missed the end of month deadline for some articles, since they stopped producing the Compilations.
I think anyone with any sense realises that when you remove a deadline for completing something, it just won't get done in a timely fashion.
What makes matters worse is WotC_Trevor said this wasn't a reduction in content, and yet they have admitted that the goal is 60,000 words each month, which is about half what they use to produce for the magazines. Yet they still can't even produce that on time.
From the beginning of 4th Edition, I've bought into WotC's lies, I've bought my books, my subscription to DDI. I've defended it to my friends, gotten them to play, gotten them to buy books. I've defended the game online, given them my money and support.
And I've gotten lies the whole time. Tools never showing up, good books being canceled, junk being released. The only tools we did get then got scrapped in favor of some half-functional attempt at anti-piracy.
Honestly, I'm disgusted by WotC's business plan here. They really need to shape up on this, give us the compliations back, give us functional tools like they promised, or they need to just scrap the whole thing and announce 5th Edition and try and salvage this junkpile they've turned the game into.
My main reason for saying so is the fact they have made 2 posts since the original post only to inform people to stay on topic and be mindful of the user agreement. We are capping 38 pages (most likely 33 if you ignore single user multi posts) and have yet to see WotC tell us they understand our concerns or will consider them.
I'm not calling for all of us to boycott DDI due to the fact that I doubt that would even sway a company that isn't staying on schedule. I even think they are kind of taunting the user base to a degree on this when they make a thread saying "complain here" so they could block the thread or contain the discontent to a single forum so they have less to deal with.
To be totally honest, I am personally doubting WotC's intent on actually reconsidering this choice.
My main reason for saying so is the fact they have made 2 posts since the original post only to inform people to stay on topic and be mindful of the user agreement. We are capping 38 pages (most likely 33 if you ignore single user multi posts) and have yet to see WotC tell us they understand our concerns or will consider them.
I'm not calling for all of us to boycott DDI due to the fact that I doubt that would even sway a company that isn't staying on schedule. I even think they are kind of taunting the user base to a degree on this when they make a thread saying "complain here" so they could block the thread or contain the discontent to a single forum so they have less to deal with.
Have they ever reconsidered? I'm asking seriously; I can't recall them ever reversing course on a major DDI-focused decision, but my memory is, at times, hazy. I guess adding export to the online CB might count (though I expect it to be removed once the VT and AT are solid).