For example it doesn’t look like they are selling Dungeon or Dragon seperately – which might be an issue if players start reading all those lovely adventures for example.

I think they should then move to 3 separate subscriptions for their online stuff.

1) DM sub for encounter and dungeon generators, DM access to GameTable, content vaults, treasure generators, etc.

2) Player sub for character vaults and player access to GameTable.

3) Mag Subs for Dungeon/Dragon magazines.

The compendium, as a whole, is garbage. This should get scrapped and they should tie it into account/book-based content depending on what books you own.

In my opinion, this whole online 4e process feels like someone is doing it out of their basement with little to no planning at all. Pretty sad actually.

Also, I’d like to point out that everything I’ve heard indicates there will be an open beta and free trial period for D&D Insider.

The business world rarely makes any sense.

I think that pretty much hit it on the head. I’ve recently had a poor experience with the MTGO Online draft (long story short, I think their software goofed, and they blame my connection, thus denying me a refund), so I’m not convinced that they can make this stable, let alone unique enough to bother with a subscription.

I think if they can make the Game Table feature-rich enough, that alone would make it worthwhile to me for a subscription (I have a lot of friends on the other side of the country I’d love to Game with.)

They already scrapped Gleemax. Let’s see what what else get’s cut before this is over.

Oh, and.. if the pricing plan is monthly, where is my character data stored? How much “campaign data” is stored in the DDI Game Table? What happens to that data if I cancel my subscription?

@Greywolf – yeah, the Asmor tools are nice. Oh, and the DDI Compendium is lackluster crap.

@SamJudson – they charged for incomplete tools before! why not do it again?! (reference to vaporware: MasterTools)

@PekkaPeruki – an open-beta is the best idea yet for it, becuase at minimum it would help generate trust in the fanbase.

@Avaril – they _should_ have made it a web 2.0 application so it could run on any web 2.0 capable browser. Hello, iPhone at the game table? a mobile web interface for the tools alone would be cool cool.

@ScottM & Avaril – yes. it was called eTools, then later MasterTools, then it was (the data) was made available to CodeMonkey for PCGEN, then the whole thing failed.

can you say “Vaporware Redux?”

I love all the empty promises.

– sry for the flood, can you tell i’m bitter? –

I hope this isn’t groundwork for justifying a withdrawal of the rest of the stuff they promised. I can easily imagine them saying, “We only got X subscribers, which doesn’t justify continuing production of features A, B, and C.” It’s a catch 22– if they need the subscribers before they can spend on the development, we’re in trouble.

ScottM’s last post: Next Game: Friday August 8th

I know that there’s more PC’s out there and blah blah blah, but as a programmer, it would have been nice if they farmed this project out to some company that knows something about cross-platform development (and meeting deadlines, for that matter).

ATM I wouldn’t think of paying a cent for that crap.

Still, it would be nice if OP could get access to WotC’s database, or they would publish a querying web service so people could easily import their characters or something…

But if you do actually look at the price for Dungeon and Dragon it does appear to be a good deal.

What I think they should have done is just have a Dungeon + Dragon deal only – keep the unfinished stuff free. It just feels wrong to ‘charge’ for something that is ‘unfinished’ even if they aren’t really costing anything.

Price-wise, I think they’ve got things spot on for Dungeon and Dragon mags alone, provided the quality remains (or exceeds) the level they’re putting out today. I’ve been very impressed with what they’ve delivered over the last few months in that respect.

The bonus tools are “meh”. Asmor is doing it better, quicker and freer already. The Rules Compendium – honestly, trying to tell us that a database lookup table with a crippled search is “the next big thing” just doesn’t cut it nowadays. Give me their database and ruby-on-rails and I could reproduce it within 15 minutes. Give me an hour and I could make it a darned site better. It’s very, very poor.

And as for the rest of the goodies – I’m very much on the “wait and see but not holding my breath” side of the fence. I certainly wouldn’t consider a subscription based on something I haven’t seen with my own eyes. IF everything works as promised (and that’s a big if), then $60 a year for everything including Dungeon and Dragon subs will be a bargain.

As it stands, I think they’re promising just a little too much, have failed to deliver anything close to what they’ve said. And that’s going to cause a lot of people to back off.

greywulf’s last post: De Bellis Antiquitatis how I do love thee

I don’t think (and don’t like) this approach.

TheLemming’s last post: Cold Turkey