WotC has posted some updates to how D&D Insider is developing. Some of it is encouraging, some of it… not so much. There’s a rundown of the different services that are included, which also drops this in there (that I hadn’t heard about before):
A suite of small “bonus tools” that live on the web and help automate some basic tasks of being a player or DM.
…
The Ability Generator is useful for playing around with new characters. Meanwhile if you’re a DM, the Encounter Generator might be quite useful to you depending on your style. In addition, we’ve got a monster building tool in development right now that we hope will be ready before the Insider free trial ends.
I like that more tools are going to be included in the package, but at the same time, it’s the kind of thing that the fan community tends to do really well, and it’s difficult to imagine that WotC’s tool is going to be better.
Among the other announcements that stood out to me:
The Character Builder and the Character Visualizer are our current priority when it comes to the suite of client applications. Each will be available for the public to try out at Gen Con as we’ll have them installed on computer kiosks both in our booth and possibly also in the Sagamore Ballroom…
The Game Table is the biggest, most complicated piece of the whole package and it’s going to take the longest to get right. The good news is that it’s far enough along that it’s being used by a Tuesday night campaign being run at the office. The bad news is that the players take bets on how many times it will crash each week.
But possibly the biggest news in the whole thing? Or at least the part that will get people complaining? The money, of course!
Our current plan is to start charging for subscriptions before we have the client applications ready. That means the initial Insider subscription package will include exactly those parts that are currently in free trial mode: the magazines, the Compendium, and the bonus tools.
I’m not surprised that they want to start charging for Dragon and Dungeon ASAP. All that writing and layout doesn’t come cheap. However, the Compendium’s trial hasn’t really wowed anyone… seems like you’d want it to be really, really complete before charging for it, instead of charging for something that’s still in development. And they announced the pricing… but for those tools that they’re launching first only. Which means, this is specifically not the pricing that includes being able to play online. It’s the subscription if you want the magazines, and/or own a Mac.
Web-Content Only Subscription Package:
12 Months = $59.40 ($4.95 per month)
3 Months = $19.95 ($6.65 per month)
1 Month = $7.95 ($7.95 per month)
It seems odd to buy a 12 month subscription to something that will radically change in service later, and possibly encourage people to stick with fewer tools. Anyway, good to have some solid info, even if it still all is a bit of a mess.
(Thanks to Greywulf for inadvertently providing the scoop, and proving that Twitter is a useful journalistic tool.)
EDIT: Bonus tools are up.
I used to buy Dungeon for about $AU12.00/month (back in the 2E days) – so this seems like a really good price to me for Dungeon + Dragon. The other stuff is just a bonus. ($US4.95 is about $AU5.50 ATM).
While I really liked dungeon & dragon magazines – just the pricing model (with paying for services that are not avialable yet) makes it appear very unattrative to me. I was really looking forward to those long-announced tools – while I doubted to use them, I was at least curious. And with the stupid license they barred the ways for all open applications for 4th edition for quite some while to come.
I don’t think (and don’t like) this approach.
TheLemming’s last post: Cold Turkey
Isn’t twitter grand for delivering breaking news? 🙂
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 think others have probably said this, but my initial reaction was one of surprise that they where starting to charge for something that wasn’t complete!
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.
Anyone else notice that the Character and Campaign vaults have disappeared from the feature set? I guess that’s just good news for Obsidian Portal, since that’s our bread and butter.
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…
I think open beta of the Game Table would benefit WotC greatly if they truly wish to create a service roleplayers would really use.
ATM I wouldn’t think of paying a cent for that crap.
I think it’s a severe oversight to have them be PC-only. What is this, 1997? It’s not like Macs are unpopular right now or anything…
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).
It’s clearly not ideal; I wonder if the word from on high was to stop the bleeding [Dungeon and Dragon magazine costs]. I agree that those two things have demoed well, so they might land subscriptions on their own.
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
Wasn’t there some DM suite that we were all waiting on for 3.0 that got nixed? Or am I just imagining that?
The GSL prohibits 3rd party development of software. To quote from section 5.5 of the GSL “no Licensed Product will (a) include web sites, interactive products, miniatures, or character creators…”. This blows, IMHO. PCGEN was a life saver and blew away any of the vaporware that WotC promised for 3E. I’m sticking to my guns, and may have to eat crow, but I think that the DDI Game Table and all the promised tools will be either 1) vaporware, or 2) inferior to what the community could have developed. I mean the whole development cycle they are still seems amateur: “The Game Table… most complicated piece of the whole package and it’s going to take the longest to get right. … take bets on how many times it will crash each week…” — would you buy software from a game developer or a productivity software developer if you read something like this? I think not. Not until, of course, other people bought in first and there were a couple of steller reviews.
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? —
Greywulf Said:
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.
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.
Avaril: Just a note that back at D&D XP when we got our first looks at a lot of this stuff, the presentation was given from a Mac and the staff even admitted that most of them (Wizards staff) in fact have and use Macs primarily.
The business world rarely makes any sense.
Just a note, I’ve appended the post to provide a link to the Bonus Tools that are included in the subscription (but are still free.)
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.
I still feel they should have better billing options. Each book should come with a “key” of sorts that can be used to unlock online/digital versions of the books, tools, etc. This, imo, should include character generators which includes options for whatever book(s) you own. I.E. If you own the Forgotten Realms PHB, then you would be able to make a Swordmage with the online software. These keys would be associated with your login/password for the WoTC portal and would be a one-time activation type thing.
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.
I’ve gotta think they are trying to avoid the situation where a player who is interested in DMing doesn’t have access to all the tools they might want to begin DMing (not need, just want).
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.