Critical Hits

Everything tabletop gaming since 2005

Inq. of the Week: D&D Insider?

by

Rumors are going around that this week D&D Insider will be switching over to paid only accounts, which means that we will no longer be getting a decent amount of free content in the online Dragon and Dungeon magazines.  What this does mean is that hopefully Wizards is getting a few steps closer to launching their beta testing for a few of their online products.  I know that a lot of you are dubious about all of Wizard’s attempts at online content and programs, but as we’ve said many times the previews we saw first hand at GenCon were extremely impressive and we are really anxious to get to try them out at home.

Last week we asked about which content you are most excited to see come out for 4th Edition, and an oustanding majority (62%) of you responded that you want to see the Bard, Monk, Druid, and other classes.  Second place with 13% was new options for existing core classes, like Two-Weapon Fighters or Ranged Warlords while Psionic Rules came in third with 10%.  Certainly all of these are big things that most of us really want to see and play with in 4th Edition, but it’s interesting to see what order we put these things into as a group and what is more important to us.  I’m curious if it’s just because we know the new classes that are going to be in the PHB2, or if these really are the things that people want to see next.

Today we’re very curious to know how many of you plan on signing up and paying for D&D Insider, and how many of you won’t be.

[poll id=”97″]

Comments

  1. I don’t anticipate D&D Insider having many of the promised features any time soon. The development is completely screwed up. For why, see my article: Oy! Hasbro! Developing Software Is Harder Than You Think

    I suspect you are right and they have got one of the tools online to justify the switch to paid-accounts. Probably a cut-down version of the Character Builder. But I think the move to charging is more to do with raising revenue.

    The original business plan for 4e must of included D&D Insider revenues from the book’s launch, e.g. May 2008. Six months later and there is still no income from D&D Insider but all those software developers and the writers for Dungeon / Dragon need to be paid.

    The books might be selling well but they are hemorrhaging cash on D&D Insider.

    Chris Tregenza´s last post: D&D Humor

  2. I wanted an online RPG presence a long time ago, so that’s why I built Obsidian Portal. The only feature in DDI that really appeals to me is the Compendium, and the current implementation is simply terrible.

    They simply have too many strikes against them for me to believe the upcoming tools will be worth the price. Plus, I don’t really use the Dragon/Dungeon material anyway. I like reading it, but it never actually makes its way into my game.

    Personally, I think that once they start charging, people will quickly move on to something else.

    Micah´s last post: The Awakening

  3. I too enjoy reading Dragon, but rarely if ever actually use any of the content. And what little content I do use presently will soon be replaced by offical books. I have no need for a compendium at this stage of the game, it’s pretty simple to remember where content is with only a few books. What I really need is a 3.5 compendium.

    I am interested in what the character builder will look like and might be willing to pay a one time fee to get the program. But I’m never going to be able to buy into the monthly fee payment system. It’s one of many reason’s why I don’t play WoW.

  7. I don’t expect anyone will vote for that option, but it makes sense for symmetry.

    I guess one scoop that we didn’t post about was when we demoed the gametable at GenCon, it had a drop-down menu for “System” implying that they’re planning on support for multiple games.

  8. I cannot help but think that I will probably sign up, but later. Their current offering doesn’t seem worth the money… yet… (and, as a computer games developer, I have to agree with Chris Tregenza’s comment that “Developing Software Is Harder Than You Think” – I know the man the Hasbro collared when they wanted to make games…)

    I would probably pay a one-off £10 (about $17.4 apparently) for the software, once it is ready, just out of professional curiosity if nothing else, but there is not much else there to interest me. The digital magazine stuff is not enough to justify the cost and renting software is not really something I would think WotC are good at.

    Give it time and the community will probably give us a 3D version of RPTools’ MapTool program (which is my personal choice for online D&D)…

  10. I’ve enjoyed reading the magazines over the past few months. I also find myself using the Compendium to look up stuff real fast as I have new character ideas, rather than pulling the book off the shelf.

    But am I going to pay for the service? I don’t know.

    While I like 4e (or at least significant parts of it), my group has been hesitant about it, and due to some unrelated scheduling issues, we haven’t had a chance to play it very much. It’s quite possible we’ll stick with 3.5 for most games. And if that’s the case, I’ll never use any of the D&DI content. So as of now it’s a question of whether I want to pay $60 to be able to get content I possibly won’t use sometime in the next year.

    As for the content itself, I have no interest in the character builder (I don’t need a program to tell me how to build a character), I have no interest in the game table (maptool works just fine), I can see myself spending a little time playing with the character visualizer (but not much, based on the screenshots I’ve seen). The Compendium could be helpful if it had any kind of acceptable interface (it doesn’t), and even more so if I could look up rules like I can with d20srd.org (which I use all the time). But as there are currently enough free tools (like Asmor’s) with better interfaces than the Compendium, I don’t have my hopes up. The magazines are okay, but while I like reading them, I don’t think I need to pay for them.

    So combined with a recent personal money crunch, I don’t think I’m going to be signing up for D&DI anytime soon. Unless I suddenly find $60, and then I might ;p

CC License

All articles and comments posted posted on the site (but not the products for sale) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. References to trademarks and copywritten material are included for review and commentary use only and are not intended as any kind of challenge.

Recent Comments

Contact The Staff

Critical Hits staff can be reached via the contact information on their individual staff pages and in their articles. If you want to reach our senior staff, email staff @ critical-hits.com. We get sent a lot of email, so we can't promise we'll be able to respond to everything.

Recent Posts

Top Posts & Pages