D&D Insider goes "paysite"....sigh

Well, it has begun. Wizards converted most of their online D&D content to subscription-only on Tuesday. The price isn't too unreasonable: about $5 a month if you sign up for a whole year. What is unreasonable, however, is that they've started charging for D&DI now.

First, some history...Back when D&D 4E was announced, we were told that the game would launch with online content including:
1. New e-versions of Dungeon and Dragon magazine
2. Character Builder, a utility to build character sheets with access to all 4E material
3. Character Visualizer, a utility to design 3D minis of your characters and/or NPCs
4. Dungeon Builder, a utility to (what else) design dungeons with a wide array of tiles
5. D&D Game Table, a program that would allow DMs and player to play D&D online, using the minis and dungeons built with the other utilities

As to be expected, Wizards got behind schedule, and only the e-zines launched with the books. So, in the meantime, D&DI was slated to remain free to access until the rest of the suite was made available. However, it seems that Wizards has even gotten impatient with themselves and has now begun charging full price without having finished any of the other online content.

Now I might be willing to pay $5 a month for ALL of the D&DI features, but certainly not for ONE of them.

Sigh...oh Wizards...

 

Sounds like marketing didn't talk to programmers or resource management again. They promised the moon on a string but forgot to check the feasibility.

And I suspect pressure from Hasbro to start generating more $ as the corporation tries to milk the cash cow. Hopefully they haven't killed the goose with the golden eggs.

(Am I mixing my metaphores?)

 

You guys are getting silly. It's $5 a month for both Dungeon and Dragon magazines, plus additional features once they get around to it. You may argue that the PDFs have a lower page count, but given that you get both for less than the price of a single print issue of either, I'd say it's pretty good. The articles that they've published have been really interesting so far, and I expect the content will get better.

Yes, they haven't released the Game Table or builders, but to be honest, I'm expecting them to have more problems as they develop it, and still more problems when they release it. I'm pretty sure the character visualizer won't satisfy you guys, and for all the other features there are plenty of free options that won't involve fighting WotC's server (which, as the countdown to 4e and the launch of Tiny Adventures shows, WotC has this problem anticipating demand). Other things such as the index actually work really well, to the point where you could look up Martial Power stuff because they had uploaded the information to the system.

I really don't see how you're saying that you won't pay for this stuff. For the price of a sandwich a month or a computer game a year, you already get two good sized PDFs full of stuff that you can download to your computer or access anywhere you have an internet connection, the ability to playtest new materials, lots of extra fluff and crunch. The tools that they're promising haven't been delivered yet, but for $5 a month, I think you're arguing in bad faith if you're going to hold it against them. If they were sticking to their original idea of $10-15 a month, I could totally see why you'd be annoyed, but right now it's a great deal for what you're already getting with the promise that you'll be getting even more stuff.

 

I'm not holding it against them that they haven't finished all the content yet, I'm holding it against them that they're charging for the whole suite before the whole suite is online. Even though the price isn't that bad, I still can't help but htink, "Why pay $5 a month for just the e-zines now, when someday I'll be able to get ALL their stuff for the same price?"

All I'm saying is that I'm not subscribing until everything is done.

 

They have a terrible track record with software, I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Not happening. There is no way the full product will be offered at this ridiculously low price. And it's their good right to charge more; Dragon & Dungeon magazines alone used to cost twice this much, weren't copy-paste-able, and were advertisement-riddled wastes of perfectly good trees.

 

Remember when 3.0 came out? remember that it came with a CD in the back that was the demo for their character generating system? Remember that the disk was buggy, so you had to go to the website to download the fixed version? Remember how they promissed a complete system capable to creating all types of characters and monsters with the same functions, complete access to all weapons & stats and upgrades?
Remember what finally came out? "Master Tools"? Remember how much that sucked?

What makes you think WotC's 4.0 software would be any better?

 

I didn't know about that. I wasn't yet into RPGs when 3.0 came out. Well, in light of history then, I'm REALLY glad I'm not giving them my money yet. As I said, I'll wait until all the software is done.

 

Then they pawned off the license to Code Monkey Publishing to fix it. They did, mostly (I hear the math comes out wrong). But the prices to keep upgraded with data as WOTC frothed books was insane.