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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 8:19AM
#291
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2001
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Then you are perpetuating the problem by being passive and allowing people to take advantage of you.
Well, from my experience, I achieved much more by being nice, forgiving and helpful than by being outraged. If you rage against anyone they usually become defensive and you achieve nothing.
I wish I would have controlled this kind of emotion more often, since I did some very stupid things out of rage.
They have done nothing to rectify the situation they gave a half hearted apology insinuated it was our fault we didn't read ampersand and told us how hard their job is.
Well, I did not understand what they where saying in that manner.
Ceterum censeo scrinium puniceum esse delendam
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 8:28AM
#292
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2001
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http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000 … art_01.htm
Well, ok, you found one, gratz 
In fairness, the biggest issue most people have is not that DDI is delayed. The biggest issues is that DDI was used to push sales of 4e books.
Well they wanted to give us something really cool in adition to the books. I really don't think they missed the deadline because they wanted to.
In fact, there are STILL banner ads running that suggest this. ENWorld has an ad TODAY that says Level Up with D&D Insider and 4e.
Well, yeah, that is bad policy, I agree.
Making one small half article saying this while AT THE SAME TIME going full guns blazing around the world showing off DDI how it would enhance the 4e experience is full of misleading advertising at best. To suggest that all those customers should have know better than to believe what WoTC was selling is just pure arrogance.
I never said that it was great what they did. They made a mistake. But I can totally understand that they failed to achieve that goal. And to stop a marketing machine or rethink a strategy is something that is not that easy.
I guess that some devs had concerns that they wouldn't be finished in time at least 2 months before the books where released. But there are always these people who say "Oh, that's not a big deal, we will make it, just work a little harder". Well I guess they worked harder and still missed the deadline.
I hoped that at least the character generator would be ready. What bugs me is that they prohibit us to distribute our fan made char gens while at the sime time they can't make their own.
I honestly hope they will change their policy about char gens and NPC stats.
But this is an other matter.
Ceterum censeo scrinium puniceum esse delendam
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 8:46AM
#293
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There are many examples of software being delivered on time, it not that hard to find them. As an admin, I have many times helped design and deploy software packages that our in house team has developed. These are often quite large and on more than one occasion, taking more than a year to implement. We have met our target dates and major project milestones on time on many of these project because we had to.
We have never missed our target date without the following the conditions.
1. Let management know it will be missed and give more reason other than software development is hard. If I used that excuse to our clients or our management, yeah, I'd likely be told that flipping burgers is pretty easy.
2. Being asked by management to put project on hold for any number of reasons.
In short, the biggest problem that they had here was managing expectations. WoTC simply didn't do it for the users. I would imagine that marketing told them to keep quiet about the status so that the books would sell. From what I have read elsewhere on the net, I would guess that WoTC is not sinking much money into this project while increasing the scope. Understaffed and undermined, they were doomed to failure. Yes this is pure speculation, but I have seen such happen before.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 9:02AM
#294
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2001
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1. Let management know it will be missed and give more reason other than software development is hard. If I used that excuse to our clients or our management, yeah, I'd likely be told that flipping burgers is pretty easy.
Of course that's not the excuse. There are a lot of things that are difficult and that will have to be done in time.
And I don't think they missed the deadline just because software development is difficult. However, if you want to release your stuff to a broader market, and there are thousands of people who just have nothing better to do than to break your application and exploiting it intentionally, things get very nasty pretty fast.
And WotC is completely new in that buisness. And companies which have developed software for decades also sometimes miss their deadlines.
But I am repeating myself. I think everything useful was said. If you want to be angry, of course you have a reason to be (you will always find a reason to be mad at someone or something). But I don't think it is necessary and I don't think it will achieve anything.
Ceterum censeo scrinium puniceum esse delendam
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 2:39PM
#295
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Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2008
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Of course that's not the excuse. There are a lot of things that are difficult and that will have to be done in time.
And I don't think they missed the deadline just because software development is difficult. However, if you want to release your stuff to a broader market, and there are thousands of people who just have nothing better to do than to break your application and exploiting it intentionally, things get very nasty pretty fast.
And WotC is completely new in that buisness. And companies which have developed software for decades also sometimes miss their deadlines.
But I am repeating myself. I think everything useful was said. If you want to be angry, of course you have a reason to be (you will always find a reason to be mad at someone or something). But I don't think it is necessary and I don't think it will achieve anything.
But Wizards isn't new to the business. They've been failing to produce great software for nearly ten years now.
Meanwhile, most software is released on schedule and on time. I'm using a piece of software that was released on time to type this message. It's running on an operating system that was released on time, while I listen to a music player that was released on time. Running in another window is a development studio that was released on time, and I'm using it to write software that will be released on time.
The problem with your post, with wizards of the coast's equivocating, is a common one in our industry. Huge problems are treated as normal, and the company never makes an attempt to correct major mistakes, because they act as though they're common. The company produces an impressive track record of terrible software. Here's an excellent article about it: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Co … 0x3f_.aspx
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 2:49PM
#296
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But Wizards isn't new to the business. They've been failing to produce great software for nearly ten years now.
Meanwhile, most software is released on schedule and on time. I'm using a piece of software that was released on time to type this message. It's running on an operating system that was released on time, while I listen to a music player that was released on time. Running in another window is a development studio that was released on time, and I'm using it to write software that will be released on time.
The problem with your post, with wizards of the coast's equivocating, is a common one in our industry. Huge problems are treated as normal, and the company never makes an attempt to correct major mistakes, because they act as though they're common. The company produces an impressive track record of terrible software. Here's an excellent article about it: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Co … 0x3f_.aspx
Im assuming by your post that you can't possibly be using Windows as every version since at least 2000 has been delayed by a year plus. Actually I suspect that most programs are delayed at least by some magnitude. The only difference between DDI (and most games which get delayed all the time) and the type of software that you are using is that most of those companies (lets say Adobe, Apple, even Microsoft to a degree) generally do not majorly publicize when their product is going to be released till they are sure. However, games generally work very much on hype, so they want to release the date. However the developers can sometimes go "Wait, it won't be ready" and the marketing group won't listen. Not sure if thats what happened in WOTC case but it happens.
I agree with the second part of your post is that delays such as this and issues generally go ignored in the long run because its been seen as the norm. The issue with this is companies that have a corner in a market such as WOTC and Blizzard (Microsft being another), that you basically can't get your fix of their specific brand (D&D, Diablo, Starcraft, Windows) are forced to wait regardless and generally will still get it when it comes out. In some cases you can get your fix elsewhere (Mac OS X for example) but its still a long way from overtaking the main beast.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 3:26PM
#297
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Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2008
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Im assuming by your post that you can't possibly be using Windows as every version since at least 2000 has been delayed by a year plus.
The original announced date, in 2005, for Windows Vista was sometime Fall 2006. The OS was released to business users in November 2006, and to home consumers on January 30, 2007, as announced in March 2006. If you want to count that as a delay, that only half their customers got it on-time, I'll accept that, but the correct date was announced March 2006, so it's not really comparable.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 3:45PM
#298
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As I have stated im not going to get drawn into arguments. Vista was delayed multiple times and can easily been said to have been released too soon. Nevermind that many of the big features that were promised weren't released (like a revamp and new shiny file system). Things were cut to get it "on time" as it were. So Windows is a bad example. I also don't think all games are released off schedule but I would say enough that its well known games miss dates.
On that im done with this subject.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 4:18PM
#299
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Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2008
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As I have stated im not going to get drawn into arguments. Vista was delayed multiple times and can easily been said to have been released too soon. Nevermind that many of the big features that were promised weren't released (like a revamp and new shiny file system). Things were cut to get it "on time" as it were. So Windows is a bad example. I also don't think all games are released off schedule but I would say enough that its well known games miss dates.
On that im done with this subject.
You always do this- you say a bunch of stuff that isn't true, and then you say, "NO I DO NOT WANT TO ARGUE".
The only event that could be arguably perceived as a delay was listed in my previous post. At the time of Vista's announcement in Summer, one date was given: Beta 1 was given for August 2005, and that date was met. Beta 2 was initially announced for late 2006, but was released nearly a year early, RC1 was released on-time.
You might be thinking of the development of longhorn, during which a lot of back-and-forth occurred. But as mentioned before: no release date was offered during that period of time. It was still a mystery technology in development. Even in that case, though, the "series of cutbacks and delays" is untrue. There was one cutback/delay that happened in Late August 2004, it was announced in full and there were no release surprises, and that is all.
And I didn't accuse you of thinking that all games were delayed. I accused you of thinking most games are delayed, or the majority are. A few are delayed. A fraction of those few are wildly successful. The trick is that if you have to ask yourself if a delayed game will be any good, it won't be.
EDIT: As for Vista being released too soon, Vista, XP, Leopard, Visual Studio 2005 (my development suite), Firefox 2.0 (my browser), and iTunes for windows (my music player) all required a point release before they stopped sucking. If D&DI were feature complete, and released with beta-ish bugs, I'm sure people would complain, but I'd be too busy DMing right now.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 08, 2008 - 4:27PM
#300
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You always do this- you say a bunch of stuff that isn't true, and then you say, "NO I DO NOT WANT TO ARGUE".
The only event that could be arguably perceived as a delay was listed in my previous post. At the time of Vista's announcement in Summer, one date was given: Beta 1 was given for August 2005, and that date was met. Beta 2 was initially announced for late 2006, but was released nearly a year early, RC1 was released on-time.
You might be thinking of the development of longhorn, during which a lot of back-and-forth occurred. But as mentioned before: no release date was offered during that period of time. It was still a mystery technology in development. Even in that case, though, the "series of cutbacks and delays" is untrue. There was one cutback/delay that happened in Late August 2004, and that is all.
And I didn't accuse you of thinking that all games were delayed. I accused you of thinking most games are delayed, or the majority are. A few are delayed. A fraction of those few are wildly successful. The trick is that if you have to ask yourself if a delayed game will be any good, it won't be.
I get sick of beating the dead horse, and obviously your viewpoint on facts differs than mine. This is the same idea as debating religion (which I used to do quite frequently). There gets to be a point where there is no point. Beating the same crap over and over again is useless and gets me angry. I come to the forums to read and talk about things I like and positive things. If I wanted to have arguments, I would go back to debating religion.
However, heres a few things on Vista.
http://news.cnet.com/Vista-debut-hits-a … tml?hhTest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4831374.stm
Now just cause they announced long before "Yeah, we are delaying it till January for everyone." does not mean it was not a delay. It just means that they delayed something before the actual date. Unfortunately, the WOTC delay occured by passing the deadline (tho arguably they had an article up a while back but it was not widely publicized and it was hard to find.) Again this also doesn't count for the many features that Vista (or Longhorn originally) were said to have such as WinFS. These features were dropped due to the fact they would already push the 5 year gap between XP and Vista even further.
And I don't even say the majority of games, but if you try to claim that no games, even big games like Half Life, any game Blizzard has ever made among others weren't delayed at some point from when the date (be it announced or even speculated from leaked info) then you are missing something or I have been duped from the many news sites I have read.
Now, if you want to continue beating the same dead horse, feel free. As far as I am concerned, we are done with this. It really doesn't even matter what other companies have done or do, this is about WOTC and what they are doing. The reason I try to remove myself is because it either detracts from the original thread or it turns into a hate fest.
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