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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:11AM
#21
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doublereedkurt,
There are several things I don't get about WotC's handling of D&DI.
First, I don't understand how all the parts of the D&DI can not be ready? Why isn't at least the character builder up and running for June 6th? That can't have all the technical hurdles as the virtual gaming table. At the least, why not have had a couple of issues of Dragon/Dungeon standing by in May? Currently they have four articles... all welcome and marketting.
Second, I can't for the life of me understand why their web-site still does not clearly state that D&DI is not available. A large "Coming soon", the Recent News should state that things are not available yet, each of the tools pages shoud have a "Coming soon" at the top of the page and a current status of each of the tools.
Third, I don't understand why they didn't try to contact folks in the stores and running WWD&DGD prior to the 7th (knowing full well it wouldn't be ready) with instructions to tell new players that the D&DI would not be ready. There is something unethical about selling books which give away free offers or having thousands of folks giving away hundreds of thousands of flyiers talking about the online tools... knowing that none are ready. Emails, forums posts, contacting stores, etc. A lot of stores and people volunteered to run WWD&DGD and hand out flyiers for WotC. An appology letter/post on the site might also go a long way.
Forth, I don't understand why they can't answer the basic questions about the system. I see know reason why folks going to the site (and this forum) don't receive immediate information on pricing, target dates for release, weekly update of development.
Fifth, I can't understand why they don't make some type of effort to make-good for folks who are upset. A number/email for returns, some type of system to give folks say an extra 10 days in their trial for those faxing/emailing/mailing receipts prior to X date, a coupon for free figs or 10% off their next book, some type of "email me when it is ready" list, etc. Something? Anything?
The worse thing is not that they missed the release date, it is the total silence coming out of them. They can spend all this time, effort, and money marketting this product, yet they can't make any real effort keeping folks informed. This does not speak well of the company.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:20AM
#22
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The worse thing is not that they missed the release date, it is the total silence coming out of them. They can spend all this time, effort, and money marketting this product, yet they can't make any real effort keeping folks informed. This does not speak well of the company.
I think either:
a) People at WoTC themselves don't know any of this, because the project team working on D&D Insider has systematically misrepresented or obscured information about the status of their project, and have been in frantic meetings for several weeks now getting up to speed, leaving no time or clarity for issuing clear information.
OR
b) WoTC has known for some time that the tools are working very poorly in their current build and may never work as described by marketing and promotion, but lacked the integrity to say so, figuring that it was better to sell as much of the 4E as they could before they had to come clean to some limited extent.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:34AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jun 10, 2008
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From everything I have been reading and following with D&DI is that WOTC went in the wrong direction with development.
They looked at Blizzard and Sony and all the other online MMOs and saw that people were willing to pay $15 for a subscriptions service. This whole D&DI feels like they saw that, wanted in on the action, and then tried to make something that would fit into an existing model. And hey people already are used to buying packs of minis for tabletop games we could do the same model for vminis and people will naturally pay extra for that.
I have to wonder if this all would have gone better if they planned out what services they could have offered, then developed them and then figured out a pay method.
I disagree that it wont happen. It will. It will be stripped and rushed to start getting subscription money because that was the plan and focus. Customers pay for any old thing at $15/month right? Unfortunately there are far more failed online subscription services the successful ones.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:39AM
#24
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WotC needs to contact an actual MMO developer/producer and bloody get their help with this. That's how they are trying to run this, as an MMO. Go to Blizzard or something (Yes I said Blizzard, their game is up, and running and catering to the amount people playing).
Actually (and I mean this in no way to be flameful) if you look at the people developing or creating DNDi apps, you can see that they have a pretty decent grasp on the current industry.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:39AM
#25
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When they first announced gleemax I went and took a look. The very first thing that occurred to me looking at that site was that they SHOULD have started adding features to the message board. The whole thing just looked like nobody had actually sat down and thought the hard thoughts about how it would all fit together yet.
How do they possibly dream they are going to go from plain vanilla pre-packaged message board to fancy cutting edge web app in one step?
Gleemax itself is bug ridden, un-reliable, and slow. It's not very confidence inspiring that they can't even get a message board right but are trying something more ambitious.
There really isn't a reason that the character creator, at the very least, couldn't have been ready to go.
Personally I don't need DDI, but I do wish my books weren't peppered with ads for vaporware.
Whether it eventually comes out at this point or not it'll probably be a laughing stock. Right now they're on the second printing of books that advertise something that doesn't exist in any meaningful way. It's a joke.
"Too little too late" is my prediction. Every day that passes reduces the probability that it will be well received. I'd be glad to be wrong and have it come out and be fantastic, but nothing I've seen said or done instills any confidence whatsoever.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 6:58AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Apr 21, 2008
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Regarding the applications themselves, it is indeed very hard to predict in advance what the customers will want with these tools, ...
Again, I feel for you guys, but just wow. This says volumes. It is not hard to predict. Look at what's on the market. See what works and what doesn't. Directly ask your potential customer base well in advance of starting the engineering side of the project. This is Product Marketing 101, virtual or otherwise.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 7:56AM
#27
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Shepstone I think either:
...
(A) does not make sense since at some point, someone in sales, customer service, or marketting would demand to see the functional product. At about a month prior to June 6th, I'd want a "lock down" on the release. I'd want to see an issue of Dragon/Dungeon up there, the character builder, the dungeon creator, etc. Otherwise, I'd go through my list, put an X through each and say... "Better state they will be in a future release."
(B) does not make sense either. Ultimately, WotC isn't going to survive based on the initial release. Like all releases, only a small percentage of folks buy the first few weeks. Others hold off and in the end they make money on folks buying many books, figs, modules, etc. over time. Any company knows that a happy customer tells a friend, and that an unhappy customer tells ten. In even the short term, they would do better overall just coming forward.
I would vote for ...
c) Incompetence. They aren't a software company. They make books and figs which don't typically miss timelines. They don't have a corporate culture/policies such as milestone dates which cancel releases, IT staff ready to change their web-site hourly, ways of informing clients, plans for missing release dates, etc. I wonder how they managed Magic the Gathering Online?
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 8:13AM
#28
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Again, I feel for you guys, but just wow. This says volumes. It is not hard to predict. Look at what's on the market. See what works and what doesn't. Directly ask your potential customer base well in advance of starting the engineering side of the project. This is Product Marketing 101, virtual or otherwise.
This is again one of those moments where we have a choice, no matter how politely you put it, between "they're amateurs" and "they're covering their asses".
The many replies in this forum and the larger positive response to the 4E publicity suggests that it's very easy to say what the customers want. Most of all, clearly, they want the Game Table. I think many of them might even be willing to pay the announced subscription fee to get it, if it has the functionality that publicity describes it as having.
The rest of D&D Insider is fluff, and I don't think many people would pay the subscription to get it unless it's truly wonderful in some respect.
So if the people making D&D Insider don't know what the customers want, no wonder they're flailing around helplessly. If they *do* know, then my suspicion is that they've found that building the Game Table as it has been described in the publicity has turned out to be very, very difficult to do while keeping the development process cheap (I'm guessing that the functionality of going from the Dungeon Builder to Game Table is probably one of the prime difficulties, but who knows.) So if that's the case, they're in a bind: the service that would make the business plan viable is going to be long-delayed and may never work well. If you try to go with a subscription fee for the easy stuff, no one will subscribe. If you let people use everything but the Game Table for free, they'll squawk a lot more when you try to move it behind a paywall later on.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 8:18AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2007
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OH this is delicous. I wish it were simply a case of mere incompetence. that the programs were not ready. everything i have seen has indicated that many if not all of the programs are ready. (the articals in dragon make extensive mention of the authors playtesting the aplications themselves)
this is worse, it appears from what was said that the delay is deliberate to find the time when we are most likely to be willing to pay.
it is certain that at least the compendium and the visualiser work. The compendium was up breifly, and the visualiser was discussed in detail in "confessions"
this is the worst marketing ploy ever.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 10, 2008 - 9:09AM
#30
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Date Joined:
Aug 23, 2005
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OH this is delicous. I wish it were simply a case of mere incompetence. that the programs were not ready. everything i have seen has indicated that many if not all of the programs are ready. (the articles in dragon make extensive mention of the authors playtesting the applications themselves)
this is worse, it appears from what was said that the delay is deliberate to find the time when we are most likely to be willing to pay.
it is certain that at least the compendium and the visualizer work. The compendium was up briefly, and the visualizer was discussed in detail in "confessions"
this is the worst marketing ploy ever.
In fairness, I think this is unlikely. You can have mostly working versions of software that still have tons and tons of bugs or are not yet finished.
Although at this point, it is probably a good idea to just slap a 1.0 on some of those things and get them out there. I remember seeing a comment from the "Oak" compiler. (Which would eventually become Java). The comment was "don't have time right now to do unsigned data types, will do later". To this day, Java does not support unsigned data types. This would be a crippling lack for C, but it turns out people didn't use Java for C type tasks. They used Java for new things nobody had done before. If the folks at Sun had held the release of Java for unsigned, it would have been a waste of effort.
If you have a highly limited budget, you want your features to be as targeted as possible. Nothing is as good at teaching you what is important than getting your customers to use your product.
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