Community

Wow been out of the loop this week. Just looked over the forums before our game tonight and WOW.
I just contacted CS for extended time, but this is Sunday so...

I have been barking at DDi for a while now. I hope more people stand up.
Everyone should make some noise.
STORM THE GATES !

Sep 19, 2010 -- 12:53PM, huddlebu wrote:

Why should we have to ask at this point?

I could not have put it better.  Grass roots move, cancel the auto renewal everyone.  Corporate koolaid drinkers you can skip the last part.

 

Sep 19, 2010 -- 11:10AM, The_Jester wrote:

And now we run into the EXACT same problem we have had since day one of DDI. No information coming from any official source. It's all speculation and hey maybe's.
 Just one more screw up in a LONG LONG LONG line of screw ups dealing with DDI. But hey, at least this fiasco has diverted attention away from the fact that there are no new tools coming out.

QFT.

Mudbunny, I'm tired of the the word nitpicking.  We can go back and forth all day on what we think each other meant, but it isn't going to matter one bit.

The way I see this whole thing (just to bring this whole thing back to the original topic of the thread):

1.) Crunch content per article has decreased in quantity in Dragon and Dungeon.
2.) As more races, classes and options have been added to the game and the articles have maintained their single race/class/option focus, the percentage of articles with materials relevant to a given character's race/class/option combinations has decreased.  When Dragon first went online for 4E, there were 8 classes to serve with articles.  Now there are about 3 times as many classes (plus hybrids) to service.  Once there were 8 races to service - now we have about 3 times as many.  That means that we've seen a 2/3 reduction in the chance a particular article will service our character.  This 2/3 reduction is not the same as the reduction in the amount of crunch per article. 

When you combine the reduced crunch per article with the reduced applicability of artivles to individual PCs, I'd estimate that we've seen an 80% to 90% decrease in the amount of applicable material generated in a given month on average for a particular PC.
 
3.) Updates to Compendium, CB and MB have become more unreliable and have been delayed and/or skipped.
4.) No new Insider programs (like the MB) have been announced, although we've been told that one is just around the corner (and has been just around the corner since early in 2010).
5.) The CB and MB have really not evolved in about a year. The MB is still beta, and the CB still lacks a lot of functionality (basic implementation of homebrew magic items, power cards where we supply all the text, etc...) and contains a lot of errors (missing data, incorrect calculations, etc...)
6.) Editing within the Compendium, CB and MB have all taken a hit over the past year.  I encounter more mistakes that should be cleaned up - and probably should have been cleaned up before the material was presented if WotC wanted to prodice a professional product.

All in all, the quality seems to have taken a huge dive over the past 2 years.  It screams to me of understaffing.  Considering the number of members of the Insider group (~40,000 - which may not reflect the total number of Insiders) each paying ~$60 per year on average minimum, there should have been millions of dollars to support the cost of Insider.  That is in addition to a portion of book revenues, supplemental materials (figures, dice, adventures) revenues, etc...

6.) For those that paid the intro rate for their first two years of service, reupping in September/October/November would represent a ~20% price increase.
7.) WotC has not announced a massive refund for the month of lost service.  I would guess doing so would cost them so much revenue that it could kill DDI if they do a one month massive refund.

Less applicable crunch contenter + lower quality + higher prices.

All of that on top of the benefits of Insider not being well suited to a subscription model.