Community

Q: Why have you decided to stop compiling the monthly magazine issues?
A: We have found that fans favor our articles individually as opposed to  downloading monthly compilations. This is not a reduction in content,  just a clarification of presentation.

This is a strange marketing decision taken here. Just because one of two options is favored by the users, doesn't mean they want to loose the other one. If 90% prefere to download articles you are still cutting of those 10 % that don't want to do so and you will also give those users a blow that did both. What makes it even worse: You don't specify which projects will benefit from this move, making it hard for people to accept it.
If you procede that way with other services, you might end up with only half the number of customers you could have and all that was done in order to save a small mount of overall time.
Unless there is a really small number of customers that downloads the compilation (lets say maybe <5-10%), you better keep on providing a service your customers are used to, especially if the effort to do so is rather small (putting some PDF's togehter and edit the layout is a one man job taking some hours at most).

Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.

Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?

Jan 13, 2011 -- 4:28AM, Dane_McArdy wrote:

Here's my main reason for why there should be a compiled issue at the end. If you want to go back and download a past issue, it sure is a lot easier to download the whole thing, rather then all the single articles one after another.

Also, so more people download single articles over the whole thing? Not sure how that means they shouldn't have it as an option. Who does it hurt?

I suspect that's precisely the reason they've chosen to stop producing them - if it's more difficult to download back issues, it's more difficult for the people who subscribe occasionally in order to get back issues, and the logic would seem to be that this makes them more likely to subscribe continuously.

Which is so stupid I struggle to believe it, except that it's pretty much exactly what happened with the CB.

Oh, is this another one of your anti-piracy stunts, Wizards?
Well done!
Because now only a fraction of these evil hack0rz will upload the individual articles for illegal download, because it's too much of a hassle, and not worth the effort.

Will you at least stick to the PDF format, or is it to much work to click on "print to pdf", as well? And hey, if you don't publish pdfs at all, the upcoming articles probably won't be read by non-paying readers at all!
In fact, they won't even be read by me!

Back then, when I used to be satisfied with my ddi subsription, I usually read the individual articles when they appeared on the wizards.com/dnd page, scan for stuff that I deemed interesting.
Once every couple of months, I downloaded the back issues so I'd have them for later reference.

Oh boy, once you've started messing up the ddi suite, you just don't stop, do you, guys?

Well, my subscription ends soon, and for the remainder of our 4E campaign, I'll just stick to the offline CB. Luckily, Dungeon didn't provide me with anything exciting, and dragon - I can do without "Fortune Cards" Previews, and whatever else you're going to come up with in the future...

Thanks for a great 1,5 years of ddi. It was fun while it lasted.

Eh, I dont think their data is completely accurate.  For instance the assassin article has been in my browser tabs since release.  I must have downloaded it multiple times.

I'll toss in my vote for bad idea.  I like the compilations.