Community

Apr 18, 2012 -- 5:11AM, AsmodeusLore wrote:

I think you might be reading a bit too much into it, Paulon.

I'll tell you why I'm not terribly worried at this point. The D&D Insider program has been successful for 4e. People are paying a subscription for these tools, and WotC is making money off of it.

I would bet anything that there will be an Insider type of program for 5th edition. I don't expect it will support 4e forever. At best, the current tools will be kept available and alive for a number of years, but not actively worked on or supported before finally being discontinued. For some reason, they don't feel comfortable revealing that. WotC isn't a software company. Maybe they don't realize that software is sort of expected to decay eventually. But support for the current version will certainly happen.

This. Whilst I will criticise WotC (and have done) for bad decisions and poor handling, I don't think we can reasonably expect any more than this. The dev team is small for the reasons AL has set out above and they are not going to commit resources to maintain what ultimately will become legacy products. They will instead want to commit as much as possible to ensuring the next edition tools are the best they can be and frankly, that's what I want them to do!

Personally, I would like to see all the lessons that hopefully have been learned in developing D&DI for 4E around managing expectations, promising deliverables rather than ideals and listening to the customer base, applied successfully to the 5E tools. That means I want them to put as many people as possible onto making the tools as good as they can be. If that means the 4E tools are no longer supported 6 months to a year into the new edition then so be it. The only thing I would say is that I hope they have also learned lessons they should have around communications and will tell us in plenty of time when this is going to happen.

Feb 26, 2012 -- 11:58AM, Style75 wrote:

Imagine for a moment if WotC posted on the forums and said:

"Hey guys, we'd like to continue to support the 4e tools into the future but we're not sure best how to do that. How can we create archival quality software that will still be accessable into the future given limited resources to support 4e products? What advice do you have on setting up such a system?"

Asking the client what they want is the cornerstone of marketing and customer support. There's also a lot of very  knowledgable people on these forums who make a living in techonology and would undoubtably give some good advice on the topic.

You've got to get into the forums and talk to the people who pay for your product. Vague comments in Twitter are not a good form of communication. Don't be afraid of us, we want to help you help us.

Speaking as one of those knowledgable people, I can tell you that the server and HDD space is dirt cheap for something like this. If they are paying more than a couple hundred a month, they are getting [explitive deleted]...

Mar 20, 2012 -- 1:00PM, Marandahir wrote:

I still want access to the tools.

Wait now, are you complaining about how the money is folded now?

Apr 30, 2012 -- 1:57PM, AsmodeusLore wrote:

Apr 30, 2012 -- 12:53PM, lokiare wrote:

it would be dirt cheap and 3-5 members would easily cover the cost per month

Citation Needed.

First site I found:

Cloud Computing $0.015 per hour of actual usage (it scales base on use). $10.95 per month for 356 MB and goes up from there. Scales so I would say it wouldn't go above $100.00 per month which means what 10 subscribers could keep it going?

Really, not that much. I'm sure if you look around you can go cheaper.

Apr 30, 2012 -- 3:42PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

It really depends. If DDI is making money, I could imagine that any D&D Next tools could be additive, without removing any existing tools. But, even in that scenario, from a business perspective? I would want to see if people really stay on 4E. For example, imagine that right now they were sustaining a 3E tool... it would be a waste of resources for them. They would earn so little goodwill (and associated revenue, etc.) that it wouldn't be worth it. And their support for an old edition would be contrary to their goals. For example, most of us would say that building 3E support right now would detract from their goals for D&D Next. Over time, that can happen again. We want them focused on the current edition of the game (whichever that happens to be at any given point in time), not the previous one that most people aren't playing.

But, the model isn't clear and won't be for some time. Maybe it will make sense for them to support 4E tools after D&D Next's release. Maybe it could be done in a way to keep things separate, not cause confusion for a new player, and get both goodwill and still be focusing on where they should (D&D Next). D&D next speaking to previous editions might allow for both.

I do know I'm having a blast with 4E while having a lot of interest in D&D Next. It will most likely be my new edition, just as all the previous ones replaced the one before it. I will, as I did before, want Wizards to put their energy on the current edition.

We are not talking about 'extra energy' we are talking about putting it on a scaling cloud server until subscribers can no longer support it, then letting it quietly die (but giving a copy out to everyone before you shut it down, open source it at that point and let others mess with it).