Wizards VTT (re)announced

[quikdagger]

One suspects the idea occurred to them, and that therefore the issue was probably money. Those companies make big scratch on video games - why bother with D&D, especially given WOTC's probable financial turmoil, unless they get a big bankroll, which WOTC will not lay down? It's like wondering why that campy movie you saw on SyFy last night didn't hire ILM to improve on those lousy effects.

True enough, but I think it had more to do with those companies being tired of dealing with Hasbro and not WoTC. It was Hasbro/Atari that forced Turbine to place DDO in Eberron instead of Greyhawk like they wanted. It was Hasbro/Atari that made too many demands on BioWare concerning Baldur's Gate 3 that they decided to create Dragon Age instead. However, I do completely agree that neither Hasbro nor WoTC was going to drop any sort of money on this project.

I believe that WoTC ruined a perfect opportunity to successfully digitize the DND license. Instead of thinking along the lines of "if we make it play like WOW, then people will pay a monthly fee like WOW." They should have been thinking along the lines of leaving the OGL intact and creating a suit of working digital aides for playing the game. They are losing money hand over fist due to the inability of stores to move the books (which becomes very costly for WoTC when Saltire Gaming, just to name one gaming store, will not buy them unless on consignment) due to the DDI. IT should have worked like any other digital game. The DDI should've been free (especially for players) with the ability to "unlock" different books by use of an activation code. This would've sold many more books (not too mention the ability to use micro-transactions to sell classes, spells, races, etc...this is afterall why LOTRO and DDO have now become financially viable games) and kept a steady income.

Instead, I still play 3.5 and have fallen in love with MapTools

RPTOOLS FTW!

[dorpond]

Instead, I still play 3.5 and have fallen in love with MapTools

And that, my friend, is why we do what we do!

[Hawke]

I'd probably give it a fairer shake when I beta tested it, but since it seems all players will need a DDI subscription, it wont ever be something my group will be interested in. They'll buy their PHB but beyond that they aren't too interested in spending much more (other than getting their DM an occasional book from his wishlist).

[quikdagger]

I'd probably give it a fairer shake when I beta tested it, but since it seems all players will need a DDI subscription, it wont ever be something my group will be interested in. They'll buy their PHB but beyond that they aren't too interested in spending much more (other than getting their DM an occasional book from his wishlist).

Which is precisely why their model has failed miserably. I don't foresee a 5th edition being developed (at least not by WoTC.) I hope this is not the case, but the pay-per-month model is rapidly falling apart in the MMO industry so I can't fathom it being successful in the DDI world. But only time will tell.

[Hawke]

On the other hand, if I could pay and have 5 other players connect to me, it suddenly gets to be a solid option for 4E. Give me the importing of monsters/charsheets and access to token/monster images and dungeon tiles and it would be enough to keep me paying for DDI. Add in Gamma World support, too, and you're looking pretty good.

[Arimmus]

True enough, I still prefer something that I can make my own if I need to on the fly. Thus Why i love map tools. Like I said before the system is too campy for me and I rather despise anything d20. The one thing I will never ever get out of my head is that while in armor, you cannot shoot a bow for crap. In d20 Star Wars its Pointless to even have a blaster if you want some armor. I'm playing in a legacy era game now and I am playing a clone Trooper that was frozen for a long donkey time. I get a penalty for shooting in my clone armor. Pointless. But I digress anyways. WOTC is slowly but surely becoming "That Guy" of the gaming world. No one wants to be "That Guy". If you can not spot " That Guy" out of your gaming group, then it looks like you are That Guy.

[quikdagger]

I honestly think it has more to do with the overseers of WoTC but then I dont work there so I dont really know. Not sure about the whole armor causing ranged combat penalties (but then I dont play Star Wars, I play DND...although I thought both had the same general rules.) I do agree though that by making their VTT only usable with a single game system is biting themselves in the...well you know... However, all this is pointless as the GameTable was not released as promised when they screamed about it at GenCon when I went. This VTT they have in beta honestly looks too similar to D20Pro to me for me to believe that it will work any differently. They have came to this race too late. They failed miserably at their attempts to digitize DND. Even their "official" DND digital books lack simple digital enhancements (i.e. take a look at Paizo's Pathfinder Core Rulebook (digital version) and notice that the entire book is hyperlinked, which of course makes the pdf version actually beneficial to have at a table.)

The simple reality is that WoTC has turned into exactly what they claimed was the reason TSR failed when Willaims took over (Ryan Dancey, Vice President of Wizards of the Coast, believed that TSR failed because of "...a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy."). "Screw the gamers, they don't know what's best for themselves!" mentality. I mean the entire room did give WoTC a very loud BOO when they announced that the new DDI would have a subscription cost (I was there.) Instead they ignored the fans and did it anyways and now they are paying the price as stores are dropping the 4th edition books from their shelves (I mean why pay $30 for a book that I can just pay $10 or whatever every 3-4 months and just patch my CB for offline use..."oh yeah screw you offliners we are making it online only now") and their decision to put something that was actually a very hyped aspect of the new system (the GameTable...not sure where this VTT crap came from) on hold was the dumbest thing they did in this whole process. In fact the only reason I know MapTools exists was when I was searching for info on the GameTable and found numerous other virtual-tabletops and after a brief youtube search I discovered a tool that had fog of war and a vision layer and I havent looked back. God-bless open source! Never fails you when you want something to work and allow for discussion concerning its growth (I mean ever had Micro$oft ask you what you would like to see in Windows?). But I grow tired of my rant and will retire........for now

[patoace]

and their decision to put something that was actually a very hyped aspect of the new system (the GameTable...not sure where this VTT crap came from) on hold was the dumbest thing they did in this whole process.

Well, WotC did put a poll in their website about what the players wanted developed next, and the Virtual Table was the less voted option, so at least that was done because they listened to their customers.

[Arimmus]

The reason that (this is my opinion) the VTT was voted least was because there are SO MANY OUT THERE!. I have seen some that look very well done, and other, that could use some touching up on. I like Battlegrounds RPG (cost too much for some of my players) and I Love Maptools! How many D&D frameworks Have I seen for this program? I can think of at least 2 for 4th ed and more for 3rd and PF.

[plothos]

Take a bunch of players who game face to face or else already have a vtt they can use and give them a new system designed to require computer assistance to set up in the first place and of course they will prefer the all-but-necessary-requirement be filled first. The vtt came off as very cool fluff when a character builder came off as essential.

[quikdagger]

However, every aspect of the DDI seems, to me at least (other than the look), worse than the AD&D Core Rules 2.0 CD-ROM program from back in the day. If you combine the Core Rules program and Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas you have one powerful program that, again in my opinion, destroys every aspect of the new pay-per-month DDI tools.

[jfrazierjr]

However, every aspect of the DDI seems, to me at least (other than the look), worse than the AD&D Core Rules 2.0 CD-ROM program from back in the day. If you combine the Core Rules program and Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas you have one powerful program that, again in my opinion, destroys every aspect of the new pay-per-month DDI tools.

Wow..I was looking for my Win XP disk the other day(did not find it!!! ) ) to install a VB on linux and ran across that disk(2.0 Core rules). I don't even remember WHEN it was created, but I know it was before the FR Atlas and that was like 1997 IIRC.

[quikdagger]

The Core Rules 2.0 came out in 1998 and the expansion came out in 1999. The Forgotten Realms Atlas also came out in 1999. I think they were TSR's last ditch effort to try and make some money. The Core Rules program contained every single spell, item, class, monster, race, etc ever printed in any TSR DND book. It included every single book in .pdf form and included a search engine (like the compendium) to search for anything you want to look-up. When creating monsters, treasure (yes it had generators for everything), etc you could right click what you were looking at to bring up the "as listed in the book" file. The character system broke down every item to its equipped location, encumbrance, etc (again everything). It also came bundled with Campaign Cartographer and Map Maker Pro (which I liked alot but hated the .xml format it loaded out too...therefore hard to send to another machine to print if it does not have the CR program also).

The Forgotten Realms Atlas contained every single map ever created (up to its release date) from all the novels, books, modules, and magazines. They were all created using Campaign Cartographer so were quite easy to modify to fit your campaign. And since they were in CC it was easy to export the CC map you wanted and import it into Core Rules and begin placing locations from the Rules. Very nifty set of programs I must say.

[jfrazierjr]

Hmmm thanks for that. I thought it was out a bit earlier, but I never even looked at the CR's more than about 5 minutes. It did not help that I was not playing in a regular game at the time.... I have however used the FRIA quite a bit in the past.

[Arimmus]

God Bless 2nd ADND. TSR was much better at writing a RPG system than WOTC. Third ed was OK in my opinion but 4th ed takes away the ROLE PLAY ASPECT. Its all about combat and grind now... which the system was more suited for an MMO not a table top game. I still love the old days of NWP and WP. I mean, when combat was scary! However When my lvl 12/21 Fighter/cleric was able to defeat 666 devils within a segment it was then time to retire the character (YAY HOLY WORD AND EXTEND VOICE) But then again he was LVL 12/21! He in his own right was practically a god!