Und wer sollte das sein?
Einen Moment, der Oger schaut eben in seine Kristallkugel:
>>> Weisses Rauschen <<< Einen moment ... sie fährt gerade hoch...
>>> Microsoft-Logo <<< Jaja, du auch herzlich willkommen... kurz justieren...
>>> Sarah Palins Inaugurationsfeier <<< Das will ich gar nicht sehen... schraub... ah, jetzt hab ichs: Der neue Eigentümer der D&D - Lizenz ist niemand anderes als ...Trommelwirbel
>>> Gary Gygax! Mittels DNA - Proben aus handsignierten White Box- und AD&D-1- Büchern und Zellresten aus zu fünfstelligen Summen versteigerten Würfeln aus dem Nachlass konnte ein geheimer Untergrund - Kult, die sich die Jünger Des Wahren D&D nennen, durch Vorlesungen aus dem Buche Necronomicon, dem Buch Hezekiel und modernster Gentechnologie einen Klon hervorrufen, der, durch Kentniss der Fundstätten der Schätze der Maya, untergegangener vorderasiatischer Kulturen, und der CDU - Schwarzgeldkonten genügend Kapital aufbringen konnte, um eine gerüchteweise 14-stellige Summe für die Lizenz von D&D auf den Tisch legen zu können. Während die Wizards - Angestellten immer noch damit beschäftigt sind, das Geld in Schubkarren aus der WoTC - Konzernzentrale zu schaffen, gelten weite Teile der Geschäftsführung, darunter auch Bill Slaviczek, als vermisst. Die Seattle Metro Police bittet alle Bürger um Mithilfe, als dringend tatverdächtig gelten zwei kostümierte Männer, die sich "Vecna" und "Yeoghu" nennen sollen, sowie einige dutzend kleinwüchsige Männer in Affenkostümen. <<<
Also? Wer hat schon geschrieben?
Die Sache mit der Gesamtausgabe ist ja nur eine Tröpfchen im Fass der nervigen DDI-Entwicklungen. Ich habe WotC schon im April 2010 eine sehr ausführliche Mail darüber geschrieben, was mich am DDI und seiner Entwicklung stört.
Dear DDI-team,
I have been playing role-playing games for 25 years now (having started with red-box D&D) and 4th edition brought me back to D&D. Right now I am running two different campaigns for two groups as well as a few one-offs for various other people. I am a DDI-subscriber since 2008 and was very satisfied with the content provided. As of late, I have noticed a change in the direction you a going with DDI – a direction I do not particularly like. After having looked at the way things are developing regarding DDI for a few months, I felt I should simply tell you about what I don’t like and what you should change.
Problems with DDI:
1. Less and less ready-to-use adventure content. As a DM I am particularly interested in adventure content I can use without much preparation. And Dungeon magazine is providing less and less of it. Just a few numbers:
- Adventure content in July, August and September 2008: 119, 126 and 101 pages
- Adventure content in July, August and September 2009: 91, 72 and 80 pages
- Adventure content in February and March 2010: 62 and 54 pages respectively
This trend has been going on for over a year now and has been aggravated by the strict split of Dragon and Dungeon magazines into player and DM resources. Since Dungeon magazine has had a stable page count of about 100 pages, content like “Eye on the Realms”, “Creature Incarnations” and “Explore: …” moving over from Dragon is eating up space formerly filled by adventures. This results in a development of players getting more content while DMs are getting less (and especially less adventures). I see this as very problematic.
2. Recent focus on very low-level adventures. While I like the concept of the Chaos-Scar “campaign” (or adventure collection or whatever you want to call it), it is getting a little bit out of hand. My campaigns are high-heroic and mid-paragon at the moment and between the epic Scales of War and Chaos Scar I am getting almost no directly usable content right now.
3. Recent focus on short adventures. While I see some benefit in providing adventures and side-treks a DM can run as a one-shot on short notice, I think you have gone too far with this idea as well. The content has recently been split between one very good long adventure (Scales of War) and some very short, side-trek-like adventures with almost no story at all (Chaos Scar). The “mid-sized” adventures are missing completely.
4. Preview content in Dragon magazine. I am really annoyed by the fact that you are essentially making me pay twice for the same content: once via DDI and a second time when the book (recently PHB 3) comes out. This way you have essentially been wasting about 15 pages of space in Dragon magazine per month with stuff I have to pay for twice. This especially bugs me since you moved content over from Dragon to Dungeon magazine and, so basically now I get less adventures in exchange for “filler content” I will eventually get in a book I have to buy anyway.
5. Lacking online-play support. While I appreciate the tools DDI is providing (the character and monster builder are good tools) and I can see the difficulties in providing support for online play, I disapprove of the decision not to pursue the development of a tool for online play. One of my groups plays via the internet using TeamSpeak and MapTool. Those are both good tools and work reasonably well for playing online, but the fact that for example there is no connection between the monster builder or the compendium and MapTool means that I have to spend a lot of preparation time to get my adventures ready to play in MapTool.
Given the problems mentioned above, I would like to see the following changes. I know that you have to cater to many tastes, but I still hope that you will consider my ideas.
1. More (original) adventure content, less (or even better: no) preview content. I would definitely like to see more ready-to-use adventures. And if this should prove to be a problem of space, you should reduce (or drop) the preview content.
2. Better spread of adventures regarding level and length. Please stop publishing only adventures of side-trek length for characters level 1-3. Take a look at Dungeon magazines 155-160: these magazines had a good spread of adventures regarding length and level. They had side-treks, dungeon delves, additions to H1 and H2, shorter and longer adventures as well as the SoW adventure path – and about 100 pages of pure adventure content. Please consider taking Dungeon magazine more in that direction in the future.
3. New adventure path. I can understand if you take a short break from adventure paths after completing Scales of War. But since I play SoW with one group and we all like it very much, I seriously hope that you will start a new adventure path soon. If space is a problem, you might consider only describing about half to two thirds of the encounters needed for the XP-total in all detail and giving the DM short ideas for the other (“filler”) encounters.
4. Tools for online play. Even though MapTool is a great program, preparing to run an adventure using it is a lot of work. Therefore I would greatly appreciate some kind of help for online play. Untagged (player) maps for all Dungeon magazine adventures would be great as would be some kind of way to export monsters in a MapTool readable format. But ultimately a complete online platform provided by WotC where all Dungeon magazine adventures are ready to use when they are published would be the way to go. Take a look at MapTool and some user-created D&D 4e campaign frameworks for an inspiration on how to implement such a thing.
I hope you will consider my suggestions – especially because I think I am not the only one who feels that way. And while I love D&D and think DMing in 4th edition is a better experience then in any previous edition, I am not sure DDI provides me as a DM with enough material to justify renewing my subscription at the moment. Therefore I hope you will extend you “give a little love to DMs”-policy to DDI and make my subscription worthwhile again.
Best Regards,
Was ich daraufhin bekommen habe war eine Standardmail mit dem effektiven Inhalt "Vielen Dank für ihre Anregungen, sie gehen uns am Arsch vorbei." (nur in nett geschrieben ;) )
Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast! We place great value in the feedback, ideas, and suggestions of our customers. I assure you that Game Support meets with teams around the company on a regular basis, and we make it a priority that your voice is heard. While we cannot guarantee a direct response, we can promise that your thoughts and concerns are being passed along to the right people.
Bis dahin hatte ich tatsächlich die irrige Hofnung, dass WotC wirklich das interessiert, was die Kunden sagen. Ich Depp! ::) Denn sie haben nicht wirklich was an der Richtung geändert, sondern sie eher noch verschärft (bis auf den Online-Play-Support. Mal sehen wie der sich entwickelt).
Dementsprechend habe ich nicht geschrieben. Denn das juckt die Jungs sowieso nicht.