The Gaming Den

I may not be the first person to have this epiphany. I've worked in both the RPG industry and the MMO industry, so you'd think I would have figured this out 3 years ago.

4E isn't really a tabletop game. Many of us already knew that.

It's an MMO. Again, that's been said before.

But it's actually a BETA TEST for an MMO.

WotC has obviously realized that there is SO MUCH more money to be made in the MMO world than in the TTRPG world.

When we make MMO and CRPG systems, we usually playtest them as TTRPGs. Admittedly, the rules are just a few pages, and we are only testing combat. But that's how it starts. Before long you have a prototype of the game working and can make changes in the computer version. But the early workups are done offline.

What better way to use the D&D license? To suck in a couple hundred thousand fans as beta testers for the online game system (and world) that you are developing. And have them PAY for privilege.

I'm seriously not kidding. It's the only reason that some reasonably smart people would market a combat-centered MMO as a TTRPG.

If that's true, it's brilliant. Would redeem WotC as a competent company in my mind.

They probably have those guys who did that fine work on those many and various fine WOTC vapourware products on it right yestermorrow.

edit: The scary reality is that 4E WAS supposed to be a direct tie in with DDO products like the virtual table top and blah blah blah that would voltron together to form an MMO competitive online mega pressence. It's just WOTC couldn't get it's act together on time and produced a VERY late VERY poor product, in many aspects of promised features you were lucky if they did so at all.

3E came with promotional material for the same basic idea and WOTC screwed THAT up too.

4E is the empty husk of a major vapourware initiative. See they did the same thing with 3E but some genius went "What if we actually rely almost entirely on the Vapourware aspect for commercial success? You know, since it worked so well with that 3E toolkit business..."

It wouldn't have been that bad of an idea. Neverwinter Nights (at least the first one) was one of the best things to happen to both WotC and 3rd Edition. If D&D can get its act together by 5th Edition and produce something with features like they promised with their DDO and make the edition good enough it'll be a license to print money.

Considering how much money there is to be made in merchandising, I'm simply astounded that people don't take more time to make the merchandised product top-notch. I can sort of understand it for video games and movies since they're so astoundingly expensive and can't really change horses midstream if the product looks like it's going to blow, but books and TTRPGs and other traditional games cost way less. For the amount of cash at stake you can afford to look at a $400,000 project, glare witheringly at the sheepish staff, throw every book square at Andy Collins' nuts, then make them do it all over again.

That would make too much sense. As is, they have spent 3 years not making an MMO based on their mechanics so I think it really was exactly what they said it was at the time. A lame attempt by people who were playing too may MMOs and not spending enough time mathhammering D&D to write a new edition of D&D that simulated World of Warcraft.

-Username17

PhoneLobster wrote: edit: The scary reality is that 4E WAS supposed to be a direct tie in with DDO products like the virtual table top and blah blah blah that would voltron together to form an MMO competitive online mega pressence. It's just WOTC couldn't get it's act together on time and produced a VERY late VERY poor product, in many aspects of promised features you were lucky if they did so at all.

WotC are just a bunch of morons when it comes to anything online. They seriously think that a monthly fee to use a character generator is something people are willing to pay. I don't know who in marketing came up with that ridiculously stupid idea, but someone really needs to tell them that they're not WoW.

Swordslinger wrote:WotC are just a bunch of morons when it comes to anything online. They seriously think that a monthly fee to use a character generator is something people are willing to pay. I don't know who in marketing came up with that ridiculously stupid idea, but someone really needs to tell them that they're not WoW.

CB is all they had when the books dropped (so they needed to push it/support it to prop up the illusion that 4e was going to have this robust online component). It was also one of the few "points of light" in the whole edition for a lot of people (which they then proceeded to snuff out when they took it into the cloud or whatever). It's ultimately "bottled water"-ish kind of consumer logic (i.e. you can easily pick apart the fact that making a char-gen system so contrived and dumpster-divery that people would actually want to pay you more for an up-to-date, not-bad-but-not-particularly-awesome database is circular and insane, but whether or not that's true, there was clearly some sort of "market" for it and in that one respect they met the weird-ass "demand" reasonably well).

The CB is one of those things that should have been free. I have hooked/roped quite a few people into playing games just by posting them a link to the 3-level version and letting them play around with it.

Of course the problem with it is that if someone can get the milk for free, why buy the cow/books? If I were them I would make it free but also make updates rare. Like a once/year thing. And of course the problem only really exists because the fluff in those things suck. The Primal Power text block stories, as stereotyped and New Agey and wannabe NA as they were, was the only time I felt vaguely interested in reading through the books without wanting to min-max.

IOW my opinion is that if 5E is smart they will release a full character builder for free and make updates to it rare. Then they would focus a lot more on fluff and artwork for their books than they did in the past so people still have a reason to buy the dead tree edition. Of course that also depends on how much they want to go forward with merchandising; if they want to make that the big deal then updates should be frequent and still free.

Swordslinger wrote:They seriously think that a monthly fee to use a character generator is something people are willing to pay.

While that IS true they intended to be renting out a lot more than just a character builder.

It just so happens that they lacked the competence required to provide anything more than that.

They did however end up with a character builder, so they called it a great success and rented it out, because when they tried the same thing with 3E all they got was a fraction of a character builder.

FrankTrollman wrote:That would make too much sense. As is, they have spent 3 years not making an MMO based on their mechanics

Aha! In other words, it's going exactly according to plan.

All the errata and 4.5 are just tweaks to the system. If Google Mail can be in Beta for 5+ years, so can the next iteration of DDO...

The key to success is waiting for a chance victory and then claiming that all of your previous blunders were part of an elaborate plan.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The CB is one of those things that should have been free. I have hooked/roped quite a few people into playing games just by posting them a link to the 3-level version and letting them play around with it.

Of course the problem with it is that if someone can get the milk for free, why buy the cow/books? If I were them I would make it free but also make updates rare. Like a once/year thing. And of course the problem only really exists because the fluff in those things suck. The Primal Power text block stories, as stereotyped and New Agey and wannabe NA as they were, was the only time I felt vaguely interested in reading through the books without wanting to min-max.

IOW my opinion is that if 5E is smart they will release a full character builder for free and make updates to it rare. Then they would focus a lot more on fluff and artwork for their books than they did in the past so people still have a reason to buy the dead tree edition. Of course that also depends on how much they want to go forward with merchandising; if they want to make that the big deal then updates should be frequent and still free.

What about a free, robust character builder that incorporates the core books and then they piecemeal out CB updates for a nominal fee.

If each splat book could be integrated into the CB for, say, a dollar a book (or two, but not more than that, as iPhones have shown that 99 cents is the perfect impulse buy), but still require the book to make any use out of it, you'd have people impulse buying the rules additions into the CB and then going out and buying the books to make sense of what they just bought.

I could see that model working.

With the proliferation of e-readers, pads and netbooks the electronic subscription could become viable as a businessmodel, if it isn't already.

At first, I thought that 4e was supposed to be a beta for a web-based game. I mean, I had played Monster' Den 2 and it seemed like a proof of concept for the 4e ruleset.

At the end of the day, I think they drastically over-estimated their market position. I mean, Bioware has made the best DnD video games to date, and something must have happened for them to basically abandon DnD for their own generic fantasy world. Maybe WotC tried to up the licensing fees or demanded that Bioware use 4e rules (I know WotC tried to make writers of novels use 4e rules, and that was met with outright rebellion).

So WotC probably tried to get into the MMO market and suddenly were faced with the fact that no one wanted their crusty IP.

Double post.

I don't think 4E is actually that MMO-like. Sure, it has some of the same flaws as MMOs, like grinding combat, constant rebalancing, and lack of powers that actually effect the world.

But the basic system is not particularly suited for real-time combat; in fact, it's specialized for tabletop gaming. All those Interrupts/Reactions, for example. There's no good way to do those in real time (or even PbP). Needing to designate exact squares, likewise. And it still uses rest-based resources, which would need to be revamped for an objective time rate.

Not everything dull is an MMO.

Fuchs wrote:With the proliferation of e-readers, pads and netbooks the electronic subscription could become viable as a businessmodel, if it isn't already.

DDi is pretty much the lifeblood of WotC's role playing division. Even a conservative estimate of 25000 subscribers means at least 125000$ / month.

malak wrote:

Fuchs wrote:With the proliferation of e-readers, pads and netbooks the electronic subscription could become viable as a businessmodel, if it isn't already.

DDi is pretty much the lifeblood of WotC's role playing division. Even a conservative estimate of 25000 subscribers means at least 125000$ / month.

That means the gross income supports about 12 full time employees. That's not great.

How in the hell did they fail to make their own Maptool clone anyway?

fectin wrote:

malak wrote:

Fuchs wrote:With the proliferation of e-readers, pads and netbooks the electronic subscription could become viable as a businessmodel, if it isn't already.

DDi is pretty much the lifeblood of WotC's role playing division. Even a conservative estimate of 25000 subscribers means at least 125000$ / month.

That means the gross income supports about 12 full time employees. That's not great.

RPGs are not a great industry to be in. Being able to pay 12 full time employees before even considering book sales or licensing income is a position the competition can only envy.

That's gross, not net. You'd quickly lose employees to facility costs, operating costs, advertising costs and profitability.
Just off the top of my head. I mean, it's probably a decent ROI, but not a cash cow.

fectin wrote:That's gross, not net. You'd quickly lose employees to facility costs, operating costs, advertising costs and profitability.
Just off the top of my head. I mean, it's probably a decent ROI, but not a cash cow.

News at 11: TTRPGs are not a cash cow.


I wonder why you feel this is worth pointing out.

That's... true. Fair point.
DDi is probably pretty great for them if it has those kinds of numbers.