D&D 4E 4E WotC Tools dead?

[delericho]

I can see turning off new subscriptions and renewals if you are contemplating turning off the service in a year or so. I don't see a situation where allowing renewals, but not allowing new subscriptions offers value to the company.

It's possible that they've had significantly more IT-related issues associated with new accounts than with simple renewals, and that as the service winds down they've therefore cut that more labour-intensive part of the system.

(Plus, of course, they've probably still got a significant number of customers on monthly auto-renews, so switching that off probably means turning out the lights in short order.)

If this is right, I'd expect them to write to customers in the near-ish future saying that they'll be turning off the renewal process fairly soon, and giving people a last chance to renew for, at a guess, another 12 months.

 

[darkbard]

And ... neither Jan's link above, nor any of my bookmarks, nor following the digital tools login link via wizards's tabletop games page works for me. I'm getting a broken link message, "unable to find...."

 

[Nagol]

It's possible that they've had significantly more IT-related issues associated with new accounts than with simple renewals, and that as the service winds down they've therefore cut that more labour-intensive part of the system.

(Plus, of course, they've probably still got a significant number of customers on monthly auto-renews, so switching that off probably means turning out the lights in short order.)

If this is right, I'd expect them to write to customers in the near-ish future saying that they'll be turning off the renewal process fairly soon, and giving people a last chance to renew for, at a guess, another 12 months.

Typical systems use the same work path and components for manual renewals and new subscriptions -- you pretty much need to: payment details change (people move, credit cards expire, etc.) which has to be factored into the system design. It is much easier to provide a simplified entry onto the subscription path than to create a nearly identical work path with the same necessary data collection points and failure possibilities. Which is why it is so odd.

One thought I had was they have reallocated server resources down to support their current customer count and are afraid that new subscribers will degrade the experience for everyone, but that would be a weird problem to have since subscriber bases always suffer some amount of churn over time.

 

[D'karr]

Their entire site has been a mess for quite a while. Some changes have been good but most changes seem like changes for changes sake. Their changes to the forums and subsequent removal of the forums just seems to show the same ineptitude. There are so many broken links within their infrastructure that it just points to a carelessness beyond measure. Their whole domain structure is hosed; dndinsider.com redirects to ddi.wizards.com, which is not found. This page http://dnd.wizards.com/digital_tools has a link to the legacy tools that is ddi.wizards.com but a link to the Fantasy Grounds Virtual table works fine. It seems like they might be restructuring things but it would be nice if they announced things for those that are actually spending money on their product.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Their entire site has been a mess for quite a while. Some changes have been good but most changes seem like changes for changes sake. Their changes to the forums and subsequent removal of the forums just seems to show the same ineptitude. There are so many broken links within their infrastructure that it just points to a carelessness beyond measure. Their whole domain structure is hosed; dndinsider.com redirects to ddi.wizards.com, which is not found. This page http://dnd.wizards.com/digital_tools has a link to the legacy tools that is ddi.wizards.com but a link to the Fantasy Grounds Virtual table works fine. It seems like they might be restructuring things but it would be nice if they announced things for those that are actually spending money on their product.

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed that they don't seem to even know about the concept of a mailing list. I mean they got my money, and they HAVE my email address, they should tell me what URL to use to get to what I pay for!

Everything seems to work BTW for me now. I wouldn't be surprised if people have some DNS issues for a day or two. CB works, the Compendium oddly enough hasn't changed URL, and etc.

I have to agree that WotC's web presence is basically crap. Whomever is in charge of it should get the boot in the arse. Its right about Christmas time, should be appropriate! lol.

 

[RedSiegfried]

I wouldn't start panicking over some broken URLs. Wizards has never been known for their web savvy - this stuff happens.

Until I hear an announcement from WoTC that they're taking down the tools, I'm not sweating it, and even then I'll only be somewhat disappointed.

That having been said, if you don't make character file backups, especially in a format that you can read without access to the CB, you're just asking for trouble, and always have been. Personally, I back up character files every time I level up and I also print to PDF and archive those. That way, electronic or not, I'll never lose my characters.

Remember, if it's not in your physical custody, you don't own it. The cloud is just another term for "some other guy's computer."

 

[RedSiegfried]

Also, when I read:

"The D&D Insider digital tools are now located here for current subscribers. The tools are not available to new subscribers at this time, but existing subscribers can continue to renew the service."

I interpret that as meaning the page at which you can sign up for new service is not available at this time, probably due to them scrambling to fix whatever they broke. Still, it sounds bad ... makes it sound like no one will ever be able to sign up again. Hopefully that is not true.

 

[darkbard]

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but disallowing new sign ups would hasten the decline of subscriptions, thus justifying killing the tools for good.

Btw, the builder only works for me on Firefox; is that others' experience as well?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but disallowing new sign ups would hasten the decline of subscriptions, thus justifying killing the tools for good.

Btw, the builder only works for me on Firefox; is that others' experience as well?

I don't think Chrome has a plugin for Silverlight, at least not anymore. They've pretty much done away with plugins. IE can certainly handle it though, if you bother with IE. My Firefox on Linux, with the right carefully installed version of 'pipelight' actually runs it pretty well, except for the weird resizing bugs, but I think those are basically inherent to the CB.

 

[delericho]

That having been said, if you don't make character file backups, especially in a format that you can read without access to the CB, you're just asking for trouble, and always have been. Personally, I back up character files every time I level up and I also print to PDF and archive those. That way, electronic or not, I'll never lose my characters.

Yep. Whether it's tomorrow, next year, or a decade from now, those tools will eventually go offline. And they may do so without warning (if there's an inopportune server failure, or something). So it's always wise to be prepared.