You know, I just had an interesting discussion today about some frustrations over D&D Insider. For those of you who don't know, D&D Insider is the subscription based plan that Wizards of the Coast offers for *around* 10 bucks a month. Not as much as an MMO but not dirt cheap / free either. Now, this said, it contains a lot of things, and those things are:

Dragon Magazine: Dragon Magazine used to be an actual published, buy-it-at-your-local-news-stand magazine, printed on that thing that's so becoming obsolete nowadays... What's it called? ... Oh yeah, paper. Anyways, Dragon contains so neat stuff. Mainly it contains stuff usable by players and DM's that tend to be, more or less, functional things. It has interesting game articles, it has stuff having to do with character creation, in-game locations (like cities and whatnot), etc. One of the other really cool things is that they publish content from upcoming books that tend to run about 35$ apiece, such as most recently, the Psion class available in the Players Handbook 3, which should be coming out in March of 2010, give or take a few months.

Dungeon Magazine: Dungeon used to be the sister mag to Dragon and used to also be on news stands most everywhere. This tends to be a magazine tailored to Dungeon Masters, more or less. It contains articles from the developers as well as actual designed adventures and encounters. Stuff you could throw into a game that way. Also a cool mag.

Digital Tools: This is super new (in relation to D&D) and it promised to be quite spectacular. The digital tools were meant to be downloadable tools which could be used to enhance your D&D experience. There were a whole list of awesome things coming down the pike. Among the original things slated was the D&D Character Builder, The D&D Compendium (an online searchable directory, not a downloadable bit of software), The Character Visualizer, Dungeon Builder and the D&D Game Table. Also, now, there is D&D Adventure Tools which includes the Monster Creator and only the Monster Creator, at the moment, but the opening "menu" has four buttons of five that are blanked out, looking to be spots for new applications to follow in the suite.

Now, all that said, there are some cool things and, truth be told, there are some things that are rather un-cool.

Amongst the cool things are the Character Builder. That's probably one of my favorite tools to use. It makes character building a snap and, so long as I'm doing online gaming and whatnot, I don't have to waste ink and paper. It also handily includes any races or classes released as bonus material in Dragon Magazine, as well as anything that's playable as a character out of the Monster Manual. It takes you through in nice easy steps, takes care of the majority of the math and sets up a great looking character sheet for you, to the point where you can even throw in a little .png file picture to use as a supposed character portrait so you can get an idea of what your character looks like. If you're Photoshop (or other picture editing program) savvy and artistically inclined, you can create your own pictures, save them as .png files and toss those in the file containing the pics and use your own. I really dig that.

Also within the realm of "cool stuff" is early viewing of content. I love getting my hands on a new class or a new race that gives me capabilities I didn't have before, that give me options I didn't have before and flavor i didn't have before. Granted, you COULD bend flavor around the other classes (you could have a fighter who's a theif, for example, but a rogue would just be a bit easier / more conducive to your goal, usually).

Now, unfortunately, there are some negatives. One big negative that I've heard talked about (and am still a tad on the fence about myself) is the subscription fee. Now, as Dungeon and Dragon used to be published magazines, I can understand the monthly fee for monthly content. That's understandable. That said, they've eliminated the need for paper, printing, publishing, etc. At least in big ways they've trimmed it down and saved money. I'm not saying that this negates costs altogether but I think it probably made it a lot cheaper. It makes me wonder about the price.

Also, an interesting little insight came my way and turned me on to the fact that some players really have a problem paying for updates to a program they buy, because once you download the character builder, you own it and can use it indeffinately with the content you've gotten while subscribing. This is where I'm on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, they're releasing new content on a monthly basis in the way of a new class, new race, new feats or whatever and once you've updated your character builder, you've got it and that's that. That said, a lot of people i've talked to think that the content offered isn't worth the money. I think it's cool and I like it but at times it does seem a bit sparse.

Attached to that is also the quality of the software. A lot of times there are bugs. Some pretty obvious or bad bugs. Bugs that are mentioned on the forum but, to my knowledge, seem to go unaddressed. Just about any patcher out there for software can do a hotfix for major issues. It seems that the software is still rather glitchy for a lot of people, leading them to believe to the extent that the company released, in actuality, something of beta test quality instead of final quality while still charging a price reminiscent of final version software.

Also a gripe with me personally is the promise of great things and then having them just go away. The above mentioned Game Table was going to be a utility that would allow gamers to connect all over the world. Gamer groups could connect with eachother thousands of miles apart and it could breathe new life into the game, even moreso than 4th ed did! It was a fantastic idea with high production value. It had a 3D dice tray with some physics to it where you could throw digital dice and, more or less, they'd react as real dice. There was a 3D window where a DM could import dungeons made with the companion Dungeon Builder and where players could import character figures custom created in the Character Visualizer and be able to play across the 3D map. This also had tools such as vision distortion for the players (also called "fog-of-war") which would hide things the players "can't see" yet and neat lighting effects. There's nothing out there on the market like this and I think that not making it was a huge loss and also took away from something that a lot of people payed good money for, thinking they were going to get it.

What's more, some of the software seems low quality. Now, I know what goes into making a game, I know that teams are tough and that schedules and deadlines need to be made and all the woes of production; I went to school specifically for game production. That said, it seems like the software quality is sub-par and if it isn't, the bug-fixing needs to happen more than a patch once a month. Included in that is the fact that even though a person is subscribing, they only get up to 5 updates a month. That's it. If they have errors and have to attempt updating again and lose their updates, that's it. Instead, I very much think that if you're paying to have some kind of software, as long as you're paying, you should have access to all the updates you need to keep things in top shape and best working order. Limited patches doesn't make sense and I feel it should be done away with.

Another gripe I have is perhaps with Hasbro or other company higher-ups with Wizards or someone who I'm not totally aware of. All I know is that, due to this economy (which is not entirely anyone's fault), Wizards of the Coast had to make lay-offs. This coming soon after they just released a great product and then they had to cut people. You know what people they cut? A big fat chunk of the Digital team. After that, you know what happened? The game table, the visualizer, the dungeon building utility, all shelved and the website was restructured to not indicate the existence of those things in any way. This frustrates me because, due to a decision made by some suits up top, a team got cut that could have HUGELY impacted the role-playing-game scene at large in a gigantic way. Those tools could have paved the way for entire new types of games, let alone new types of game-play. The tools also could have been fantastic marketing tools, as friends could get other friends who live very far away, into the game when otherwise, they might not get into it. That's free money that's just being turned down and it doesn't make sense to me.

*Sigh* I really do like Wizards and I love D&D. Like I've said a million times over, it's my favorite game ever. Sure, there are some things it lacks in a few places but overall, it's a blast and has brought more inspiration to me in the past years than anything else has in my life. But Wizards, you've got a great thing possible with D&D Insider and you're not using it to its potential; you're just not. Now, whether its the fault of not having enough dough, or whether it's having a vision that the players just may not know about or whether it's just a whim, I think that being in there and helping with the decision making, I'd change a few things and I'm pretty sure it would make a good deal of money. You are a business, after all, and I understand. I just think that changing gears and bringing back some of the awesome things that were promised at the beginning could really bolster your company in a lot of ways.

Guys, as always, thanks for reading and this, by no means, is me hating on Wizards, it's me trying to give some constructive criticism that, thanks to a buddy of mine, I was enlightened to today. I think it needs to be said and I think the players need to speak up more and try to let the company know what we really want. And maybe the majority really did want what they're doing right now but being a silent minority without even getting some answer, even if it's to the negative, isn't helpful. We can't gripe in the shadows but not get a word out asking for what we really want.

For me, it's more classes that feel different from the others, as well the old suite of D&D Insider software tools. If they got those back, I'd be a really happy camper.

Thanks again for reading and I'm thinkin' a lot of comments are comin' on this one. lol

~Andrew