WotC’s strategy concerning D&D 4 was subject to many discussions, few of them with a positive regard. The relaunch of the Character Builder and the Monster Builder using Microsoft Silverlight have also been subject to much criticism. Now it may be time for those people to say “I told you so.” I also joined that chorus. And now Mary-Jo Foley reports on ZDNet Microsoft may only be releasing one further version of Silverlight and that maybe only for the Internet Explorer.
Surely the current version will still be available using current Silverlight players, but there will be a point in the future, when the last bugfix to patch a security issue and the last new feature has been released. And WotC sooner or later has to move away from Silverlight. Up to today the online CB has matured to a quite usable but not perfect tool (armor bonuses were recently broken, but else it’s working good), but eventually they have to start all over again.
Even though I regarded using Silverlight, a Microsoft-supported but never widespread technology, as a mistake, I never imaged it to be this drastically. WotC has proved that their are barely able to manage a substitution of the old offline CB and MB with their online successors, which lets me doubt very much that they will do it much better the next time. Digital tools for rpgs are a fine thing to have, but being dependent on a company that has not much manpower for such things and not much experience with software development seems to prove fatal.
Goddammit!
No related posts.
The sad thing?
They were told that this would happen.
Over and over and over again.
The online tools are a laughable joke, and an insult to anyone who had been using the offline tools (such as they were) for a customized, personal D&D game (e.g. you cannot house rule ANYTHING meaningful in the online tools, meaning they have significantly fewer features than the offline versions).
People who said “this is a bad move” on the WotC forums, or who criticized the unquestionable limitations of the online tools, were insulted repeatedly and called thieves and worse by WotC supporters. WotC refused to respond to reasonable concerns, staying adamant that they were moving forward, despite their many lies and deceptive actions related to the EOL of the offline tools.
I wish I could say I was sad about this, but WotC already drove me away last year, with the Essentials tripe and the online tools launch.
I guess bad language has been used on both sides, so I’ll stay away from that accusation. Also the customizing for house rules has been added during the last days. I had that as missing in my article first, but removed it right after launch. They have added the support of custom feats and powers I think. So you can add more of them. But adding your own feats and stuff is still missing, I think. Nonetheless you are right, the launch of the online tools was major break in the tool support for D&D 4. The offline tools have only just been almost reached concerning features. And that’s why I’m really afraid of another relaunch using a different technology. That’ll be the whole story all over again.