2 hours ago
Angry Robot BooksArrogance and Ignorance
Wizards of the Coast suffers these terribly when it comes to marketing DnD now. This was beginning to show itself way back at GenCon for the release of 3rd Edition. I took part in a marketing research panel with about 10 other people and 3 market research folks who had been briefed on what the product was but did not really seem to have any real knowldge of what they were working with. Their intended spin they wanted to try out on us was geared toward ten year olds for the most part. We gave our input, told them what we thought was lame (most of it) and what we thought might work.
About 6 months later to their credit the marketing was 50/50 our input and their input. However, things have been downhill since then. The dregs are now washing back with 4th Edition. However what really seems to be the problem now is that WoTC seems to think they can throw any piece of shit out there and it will stick. I am sure of of this is tied into budget and profits, they are a company after all. However Gleemax closing down in September should be of suprise to no one. They named it after an inside joke. Made it look fairly lame. It was nearly impossible to navigate. They called on folks to post to “blogs” that were nothing more than locked threads on a message board. They dropped it out on the net in a very early alpha state of development and it never got past an early beta state.
WoTC’s web efforts have never been stellar. Navigation logic and user interface are pretty much always an after thought. The new DnD insider site is not great, but it seems almost to be something. However they hyped it way too much not to have more meat on the table when they rolled it out. That was a HUGE missed oportunity they will never get back.
Now we get to the Arrogance portion of the rant. The new edition touts all of these thing sthey have brought to the table, improving the game from past editions. Marginalizing things from old editions telling you how bad they were and in reality much of the “new” stuff is just old tried and true with a spiffy new name tossed on it. “Points of Light” being the most blatant example.
Unfortunately I was interupted in this train of thought, so we’ll pause this rant and return later for part two. I’ll do a wrap up and link to some other similar thoughts at my favorite blogs.
Gith and visitors.
Hi to all the folks popping in from RPGnet to read those interviews with Stross and Cordell. They were both done as a collaborative effort from several folks working on the old planewalkers.com which went silent for quite a while. It was quite fun and both the subjects of the interviews were very nice to particpate.
Dragon Age: Origins
Bioware just knows how to make games people like. I have not played one of their games that did not strike me as detailed and it always seems as tho everyone working on the game has invested themeselves in making the thing live. Mass Effect was amazing on the xBox 360, and this game looks to be an amazing evolution of what they learned in Baldurs Gate I & II. What follows is an interview from E3, try to ignore the chick asking the questions. This will be a PC only game apparently.
The Big Waaagh!
Friend and former coworker of mine was part of getting this new Warhammer 40K gaming event organized in Memphis, TN. It appears to have been a huge success and I wish them the best of luck this weekend, with hopes of many more events to come in the future.
Here is a little update from GW US Community blog also.
Repost: Big Box Kick in the Nuts
Apparently I have a short memory. Yesterday (July 8th) I decided to go to Best Buy and pick up a copy of Civilization: Revolution for the xBox 360. No luck, not on the shelves and I did not bother to ask a sales tard. I just walked across teh street to Circuit City. CC is one of my last resort stops, they have actually gotten better but I still really hate going in there for some reason. No luck.
This time I asked the chick at the regester what was up, she checked the website from her terminal and it confirmed today was the release date, however the site also said “Not available for instore pickup” WTF, shrugged and walked out. Figured surely I could handle walking through one store for access to the GameStop in the mall. Walked in the overly cheerful and annoying rep there asked if she could help. “You bet” I said, do you have a copy of Civilization: Revolution ?”
“Nope, we will get that in tomorrow, we do not get releases on release day it usually takes an extra day or so because we are on the East Coast. Would you like to reserve a copy?”
I replied “Nope, thanks.” and walked out. Fairly pissed a confused by the whole experience.
Problems I see here are as follows in order of occurance.
You would think Brick and Mortar establishments would want to have things, new things in store for people to purchase. I could understand if they under ordered something like Civ, as it ain’t Halo or Rock Band 2, but this was just a case of BB and CC not even apparently intending on getting it in. I will not make this mistake again. Another bad experience I had was when Joani and I decided to get LotRO and start playing. They both had 50 bajillion copies of WoW but not ONE copy of LotRO.
As far as the experience of Game Stop goes. I think they just have a problem with deffinitions. Release day is not a few days around the time the product is supposed to be in stores, it is the day announced as release day. Having worked in both record and retail stores, we used to get shipments from our warehouses the day BEFORE the announced release or by 10 am on the release day. Big dog titles we searched the box for and had the ready to go, the 2nd string stuff we would shelve soon after. teh 2nd concept GameStop seems to have off a bit is that Huntsville, AL is on the East Coast, let alone that location should impact whether they get something on release day or not. My time in retail was both in Toledo, OH and Huntsville, AL and unless the Major distributors has a huge cock up, we got things on time.
I did not want to reserve a copy at their stupid store I would have to spend another hour round trip getting to and from after they had already pissed me off. I figured I would check Rhino at lunch today, if they had a copy fine. If not Amazon would get my money and I would have it by the weekend. Well GameStop got in a little jab because apparently they are now the proud owner of the former Rhino location, and they had a copy left of what has apparently been a suprisingly brisk selling title (Might be because the CC and BB don’t have it).
Oh and while I am at it, let me pick on the dorks at Barnes and Noble. They had a store sandwiched inbetween BB and CC. We have a new people àquarium theme park shopping extraviganza called Bridge Street that is around 5 away from their former location. They opened a newer bigger fancier, higher priced cherry position location there. At the old location, there are signs plastered all over with big red letters. The read °Thanks for shopping with us we are now Closed° and then in finer black magic marker it is scribbled in that they hav emoved to bridge street. The casual passer by might just think they have closed and move on. Their signage people should be shot. It is not like B and N does not move frequently. This same store has done it once before. A big WE HAVE MOVED is much more friendly than WE HAVE CLOSED.
I will go with my first instinct next time and just pre order the game from Amazon and get it without wasting gas, time and peace of mind.
Repost: DnD 4th ed. and Market Value
Apparently, according to the “rules” in 4th edition D&D, the player characters are idiots when it comes to commerce. Ok this is going to be a nit pick for the beginning of my look at the new books. I have no intention of doing a full review, that would take really getting down and playing and time is limited. This nit is however symbolic of things strewn about my skimming of the books.
From a sidebar on the section on rituals.
You can sell ritual books or ritual scrolls for half the market
price of the rituals they contain, assuming that the DM
agrees that demand for a particular ritual exists. Although
you can try to sell copies of a ritual you know, doing so
offers no financial gain, and there is limited demand for
ritual books or scrolls. You pay the full cost to create a
scroll and can typically sell it for only half value. In addition,
the number of people in the world who can afford to
perform an expensive ritual and who can succeed on the
necessary skill checks is small, and many of the NPCs who
are skilled enough and wealthy enough to be potential
customers already have collections of ritual books available
to them.
So now from the Wikipedia article on Market Value
Market Value is the estimated amount for which a property should exchange on the date of valuation between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arms-length transaction after proper marketing wherein the parties had each acted knowledgably, prudently, and without compulsion.
First why write a “rule” like this. They say several places in the PHB how much things will sell for. I know previous editions have set pricing structures for things. But the Saying the Market Value for something is say 50 but since you are a PC you can only sell it for 25 just seems silly.
Honestly any DM worth his salt will ignore this and do whatever they want. The writers should know this and take it into account , writing to the level of the players. I feel like this is what is coloring some of the dislike experienced RPG are expressing.
Sorry, just something that bugged me and I had to dump it somewhere.
PVP / PVE Balance ?
Who’d a thunk it, someone at least claims to understand how it should be done and they are working on a game due out soon.
We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career.
Games ..
Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows I like games. I get into beta tests once in a while for various MMO’s. The latest to let me in was Age of Conan. I was marginally interested in this one, but skeptical because it is likely to be another attempt at mixing PVP and PVE gaming which seem to always fail (game play wise) on some level.
Going to school, starting a new job, and having a blast playing Rock Band with Joani did not leave much time for me to give it a go. I finally downloaded and patched the client. Launched it and logged in only to have the game never get past a black screen after the initial static load screens. My system is a pretty straight forward configuration so, I wont be wasting anytime troubleshooting it. Just not enough time. Based on the word around the blogs, I am not the only one having client problems, and they are starting to sound like another VERY rocky launch candidate similar to Vanguard.
LOTRO however is proving to be quite awesome :)
Wonder if Paizo will get credit for this..
New details have been released on the GSL from Wizards for 4th edition. Up until this point early adopters were supposed to pay 5k to get in before the crowd. Then Paizo basically said, nope not putting our business on hold for months while you guys get your crap together.
Update..
Chris Pramas blogged about this development. Things appear not as gleeful as they did a day or two ago…
Cold Snap
First cold snap of the year down here in ‘Bama. Made it to 28 degrees which is scares the hell out of these people. WTF, water freezes at 32 !!! I was suprised schools weren’t canceled. Ok, that is a little harsh but the hubub made about cold weather and the evil white stuff gets on the radar is amusing to someone from up north.
School still progresses, getting a little bored with the current one. Looking forward to some new stuff. 2 Dimensional composition is has had its ups and downs.
Playing EQ2 again, gave up on WoW, was just not as deep as EQ2. Found a good guild with some pretty interesting folks. Their raids are level headed mostly. I’m in as just a member so no heavy requirements as far as attendance so school is safe.