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I mean, remember when WotC just straight up nuked the D&D forums which had years of content including tons of build guides and stuff?
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May 27, 2020 11:58
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Related, Green Ronin is finally nuking their forums (again?):GR post posted:Unfortunately, the time has come to shut down the forums. While it wasn’t an easy decision, it was necessary once we discovered a rather serious security vulnerability that made continuing to support the forum software an untenable position. We have reached the tipping point where the security risks involved with maintaining the forums outweigh the benefits. We tried to find a solution that would allow us to maintain the existing forums in read-only mode, but just running the forum software on our servers would pose too great a security risk. Don't worry, the timeline wasn't there or anything because it's nowhere.
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May 27, 2020 13:10
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Kai Tave posted:I mean, remember when WotC just straight up nuked the D&D forums which had years of content including tons of build guides and stuff? I mean, *Gestures vaguely at 4e's digital footprint as well*
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May 27, 2020 13:16
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Kurieg posted:I mean, *Gestures vaguely at 4e's digital footprint as well* I'm pretty sure even at the time they switched to an online character builder everyone knew Silverlight was doomed.
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May 27, 2020 14:09
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gourdcaptain posted:I'm pretty sure even at the time they switched to an online character builder everyone knew Silverlight was doomed.
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May 27, 2020 14:30
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Kai Tave posted:I mean, remember when WotC just straight up nuked the D&D forums which had years of content including tons of build guides and stuff? Well the Magic forums weren't seeing much traffic because everyone preferred Reddit or various fan forums, so why keep the forums alive for the much smaller base of weirdos who care about Dungeons and Dragons?
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May 27, 2020 14:33
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Roleplayers are nothing but trouble, admittedly.
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May 27, 2020 14:34
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dwarf74 posted:it turns out there were a lot of Silverlight developers around that part of Washington who were looking for work, for some unknowable reason, so That, and I think it let them reuse parts of the .NET based desktop character builder in a particularly hilarious fashion of them running on the server and it having to make RPC calls to it for anything, making it laggy as hell initially. I don't know how it worked over time, I cancelled my Insider subscription that month.
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May 27, 2020 14:41
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Kai Tave posted:I mean, remember when WotC just straight up nuked the D&D forums which had years of content including tons of build guides and stuff? WOTC has historically been just loving terrible at basically everything digital, with Gatherer (and then MTGO and Arena) being essentially the sole exceptions. Nothing changes.
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May 27, 2020 16:39
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thespaceinvader posted:WOTC has historically been just loving terrible at basically everything digital, with Gatherer (and then MTGO and Arena) being essentially the sole exceptions. I mean, gatherer and MTGO are both incredibly terrible. Arena is better but it's still not coded very well.
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May 27, 2020 16:42
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gatherer is bad enough that even WotC sponsored magic content creators use scryfall instead.
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May 27, 2020 17:00
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It's honestly pretty impressive that a company based in Washington state can't even find talented, enthusiastic coders to exploit for exposure, you'd think there'd be someone with actual programming skills champing at the bit to be an Official WotC Code Person for a pittance, meanwhile Comp/Con is over here going into the next part of its roadmap where it's going to be adding more campaign management tools, an official homebrew editor/importer framework, gameplay tracking systems (so you can keep track of things like how many enemies you've defeated, how many times you've taken structure/stress damage, etc), and achievements.
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May 28, 2020 00:33
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gourdcaptain posted:I'm pretty sure even at the time they switched to an online character builder everyone knew Silverlight was doomed. At the time Silverlight was Microsoft's big replacement for old crusty Flash - so not completely crazy to go 'a character tool that requires you to download and install it on your windows machine is a bad idea, let's replace it with an online version' in early 2010 or whatever. The real problem was that meanwhile smartphones had arrived and were eating the lunch of rich web plugins in general. But in early 2010 if you'd done an iphone-only one you'd still be locking out a lot of people.
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May 28, 2020 03:57
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xiw posted:At the time Silverlight was Microsoft's big replacement for old crusty Flash - so not completely crazy to go 'a character tool that requires you to download and install it on your windows machine is a bad idea, let's replace it with an online version' in early 2010 or whatever. It seemed like at the time it was a pretty blatant move to make sure people kept subscribed instead of just subscribing to get the builder for a month or pirating it. The web-based one was pretty unusable at launch due to lag issues, also. Did they ever sort out the hilariously ridiculous use of modal dialogs for literally everything?
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May 28, 2020 04:54
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gourdcaptain posted:It seemed like at the time it was a pretty blatant move to make sure people kept subscribed instead of just subscribing to get the builder for a month or pirating it That's exactly what it was. They were just a little ahead of the curve on our current trajectory of turning everything into x-as-a-service
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May 28, 2020 04:57
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Yeah, pretty sure they wanted more money from people like me, who would just subscribe for a month whenever a big update happened, download the character builder, and then gently caress off again. Instead everyone I know who did that just stopped subscribing and went to  instead.
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May 28, 2020 06:09
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Kai Tave posted:It's honestly pretty impressive that a company based in Washington state can't even find talented, enthusiastic coders to exploit for exposure, you'd think there'd be someone with actual programming skills champing at the bit to be an Official WotC Code Person for a pittance, meanwhile Comp/Con is over here going into the next part of its roadmap where it's going to be adding more campaign management tools, an official homebrew editor/importer framework, gameplay tracking systems (so you can keep track of things like how many enemies you've defeated, how many times you've taken structure/stress damage, etc), and achievements. It’s because they paid like absolute poo poo and you have to work in Renton, so you’re far away from actual Seattle, but on the plus side you couldn’t afford to live in Seattle anyways! So they only got people who just wanted to work at WOTC (who would quit within six months, because it also wasn’t a very good company to work for) and people who couldn’t get a job anywhere else in one of the biggest tech regions in the country. I think that changed at least somewhat in the lead up to Arena, which helps explain Arena.
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May 28, 2020 07:10
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I mean pretty much the entire software industry at large seems to be exploitative as hell but quality software still gets made, I wasn't expecting WotC to actually pay well so much as I figured by now they would have managed to rope in some bright-eyed young software engineer who loves D&D and would gladly be exploited for a chance to be a part of his favorite hobby, but who has, like, actual talent too.
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May 28, 2020 10:24
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Like it's absolutely fair to say that a big part of how good Comp/Con is comes down to the fact that Massif recognized the opportunity to put a chunk of their Kickstarter largesse towards funding it, and if that hadn't happened it would be in a greatly reduced state from where it is now, but it would still probably be vastly better and more functional than anything WotC has ever put out all from being made by someone in his spare time.
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May 28, 2020 10:27
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Kai Tave posted:I mean pretty much the entire software industry at large seems to be exploitative as hell but quality software still gets made, I wasn't expecting WotC to actually pay well so much as I figured by now they would have managed to rope in some bright-eyed young software engineer who loves D&D and would gladly be exploited for a chance to be a part of his favorite hobby, but who has, like, actual talent too. Well, there are degrees of exploitation and most companies (in the Seattle area) at least try to exploit you while slapping a few fat-rear end numbers in front of your face. But I think there are other factors for what you're talking about. Small indie companies are more likely to get a smart person doing a bunch of work in their free time because (a) they've built up a lot more goodwill than WotC and (b) they're a lot less likely to send a C&D. Kobold Fight Club is a clear example of someone pushing up against the line of what they think won't get them lawyered out of existence. And once someone gets into the company where they have legal freedom, they're dragged into updating the archaically-designed Daily MTG site or whatever.
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May 28, 2020 18:00
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Dawgstar posted:Related, Green Ronin is finally nuking their forums (again?): This makes me very, very glad that Kreuzritter posted his Mutants & Masterminds builds on RPGnet as well. In fact, stuff like this and the WotC thing is an important lesson for posting your big-rear end projects: webforums are not your safety deposit box. Almost every FATAL & Friends I ever wrote the past 2 years is saved somewhere as a Word Doc.
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May 28, 2020 22:03
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Libertad! posted:This makes me very, very glad that Kreuzritter posted his Mutants & Masterminds builds on RPGnet as well. I do regret there's probably a lot of really hard work that went into turning assorted comic book and other characters into M&M stats will be gone forever, since especially with a crunchy system like that I found lots and lots of NPCs could really help to show different ways the sausage was made.
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May 29, 2020 14:52
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 22:09
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Look who's trying to sneak his way back into legitimacy: I want to take a shower after being exposed to something so viscerally slimy.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:37
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 22:40
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"Now is not the time! Black Lives Matter!" I hit bingo pretty early.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:46
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(Link to D&D facebook post) https://www.facebook.com/dungeonsanddragons/photos/a.98724281070/10158106622866071/?type=3&theater "We support those who are using their voices to affect systematic change, make their communities better places to live, and invest in the citizens and leaders of tomorrow" 
Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 02:54
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Foolster41 posted:(Link to D&D facebook post) "Unless it's by someone we hired as a consultant, then it's fine."
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Jun 2, 2020 03:06
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loving lol Wizards https://twitter.com/Aclippinger/status/1267675527319519232
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Jun 2, 2020 05:47
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I think that's just a freelancer making fun of historians straight washing stuff, not actual WotC content.
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Jun 2, 2020 06:17
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They are canonically lovers. That’s someone making fun of historians.
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Jun 2, 2020 09:05
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Yeah just a bit below the image in the book it flat out says they were lovers. Clippinger is having a laugh.
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Jun 2, 2020 09:53
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basically the historian equivalent of "GALS BEING PALS"
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Jun 2, 2020 10:18
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WotC finally put out their 'we stand in support of those who fight racial injustice' screenshot graphic on their Twitter and most of the replies are about firing Mearls (and reminding people that's only the first step).
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Jun 2, 2020 13:15
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It's worth mentioning that another reason WotC abandoned the 4e digital tools (D&D Insider/Gleemax grand plan) was that the senior developer working on them, Joseph Batten, murdered his estranged wife and then killed himself, leaving them with both a horrifying tragedy, and nobody in charge any more. This was after repeated failures to deliver on what was promised, of course; I've seen speculation that the stress surrounding those failures may have contributed to his emotional crisis.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:09
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Leperflesh posted:I've seen speculation that the stress surrounding those failures may have contributed to his emotional crisis. I wouldn't put much stock in that, it's literally impossible to know what was going on in his mind but the internet loves to make estimates (that coincidentally reinforce their own worldview) anyway.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:18
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Leperflesh posted:It's worth mentioning that another reason WotC abandoned the 4e digital tools (D&D Insider/Gleemax grand plan) was that the senior developer working on them, Joseph Batten, murdered his estranged wife and then killed himself, leaving them with both a horrifying tragedy, and nobody in charge any more. This was after repeated failures to deliver on what was promised, of course; I've seen speculation that the stress surrounding those failures may have contributed to his emotional crisis.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:30
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Nessus posted:Wasn't it going to basically be D&D beyond, just for 4E? From what I remember they were going for a whole automated online tabletop experience, which would've been amazing for 4e.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:57
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Free Gratis posted:From what I remember they were going for a whole automated online tabletop experience, which would've been amazing for 4e. yeah, the original plan was a subscription service to D&D that included the ability to use all the books in character creation, a virtual table top similar akin to VTT with ability to purchase adventure modules for use (which would come with all the maps/tiles/enemies pre-loaded etc. A truly random dice roller (this one is really hard, btw. Roll20 publishes their stats and proves that they have random distribution, but people are so used to using physical dice that random distribution seems off by comparison), ebooks for every physical book you actually bought. I think there were a few more promises thrown in there too, and the character builder actually was all options available before they shelved it (because people would subscribe for a month, let their subscription lapse, then download the updates from :warez: sites supposedly).
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Jun 3, 2020 06:03
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https://twitter.com/LawrenceHarmon/status/1268255676150820872?s=19 I mean, holy poo poo:
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Jun 4, 2020 00:52
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