4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

From the homepage - Wizards of the Coast + Internet == Suck

I’m curious what everyone else thinks about the D&D website. Am I completely off base here or does this resonate with you guys and gals?

Amen brother Chibbs.  Preach on!

I almost asked whether or not you guys get any sleep - then I realized I’m on the East Coast and you all are on the West.

Anyway - I agree with most of Chibbs criticism, but I’m not sure if I can be that harsh.  The web site is functional for those who play D&D and have a basic understanding of what to look for.  But it is not appealing to those who are thinking about joining D&D.

As much as I’d like to point out Wizards for a faulty website, it’s hard to do that when, even as bad as it is, their competition is as bad or worse.  Plus, I don’t really find WoW’s site as awesome as you seem to.  It has some things that stick in my craw too.  Those “daggers with plus signs” are on WoW’s site.  (And they’re at City of Heroes and other sites too.)

(EDIT - I took screen shots and had them here, and now they won’t load.  I was attempting to just show the pictures of them up next to Wizards site and of course it worked at first and is now failing.  So now I’m just going to link to these websites.)

Mutants and Masterminds

Green Ronin

GURPS

White Wolf

City of Heroes

He has a point most of those sites are worse than WotC one, while WotC site could be vastly improved it does have a lot more information and freebies than any of the other RPG company sites.

Blizzard have a much larger budget to spend in webdesign than WotC as well.

Morrus gave your review the front-page treatment at ENWorld.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=224578

Yeah, but I want to hear about the art, when will you talk about that?  =)

Cameron - 24 April 2008 04:42 AM

As much as I’d like to point out Wizards for a faulty website, it’s hard to do that when, even as bad as it is, their competition is as bad or worse.  Plus, I don’t really find WoW’s site as awesome as you seem to.  It has some things that stick in my craw too.  Those “daggers with plus signs” are on WoW’s site.  (And they’re at City of Heroes and other sites too.)

I agree… the “competition” is as bad or worse.  Privateer Press does a decent job though.  But your point is valid. 

The point about the WoW site is that it is possible to flashy, full of graphics, dripping with theme, and still be easy to use and read.  It’s not about whether or not the art is as good or if the content is as interesting.  WoW has shown that it is possible to have a site that is functional and easy to look at it.

Think of it from a marketing perspective - which site entices you into the game more?

As an existing player and customer, I wouldn’t normally care what their website is like.  However, they are going to ask me to pay $10/month to access exclusive online content going forward and that upsets me.  I expect the same quality online as I do their print products.  They are far from the mark at this point.

I am not at a computer where I can view the video yet, but I can assume what things it would say from being a member of this community for a long while and I can make quite a few inferences from this thread and the front page comments (as well as those at ENWorld). I personally think that my opinion falls somewhere with Cameron’s. The website is a /fail in many aspects, but it is a lot better than much of the competition and I think that this time around they are putting more effort into improvement (even if that makes me sound naive).

What effort into improvement?  They are just adding more features, not making it better as far as I can tell.  All I see is that they are moving some of their print stuff to online only (like Dragon and Dungeon) and adding some bells and whistles (like the character generator and game table) and want us to pay for it.

I’m *happy* to pay them if what they deliver is good.  Right now, the “preview” of the magazine content is awful.  I just don’t like reading content the way that they present it.  Further, nothing I’ve seen of the character generator and table top thingy make me confident in it’s quality or usefulness.

One might argue that they are decidedly quiet about releasing details on functionality and future plans of their new digital offerings.  We’ve seen some early video of the barbie dress-up your character game and some of the table top and nothing I saw made me say “I gotta have that!”.  If what they showed was on the cover of a box at the store, I wouldn’t buy it.

The whole point of the web site criticism is that they just don’t get the online world.  I want my confidence to be bolstered before I can commit my $10 per month.

Look at it this way - the 4th edition ruleset looks to be great (subjective, I know) and there is plenty of information about it.  I have seen examples, art, and got to even test drive the system all before the game is released.  I have confidence that the books and the game itself will be of high quality.

Where is the same thing for their online offerings?  If their print materials were of the same quality as their website, people wouldn’t buy as much (to say the least).  So if they can’t get their website done right, how can I expect them to get their character generator and tabletop done right?  And unless something changes about how Dungeon and Dragon magazine content is presented, it is already ruined imho.

As a note - the actual content of Dragon and Dungeon seems to be excellent of late… I’m only griping about the presentation and general readability.

I personally feel that wizards will have many paying customers due to the release of 4e and because of this, they will be held accountable. If the don’t shape-up, then they will lose many customers. At the same time, nobody from any community other than the WotC forums can disagree with this entirely...because these communities wouldn’t exist if their site was “good” and didn’t have horrible issues (like the “search feature.").

Look, Green Ronin (Mutants & Masterminds, Tru20), Steve Jackson Games (GURPS), Privateer Press (Iron Kingdoms), and White Wolf (World of Darkness, Exalted, Sword & Sorcery) are all tiny companies relative to Wizards of the Coast (Dungeons and Dragons).

WotC and Blizzard are both huge. Hasbro, corporate parent of WotC, has a market cap of $4billion. Vivendi Universal’s, Blizzard’s corporate overlord, cap is $30billion.

There is no excuse for the Dungeons & Dragons website. It should be the benchmark for role-playing games. That it isn’t is just pathetic.

That it hasn’t had a massive overhaul in coordination with 4e is simply bizzare. It, along with the abortion that is Gleemax, really broadcasts that they just don’t get the Web.

Their are two root problems. First is Hasbro. They don’t get the Web, and their focus on cutting expenses to the bone to pad their margins is not condusive to the major investments in infrastructure and talent necessary to make WotC’s various web sites top notch.

Second is the Google effect. Like Google (and to some extent Facebook), Blizzard is sucking up all of the premier talent. WotC just can’t offer these bright bulbs anything better than they would get at Blizzard: see the first root problem.

Mr. Sigler is spot-on. WotC needs this kind of sharp criticism to keep them honest and push them to improve their product. Saying “it’s functional” or “others are worse” is no excuse and is really kind of pathetic in itself.

As I sit here looking at both sites mentioned in the video, I fail to see such a ‘huge’ difference.

In fact I prefer WotC’s site over WoW.  It is so much easier to navigate.

I would question someone when they nitpick about some white pixels around a cut and paste job, when that person doesn’t edit his own videos to lose the dead space when he’s at a loss for words.

Begisle - 24 April 2008 07:23 AM

I would question someone when they nitpick about some white pixels around a cut and paste job, when that person doesn’t edit his own videos to lose the dead space when he’s at a loss for words.

It’s to do with the quality of finish. It shows they don’t really care about presentation or what people think of it. It’s like when you go house hunting and you come to a house that’s been recently decorated, but the wall sockets don’t fit properly, they haven’t put the beading round the laminate floor, and basically missed the finishing touches it all shows they have just got the builder that quoted the lowest in.

I’m generally “ok” with WotC’s main site. I’m ok with the fonts and the artwork, although that troll mini is starting to annoy me.

But I do think the menus and the content could be much better organized. I have a hard time finding some older articles once they drop off the main page.

Gleemax is awful though. I hope DDI doesn’t share Gleemax’s design.

I would question someone when they nitpick about some white pixels around a cut and paste job, when that person doesn’t edit his own videos to lose the dead space when he’s at a loss for words.

Heh, you obviously don’t know how well Chibby knows website design, then.  He never professed to know video editing, but the boy knows his s**t when it comes to design.

~~Becka

Kyle Watt - 24 April 2008 08:23 AM

Gleemax is awful though. I hope DDI doesn’t share Gleemax’s design.

Absolutely 100% ditto.  Gleemax is the worst designed website I’ve been to since the one I designed for myself back in 1997.  It’s ugly, it hurts my eyes, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out navigation on that site to save my life.  By comparison, the WotC base site is like Mt. Olympus to Gleemax’s Hades.

EDIT - Just read through the forum at ENWorld.  I hope we didn’t start some sort of internet flame war between our two sites.  While I thought Chibbs was a little harsh on WotC, some of the comments at ENWorld were ad hominem attacks on Chibbs or were irrelevant to his review.

Btw - calling someone a geek when you take time out of your day to post on a D&D website is like the textbook definition of irony.