- Chuck

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- Chuck

People who paid for a full year aren't asking for a refund. (Well, maybe they are but that's not what those threads are about.)

Yeah but if you decide the service isn't worth the money after trying it out, they should let you cancel.

I don't think the issue is whether or not the service is worthwhile, but rather they won't let you stop paying for it.

@BLANDspace: Weird, as most the gamers I know are very social and fairly normal. OK, so some of them have a tendency to talk to other players about whats going on in the game, but they are very open minded, normally intelligent & imaginative. I can't tell them apart from the rest of humanity... well, unless they are wearing a convention t-shirt.

But then the ones I know don't live in their parent's basment. They have also had romatic relationships. Some are married and have kids, even.

@johnfrank: you sound like a good person for an aspiring game designer to get to know. :)

The issue isn't what's available, how Wizards of the Coast (division of Hasbro) has ruined D&D, or how terrible their implementation of the online is or was.

The issue is that people are having difficulty canceling their subscriptions, which is a serious problem, since my gaming group had decided to subscribe for 1 month every 4 months just to download the two online magazines. I would like to know that I could get my 1 month subscription and then not have it automatically renew despite my efforts to cancel.

FYI to those of you saying the current system doesn't allow you to be imaginative, you need to pull your heads out of the sand. My group has happily changed the rules to our liking and invented what we needed when necessary. What you're saying is you're too lazy to use your imaginations to create what you need, and are instead being fully dependent on the game company to do everything for you. It's also been stated more times than I can count that 4th edition can be played with the core books and nothing more without losing any of the play appeal.

i was at GenCon 2 years ago when they announced D&D 4th Ed. i was pissed. i questioned the mindless idiots around me as to why they were clapping, because they were happy about 4th ed. or because they were expected to clap. i quickly told them, i tried to be loud about it, how hasbro was goning to do this to us everytime D&D merchandise sales hit a certain low, and how hasbro happily let us buy new stuff for 2 days at the Con knowing that it would soon be obsolete. i was happy when they had a question-and-answer session. i quickly asked if they were goin to put out a new edition everytime sales hit certain lows and if the new addition would be at all compatible with 3.5ed. the guy ignored my first question but did say that it would not be at all compatible with 3.5ed. there are still people who play original D&D, AD&D, 3rd ed. 3.5ed. its a chioce and new material is always available for all editions as other companies, and the internet, makes it readily available. to the ignorant-by-choice people who stereotype D&D players, try to relax a bit, open your mind, and maybe you will stop being such a loser. 4th ed. had dumbed down D&D alot, making it easier for more people to play, people with less imagination for example. but as always D&D players come from all walks of life, all nationalities, and knows no boundries. for example, the group i play in has 5 guys, one gal, a doctor, an electrician, a parks dept. employee, collections supervisor, a guy who hardly ever keeps any job for more than a week(when he actually has a job,) and a computer builder/repairman. there will always be people who are not working on their self-image problems and need to put others down to make themselves feel better, and D&D players have long been made fun of by those people. the people i game with know we're made fun off, we know what kind of people do it, and we're ok with that.

Wizards is a complete disaster internally. I personally know people that worked there and heard, on a regular basis, what a disaster it was. Not only was there a mass exit by most of their talent, but that was recently followed up by a layoff.

Hasbro treats WotC as a stepchild thats kept in the closet and its really ran as 2 seperate companies. There is no way, in its current state, that Wizards will ever produce anything of quality and are more likely doing everything they can to delay the inevitable.

The price of the books went up because game rs wanted to spend more money? That might be the craziest thing I've ever read on Consumerist. Citation, please.

    Everyone's grown old in our group, with kids, and in one case, a grand-kid on the way. We're still using those old first edition books, tattered and glued back together on the spines.

    For newbies, they borrow books, buy 'em on Ebay, or there's pirated pdfs...

    For character sheets, I thought everybody had graduated to Word or Excel?

http://middendorfproject.googlepages.com/frankpdf

@mythago: For those not paying attention, the D&D crowd of the 1970s/1980s were often/usually the same people that were into computers. These are the sorts of people who took imagination into business and into entertainment. Many of the more popular entertainments and industries wouldn't exist without such people.

D&D Online? Isn't the whole point getting three pizzas on sale, a bunch of Mountain Dew, five of your geeky friends and staying up for 2 days to finish the adventure? It isn't D&D if it doesn't take place in a basement den with wood paneling!

I miss it, and those times.

My friends and I play table-top rpgs on the weekends, and we've pretty much given up on D&D, due to the constantly release of new versions (which you have to buy all new books for) seeming to have shorter and shorter periods in-between release dates.

There are options though for those who don't want the current bastardization of the Dungeons & Dragons game rules and/or are otherwise fed up with Hasbro. For those who liked the 3d Edition rules, check out Paizo's Pathfinder RPG at http://paizo.com/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG . For those wanting that 1st Edition feel while playing with modern rules, check out http://www.trolllord.com .

As a an avid D&D player, a Hasbro stockholder, a producer on several D&D movies, and a past writer for D&D product, I find it interesting that someone would claim that business doesn't happen over D&D games. I was present when Transformers was licensed into a movie that did over a billion dollars in worldwide business - and that happened at a D&D game. I was also present when the Dragonlance novel series was commisisoned for an animated Paramount film - and that happened at a D&D game. I also watched the Sci-Fi channel commission the Battlestar Galctica Mini-Series at a D&D game.
There are several regular games of Dungeons & Dragons in hollywood that involve high powered agents, actors, and producers at which business is done.
Additionally, to claim that the primary audience for D&D is teenagers is incorrect. The average D&D player is now over 24 (studies show that teenagers play trading card games and then graduate to video games) and wants to spend more on his (statistcally) hobby - which is the primary reason the cost of the core books went up. Ironically the excuse given in that meeting was that people want to spend more on their hobbies and that D&D was cheap comapred to golf.

I used to play D&D in the '80s (high school and college), back when it was AD&D. I understand the allure of more classes, but once they added the Barbarian and Cavalier that was enough for me...

Make your own rules, your own dungeons and be done with. This migration to the 4th edition Rule Set really just preempts table-top playing anyways. Yeh, if I want my character to be seamless on the computer, I'll play computer-based D&D.

And also, anyone who does play or ever did play D&D is a social misfit by definition of the general populace. Ask yourself, big business is decided over golf not D&D. Maybe we'd all be in a better place if our CEOs did play D&D and did also schooze that way!

But misfits we are, otherwise everyone would be playing.

More than that, once other really big features come out the subscription price goes up, but those of us who already got a subscription will get everything despite the fact the price we paid only really covered what we have now. So even if those newer things don't come out we only really paid for what amounts to two magazine subscriptions and some character builder.

I still play D&D and I'm a 26 year old female. Tonight is actually D&D night (though, I can't go 'cause I'm not feeling well).

I didn't start until 4E so I don't really know what it was like beforehand, but it does seem like Hasbro has dropped the ball here. I have much love for WOTC, though, thanks to Magic, The Gathering.

Plus, it's not like you really need new products to play this game. Some people out there are still using the rules from 1974.

Ebay and second-hand bookstores are your friend.

The set of tools that was supposed to be available at the time 4th Edition launched included a character builder, character visualizer, dungeon builder, online game table and online magazines. Of all these utilities, only one was actually ready at launch: the magazines, and that's only because they were already doing it. This many months later, and only the character builder has been released, which makes Hasbro's runaround especially nefarious, because people have every reason to cancel their account, given this track record.

@BLANDspace: I dare you to say that to Vin Diesel's face.

I'm female and I used to play D&D - I don't have time now (19 and in college) and there's no one around to play...
I stick to Baldur's Gate now for my D&D fix.

THe business with the online business for D&D is idiotic. I can't even believe the incompetency involved. They have no proven track record with any electronic product, and building something like this is not a novice activity. Just crazy.

Oooooh....Hasbro casts "Spell of Idiotic Mismanagement" and takes 100 hit points.

For those of you who don't play D&D...

Why are you reading this thread?

Just kidding. I meant to say, for those of you who don't play D&D, the "annual membership" is for "Dungeons & Dragons Insider," (DDI) part of a 3-pronged intitative to get D&D players using Hasbro-operated online services:

First, they tried creating a social network (Gleemax) that was substandard by any definition of social network. That's already shut down.

Second, they took two print magazines (Dragon and Dungeon) online-only and merged them into DDI.

Third, they announced an online "virtual tabletop" for networked D&D-playing. That doesn't work yet.

So basically, this article is people complaining that Hasbro won't let them cancel their subscriptions to 2 online magazines.

Yep, that's Hasbro's big new revenue model: Online magazines for a hobby dominated by teenage boys.

When all this was announced at Gen Con last year, I told another player "I look forward to reading the Wall Street Journal on 'How Hasbro Killed Dungeons & Dragons" (which seemed to visibly started the Hasbro employee at the table with us).

Anyway, this is exactly the kind of runaround one should expect from Hasbro. They spent two years claiming they weren't working on a Fourth Edition of the D&D rules, then announced they had been working on a the major game show, instantly killing the sales of third-party products designed to be compatible with the Third Edition. In one swoop, they screwed with their customers and their semi-competitors.

When I go to the forums linked and follow the administraters instructions, all the links work fine for me. Brings up the cancellation forms quite easily.

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!!...our cancellation verification system.