It's about time. Gleemax was a joke to begin with. The transition of accounts from old Wizards.com boards to it failed miserably, the site was (like every WotC online presence) terribly laid out, ugly and damned near useless. Also, do to their ultra-evangelical moderation and censorship, 3rd party forums are always a better option even for that part that Gleemax actually did do half-right.
Now let's add Shadowmoor and Eventide into MTGO2.5 so I have a nice deck editor/maker/card browser again and I might actually start playing again. (Note: I don't play on MTGO, I just used MTGO2's deck editor to make my deck lists.) As it is, I've acquired few rares from Shadowmoor and just got a common and uncommon playset for Eventide, with no rares.
Aside: Doesn't everyone love how D&D 4th Edition (the horrible craptasm I think it is, but I don't want to threadjack) launched with none of its online content that was used to sell it before release? They recently added an online guide -- which is only searchable for keywords. You can't even browse powers lists: you have to know the name and look it up by that. Time and time again, WotC's online division shows us failure.
Agreed on this note. MTGO 3 needs to be taken back in they need to rerelease v.2.5 and let us continue to have server issues... 2.5 is at least more stable than 3.0
Define 'more stable'.
Looking at the server up time, V3 is considerably more stable than V2 was for the past few years.
The client has a lot more bugs now though, but as far as server stability goes, V3 is much better than V2.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
^^
MTGO Writer and Epic Time-Waster.
If you have questions about MTGO PM me, I'm all up ons, as it were.
Check out my articles on http://puremtgo.com/ I'm the nerd you see there... wait, not that one. Nope, not that one either... yeah. That one.
I'm switching Actually I think it was about time to move on to 4.0. Making a non-spellcaster that could go toe to toe with a spellcaster was getting tiresome with all those spell-filled splatbooks WotC released for 3.5. They pamper those wizards and clerics and (worst, because most powerful, of all) druids with the Spell Compendium, and what do the fighters, barbarians and rogues get? Nothing, because the whole spellcasting system was inherently flawed. Nah, I'll be trying the new system out gladly, knowing that this time it is actually possible to share the splatbook goodiness!
Edit: And yeah, uhm, since this is a magic related site... I think I visited Gleemax once or twice, was amused by that strange photo shoot contest ages ago, and never checked back. It just wasn't on my radar...
D&D 4.0 is also an unfinished product, rushed out in the name of quick dollars on the books, to hold off the Collective. It is crap, just like MTGO 3.0. I think the downfall truly started with the DuelMasters, then spiraled out of control after the marvelous mishap that was DreamBlade. Now they are trying to make Yu-Gi-Oh: The Gathering in hopes of attracting quick money from the Yu-Gi-Oh players who drop stupid amounts of cash on that game. Gleemax, while I neat idea, died a premature death. Look at the whole Organized Play network. They cut all kinds of events at once, and offered nothing to replace them. Wizards has yet to offer anything to fill the void of what they cancelled. That screams, "We don't have a clue! Emergency! Emergency! Cancel everything you can, pull out the PR smoke and mirrors and run damage control until we get a clue! ALERT! ALERT! HASBORG assimilation is imminent!" i And if you listen carefully, you can hear it, the collective. "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated."
There's The Complete Warrior and The Complete Adventurer for melee lovers. People just love being spellcasters.
Yeah, probably because people like to have a variety of options available to them and they want to not suck. In 3.5 that pretty much means you ahve to be a spellcaster. People do like melee classes, it's just that they suck and are boring after a while because they can do so few things.
4th edition changes that, and thank god it does. Now each class essentially has the same amount of options and similar power level at each level. 3.5 was fun but honestly you can keep its essentialy unfixable problems while the rest of the world updates gradually to the incredibly streamlined and very well tested 4th edition.
And I don't really miss the online content of 4th edition. I never really expect anything signifigant from wizards when it comes to product support online. They inevidably fail. I mean, even gatherer has friggin ads up the yinyang.
Looking at the server up time, V3 is considerably more stable than V2 was for the past few years.
The client has a lot more bugs now though, but as far as server stability goes, V3 is much better than V2.
This is hard to judge, as there are far less people using V3 than there were using V2, thus less strain is put onto their server(s) to begin with.
I never went to Gleemax, as I'm really not into 'social networking', but it's not surprising to me that it didn't succeed. It wasn't that well received to begin with, and Wizards is pretty much a 100% 'bad streak' this year.
D&D 4.0 is also an unfinished product, rushed out in the name of quick dollars on the books, to hold off the Collective.
I fail to see how it is more unfinished than 3.0 on release. Why, it doesn't have all the splatbook classes in?
As for Dreamblade, it was the best strategic/tactical game WotC released EVER (yes... better than Magic). The only failure in Dreamblade was the fact that they thought catering to the hardcore tournament players was a better idea than catering to the casual crowd. Lesson learned (hence the cut to Magic OP and reorienting the money towards the casual-friendly Magic Play Network).
I fail to see how it is more unfinished than 3.0 on release. Why, it doesn't have all the splatbook classes in?
As for Dreamblade, it was the best strategic/tactical game WotC released EVER (yes... better than Magic). The only failure in Dreamblade was the fact that they thought catering to the hardcore tournament players was a better idea than catering to the casual crowd. Lesson learned (hence the cut to Magic OP and reorienting the money towards the casual-friendly Magic Play Network).
4.0 also does not have old staple classes in it either. Not to mention it was built strictly to make programming easier. The we did not know how to get them in there approach for the druid etc. seems to have worked for some. As to the OP Network, if it had been well thought out, there would be more going on with it. The money redirection was to make up for the previous financial failures. Stagnant since 2005 means, "We need money fast or we are done." MaRo's Living Changerously title was more than a play on words or a pun. It was a message. Either this year they make it or they get devoured.
I think the downfall truly started with the DuelMasters, then spiraled out of control after the marvelous mishap that was DreamBlade. Now they are trying to make Yu-Gi-Oh: The Gathering in hopes of attracting quick money from the Yu-Gi-Oh players who drop stupid amounts of cash on that game.
Duel Masters is only a failure in the US. Its extremely popular in Asian markets and is the #1 selling game in Japan. There were just too many TCGs in the US already and so it was doomed before it even came out. Its a really fun game btw.
It all comes down to Hasbro putting pressure on WoTC to produce more products and generate more profit. Hasbro doesn't seem to know a thing about how the hobby gaming industry works and WoTC is paying for Hasbro's ignorance.
I hate having to repeat myself but...adding another rarity to Magic isn't turning it into Yu-Gi-Oh or any other TCG. The rarity system in YGO is much more outrageous than the new rarity system in Magic. There are 7 rarities you can get in boosters and its hard to even get a set of commons if you buy a box. Magic will still be more easily collectible than any other TCG on the market.
NOOOOO! What will I do without the D20 optimization boards to steal builds from. The magic section of it was a failure, but I knew of no better forum for d20 optimization.
RIP Gleemax, with the hope that you will be revived on a forum that doesn't go down every 5 seconds.
So is it just the Facebook-style crap they're scrapping, or the entire rotting edifice including the forums with their illiterate neckbeards and insane moderation policies (you can sit there and start sexist troll threads all you like and they won't touch you, but post a critical response in one of said troll threads and you get suspended)?
If so, then good. About time. Burn in hell, Gleemax. And its users can get the F off my internet.
P.S. I laughed so hard at all the Hasborg discussion, even though it's unwarranted and quite inane.
I hate having to repeat myself but...adding another rarity to Magic isn't turning it into Yu-Gi-Oh or any other TCG. The rarity system in YGO is much more outrageous than the new rarity system in Magic. There are 7 rarities you can get in boosters and its hard to even get a set of commons if you buy a box. Magic will still be more easily collectible than any other TCG on the market.
You are bing short sited. They added another rarity a long time ago. It was called the foil. Now yes, I have read all the wonderful math calculations and heard all the arguments. Reality is the Mythic rare thing was not needed. It is neither innovative nor desired. It is another Hasborg induced kneejerk, half-baked idea.
The real shame is unlike Gleemax, it will just make people mad, and they will go on. Gleemax was touted at GAMA by WotC people only to die an early death because of poor implementation. Why? Because they have devoted all their efforts to fix the failure that is MTGO III. I said it then, I say it now, MTGO is the worste thing to happen to the game. Now it seems it may kill it for different reasons altogether. Maybe you all need a reminder of what happens when the collective is unhappy with a subsidiary. They get dissolved and devoured and forgotten. WotC is fighting to avoid it, but I fear failure that is their digital initiative is going to doom them. I play magic and D&D in person for a reason, If i wanted Warcraft, I would play Warcraft. instead of trying make the games more like everyone else, maybe it is time to figure out ways to make them appeal to digital zombies that are todays gamers, without contracting the soul of the games to Digital Satan.
P.S. I laughed so hard at all the Hasborg discussion, even though it's unwarranted and quite inane.
You can tell me how unwarranted and inane after WotC is a memory and all its fun goodness has been lost to the Collective.
It is quite obvious the WOtC employees dislike Hasbro. They refer to them as their dark overlords. That was a first and GAMA experience I still chuckle about.
NOOOOO! What will I do without the D20 optimization boards to steal builds from. The magic section of it was a failure, but I knew of no better forum for d20 optimization.
RIP Gleemax, with the hope that you will be revived on a forum that doesn't go down every 5 seconds.
They really do need to find a replacement for the D&D boards somewhere as there is a lot of collected wisdom stored there and I think it's one of the best places to get D&D info online in terms of forums. But a lot of the need for customization boards sprung from the fact that 3.5 was so friggin broken. Many of those degeneracies have been taken out in 4th ed, making the boards a little less of a necessity. Though it still would be nice to have a place to find a good way to open up multiclassing a little more.
So there are still things to talk about and I hope they at least bring back the old wizards forums. (also, the exclusion of classes like druid, monk, bard, and barbarian does not make 4th ed untested. It simply means they were a little choosier about having a more basic set of options for core classes. Though why there had to be three strikers and only one controller I do not understand.)
(also, the exclusion of classes like druid, monk, bard, and barbarian does not make 4th ed untested. It simply means they were a little choosier about having a more basic set of options for core classes. Though why there had to be three strikers and only one controller I do not understand.)
I did not say untested. I said incomplete. It was rushed out. It is also out many years early. When wizards popped out 3e/3.5e they promised it would be at least a decade before 4th would appear. One more lie. Just like the Mythic rare cards not being utility cards will come to be seen.
J.D. "Illiad" Frazer said it best, "4th edition is a paper system for a computer RPG"
The Digital Initiative is the interest. It means WotC makes pure proffit and never has to deal with retailers. Gleemax was but a step along the way. Lost to the coming assimiation. If you do not believe, look at wizards press releases. They have a new Hasborg appointed president.
I did not say untested. I said incomplete. It was rushed out. It is also out many years early. When wizards popped out 3e/3.5e they promised it would be at least a decade before 4th would appear. One more lie. Just like the Mythic rare cards not being utility cards will come to be seen.
J.D. "Illiad" Frazer said it best, "4th edition is a paper system for a computer RPG"
The Digital Initiative is the interest. It means WotC makes pure proffit and never has to deal with retailers. Gleemax was but a step along the way. Lost to the coming assimiation. If you do not believe, look at wizards press releases. They have a new Hasborg appointed president.
If 4e was rushed, I'd be amazed at what they could have come up with if they "completed" it. It's already balanced better than 3.5, easier to learn than 3.5, and it doesn't have the glaring problems 3.5 did.
The new changes to Magic have been more questionable, but it looks to be more of a problem with the MtG people than a problem with all of WotC.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
They call me Hadoken 'cause I'm down-right fierce.
I posted this on Gleemax but wanted to post here as well, it may actually get read here
A true community site is a very hard project for any company to create. I work for a company doing just this now. We have worked for 2 years and still have many more months before we launch. As a gamer and a human the things that turned me away from Gleemax was 1, the name. Even as a magic player, Gleemax means nothing to me. Give me something that I will remember, that ALL of your core products use. A community site should foster all of your brands. The second issue I had with this site was the color scheme. Not many people I know want a neon green site staring them in the face. A lot of what your trying to do can be tied back into the main site. Let players create blogs in the forums. Maybe only certain ranks can do this. At some point you can pull blogs to the main site as content. This could be done for any game. You don't need a separate site of or a separate project to create a community. You have a great community now, you just need a way to organize the content so that users better interact with the developers. Some of the new CMS (Content Management Systems) allow real time comment postings on articles. And they do a really good job at filtering profanity and robot posts. This will allow users to comment on articles and on each others comments.
I did not say untested. I said incomplete. It was rushed out. It is also out many years early. When wizards popped out 3e/3.5e they promised it would be at least a decade before 4th would appear. One more lie.
J.D. "Illiad" Frazer said it best, "4th edition is a paper system for a computer RPG"
Well, I hardly blame them for making a new game within the decade. I presume you're not still working on a windows 3.11 computer either, are you? The 3.0/3.5 system is, as stated before, inherently flawed on some points. Flawed to the point that a lot of it can't be fixed, except by doing it all over again and releasing 4.0. Guess what, they just did that!
And yes, the rules are more simple, but you know what? I was getting really tired of still having to look up the grappling rules after 5 years of play, dealing with huge spiked chain (Monkey Grip, reach 15 ft.) wielding, unapproachable, tripping pc's, and sorcerors slinging 20-ft. radius burst spells dealing twice as much damage as the dedicated fighter/barbarians can deal to a single person...
And what's up with all those casting times. 3 rounds for Lesser Restoration? A full round for Enlarge Person? Nobody knows! 4.0 streamlines the whole concept of roleplaying to a much more grokkable experience. I'm all for it, the only thing I will miss is the 3.5 splat books with their incredible amount of extra options, something that time will solve anyway.
On topic: If I bought a company I'd want to have a say in it, so I don't really find it strange that WotC is getting a Hasbro appointed president. That doesn't really mean they are being assimilated. By the by, people say the same things (in regards to assimilation politics) about Electronic Arts, and they are learning too that breaking and dissolving a talented company isn't the way to go. Hasbro will realize this as well, I hope.
Have a say in the company if you understand the product. Again, go look into the many other companys Hasborg has purchased. You will find WotC was one of the few left unmolested until the last year. The others were digested and forgotten. When they happens, you can go ahead and put Magic and D&D's headstones next to Gleemax's. They will no longer be a focus, just one more product to be shoved out the door.
And you all can enjoy your D&D 4 all you want. As far as I am concerned it is crap. I looked at the books, even tried a few games. If I want to play Warcraft or Diablo, I will play Warcraft or Diablo. This new thing is not even true to D&D. And the fact people are so accepting of it shows how unsophisticated the modern gamer is. Pretty package, and promise them some digital content, and they drool like mental patients.
4.0 also does not have old staple classes in it either.
By staple, I would expect you mean a class that is essential to D&D, thus would have had to be in pretty much every edition.
Barbarian: not staple (not in 2E). Just a Fighter in loincloth with anger management issues.
Monk: not staple (not in 2E). Stupid Wuxia class.
Druid: not staple (not in BECMI D&D). Just a nature-flavored cleric before it became a broken polymorph on stick in 3.0
Sorcerer: hell no! not staple (class added in 3.0). For people who recognized Vancian spellcasting is an idiotic concept. Now unneeded since the designers realized Vancian spellcasting is an idiotic concept.
Bard: not staple (BECMI). Pitied by every other player at the table for being a gimped useless character. Multiclass Fighter/Wizard/Rogue with a banjo.
What else is missing?
It's got: Fighter, Thief, Rogue, Wizard. All the staples. It also has Ranger, Paladin (i.e. the old editions "I'm mostly there to provide non-boring Fighter variants" classes), and the new Warlock and Warlord. Each of the classes having more build options from start than 3.X characters (assuming no splatbooks).
They didn't rush 4E out the door. They put in the needed staple classes, and then cut the rest because people are not interested in buying a 500 pages PHB that costs 70$. If you want the wacky classes, then that's what splatbooks are for.
They didn't rush 4E out the door. They put in the needed staple classes, and then cut the rest because people are not interested in buying a 500 pages PHB that costs 70$. If you want the wacky classes, then that's what splatbooks are for.
QFT.
And how did this thread get to be mainly about 4thed?
CONTENT: the peeps on gleemax seem equally glad it is dying which makes me think that the only thing that is going away is the gleemax shell tying everything together and being generally annoying and florescent green. Seems like the forums themselves will remain.
d20 Optimization Boards, D&D 3.5 Custom Creation Board (That doesn't exist anymore, it was wiped away when 4E arrived.) and some other stuff. Most of boards I used in gleemax didn't have anything to do with MtG, though.
Actually Gleemax beat the heck out of the CO boards. They capped bandwidth, kicked out the well respected and informed moderator due to her inability to follow the company line and drove tons of people away.
Whenever you see an idea for a new program that doesn't actually have any real content, you know it's a terrible decision made solely by executives.
All the rants about MTGO 3 seem a bit off-topic, but I'm going to bite: the part of MTGO which generates the most revenue (drafts) continue to fire regularly and are not plagued by server crashes every other day. PEs during release events (after some initial teething troubles) worked up to a point, and again, after they fixed the DB issues, weren't plagued with crashes. Leagues are low priority since they earn less money per match than drafts or PEs.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a piss-poor application, but that hasn't stopped people using it and generating continued revenue for WOTC. It's not "dead" and they aren't going to bring back 2.5. Get over it.
EDIT: And on topic, I never used Gleemax except to get on to the Magic boards. I don't want a "social networking" site from my hobby provider. I have a better one, it's called Facebook. Why try to compete in a market which you have no background or expertise? No surprises it failed here...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless. If it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it or the wise make plans against it.
-- Sun Tzu, The Art Of War
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Now let's add Shadowmoor and Eventide into MTGO2.5 so I have a nice deck editor/maker/card browser again and I might actually start playing again. (Note: I don't play on MTGO, I just used MTGO2's deck editor to make my deck lists.) As it is, I've acquired few rares from Shadowmoor and just got a common and uncommon playset for Eventide, with no rares.
Aside: Doesn't everyone love how D&D 4th Edition (the horrible craptasm I think it is, but I don't want to threadjack) launched with none of its online content that was used to sell it before release? They recently added an online guide -- which is only searchable for keywords. You can't even browse powers lists: you have to know the name and look it up by that. Time and time again, WotC's online division shows us failure.
Define 'more stable'.
Looking at the server up time, V3 is considerably more stable than V2 was for the past few years.
The client has a lot more bugs now though, but as far as server stability goes, V3 is much better than V2.
MTGO Writer and Epic Time-Waster.
If you have questions about MTGO PM me, I'm all up ons, as it were.
Check out my articles on http://puremtgo.com/ I'm the nerd you see there... wait, not that one. Nope, not that one either... yeah. That one.
D&D 4.0 is also an unfinished product, rushed out in the name of quick dollars on the books, to hold off the Collective. It is crap, just like MTGO 3.0. I think the downfall truly started with the DuelMasters, then spiraled out of control after the marvelous mishap that was DreamBlade. Now they are trying to make Yu-Gi-Oh: The Gathering in hopes of attracting quick money from the Yu-Gi-Oh players who drop stupid amounts of cash on that game. Gleemax, while I neat idea, died a premature death. Look at the whole Organized Play network. They cut all kinds of events at once, and offered nothing to replace them. Wizards has yet to offer anything to fill the void of what they cancelled. That screams, "We don't have a clue! Emergency! Emergency! Cancel everything you can, pull out the PR smoke and mirrors and run damage control until we get a clue! ALERT! ALERT! HASBORG assimilation is imminent!"
i
And if you listen carefully, you can hear it, the collective. "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated."
Yeah, probably because people like to have a variety of options available to them and they want to not suck. In 3.5 that pretty much means you ahve to be a spellcaster. People do like melee classes, it's just that they suck and are boring after a while because they can do so few things.
4th edition changes that, and thank god it does. Now each class essentially has the same amount of options and similar power level at each level. 3.5 was fun but honestly you can keep its essentialy unfixable problems while the rest of the world updates gradually to the incredibly streamlined and very well tested 4th edition.
And I don't really miss the online content of 4th edition. I never really expect anything signifigant from wizards when it comes to product support online. They inevidably fail. I mean, even gatherer has friggin ads up the yinyang.
This is hard to judge, as there are far less people using V3 than there were using V2, thus less strain is put onto their server(s) to begin with.
I never went to Gleemax, as I'm really not into 'social networking', but it's not surprising to me that it didn't succeed. It wasn't that well received to begin with, and Wizards is pretty much a 100% 'bad streak' this year.
I fail to see how it is more unfinished than 3.0 on release. Why, it doesn't have all the splatbook classes in?
As for Dreamblade, it was the best strategic/tactical game WotC released EVER (yes... better than Magic). The only failure in Dreamblade was the fact that they thought catering to the hardcore tournament players was a better idea than catering to the casual crowd. Lesson learned (hence the cut to Magic OP and reorienting the money towards the casual-friendly Magic Play Network).
Netdecking is Rightdecking
My latest data-driven Magic the Gathering strategy article
(TLDR: Analysis of the Valakut matchups. UB rising in the rankings. Aggro correspondingly taking a dive.)
4.0 also does not have old staple classes in it either. Not to mention it was built strictly to make programming easier. The we did not know how to get them in there approach for the druid etc. seems to have worked for some. As to the OP Network, if it had been well thought out, there would be more going on with it. The money redirection was to make up for the previous financial failures. Stagnant since 2005 means, "We need money fast or we are done." MaRo's Living Changerously title was more than a play on words or a pun. It was a message. Either this year they make it or they get devoured.
Duel Masters is only a failure in the US. Its extremely popular in Asian markets and is the #1 selling game in Japan. There were just too many TCGs in the US already and so it was doomed before it even came out. Its a really fun game btw.
It all comes down to Hasbro putting pressure on WoTC to produce more products and generate more profit. Hasbro doesn't seem to know a thing about how the hobby gaming industry works and WoTC is paying for Hasbro's ignorance.
I hate having to repeat myself but...adding another rarity to Magic isn't turning it into Yu-Gi-Oh or any other TCG. The rarity system in YGO is much more outrageous than the new rarity system in Magic. There are 7 rarities you can get in boosters and its hard to even get a set of commons if you buy a box. Magic will still be more easily collectible than any other TCG on the market.
RIP Gleemax, with the hope that you will be revived on a forum that doesn't go down every 5 seconds.
Yeah it has slightly better uptimes without having PEs all the time, or Leagues which are one of the heaviest areas of use...
Yes i am the same guy who trades/sells on MOTL AND Wizards of the Coast and i trade on POJO.
If so, then good. About time. Burn in hell, Gleemax. And its users can get the F off my internet.
P.S. I laughed so hard at all the Hasborg discussion, even though it's unwarranted and quite inane.
You are bing short sited. They added another rarity a long time ago. It was called the foil. Now yes, I have read all the wonderful math calculations and heard all the arguments. Reality is the Mythic rare thing was not needed. It is neither innovative nor desired. It is another Hasborg induced kneejerk, half-baked idea.
The real shame is unlike Gleemax, it will just make people mad, and they will go on. Gleemax was touted at GAMA by WotC people only to die an early death because of poor implementation. Why? Because they have devoted all their efforts to fix the failure that is MTGO III. I said it then, I say it now, MTGO is the worste thing to happen to the game. Now it seems it may kill it for different reasons altogether. Maybe you all need a reminder of what happens when the collective is unhappy with a subsidiary. They get dissolved and devoured and forgotten. WotC is fighting to avoid it, but I fear failure that is their digital initiative is going to doom them. I play magic and D&D in person for a reason, If i wanted Warcraft, I would play Warcraft. instead of trying make the games more like everyone else, maybe it is time to figure out ways to make them appeal to digital zombies that are todays gamers, without contracting the soul of the games to Digital Satan.
You can tell me how unwarranted and inane after WotC is a memory and all its fun goodness has been lost to the Collective.
It is quite obvious the WOtC employees dislike Hasbro. They refer to them as their dark overlords. That was a first and GAMA experience I still chuckle about.
They really do need to find a replacement for the D&D boards somewhere as there is a lot of collected wisdom stored there and I think it's one of the best places to get D&D info online in terms of forums. But a lot of the need for customization boards sprung from the fact that 3.5 was so friggin broken. Many of those degeneracies have been taken out in 4th ed, making the boards a little less of a necessity. Though it still would be nice to have a place to find a good way to open up multiclassing a little more.
So there are still things to talk about and I hope they at least bring back the old wizards forums. (also, the exclusion of classes like druid, monk, bard, and barbarian does not make 4th ed untested. It simply means they were a little choosier about having a more basic set of options for core classes. Though why there had to be three strikers and only one controller I do not understand.)
I did not say untested. I said incomplete. It was rushed out. It is also out many years early. When wizards popped out 3e/3.5e they promised it would be at least a decade before 4th would appear. One more lie. Just like the Mythic rare cards not being utility cards will come to be seen.
J.D. "Illiad" Frazer said it best, "4th edition is a paper system for a computer RPG"
The Digital Initiative is the interest. It means WotC makes pure proffit and never has to deal with retailers. Gleemax was but a step along the way. Lost to the coming assimiation. If you do not believe, look at wizards press releases. They have a new Hasborg appointed president.
If 4e was rushed, I'd be amazed at what they could have come up with if they "completed" it. It's already balanced better than 3.5, easier to learn than 3.5, and it doesn't have the glaring problems 3.5 did.
The new changes to Magic have been more questionable, but it looks to be more of a problem with the MtG people than a problem with all of WotC.
A true community site is a very hard project for any company to create. I work for a company doing just this now. We have worked for 2 years and still have many more months before we launch. As a gamer and a human the things that turned me away from Gleemax was 1, the name. Even as a magic player, Gleemax means nothing to me. Give me something that I will remember, that ALL of your core products use. A community site should foster all of your brands. The second issue I had with this site was the color scheme. Not many people I know want a neon green site staring them in the face. A lot of what your trying to do can be tied back into the main site. Let players create blogs in the forums. Maybe only certain ranks can do this. At some point you can pull blogs to the main site as content. This could be done for any game. You don't need a separate site of or a separate project to create a community. You have a great community now, you just need a way to organize the content so that users better interact with the developers. Some of the new CMS (Content Management Systems) allow real time comment postings on articles. And they do a really good job at filtering profanity and robot posts. This will allow users to comment on articles and on each others comments.
And yes, the rules are more simple, but you know what? I was getting really tired of still having to look up the grappling rules after 5 years of play, dealing with huge spiked chain (Monkey Grip, reach 15 ft.) wielding, unapproachable, tripping pc's, and sorcerors slinging 20-ft. radius burst spells dealing twice as much damage as the dedicated fighter/barbarians can deal to a single person...
And what's up with all those casting times. 3 rounds for Lesser Restoration? A full round for Enlarge Person? Nobody knows! 4.0 streamlines the whole concept of roleplaying to a much more grokkable experience. I'm all for it, the only thing I will miss is the 3.5 splat books with their incredible amount of extra options, something that time will solve anyway.
On topic: If I bought a company I'd want to have a say in it, so I don't really find it strange that WotC is getting a Hasbro appointed president. That doesn't really mean they are being assimilated. By the by, people say the same things (in regards to assimilation politics) about Electronic Arts, and they are learning too that breaking and dissolving a talented company isn't the way to go. Hasbro will realize this as well, I hope.
And you all can enjoy your D&D 4 all you want. As far as I am concerned it is crap. I looked at the books, even tried a few games. If I want to play Warcraft or Diablo, I will play Warcraft or Diablo. This new thing is not even true to D&D. And the fact people are so accepting of it shows how unsophisticated the modern gamer is. Pretty package, and promise them some digital content, and they drool like mental patients.
That made me giggle:D:D:D:D
By staple, I would expect you mean a class that is essential to D&D, thus would have had to be in pretty much every edition.
Barbarian: not staple (not in 2E). Just a Fighter in loincloth with anger management issues.
Monk: not staple (not in 2E). Stupid Wuxia class.
Druid: not staple (not in BECMI D&D). Just a nature-flavored cleric before it became a broken polymorph on stick in 3.0
Sorcerer: hell no! not staple (class added in 3.0). For people who recognized Vancian spellcasting is an idiotic concept. Now unneeded since the designers realized Vancian spellcasting is an idiotic concept.
Bard: not staple (BECMI). Pitied by every other player at the table for being a gimped useless character. Multiclass Fighter/Wizard/Rogue with a banjo.
What else is missing?
It's got: Fighter, Thief, Rogue, Wizard. All the staples. It also has Ranger, Paladin (i.e. the old editions "I'm mostly there to provide non-boring Fighter variants" classes), and the new Warlock and Warlord. Each of the classes having more build options from start than 3.X characters (assuming no splatbooks).
They didn't rush 4E out the door. They put in the needed staple classes, and then cut the rest because people are not interested in buying a 500 pages PHB that costs 70$. If you want the wacky classes, then that's what splatbooks are for.
Netdecking is Rightdecking
My latest data-driven Magic the Gathering strategy article
(TLDR: Analysis of the Valakut matchups. UB rising in the rankings. Aggro correspondingly taking a dive.)
QFT.
And how did this thread get to be mainly about 4thed?
CONTENT: the peeps on gleemax seem equally glad it is dying which makes me think that the only thing that is going away is the gleemax shell tying everything together and being generally annoying and florescent green. Seems like the forums themselves will remain.
Actually Gleemax beat the heck out of the CO boards. They capped bandwidth, kicked out the well respected and informed moderator due to her inability to follow the company line and drove tons of people away.
Whenever you see an idea for a new program that doesn't actually have any real content, you know it's a terrible decision made solely by executives.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a piss-poor application, but that hasn't stopped people using it and generating continued revenue for WOTC. It's not "dead" and they aren't going to bring back 2.5. Get over it.
EDIT: And on topic, I never used Gleemax except to get on to the Magic boards. I don't want a "social networking" site from my hobby provider. I have a better one, it's called Facebook. Why try to compete in a market which you have no background or expertise? No surprises it failed here...
-- Sun Tzu, The Art Of War