# How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?



## MerricB (Jul 5, 2011)

Amusing myself with old posts and new data:

*Dragon Magazine Subscribers*

```
Issue Date Subs Total Paid
12     9/30/77       1164	 7381
22	9/26/78       1144	      7859
33	10/1/79       1951	      10,885
44	10/31/80      4558	 20,155
55	9/30/81	 11,531 48,119
67	9/30/82	 19,029 60,387
91	9/12/84	 36,974 118,021
104	9/27/85	 36,200 107,200
115	9/22/86	 29,598 88,758
127	9/28/87	 25,003 73,008
151	9/26/89	 26,800 99,628
163	10/1/90	 27,912 91,956
188	9/30/92	 23,685 89,985
200	10/1/93	 21,116 77,534
212	9/30/94	 20,105 74,753
236	10/14/96 14,357 54,812
242	10/15/97 12,435 44,163
266	10/10/99 13,224 31,536
```

Oct 2000 (#278) - 38,214
Oct 2001 (#290) - 49,627
Oct 2002 (#302) - 51,831
Oct 2003 (#314) - 68,585
Oct 2004 (#327) - 62,725
??? 2005 (#339) - 54,637
??? 2006 (#351) - 46,250

*Current D&D Insider Subscribers:* Unknown, but over 56,000.

Make of it what you will! 

Cheers!


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 5, 2011)

Hmm... If PD really is claiming to be bigger than D&D then this may mean D&D excedes the early 80s numbers.


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## TerraDave (Jul 5, 2011)

84 was the peak. The cartoon had come out in the fall of 83. Dragonlance would be released in 84. B..E..C..and M were out as were all of the "classic" modules...and Gygaxian goodness was available in seemingly every mall and town center on earth. As were D&D licensed toys. There were also dozens of other RPGs, including all those _other_ classics (cyperpunk, shadowrun, and vampire would come in the age of decline, by there nature). 

Of course, terrible managment meant that TSR was loosing money, the BADD crowd was rising...and it would only get worse. 

At least, thats what I see.


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## TheClone (Jul 6, 2011)

MerricB said:


> *Current D&D Insider Subscribers:* Unknown, but over 56,000.




Where did you get that from?


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## Echohawk (Jul 6, 2011)

TheClone said:


> Where did you get that from?



I'm guessing that it is based on the 56523 members of the D&D Insider group in WotC's community. I think we've previously established that in order to be counted in that you need to (a) have a DDI account, and (b) have created a WotC community account. (Apparently, lapsed DDI subscribers are removed from that group.)

Hence the total number of DDI subscribers is equal to 56523 plus all the DDI subscribers who haven't also created WotC community accounts, or "at least 56000". If those are accurate deductions, then the real number is likely to be much higher than 56000, since there will be many DDI subscribers who have never visited the Community section of the WotC web site, or created accounts there.


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## Hussar (Oct 3, 2011)

Casts *THREADOMANCY* 

I just recently got a DDI sub and took a look at the current number:  62396 subscribed members.  That's a 10% increase in three months.  Does anyone know how fast or slow this number has been growing?  10%/quarter seems a pretty durn healthy growth rate.


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

Echohawk said:


> I'm guessing that it is based on the 56523 members of the D&D Insider group in WotC's community. I think we've previously established that in order to be counted in that you need to (a) have a DDI account, and (b) have created a WotC community account. (Apparently, lapsed DDI subscribers are removed from that group.)
> 
> Hence the total number of DDI subscribers is equal to 56523 plus all the DDI subscribers who haven't also created WotC community accounts, or "at least 56000". If those are accurate deductions, then the real number is likely to be much higher than 56000, since there will be many DDI subscribers who have never visited the Community section of the WotC web site, or created accounts there.




For example, in our group of 6, only I have ever logged in to the Community section at WotC.


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## Echohawk (Oct 3, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Casts *THREADOMANCY*
> 
> I just recently got a DDI sub and took a look at the current number:  62396 subscribed members.  That's a 10% increase in three months.  Does anyone know how fast or slow this number has been growing?  10%/quarter seems a pretty durn healthy growth rate.



There were 7972 DDI members also registered on the WotC forums on 2009-09-06. To get to 62396 today would require roughly an 8.6% increase *per month*, but that's slightly misleading, since the number doubled to 14392 between 2009-09-06 and 2009-10-06.

I'd estimate the average monthly growth rate at about 6-7% per month over the last two years, which does seem to be reasonably impressive.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Just a question. Is it reasonable, for Wotc to have created a few accounts themselves? I am not saying it is happening, I am just asking if it could be a possibility to consider or if we should rather to exclude it.


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## Nikosandros (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Just a question. Is it reasonable, for Wotc to have created a few accounts themselves? I am not saying it is happening, I am just asking if it could be a possibility to consider or if we should rather to exclude it.



Reasonable? I would say no. Possible? Well, yes, of course. But I would consider it very unlikely.


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## Nikosandros (Oct 3, 2011)

Echohawk said:


> There were 7972 DDI members also registered on the WotC forums on 2009-09-06. To get to 62396 today would require roughly an 8.6% increase *per month*, but that's slightly misleading, since the number doubled to 14392 between 2009-09-06 and 2009-10-06.
> 
> I'd estimate the average monthly growth rate at about 6-7% per month over the last two years, which does seem to be reasonably impressive.



Yes, it sure is an impressive number.

It's rather fascinating to see this numbers through the years, even though it's hard to make a direct comparisons between magazine Dragon and DDI. However, I must say that one thing has remained constant for me. Back then, I was the only one in my gaming group with a subscription to Dragon magazine and, nowadays, I'm the only one with a DDI subscription...


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Just a question. Is it reasonable, for Wotc to have created a few accounts themselves? I am not saying it is happening, I am just asking if it could be a possibility to consider or if we should rather to exclude it.




Exclude it. Only rabid anti-WotC trolls would even consider that they (WotC) would engage in such cheating - and for what?


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## Hussar (Oct 3, 2011)

Yeah, I gotta go with Jack99 on this one.  What would be the point?  It's not like they're making a whole lot of advertising revenue that's dependent on their subscription numbers (cough TSR cough).  

You'd have to create thousands of accounts to make any significant change and I really can't see anyone paying someone to do that.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Why? We have seen it before, publishers employing dishonest tactics to improve the public image of the performance of their products. It ain't something unheard of.

Major -big business- cigarette companies have been accused of clandestine product sales.

In general, companies are not genuine to be certain of. If they find out a way to help their case that costs less than what it gives they would rather go at it, wouldn't they?


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## Imaro (Oct 3, 2011)

Does anyone know the turnaround time that it takes to be removed from the group once you are no longer a subscriber?


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## Hussar (Oct 3, 2011)

I think I've seen it done on other threads that it's pretty much 24 hours or less.  Basically, as soon as they process the end of your sub, you're removed automatically.


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## delericho (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Just a question. Is it reasonable, for Wotc to have created a few accounts themselves?




Of course they have! Emphasis on "a few" though - basically, the staff will all have them, there will be a couple of accounts for testing bits of the system, and so on.

But it will be a very small number - perhaps as many as ten 'fake' accounts. Out of 62,000.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 3, 2011)

Edit: Nevermind- ninja'd.


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## MrBeens (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Why? We have seen it before, publishers employing dishonest tactics to improve the public image of the performance of their products. It ain't something unheard of.
> 
> Major -big business- cigarette companies have been accused of clandestine product sales.
> 
> In general, companies are not genuine to be certain of. If they find out a way to help their case that costs less than what it gives they would rather go at it, wouldn't they?




Take your tin foil hat off 
In this case there is no public image massaging - in this case the only people looking at these numbers and extrapolating the health of a product are people in this thread - WoTC are not using the numbers in a press release or anything. 
And as has been said, the numbers are only a rough indicator. 3 people who subscribe in my group, none of whom are registered with the community.


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## Mithreinmaethor (Oct 3, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> Take your tin foil hat off
> In this case there is no public image massaging - in this case the only people looking at these numbers and extrapolating the health of a product are people in this thread - WoTC are not using the numbers in a press release or anything.
> And as has been said, the numbers are only a rough indicator. 3 people who subscribe in my group, none of whom are registered with the community.




I agree I think that about 1/4 of the people I play with that have DDi actually also have a WotC forums account.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

delericho said:


> Of course they have! Emphasis on "a few" though - basically, the staff will all have them, there will be a couple of accounts for testing bits of the system, and so on.
> 
> But it will be a very small number - perhaps as many as ten 'fake' accounts. Out of 62,000.



That would be my bet too.
But... you never know.


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## Scribble (Oct 3, 2011)

Watch out for hyenas hiding in your bathtub too. You never know...


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## Echohawk (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> That would be my bet too.
> But... you never know.



I'm really struggling to see that there would be any benefit to WotC whatsoever in padding these numbers. The number is fairly meaningless as it is, given that it isn't even an indication of DDI subscribers, but merely the subset of DDI subscribers who are also registered on the forums.

And if you do think that it would somehow be beneficial for WotC to fake that total, it would make more sense to write a script that just increases the number displayed by a random amount every day, rather than going to all the trouble of adding new DDI subscribers and then also registering them on their own forums.

But even that sounds like an awful a lot of effort to go to in order to fake a number that only a few dozen people reading this thread care about.


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## Scribble (Oct 3, 2011)

I can see this working wel at a board meeting...

And now we have a report of how well the DDI is doing. As you can see in superFunk32's message board post he has a link to the number of people in the DDI group. See how big it is? Keep investing! Yay!  

What? Why would you actually want a report from our accounting department?


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Echohawk said:


> I'm really struggling to see that there would be any benefit to WotC whatsoever in padding these numbers. The number is fairly meaningless as it is, given that it isn't even an indication of DDI subscribers, but merely the subset of DDI subscribers who are also registered on the forums.
> 
> And if you do think that it would somehow be beneficial for WotC to fake that total, it would make more sense to write a script that just increases the number displayed by a random amount every day, rather than going to all the trouble of adding new DDI subscribers and then also registering them on their own forums.
> 
> But even that sounds like an awful a lot of effort to go to in order to fake a number that only a few dozen people reading this thread care about.




Many fans across the various community forums use the DDI subscription numbers as an argument to indicate that 4e is a healthy and solid affair for Wotc.


Alas, since internet communities are important for the companies one could think that even edition wars (Pathfinder included as an edition) seems to be part of the business nowadays -I am talking about the companies here.Imagine if the subscriptions were around 10000 or even 20000 I would say. How would this cast 4e's image?


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Scribble said:


> Watch out for hyenas hiding in your bathtub too. You never know...



I must have pissed in your cheerios or something...sorry bout that.


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Many fans across the various community forums use the DDI subscription numbers as an argument to indicate that 4e is a healthy and solid affair for Wotc.
> 
> 
> Alas, since internet communities are important for the companies one could think that even edition wars (Pathfinder included as an edition) seems to be part of the business nowadays -I am talking about the companies here.Imagine if the subscriptions were around 10000 or even 20000 I would say. How would this cast 4e's image?




So despite you saying that you weren't suggesting WotC was cheating with the numbers (in your first post), it seems to me that it is exactly what you ar saying. I wonder, do you have similar view towards Pathfinder's 50k beta download claim, or is it just WotC that are subject to your theories?


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## Scribble (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> I must have pissed in your cheerios or something...sorry bout that.




Nah- just both are things to watch out for.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Jack99 said:


> So despite you saying that you weren't suggesting WotC was cheating with the numbers (in your first post), it seems to me that it is exactly what you ar saying. I wonder, do you have similar view towards Pathfinder's 50k beta download claim, or is it just WotC that are subject to your theories?



It was an hypothesis based on some logical possible cause.
Why is it more interesting to see my motives than think about the logic behind the argument. In fact, the first thing that you do here is to show that you would rather dare accusing people of trolling if they dare think of some idea or hypothesis that would cast in doubt what you want to defend. In your second post I am IDied as that troll enemy of the other side.


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## Nikosandros (Oct 3, 2011)

Scribble said:


> Watch out for hyenas hiding in your bathtub too. You never know...



You aren't funny. Every time I go to the bathroom I put my life on the line, not knowing what kind of predator might spring on me from the bathtub and yet you make light of this issue.


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## was (Oct 3, 2011)

I did but then decided not to renew my subscription. Didn't really feel was getting my money's worth out of it.


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> It was an hypothesis based on some logical possible cause.
> Why is it more interesting to see my motives than think about the logic behind the argument. In fact, the first thing that you do here is to show that you would rather dare accusing people of trolling if they dare think of some idea or hypothesis that would cast in doubt what you want to defend. In your second post I am IDied as that troll enemy of the other side.




1. You had very little substantial arguments to support your "theory".
2. Your motives are interesting, because, according to your own theory, the perception of the online community is very important. And if you are right about that, why are you promoting a theory that makes WotC a bunch of cheaters? Because you think they are, or because you want to have others think so?


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## Dannager (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> It was an hypothesis based on some logical possible cause.




No, your "hypothesis" is a transparent attempt at a smear against a respected company based on absolutely (and I mean *absolutely*) zero evidence.

If you had evidence, that would be one thing. But you don't.

What you are doing is the tabletop gaming equivalent of, "I'm not saying it's true, but _what if it is_? All I'm doing is asking questions. What is WotC hiding?" Let's leave the Glenn Beck tactics to Glenn Beck.

*Mod Note:* Irony - using a hyperbolic host as an example to overstate your own case.  Let us leave the political references on boards that allow them, please.  Failure to do so will mean that, like Dannager here, you get booted from the thread.  ~Umbran


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Dannager said:


> No, your "hypothesis" is a transparent attempt at a smear against a respected company based on absolutely (and I mean *absolutely*) zero evidence.
> 
> If you had evidence, that would be one thing. But you don't.
> 
> What you are doing is the tabletop gaming equivalent of, "I'm not saying it's true, but _what if it is_? All I'm doing is asking questions. What is WotC hiding?" Let's leave the Glenn Beck tactics to Glenn Beck.




It is like someone casting some doubt after seeing an advertisement of some product and you jump on him accusing him of no actual evidence that give him no right to be questionable about said thing.  

Or like some people that have been questioning the credibility of the value of icv2 reports.

As I have no problem with people hinting that we should not be so certain regarding the value of icv2's reports I also expect people to accept that we should not be totally certain about DDI's success. You see, I like doubts. Especially regarding marketing arguments. Is this so bad?




Jack99 said:


> 1. You had very little substantial arguments to support your "theory".
> 2. Your motives are interesting, because, according to your own theory,  the perception of the online community is very important. And if you are  right about that, why are you promoting a theory that makes WotC a  bunch of cheaters? Because you think they are, or because you want to  have others think so?



Why not say what one thinks of regarding some product of Wotc or Paizo or whoever? Should I feel restrain to express my thoughts because of casting doubts one way or the other? Are you serious people?

EDIT: I think you are assuming the roles of counter-propaganda agents too seriously to be any good.


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> Why not say what one thinks of regarding some product of Wotc or Paizo or whoever? Should I feel restrain to express my thoughts because of casting doubts one way or the other? Are you serious people?




First of all, my question from earlier still remains unanswered. Do you question all companies, or just WotC?

Also, while it's healthy to have a certain amount of scepticism, it can be taken too far. I mean, if you don't believe anything they say, why even bother reading about it? How far do you go in your disbelief? What is next? Maybe some tinfoil conspiracy that Monte has only accepted to work on 5e in order to help Paizo gain dominance by creating an edition that will antagonize even more fans? Or maybe one about Mearls giving Bill S bad advice, so that Bill gets fired and Mearls gets his job? Maybe it's just me, but I would rather discuss stuff we at least have a little clue or hint about, instead of random speculaions who seem to have been pulled out of where the sun doesn't shine. In short, scepticism towards something concrete is fine, while scepticism towards invented assumptions are a waste of time.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Jack99 said:


> First of all, my question from earlier still remains unanswered. Do you question all companies, or just WotC?
> 
> Also, while it's healthy to have a certain amount of scepticism, it can be taken too far. I mean, if you don't believe anything they say, why even bother reading about it? How far do you go in your disbelief? What is next? Maybe some tinfoil conspiracy that Monte has only accepted to work on 5e in order to help Paizo gain dominance by creating an edition that will antagonize even more fans? Or maybe one about Mearls giving Bill S bad advice, so that Bill gets fired and Mearls gets his job? Maybe it's just me, but I would rather discuss stuff we at least have a little clue or hint about, instead of random speculaions who seem to have been pulled out of where the sun doesn't shine. In short, scepticism towards something concrete is fine, while scepticism towards invented assumptions are a waste of time.



It is not the first time we question ethics regarding what we know behind various announcements or methods or practices of Wotc or Paizo or what have you. They are companies after all, and companies are known to behave in whatever way it may help their bottom line. OTOH you are making it personal. You involve people into the argument. That is not fair. I would say that is not an ethical way to guide the discussion. Beyond saying that, I can see your point regarding introducing skepticism for the sake of it. Yet, as I said, it remains a possibility to keep in the back of our mind. Why do I say that? Well, did you expect to see so many current events that paint 4e in a desperate fashion? I guess not. Why do I say desperate? Well, many fans think right now, why do we see a Wotc that is in a hurry to change course? Why is their production plan so poor?

And regarding your question about my motives being unanswered. You did not answer my question first: why the hell do you care? What does it matter? I told you, you seem like a counter-propaganda agent.


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## Mithreinmaethor (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> It is like someone casting some doubt after seeing an advertisement of some product and you jump on him accusing him of no actual evidence that give him no right to be questionable about said thing.
> 
> Or like some people that have been questioning the credibility of the value of icv2 reports.
> 
> ...




The Icv2 stats of their own admissions do not take into account any electronic media by any of those rated.  Which means that DDi for WotC and PDF sales by Paizo are not counted.  It is strictly from interviews with retailers.


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## Echohawk (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> You see, I like doubts. Especially regarding marketing arguments. Is this so bad?



Please point out to me where WotC have used the number of DDI subscribers who also have forum accounts for any marketing purpose whatsoever.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Mithreinmaethor said:


> The Icv2 stats of their own admissions do not take into account any electronic media by any of those rated.  Which means that DDi for WotC and PDF sales by Paizo are not counted.  It is strictly from interviews with retailers.



Yes. The latest reports have also still influenced the interent D&D communities and edition wars.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Echohawk said:


> Please point out to me where WotC have used the number of DDI subscribers who also have forum accounts for any marketing purpose whatsoever.




Your point? You do not need to have Wotc to officially do this when fans can credibly do it by themselves. And even if Wotc did point out the numbers that would not mean that they were lying.

Hehe, Lisa Stevens and Mike Mearls (has he?) have made posts to boast about the height of their numbers in the past, but this does not mean that if they do not do this then it aint happening.


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## Scribble (Oct 3, 2011)

Mike Mearls and Lisa Stevens should have an arranged marriage like they did back in the day to settle feuds between royal houses.

I know Mearls is already married but hey... Harem!


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## Echohawk (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> And even if Wotc did point out the numbers that would not mean that they were lying. Lisa Stevens and Mike Mearls (has he?) have made posts to boast about the height of their numbers in the past, but this does not mean that if they do not do this then it aint happening.



Ha! I have it figured out, xechnao is clearly a pseudonym of Carl Smith, who wrote the classic N2: _The Forest Oracle_.

The Forest Oracle: "A group of seven men approaches. They are neither tarrying nor running. Their faces are expressionless. It is plain that they are not soldiers by their haphazard way of walking. They do not seem to be joking loudly or singing as they advance."

Compared to: "WotC are neither making claims about their DDI stats, nor can we be sure they are not lying about them. It is plain that they could be fixing the numbers by the fact that we can't be sure they aren't fixing the numbers. WotC do not seem to be using the numbers for marketing purposes as they increase."


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## Jack99 (Oct 3, 2011)

xechnao said:


> It is not the first time we question ethics regarding what we know behind various announcements or methods or practices of Wotc or Paizo or what have you. They are companies after all, and companies are known to behave in whatever way it may help their bottom line. OTOH you are making it personal. You involve people into the argument. That is not fair. I would say that is not an ethical way to guide the discussion. Beyond saying that, I can see your point regarding introducing skepticism for the sake of it. Yet, as I said, it remains a possibility to keep in the back of our mind. Why do I say that? Well, did you expect to see so many current events that paint 4e in a desperate fashion? I guess not. Why do I say desperate? Well, many fans think right now, why do we see a Wotc that is in a hurry to change course? Why is their production plan so poor?
> 
> And regarding your question about my motives being unanswered. You did not answer my question first: why the hell do you care? What does it matter? I told you, you seem like a counter-propaganda agent.




I think we just disagree on a fundamental level on just about everything. When you say WotC is lieing, it is, considering many of them are fellow posters, just as personal as my examples where I made up ridiculous stuff about Monte and Mearls. I also don't think your theory has anything to do with WotC being desperate. Or rather, even if I agreed that they were, it would be more than a stretch for me to go from discussing their changes to discussing the possibility of them cheating with some numbers that you attribute way too much significance. I also believe I have answered your question (marked 2 in a previous post).

With that said, I don't think we are getting anywhere, so lets just agree to disagree - once again. 

Cheers, I am off to bed.


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## xechnao (Oct 3, 2011)

Echohawk said:


> Ha! I have it figured out, xechnao is clearly a pseudonym of Carl Smith, who wrote the classic N2: _The Forest Oracle_.
> 
> The Forest Oracle: "A group of seven men approaches. They are neither tarrying nor running. Their faces are expressionless. It is plain that they are not soldiers by their haphazard way of walking. They do not seem to be joking loudly or singing as they advance."
> 
> Compared to: "WotC are neither making claims about their DDI stats, nor can we be sure they are not lying about them. It is plain that they could be fixing the numbers by the fact that we can't be sure they aren't fixing the numbers. WotC do not seem to be using the numbers for marketing purposes as they increase."




HA, good!


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## Hussar (Oct 4, 2011)

See, Xechnao, there's a significant difference in how the data is being questioned.  

The ICV2 numbers, _by their own admission_ don't include a significant segment of the hobby.  The only thing we can determine by those numbers is the print versions of Pathfinder are doing better than the print elements of WOTC D&D during a quarter.  That's it.  That's all we can determine.

Now, the Subscriber numbers on the WOTC site only tell us one thing - how many subscribers have also signed into the forum.  Again, these are total voodoo numbers.  About the only thing we can tell is that the number is growing.

You are right that WOTC _potentially could_ be inflating the sub numbers.  However, it's not exactly likely.  For one, you can actually view the members.  Now, of course WOTC staffers have memberships, and that's easily visible.  If the memberships were being spawned by some sort of bot, you'd get all sorts of names that would be pretty obvious that they were being faked.

And, again, what would be the point?  They'd have to spawn thousands of memberships to make any appreciable difference and that sort of thing gets caught pretty easily.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Oct 4, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, Xechnao, there's a significant difference in how the data is being questioned.
> 
> The ICV2 numbers, _by their own admission_ don't include a significant segment of the hobby.  The only thing we can determine by those numbers is the print versions of Pathfinder are doing better than the print elements of WOTC D&D during a quarter.  That's it.  That's all we can determine.
> 
> ...




Oh, it wouldn't be technically hard to make up any old number you want, but why 62k? It is just not THAT exciting a number. Why, if you are going to do it at all, not make it 150k or 250k? Would any of us be the slightest bit the wiser? Of course not.

As for the number, its size actually is fairly important in terms of gauging success overall with 4e. This is because cashflow adds up rather fast. 62k x$7/mo is what, around $450k, which is a pretty darn big bunch of change. Doubtless a decent part of that is taken up by the cost of the service, but it is a LOT of cash for a game company, around $5m a year. Now, suppose the REAL number of subscribers was more like 100k, now you're starting to talk about a service that is starting to reach a scale where it can bring in M:tG kind of money. Sure, nobody knows what Paizo is doing either, but you'd be hard pressed to find a $450k (or $700k!!!) chunk of cashflow lying around in their operations.

Honestly, I actually find it hard to believe that the number is a LOT bigger than 62k simply because if it was they'd have poured a HECK of a lot more resources into DDI than they obviously have (or else the whole rest of the game is really utterly dead in the market, which ic2 and Amazon numbers at the very least belie). Still, as a sanity check typically payroll is something like 40% of gross in these kinds of operations (take it from me, been there). So, you're talking a good $150k a month payroll. Even if WotC pays their IT people a LOT that's still 10-15 people on staff. So even at the low number it would seem like DDI can pay for itself and more reasonably. Again, that does kind of point to the real number not being a lot larger, there's just no way they've got 40 people working on DDI at high salary. Even with DR's cut and acquisition, etc...

So, 62k really does pass a pretty good smell test. It also seems like a pretty good number from other directions. I mean even if 4e is not THAT popular there are still bound to be 100's of 1000s of people that have played it and play it with some regularity. If 1 in 5 (basically all the DMs) are getting DDI, then you're in a reasonable territory there.


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## Scribble (Oct 4, 2011)

Also if you're willing to believe (without any evidence) that one company is inflating numbers then either you're being biased, or you're willing to believe ALL companies are doing so.

In which case then it's meaningless.


----------



## keterys (Oct 4, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, suppose the REAL number of subscribers was more like 100k, now you're starting to talk about a service that is starting to reach a scale where it can bring in M:tG kind of money.



I believe M:tG makes far more money than that.

That said, online and subscription services are a very serious deal. There's a reason that WotC has sunk millions into trying to create an online game table. Millions, mind you, that have all turned up no profit to date.



> Honestly, I actually find it hard to believe that the number is a LOT bigger than 62k



Depends on your scale - I can't imagine they have less than, say, 100k subscribers given how many people don't register, but I'd be surprised if they have more than, say, 300k subscribers.



> Still, as a sanity check typically payroll is something like 40% of gross in these kinds of operations (take it from me, been there). So, you're talking a good $150k a month payroll. Even if WotC pays their IT people a LOT that's still 10-15 people on staff.



Plus game designers/developers, editors, artists, community managers... plus health benefits and office space in some cases. Every DDI article has at least, what, 7 names on it?

Plus all of the money they've spent on developing the character and monster builders, nevermind research that isn't fruitful yet like the virtual table. Given they've gone through at least two different companies/teams, I'm pretty sure that all added up.

That said, I do think DDI is profitable. I'm not sure how much of a hole their attempts at an online table have set them back, though. I expect _at least_ a year's worth of that profit. Which totally might pay off, if they can deliver a quality product.

Big If.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Oct 4, 2011)

keterys said:


> I believe M:tG makes far more money than that.
> 
> That said, online and subscription services are a very serious deal. There's a reason that WotC has sunk millions into trying to create an online game table. Millions, mind you, that have all turned up no profit to date.




I'm skeptical they put millions into it. Software is expensive, but given that they've had a pretty clear roadmap for the past couple of years on VTT what I see is more a low but ongoing commitment to eventually getting there. I'd expect since their DDI strategy is WORKING they aren't really in a giant rush to get a product going that they don't even have a business strategy for yet.



> Depends on your scale - I can't imagine they have less than, say, 100k subscribers given how many people don't register, but I'd be surprised if they have more than, say, 300k subscribers.




300k subscribers WOULD be bigger that M:tG. That would be well over $25m a year, which is likely bigger than all other RPG products in existence anywhere combined. I think at that point there would be a very different kind of noise coming out of WotC. Even 100k doesn't really jibe to me with what we see them up to. 


> Plus game designers/developers, editors, artists, community managers... plus health benefits and office space in some cases. Every DDI article has at least, what, 7 names on it?




Sure, but you don't think 7 people spent their entire month on each article do you? The author gets a couple grand, the other six people spend some amount of time on it, but even assuming that amounted to a whole full-time person for the month, that's something like $15k all told to produce an article. Now x10 significant articles per month, that's far from nothing, but it isn't eating up anything like all the cashflow. I could easily see 62k subscribers being a very modest net return, but 100k? That would be $700k a month. Given I have direct experience with putting together large scale web apps I can pretty well guesstimate the IT side (hosting and some modest development like we actually see) is probably on the order of $100k a month. You have a couple sysops, a couple developers, a group manager, and some business ops, could even run to $150k. So I look at it this way, running DDI and producing content for it? That could easily run you into the $300k a month range. 

Again, the smell test, WotC doesn't seem overly excited by what they're making on D&D. It certainly isn't enough to show up in any Hasborg statements. Thus it can't be vastly beyond costs. They could be making a couple million bucks a year off it, but I'd be a lot less surprised to find out they have 70k users and it nets them a little money, which they may well be plowing entirely back into product development. That explains the slow pace of development and all the soul searching going on over there. Especially if the 5 years ago 4e business plan painted it as a giant cash cow and reality is it makes a few bucks. 



> Plus all of the money they've spent on developing the character and monster builders, nevermind research that isn't fruitful yet like the virtual table. Given they've gone through at least two different companies/teams, I'm pretty sure that all added up.




We really have little way of knowing what they actually spent on these things. I can say that if I were asked to bid on MB as a product the cost would be in the low 100's of K $, but it is hard to say what they've actually spent. The old MB was similar (probably less, stand-alone .NET apps are not that expensive to write). I imagine they reused a fair amount of the infrastructure from the old apps too. CB is a bigger nut to crack, given the complexity of PCs. I can easily imagine they've spent a couple million in 3 years on software, but if they've averaged 40k subscribers over the last 3 years, that's something like $9m gross, so it was a significant expense, but probably not the critical one (and also one you can scale up or down based on cashflow, unlike infrastructure).



> That said, I do think DDI is profitable. I'm not sure how much of a hole their attempts at an online table have set them back, though. I expect _at least_ a year's worth of that profit. Which totally might pay off, if they can deliver a quality product.
> 
> Big If.




Eh, yeah, something like that. I just doubt they'd have been set back that much with 100k users. It is hard to say though. Frankly I don't think they're aiming at having the best VTT ever, at least not in the near term. They're looking to have a VTT that is good enough to be a selling point for DDI. They can afford to take the long view and go slow with it, keep their outlays down, build the whole DDI thing incrementally over time. I think they put a bit into a new thing like VTT, see how it looks, evaluate, go forward a bit more, see how that goes, etc.


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## keterys (Oct 4, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm skeptical they put millions into it.



Yeah... none of us know the specifics, but remember that they had another software company contracted to provide the VTT - and they were demo-ing a totally different 3D-ish implementation at DDXP almost four years ago. Then, after years of problems, they had to drop it and turn to a new project which they started from scratch (sigh). Granted, I may be associating some of the costs of the Gleemax disaster with it, since it was lumped together at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if that particular bit of red ink was kept around though.

A team working on a project for 4 years is about 2 million dollars. Maybe they managed to recoup some of the losses on the legal end, though, because they weren't delivered what they contracted for. Don't know.



> 300k subscribers WOULD be bigger that M:tG. That would be well over $25m a year, which is likely bigger than all other RPG products in existence anywhere combined. I think at that point there would be a very different kind of noise coming out of WotC. Even 100k doesn't really jibe to me with what we see them up to.



For clarity, I was citing 300k as a maximum... and it would not be bigger than MtG with those numbers afaik. I also suspect a lot of people on DDI are on the $5/$6 plan, but I am surprised it's been growing at that rate since they hiked the price.



> Again, the smell test, WotC doesn't seem overly excited by what they're making on D&D. It certainly isn't enough to show up in any Hasborg statements. Thus it can't be vastly beyond costs. They could be making a couple million bucks a year off it



And with 100k users, that's all they'd be making on it... and presumably putting a bunch back into it for the continuing development of monster builder, character builder, virtual table and whatever the unannounced stuff is. Plus repaying the investment already put in. It's very easy for the gross and net to be nothing alike - Hasbro's gross is something like 4 billion while their net is 400 million.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Oct 4, 2011)

Oh, believe me, I know about numbers in businesses. Yeah, it could be 100k and given that we don't really know their overhead etc that could be a reasonable number as well. Isn't the yearly sub still $72? That's what I paid last time, back around Feb or so IIRC. Anyway, I guesstimated the whole thing as $7 a user. Probably most have year subs, then you have some with the 3 and 1 month ones, but again who knows? 

Yeah, they could have spent any arbitrary amount of money on the 3D/Gleemax whatever nonsense. I'd assume they wrote that down long ago. I imagine what they're looking at now in terms of ongoing strategy would be what they're investing in the current product and anticipated follow-ons, plus the normal operating expenses. Nobody is going to be worrying about what happened to the money they burned up on Gleemax. 

Anyway, it sure seems like DDI has to be a pretty nice deal. Worst case even if it isn't making a dime they could certainly pare back development and just run it. It will certainly make some income.


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## keterys (Oct 4, 2011)

Hmm, maybe the price hike was earlier than I remember it. I thought some people might still be on the $60 plan. So, yeah, your $7 makes sense.

Ah well, would be really nice to know some of these things.


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## MerricB (Aug 9, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Casts *THREADOMANCY*
> 
> I just recently got a DDI sub and took a look at the current number:  62396 subscribed members.  That's a 10% increase in three months.  Does anyone know how fast or slow this number has been growing?  10%/quarter seems a pretty durn healthy growth rate.




Casts ANIMATE ANIMATED (BUT NOW BURIED) THREAD:

Current subscriber number (August 2012): 73752

Increase since last count by Hussar (in October 2011): 11,356 in 10 months, or an average of 1,100 per month.

Increase between July 2011 and October 2011: approx. 6,000 in 3 months, or an average of 2,000 per month.

I'll try to remember to keep an eye on it to see when it starts dropping. It might be already - I just haven't been paying attention.

Cheers!


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## Hussar (Mar 10, 2013)

*Casts Threadomancy*

What is the current subscriber rate at?  Has the DDN cut into things?


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## Blue (Mar 10, 2013)

I'm still subscribing, but it's primarily because I chose DDI over buying all the new books and I'm in two ongoing 4e campaigns.  I don't feel like I'm getting new content value.  When Next comes out I can purchase the missing 4e books I want used cheaply, but at that point the new content for a young game will hopefully bring value to the subscription again.

Frankly, they are building up ill-will charging the same rate with so much less content.  Look at the size of Dragon the first few months when 4e started vs. now, it's a third to half the pages.


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## Obryn (Mar 10, 2013)

I just renewed.  It coincides with bonus time, and I'll be playing 4e for a while yet.


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## Pour (Mar 10, 2013)

I renewed my subscription on the year, as well. It's just too valuable a resource not to have if you're running 4e. 

With all the 5e stuff and lack of 4e books, subscriptions likely went down, but then again all support in the magazines has been 4e. 4e is still on the shelves, as are the growing reprints. The average customer visiting the site would find themselves directed either to DDI or the pdf store. Only the more inquisitive ones would find the playtest. Hm, I really do wonder what the numbers are at this juncture. 

Also wasn't there a tease about a new digital offering? If they somehow link DDI with the reprints, edition compendiums and character builders, I imagine there's money there.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 10, 2013)

Pour said:


> I renewed my subscription on the year, as well. It's just too valuable a resource not to have if you're running 4e.
> 
> With all the 5e stuff and lack of 4e books, subscriptions likely went down, but then again all support in the magazines has been 4e. 4e is still on the shelves, as are the growing reprints. The average customer visiting the site would find themselves directed either to DDI or the pdf store. Only the more inquisitive ones would find the playtest. Hm, I really do wonder what the numbers are at this juncture.
> 
> Also wasn't there a tease about a new digital offering? If they somehow link DDI with the reprints, edition compendiums and character builders, I imagine there's money there.




I don't know about any new digital offerings, but what they have is as good as ever, modulo the VTT, which you can still play for free on RPGTableonline.com (though importing monsters above level 2 is no longer free, which bites hard, still, you can use it still, if not 100% as conveniently). Basically DDI is IMHO too incredibly useful to stop subscribing to. I COULD in theory run 4e without it, but it would be a huge pain in the ass to say the least.


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## Pour (Mar 10, 2013)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Basically DDI is IMHO too incredibly useful to stop subscribing to. I COULD in theory run 4e without it, but it would be a huge pain in the ass to say the least.




Answer me honestly, Ab, would you continue playing 4e without the digital tools? I keep asking myself that question and thinking, initially, I would try out different game systems with the absence. Not saying I would abandon 4e forever, it's certainly my favorite D&D, but if that was taken away I'd be hard-pressed to just up and start a new campaign. Keep in mind, though, my current game which started December 2008 is about to wrap up come the end of summer, so I'm in a different frame of mind looking ahead.


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## D'karr (Mar 10, 2013)

Pour said:


> Answer me honestly, Ab, would you continue playing 4e without the digital tools?




I haven't used the online only digital tools for a very long time.  Except for the compendium there was nothing that I absolutely, positively needed.  Since they are not publishing new "rules", I don't even really NEED that.  The tools are an incredibly awesome convenience.  However, I don't have a NEED for the online only ones, as I had alternatives.  Over time I've become so comfortable with the system that, as a DM, I don't feel a need for the tools.  I can use a ready made creature right out of the book, or create my own on the fly by using the table on pg 42 as a rudimentary, and quite solid guide.

I've kept trucking with the offline tools.  If I did not have the offline tools I could continue without much issue as a DM, as a player I admit that the character builder is too awesome and convenient not to have.  So it would be much more difficult.

I'm really glad that they started putting the Dungeon and Dragon magazines as compilations again over the last couple of months. When they went to individual articles, without compilation, they lost my interest entirely. So when my subscription expired in February, I did not renew.  I've just kept using the offline ones and not looked back.


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## Obryn (Mar 10, 2013)

Pour said:


> Also wasn't there a tease about a new digital offering?



90% sure it was the online comic they announced.

-O


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## Morrus (Mar 10, 2013)

Obryn said:


> 90% sure it was the online comic they announced.
> 
> -O




Yup.  It was Table Titans (or whatever it's called).


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## Morrus (Mar 10, 2013)

Obryn said:


> 90% sure it was the online comic they announced.
> 
> -O




Yup.  It was Table Titans (or whatever it's called).


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## Pour (Mar 10, 2013)

Obryn said:


> 90% sure it was the online comic they announced.
> 
> -O




*fights the crushing wave of disappointment*


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## Pour (Mar 10, 2013)

Obryn said:


> 90% sure it was the online comic they announced.
> 
> -O




*fights the crushing wave of disappointment*


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 10, 2013)

Pour said:


> Answer me honestly, Ab, would you continue playing 4e without the digital tools? I keep asking myself that question and thinking, initially, I would try out different game systems with the absence. Not saying I would abandon 4e forever, it's certainly my favorite D&D, but if that was taken away I'd be hard-pressed to just up and start a new campaign. Keep in mind, though, my current game which started December 2008 is about to wrap up come the end of summer, so I'm in a different frame of mind looking ahead.




Without the Compendium things would be a lot tougher. Every day or two I use that thing. I'm constantly either on there talking with a player deciding what sort of power or whatever they're going to get, or looking up an item I gave them last week because they didn't write it down, or figuring out what I'm going to play in an online game, etc. I could use the CB for some of it, but that thing is slow, and frankly as a DM I just don't need to mess with it. I have the players do their own sheets and email me a copy. So I could live without CB, as a DM. MB is more useful, but frankly I have made up very few new monsters in the past year or two. If I do make one it is so far from standard that it is hard to even use MB for it (puzzle monsters and weird stuff). There have been long periods when I didn't even have Windows anyway, and couldn't even use MB/CB and didn't really miss it much. 

There's also access to Dragon/Dungeon, which is NICE. I know people complain about them, but honestly, while there is somewhat less content than 4-5 years ago the quality is MUCH higher. Not all the adventures are brilliant, but many are at least decent starting points. For instance the Message in a Bottle adventure from a December isn't BRILLIANT, but it is NOT bad, really a simple side trek. The PCs happened to be sailing around, so I basically tossed in elements of it, used a couple of the characters and locations. I don't do it a lot, but I do find ideas or specific encounters I can steal moderately often. 

SO, if DDI went away would I quite 4e? Well, I wouldn't go back to 2e, nor am I inclined to buy 3.x or PF at this point. I figure 4e is no harder to play than PF even without a master index. They both have tons of stuff out there. I might be motivated to try some indie FRPG, I don't know. Currently I have 2 campaigns going, both in Heroic, and I expect at least one of them will go for another year. The other will be paragon soon, if we all get back to it as it seems to be on hiatus the last month or so.


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## dd.stevenson (Mar 10, 2013)

Blue said:


> I'm still subscribing, but it's primarily because I chose DDI over buying all the new books and I'm in two ongoing 4e campaigns.  I don't feel like I'm getting new content value.  When Next comes out I can purchase the missing 4e books I want used cheaply, but at that point the new content for a young game will hopefully bring value to the subscription again.




Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 10, 2013)

Personally, I chose the books over the subscription, and our 4Ed DM looks like he's not going to renew his subscription because of the advent of 5th.

When is the online support for 4th supposed to end, again?


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## Hussar (Mar 10, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?




Pretty much.  It's not that bad of an idea really.  You can access the entire line for 7 bucks a month, or you can buy what you want to use and never pay again.  It's not really direct competition IMO.  Particularly since you cannot use the DDI elements offline.  You have to have a computer.

I let my sub slide last September and I'm not really feeling the pinch.  It was nice to have, but, not really necessary.


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## Nagol (Mar 10, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?




Pretty much.  THe "crunch" gets added to the appropriate online tools a month or 3 after intial publication.  You lose out on some of the art and fluff unless you buy the physical product.

So, if as a player, you want the additional options for character development, get a DDI account for the cost of about 2-3 books a year and you're done.  That said, WotC gets to collect more direct revenue from the subscriber than 2-3 books worth -- no distributor or store margins.  There is indirect overhead in the channel, but if you're keeping it active, individual transactions are almost free.


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## Nagol (Mar 10, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Personally, I chose the books over the subscription, and our 4Ed DM looks like he's not going to renew his subscription because of the advent of 5th.
> 
> When is the online support for 4th supposed to end, again?




No announcement.  Assuming they are keeping the Internet channel, it would make most sense to keep 4e support going for as long as you have a handul of people willing to pay for it.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 11, 2013)

Nagol said:


> Pretty much.  THe "crunch" gets added to the appropriate online tools a month or 3 after intial publication.  You lose out on some of the art and fluff unless you buy the physical product.
> 
> So, if as a player, you want the additional options for character development, get a DDI account for the cost of about 2-3 books a year and you're done.  That said, WotC gets to collect more direct revenue from the subscriber than 2-3 books worth -- no distributor or store margins.  There is indirect overhead in the channel, but if you're keeping it active, individual transactions are almost free.




Yeah, I think its reasonable to assume DDI cannibalizes SOME 4e splat book sales. Some of my players for instance have DDI but have purchased few, if any, splatbooks (though I suspect if PDFs had been available 4 years ago they could have sold quite a few of those). In general you would think that a web service would produce superior income, but its hard to say for sure. In the long run it probably could. Whether DDI has offset the loss in splat sales is hard to say, though presumably this would be a major market condition for WotC to figure out. 

Anyway, I personally bought most of the 4e splat books. The very few I haven't got were either books I didn't really need, like the race books, or setting books, or a couple that I just never happened to get around to picking up a copy of, like Psionic Power (only one person has played a PHB3 class and for the small amount we'd use it I can use DDI for this book). I must admit though, if there are PDFs and DDI/Compendium in the future I'll be hard pressed to buy physical books again. I just don't use most of them a lot on an everyday basis. 



Dannyalcatraz said:


> Personally, I chose the books over the subscription, and our 4Ed DM looks like he's not going to renew his subscription because of the advent of 5th.
> 
> When is the online support for 4th supposed to end, again?




There is no scheduled termination. Mike actually stated at one time when this concern was first raised (right after DDN was announced) that his opinion was 4e DDI should be continued or DDN support should just be added, anyway in some fashion that 4e tools would still exist. In any case we have at least 18 months presumably until the release of DDN, there's not going to be a discontinuation before that.


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## jodyjohnson (Mar 11, 2013)

Current DDI group membership is listed as 81,153.

The DDNext group is 8399 but you don't need to join the group to see Next info.
The DDN group is larger than the LFR and General D&D groups.

The second largest group I'm subscribed to is the Online Roleplaying Game Group at 45,700.


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## dd.stevenson (Mar 11, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Pretty much.  It's not that bad of an idea really.  You can access the entire line for 7 bucks a month, or you can buy what you want to use and never pay again.  It's not really direct competition IMO.  Particularly since you cannot use the DDI elements offline.  You have to have a computer.
> 
> I let my sub slide last September and I'm not really feeling the pinch.  It was nice to have, but, not really necessary.




How does the "buy what you want to use and never pay again" part work? Do you have to pay full price for the splat books? (EDIT: Ah, I see now. This sentence in your post was talking about the physical books.)

If you can substitute both products for one another without feeling the pinch, then that's direct competition. Heck, this competition sounds more direct than the competition between Pathfinder and 4E.



Nagol said:


> Pretty much.  THe "crunch" gets added to the appropriate online tools a month or 3 after intial publication.  You lose out on some of the art and fluff unless you buy the physical product.
> 
> So, if as a player, you want the additional options for character development, get a DDI account for the cost of about 2-3 books a year and you're done.  That said, WotC gets to collect more direct revenue from the subscriber than 2-3 books worth -- no distributor or store margins.  There is indirect overhead in the channel, but if you're keeping it active, individual transactions are almost free.




That sounds great for the customers. Choose which ever one you want! But is there any good reason to buy *both *the books and the DDI subscription? Do these goods complement each other?


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## Nagol (Mar 11, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Ho
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That sounds great for the customers. Choose which ever one you want! But is there any good reason to buy *both *the books and the DDI subscription? Do these goods complement each other?




I'm not a subscriber.  So far as I can tell, if you are interested in the crunch only then the products directly compete.  The only reason to buy both is because thay are not completely overlapping offers.

*Books* 
Access lasts as long as the physical product survives
Errata must be applied by owner
Contains art
Contains more descriptive text
Can be held
single purchase price

*DDI*
Access lasts only as long as WotC operates the toolset and a subscription is active
Has errata applied as part of the service
Limited art and descriptive text
Complements and extends convenience apps (character builder, encounter builders, etc.)
Has other offerings like columns and the online magazines


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## Dice4Hire (Mar 11, 2013)

I never subscribed to DDI, but a friend who did and has since stopped gaming let me use his sub, which will run out in May or so. Overall, I have liked it, but I will do without it when the sub runs out.


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## D'karr (Mar 11, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> If you can substitute both products for one another without feeling the pinch, then that's direct competition. Heck, this competition sounds more direct than the competition between Pathfinder and 4E.




What DDI does not provide is the flavor content of the books.  For example, all the information about the planes that appears in the books _Plane Above, Plane Below, Heroes of the Fey Wild, and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos_ is not included in DDI.  All of the mechanical content, such as backgrounds, themes, classes, powers and feats are included.  

For me, it was important to have the flavor content - so I purchased a books.  Until just recently, I also had a subscription to DDI for all the flavor content that is not in the books (Dungeon and Dragon), and for the electronic tools.


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## Argyle King (Mar 11, 2013)

For what it's worth, I never subscribed to DDi the whole time I was playing 4th.  DDi isn't something that is required to play the game.


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## D'karr (Mar 11, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> For what it's worth, I never subscribed to DDi the whole time I was playing 4th.  *DDi isn't something that is required to play the game.*





Very true, but it sure does make it easy.


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## Argyle King (Mar 11, 2013)

D'karr said:


> Very true, but it sure does make it easy.





I suppose so.  I haven't found much about 4th Edition to be especially difficult.


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## D'karr (Mar 11, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I suppose so.  I haven't found much about 4th Edition to be especially difficult.




I agree, maybe I should have said more convenient.


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## dd.stevenson (Mar 11, 2013)

Nagol said:


> I'm not a subscriber.  So far as I can tell, if you are interested in the crunch only then the products directly compete.  The only reason to buy both is because thay are not completely overlapping offers.
> 
> *Books*
> Access lasts as long as the physical product survives
> ...






D'karr said:


> What DDI does not provide is the flavor content of the books.  For example, all the information about the planes that appears in the books _Plane Above, Plane Below, Heroes of the Fey Wild, and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos_ is not included in DDI.  All of the mechanical content, such as backgrounds, themes, classes, powers and feats are included.
> 
> For me, it was important to have the flavor content - so I purchased a books.  Until just recently, I also had a subscription to DDI for all the flavor content that is not in the books (Dungeon and Dragon), and for the electronic tools.




Thanks for the answers guys. Just going off what you've told me, I'm inclined to believe that not many people bought both the books and the subscription. (And... wow, that is really different than what I thought they were doing with DDI. What was wotc's business plan here? Were these products marketed to different segments, I wonder?)

Anyway this sort of gives me some ideas as to why wizards is doing what they're doing: ending the "long tail" of 4e splat two years early, and making wishy-washy statements about DDI's future. Not really my lookout, but it's given me some food for thought.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 11, 2013)

D'karr said:


> What DDI does not provide is the flavor content of the books.  For example, all the information about the planes that appears in the books _Plane Above, Plane Below, Heroes of the Fey Wild, and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos_ is not included in DDI.  All of the mechanical content, such as backgrounds, themes, classes, powers and feats are included.
> 
> For me, it was important to have the flavor content - so I purchased a books.  Until just recently, I also had a subscription to DDI for all the flavor content that is not in the books (Dungeon and Dragon), and for the electronic tools.




It's more than that though. You REALLY cannot play 4e without owning at least SOME books. You would practically speaking need a PHB, RC, or DM's Kit + HotF* just to get the 'core rules'. While SOME of the core rules exist in some form in glossary entries and such within the Compendium it is in no way shape or form intended as a rules text. There's no way to just browse it from end to end really, and vast swaths of procedural rules simply don't exist in it at all. There's tons of stuff that is 'context' too, discussions of how magic items work, what they are, how to integrate them into the game, etc etc etc. While a really experienced DM can probably cobble together some sort of game play you STILL lack for instance all the actual combat rules, which there's no way you will reproduce from just reading Compendium entries.

So the Compendium and the books overlap, but they're not interchangeable by any means. 

As for the primary reason WotC might terminate 4e DDI support, that should be obvious, because they would think it might cannibalize DDN sales.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 11, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Thanks for the answers guys. Just going off what you've told me, I'm inclined to believe that not many people bought both the books and the subscription. (And... wow, that is really different than what I thought they were doing with DDI. What was wotc's business plan here? Were these products marketed to different segments, I wonder?)
> 
> Anyway this sort of gives me some ideas as to why wizards is doing what they're doing: ending the "long tail" of 4e splat two years early, and making wishy-washy statements about DDI's future. Not really my lookout, but it's given me some food for thought.




Yeah, surely they must be considering what was what. Did DDI make money? Even if it did was it at the expense of book sales so that it really wasn't worth it? Can they afford to retreat back to a pre-digital business model? 

OTOH we don't know diddly, maybe DDI was a brilliant success overall. Maybe they're eager to continue that success with DDN as well in a similar way. Even if this is true it doesn't mean 4e DDI will continue to exist of course.


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## Ajar (Mar 11, 2013)

D'karr said:


> I'm really glad that they started putting the Dungeon and Dragon magazines as compilations again over the last couple of months. When they went to individual articles, without compilation, they lost my interest entirely. So when my subscription expired in February, I did not renew. I've just kept using the offline ones and not looked back.




I find this really interesting -- I'm the exact opposite. I have a lot less interest in reading Dungeon and Dragon articles now that I have to hunt for them in a single compilation. Previously I used to just download the 1-2 articles that interested me each month or two.

*

I hope D&DI was at least a modest success, and in particular I hope they have usage stats for the online Compendium. I'd hate to run a homebrew 4E game without access to it.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 11, 2013)

Ajar said:


> I find this really interesting -- I'm the exact opposite. I have a lot less interest in reading Dungeon and Dragon articles now that I have to hunt for them in a single compilation. Previously I used to just download the 1-2 articles that interested me each month or two.
> 
> *
> 
> I hope D&DI was at least a modest success, and in particular I hope they have usage stats for the online Compendium. I'd hate to run a homebrew 4E game without access to it.




Agreed. I read a lot of articles but far from all, and I downloaded a selection of those I really wanted to perhaps use/reference (IE rules related stuff, some adventures, etc). Now I have to download a whole magazine and remember which one contains what I want and rummage through them all every time I want to find it. Definitely a downgrade in magazine material utility all around. 

Frankly, while I can understand how sticking to the pretense of a 'magazine' allows for periodic things, 'covers', and kind of generates some level of interest I think we're at a point where it would be best to just publish articles and move the focus to curating the whole collection and maximizing their utility, while continuing to add new material. This could greatly broaden the ultimate utility of the articles as well.


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## Hussar (Mar 11, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> /snip
> 
> 
> That sounds great for the customers. Choose which ever one you want! But is there any good reason to buy *both *the books and the DDI subscription? Do these goods complement each other?




Consider the fact that print book sales effectively die after 3 months.  Yes, you continue to sell a few books after that three months, but, something like 90% of your sales are done in the first three months.  A DDI sub pays all year.  Those who want the books will likely still buy the books.  But, now you've sucked in all those people who didn't buy the book into paying for an entire year.

Plus, instead of a group having one physical book (just how many copies of, say, Tome of Magic does a group need?), you have 5 people paying a year's worth of subsciptions plus the possible sale of one physical copy.

The model is pretty well tested in other markets.


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## dd.stevenson (Mar 12, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Consider the fact that print book sales effectively die after 3 months.  Yes, you continue to sell a few books after that three months, but, something like 90% of your sales are done in the first three months.  A DDI sub pays all year.  Those who want the books will likely still buy the books.  But, now you've sucked in all those people who didn't buy the book into paying for an entire year.
> 
> Plus, instead of a group having one physical book (just how many copies of, say, Tome of Magic does a group need?), you have 5 people paying a year's worth of subsciptions plus the possible sale of one physical copy.
> 
> The model is pretty well tested in other markets.




Which markets are you thinking of? 

If you're thinking about, say, the hardcover-->trade paperback-->ebook model of the publishing industry, then I'm extremely skeptical that this is a useful model for the RPG splat market. Mainly because we've been told repeatedly that RPG splat books are low volume items and thus extremely sensitive to changes in sales numbers. Also because the DDI/physical book purchasing decision isn't a la carte--DDI is either on or off, and if it's on then you're immediately disincentivized from buying the physical book. (At least that's my understanding of how it works.)


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## Blue (Mar 12, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> That sounds great for the customers. Choose which ever one you want! But is there any good reason to buy *both *the books and the DDI subscription? Do these goods complement each other?




The books have the art, the fluff, the permanence (you don't have to keep paying), immediate gratification, and offline usage.

DDI have automatic errata, look up using the compendium (my favorite bit at the table), various tools in various states of completeness and functionality over the life of DDI, and the content from Dragon and from Dungeon, including art & maps as separate image files to print/reuse.  Content was usually 1-3 months behind.

When there was new print content out regularly (1+ books per month) as well as more articles in Dragon and in Dungeon, the value for DDI was quite high for me.  I still purchased occasion books like the one about the Astral Sea, but from a rules perspective the auto-errata on the compendium outweighed the books a lot.

Now it's reversed - there's little new content in published books and the magazines are a fraction the size.  And the magazine articles that are coming out are much lighter in crunch.  Basically I use the compendium for rules look up and the online character builder a bit.  If this was all I was getting I wouldn't have signed up in the first place, but I'm not going to purchase loads of 4e at full price right before groups I play with potentially switch to Next (or something else).

Over the lifetime of DDI it works out to be a positive value for me, but this year's re-up so far has not been worth it in terms of new content.


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## Hussar (Mar 12, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Which markets are you thinking of?
> 
> If you're thinking about, say, the hardcover-->trade paperback-->ebook model of the publishing industry, then I'm extremely skeptical that this is a useful model for the RPG splat market. Mainly because we've been told repeatedly that RPG splat books are low volume items and thus extremely sensitive to changes in sales numbers. Also because the DDI/physical book purchasing decision isn't a la carte--DDI is either on or off, and if it's on then you're immediately disincentivized from buying the physical book. (At least that's my understanding of how it works.)




Probably not all that different from regular published books.  Like I said, you sell for maybe three months and that's it.  Other than core books.  With a DDI, you get everyone effectively buying one book a month.  The print books are extra on top.


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

MerricB said:


> Casts ANIMATE ANIMATED (BUT NOW BURIED) THREAD:
> 
> Current subscriber number (August 2012): 73752
> 
> ...



If you're using the numbers from the DDI group they don't change. That's not the current number of subscribers but the total number that have ever subscribed (and set-up their community account)


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 12, 2013)

dd.stevenson said:


> Which markets are you thinking of?
> 
> If you're thinking about, say, the hardcover-->trade paperback-->ebook model of the publishing industry, then I'm extremely skeptical that this is a useful model for the RPG splat market. Mainly because we've been told repeatedly that RPG splat books are low volume items and thus extremely sensitive to changes in sales numbers. Also because the DDI/physical book purchasing decision isn't a la carte--DDI is either on or off, and if it's on then you're immediately disincentivized from buying the physical book. (At least that's my understanding of how it works.)




I think you can clearly see a progression in WotC's mastering of this whole equation over the 5 year life of 4e so far. At first they were selling splat books like Martial Power, just giant compendiums of powers and etc, 99% crunch, then they had DDI full of rather fluffy articles and such (there was a lot of crunch there too, but also a lot of fluff, history of this god or that country or etc). 

The situation is almost reversed now. The books that have been put out for 4e recently include Heroes of the Feywild, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, a drow book (with NO crunch), and various adventures and supplements. Meanwhile DDI is now the ONLY crunch delivery mechanism for 4e. There's still other stuff there, but its clear that WotC has discerned that the best equation is to sell you books full of art, ideas, some light crunch, but mostly fluff, which you cannot find in anything like the same quality and presentation on DDI, and which it is nice to be able to read from a book. Meanwhile the crunch goes right the heck into Compendium and skips even bothering with hardcopy that DDI cannibalizes anyway. 

Of course 4e has aged over that time period as well, and other things have happened, but it certainly seems like WotC has been feeling its way towards a formula that would allow all its D&D products to fill different needs and not overlap too much. I think there are still some parts that IMHO have been missed, but some of that is technological too. PDF is a great format for people to download and read, but it is a horrible format to curate, and so far curation is DDI's one real failure, at least as far as anything beyond hard crunch goes (Compendium does that tolerably well).


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## Hussar (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> If you're using the numbers from the DDI group they don't change. That's not the current number of subscribers but the total number that have ever subscribed (and set-up their community account)




That is not true and has been verified.  When your sub runs out, the DDI group number decreases by one.


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## Shemeska (Mar 12, 2013)

So it has been said. 

The fact that the DDI group number has never stopped going up each month, even as new 4e product slowed and even after 5e was announced makes me wonder though.


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

Hussar said:


> That is not true and has been verified.  When your sub runs out, the DDI group number decreases by one.



Has it ever dropped? Are there _really _over 17,000 more people subscribing to DDI each month than in 2011 when 4e was still being produced and the magazines were twice the size?


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## Obryn (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> Has it ever dropped? Are there _really _over 17,000 more people subscribing to DDI each month than in 2011 when 4e was still being produced and the magazines were twice the size?



I know it's unfathomable that 4e players still find DDI useful and that it's still attracting new players, but it seems to be so. Keep in mind - without new books, it's the only place for a 4e player to spend money. 

As was mentioned above, the subscriber total has had small drops, but an overall upward trend. 

-O


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

Obryn said:


> I know it's unfathomable that 4e players still find DDI useful and that it's still attracting new players, but it seems to be so. Keep in mind - without new books, it's the only place for a 4e player to spend money.
> 
> As was mentioned above, the subscriber total has had small drops, but an overall upward trend.
> 
> -O



True, but a 20% growth? When the benefit-to-cost ratio was at its lowest?


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## Storminator (Mar 12, 2013)

Meh. My table has six subscriptions - which is one more than last year. That's 20% growth.

And I don't even read the articles. 

PS


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## dd.stevenson (Mar 12, 2013)

Obryn said:


> Keep in mind - without new books, it's the only place for a 4e player to spend money.




Or to put it another way, the print books are no longer cannibalizing sales from DDI. Makes sense to me.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 12, 2013)

Storminator said:


> Meh. My table has six subscriptions - which is one more than last year. That's 20% growth.
> 
> And I don't even read the articles.
> 
> PS




Agreed, out of the 4 players in one group and 3 regulars in my other group, plus me, we have a total now of 3 active DDI subs that I know of, and I THINK one of the other people has one as well, but I'm not 100% sure. That's up from 5 players plus me with 2 subs total 3-4 years ago. 

Remember, while some people may find DDI to be PUTTING OUT less stuff now, it has MORE STUFF EVERY YEAR, because nothing ever goes away. This is part of the reason I think the "magazine format" is kind of a mistake, it causes the wrong measuring stick to be used. It has good points too, but still. The other aspect is that there is a lot more stuff. 4 years ago you could just play and you had 3 core books and 2-3 supplements and a few Dragon articles. It wasn't hard to keep track of, and you could just build your character (and old CB didn't really require a subscription once you had it). 

Come back now today and there's a vast array of stuff that CB and Compendium helps with, and a HUGE library of stuff on PDF in there from 5 years of Dragons and Dungeons, so why not sign up? Even if they DO put out a bunch less new articles every month you still have all that stuff to go through. (and yes, in theory you can download it all in a single month, good luck!). Overall I think it actually does make sense.

I'd also like to point out that there's no reason to believe that the number of people actively playing 4e has dwindled either. Surely as the game has become well-distributed and known the sales of books have fallen off. This is not at all related to how much the game is played. If you go to an Encounters or LA session there's plenty of people there. I have PLENTY of players available for both my online and offline groups. In fact I have more players right now than at any point except maybe one brief moment in 2008, but these are all ones that show up and play reliably every week. We buy far fewer books, more DDI, and play more than at any point in time. Its all anecdote, but I see no reason to believe that DDI should be smaller now than before or that it is a worse deal now than before. Quite the contrary.


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## delericho (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> True, but a 20% growth? When the benefit-to-cost ratio was at its lowest?




You actually gave a plausible explanation for this in your previous post - the DDI group total is those subscribers _who have filled out their Community account_. So, it's entirely possible that the total number of subscribers hasn't increased by much, but that many existing subscribers have filled out their accounts (the better to contribute to 5e playtesting discussions?).

Or, of course, the total could just have gone up by 20%.


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

delericho said:


> You actually gave a plausible explanation for this in your previous post - the DDI group total is those subscribers _who have filled out their Community account_. So, it's entirely possible that the total number of subscribers hasn't increased by much, but that many existing subscribers have filled out their accounts (the better to contribute to 5e playtesting discussions?).
> 
> Or, of course, the total could just have gone up by 20%.



I've been curious about those numbers for a while. I used to keep a monthly tally but stopped because they always went up. When WotC pulled the tools and people were rage quitting it always went up.
I even cancelled my account and checked the numbers using a friend's loggin, continually refreshing and they never changed. While that could have just been me (since it was a one-time test) it does suggest if you were ever a member of DDI and retain your account you're still a member of the DDI group.


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## delericho (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> I've been curious about those numbers for a while. I used to keep a monthly tally but stopped because they always went up. When WotC pulled the tools and people were rage quitting it always went up.




I can certainly understand that! Indeed, I'm rather surprised that they're still going up, what with 4e support being pretty minimal and with 5e on the horizon.

But, honestly, I'm not particularly bothered whatever is happening*. The number that I'm really interested in is the _real_ number of subscribers. For obvious reasons, WotC isn't going to reveal that, and we don't actually know how the numbers in the DDI group match up with that total.

* YMMV, of course.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> I've been curious about those numbers for a while. I used to keep a monthly tally but stopped because they always went up. When WotC pulled the tools and people were rage quitting it always went up.
> I even cancelled my account and checked the numbers using a friend's loggin, continually refreshing and they never changed. While that could have just been me (since it was a one-time test) it does suggest if you were ever a member of DDI and retain your account you're still a member of the DDI group.




Well, except for the fact that I know from experience that if your subscription lapses you are no longer a member of the DDI group, and you can't JOIN that group, except by subscribing, thus everyone in that group is paying for DDI (or there's some bug/exception/deliberate misdirection going on). 

I think Delricho's idea COULD be correct. I had a forum account long before I got DDI, so I am not sure how that works exactly, the logins are the same, but I guess there's some sort of setup you have to do be a forum member and thus be in groups beyond just getting a DDI account? Certainly the two are associated but not identical since obviously you don't get kicked off the forum when you stop buying DDI. 

I think the whole group membership thing is SOME sort of indicator of something, but its hard to say what for sure, and its not unreasonable to be skeptical that it represents a simple tally of current DDI members. We will never know. It pays to be skeptical, but OTOH 80k users for a world-wide service where the whole community has millions of participants isn't far-fetched, and the fact that the number continues to go up still doesn't surprise me or conflict with personal experience.


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, except for the fact that I know from experience that if your subscription lapses you are no longer a member of the DDI group, and you can't JOIN that group, except by subscribing, thus everyone in that group is paying for DDI (or there's some bug/exception/deliberate misdirection going on).



I tink it's more a case if you unsubscribe from DDI you lose access to the group but are not technically kicked out, likely for some odd coding quirk, such as being kicked out being the same as banned from the group preventing people from rejoining or the counter only going up as long as people keep their forum accounts.


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

There's a pretty straightforward way to test this. Find someone who had a subscription but let it lapse. Get his D&D Community username, then have someone with an active DDI subscription check whether that username is in the DDI group.

Also, notably, there was a point in the past where you were only added to the DDI group once you created a D&D Community account. I'm not sure whether the process is different now, but if it's the same then DDI group membership reflects only a fraction of actual subscribers.


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## Nagol (Mar 12, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> I tink it's more a case if you unsubscribe from DDI you lose access to the group but are not technically kicked out, likely for some odd coding quirk, such as being kicked out being the same as banned from the group preventing people from rejoining or the counter only going up as long as people keep their forum accounts.




I would hate to think that only 81K people have ever signed up for DDI.  That population spread over a few years would be close to a catastrophic failure with even a minimal churn rate.

My guess is you're seeing the lag from long-term subscriptions keeping the numbers up and the service is cheap enough for the char bulder/compendium service for people to not bother cancelling while they play 4e.  It's been just over a year or so since DDN was announced and less than a year since the playtest began.  Keep your eye on the numbers during June-July this year.  That's likely the time when disillusioned subscribers will start to drop.


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## Hussar (Mar 12, 2013)

And, note, the rate of increase has decreased rather sharply.  For a while there, it was growing by leaps and bounds.  Now, it's just dribbles and drabs.  It hasn't decreased overall, but, that's not really surprising.  4e, like it or not, is still the latest edition and likely the one that, simply because of branding, new players will be exposed to first.  

And, considering the things like Expeditions and Encounters, there's a pretty solid base of organized play to draw in subscribers.  "Hey, you liked this Encounters game, why not try a one years sub to DDI and get access to all those spiffy books you see other people have?"


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## Jester David (Mar 12, 2013)

Nagol said:


> I would hate to think that only 81K people have ever signed up for DDI.  That population spread over a few years would be close to a catastrophic failure with even a minimal churn rate.
> 
> My guess is you're seeing the lag from long-term subscriptions keeping the numbers up and the service is cheap enough for the char bulder/compendium service for people to not bother cancelling while they play 4e.  It's been just over a year or so since DDN was announced and less than a year since the playtest began.  Keep your eye on the numbers during June-July this year.  That's likely the time when disillusioned subscribers will start to drop.



Well, that's the number who subscribed and set up a community account, which is an additional step.


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## Hussar (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> Well, that's the number who subscribed and set up a community account, which is an additional step.




But, that's the point.  That number is pretty much verified.  And the number does go down when people's accounts lapse.

I knew if I did a bit of digging, I'd find the post:



darjr said:


> Just to add. I let my DDI subscription lapse. I'll resign up; however, my membership to that group was rescinded. So you do have to be a DDI subscriber to be a member.




And, for giggles, go back and read that thread.  It's pretty funny.


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## Jester David (Mar 13, 2013)

Hussar said:


> But, that's the point.  That number is pretty much verified.  And the number does go down when people's accounts lapse.
> 
> I knew if I did a bit of digging, I'd find the post:
> 
> ...



In that post aive he just clarrifies that you're no longer an active part of the group - in that you can no longer look at the group and participate. But it doesn't say the number changed. I've never seen the number go down and I was recording weekly for the better part of six months. It's weird not to even have a slight dip when I was so many people were losing the icon. Even now, you don't see nearly as many people with the icon on the WotC board.
I'll have to read through this thread and see if there's ever a drop.


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## D'karr (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> I've never seen the number go down and I was recording weekly for the better part of six months.




It doesn't mean the number never went down, just that during that period there was no net-loss.  DDI is worldwide as far as I can tell and the billing and expiration can be on a montly, quarterly or yearly cycle.  It is not too fantastic to believe than in a given billing/expiration cycle you can have someone drop off in on of the "plans" but someone else in the world pick up a subscription with the same "plan", or a different one.


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## Jester David (Mar 13, 2013)

D'karr said:


> It doesn't mean the number never went down, just that during that period there was no net-loss.  DDI is worldwide as far as I can tell and the billing and expiration can be on a montly, quarterly or yearly cycle.  It is not too fantastic to believe than in a given billing/expiration cycle you can have someone drop off in on of the "plans" but someone else in the world pick up a subscription with the same "plan", or a different one.



So... the two possibilities are
a) DDI has never suffered a noticeable net loss 
b) the numbers in the DDI group are not accurately go up and down

Between those two possibilities, you're going with a). The number of DDI subscribers has only grown, despite the edition being dead with the last release being almost a year ago.
Despite the massive unhappiness in the fall of 2010 when the second annual payments were due and there were yet no replacement tools and everyone was upset about Essentials.
Every single month there was still more people currently subscribed to DDI than the month prior. 

Or... the groups aren't registering people leaving the group properly. 

I think I'll go with minor technical glitch.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> Between those two possibilities, you're going with a). The number of DDI subscribers has only grown, despite the edition being dead with the last release being almost a year ago.




Why would this mean that people would stop playing?

Also, these are subscriptions we're talking about. There's a reason the subscription model is such a powerful one. Without a subscription, people actively decide when they want to pay money for a product or service. With a subscription, the onus is on the individual to _*stop*_ paying that money. They are much more reliable, even in the face of drops in functionality.

I'm not saying a) is certainly the truth, but it's not like it doesn't make any sense. You also need to avoid falling prey to the idea that there is widespread dissatisfaction with DDI. Some people are unhappy, but most of us think it's great, and we'll continue to subscribe for as long as we run 4e games.

Again, there's an easy way to check. Let a subscription lapse, and have someone check the group's members to see if they were removed.


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## Jester David (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Again, there's an easy way to check. Let a subscription lapse, and have someone check the group's members to see if they were removed.



Which I've done myself, using a friend's DDI to track the numbers. Refreshing to see exactly when i was no longer subscribed. No change.
But I suppose someone could ave subscribed at just that moment.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> Which I've done myself, using a friend's DDI to track the numbers. Refreshing to see exactly when i was no longer subscribed. No change.
> But I suppose someone could ave subscribed at just that moment.




That's not what I said.

We're not talking about tracking numbers. We're talking about unsubscribing from D&D Insider and then seeing if you are still a member of the group. You can search a group's members for an individual. All someone needs to do in unsubscribe and let someone know what their Community username is, and then an active subscriber can search the D&D Insider group to see whether it still lists them as a member. There are 8124 pages of members listed, 10 members per page, so the members database lines up with the member count the group is reporting.

Heck, give us your community username. If you had an account in the past and canceled your subscription, we can check whether you're still in the group.


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## D'karr (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Heck, give us your community username. If you had an account in the past and canceled your subscription, we can check whether you're still in the group.




I just let my suscription lapse last month, username D_karr.


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## Jester David (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Heck, give us your community username. If you had an account in the past and canceled your subscription, we can check whether you're still in the group.



The_Jester.

While you're doing that compare the number of pages & members per page with the total membership.


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## jodyjohnson (Mar 13, 2013)

No D_karr on page 2101 between d_hurst and D_mage.
No The_Jester on page 7162 between The_Jagged and The_Jester-s_Trucker.

I eyeballed about 1500 pages and saw about 6 members out of order.  Assuming they were people that changed their name (i.e. on page 7162 Mathew_AC links to The_Last_Rogue).

Currently 8126 pages.


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## Ferghis (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> The_Jester.




No The_Jester found on the group member search page, located here: http://community.wizards.com/dndinsider/go/members/view?pref_tab=groups



Jester Canuck said:


> While you're doing that compare the number of pages & members per page with the total membership.



The membership list shows 10 members per page, and 8125 pages. There are only nine members on the last page of the list. So that's 81249 members actually listed, and 81263 members claimed, a difference of 14 members.


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## darjr (Mar 13, 2013)

I never thought to get another account to check if I was listed. Or to count the users and number of pages. Genius!


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## D'karr (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Also, these are subscriptions we're talking about. There's a reason the subscription model is such a powerful one. Without a subscription, people actively decide when they want to pay money for a product or service. With a subscription, the onus is on the individual to _*stop*_ paying that money. They are much more reliable, even in the face of drops in functionality.




Exactly, and that is why with a subscription model you will not see a significant change from month to month, unless a *significant* amount of people cancel all at once.  The billing/expiration cycle sort of precludes that visibility, except at the backend level (their billing department).



> I'm not saying a) is certainly the truth, but it's not like it doesn't make any sense. You also need to avoid falling prey to the idea that there is widespread dissatisfaction with DDI. Some people are unhappy, but most of us think it's great, and we'll continue to subscribe for as long as we run 4e games.




This is absolutely true, I continue to run 4e games and the only reason I let my subscription lapse is that I don't need the online tools, as I've got other alternatives, and I wanted to start cutting some extraneous costs.



> Again, there's an easy way to check. Let a subscription lapse, and have someone check the group's members to see if they were removed.




And we just did that.  Lo and behold my subscription has lapsed, and I'm no longer a member of that group, or counted in its rolls.

Sometimes I feel like on the internet there is this "perverse" desire to see that DDI is somehow failing.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

Ferghis said:


> The membership list shows 10 members per page, and 8125 pages. There are only nine members on the last page of the list. So that's 81249 members actually listed, and 81263 members claimed, a difference of 14 members.




If you were looking specifically at the Members tab, the discrepancy is probably due to the moderators and admins for the group not being listed in the Members tab.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

Glad this was put to rest, though. Now we'll have something to point to the next time someone tries to claim that people aren't removed from the DDI group when their subscription ends.

The next step would be to have someone who has never subscribed before and does not have a community account start up a new subscription to DDI so we can check whether he is automatically added to the DDI group without having to create a community account.


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## Ferghis (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> If you were looking specifically at the Members tab, the discrepancy is probably due to the moderators and admins for the group not being listed in the Members tab.




The members tab had 7 fewer members. I was quoting the numbers present in the "All" tab. I'm wondering if there is an option somewhere to not be listed even if you belong to a group.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> There's a pretty straightforward way to test this. Find someone who had a subscription but let it lapse. Get his D&D Community username, then have someone with an active DDI subscription check whether that username is in the DDI group.
> 
> Also, notably, there was a point in the past where you were only added to the DDI group once you created a D&D Community account. I'm not sure whether the process is different now, but if it's the same then DDI group membership reflects only a fraction of actual subscribers.




Exactly, but the point is this has been done/observed. My own DDI has lapsed a couple times, and as soon as it was the flag on my account went away (the DDI moniker on the forum) and the group DDI no longer showed up in the list of groups I was in.

Obviously it isn't possible to really say if the COUNTER for the number of group members is really accurate or not. Those sorts of things could be quite far off either because it never decrements, because it just isn't that reliable, because the number has been changed in the course of various updates and whatever of systems, etc. Having run many commercial web-based services myself I am not one to put TOO much stock in counters like that, chances are the admins of the site don't worry about their accuracy much, and its hard to say how they are calculated or if they always work right.

Still, it is the only number we have, aside from just personal observation. Mine is still that people are using DDI at least as much as ever. Over time I've observed that the people I play with have tended to realize just how super handy it is and sign up. At first there was much skepticism, but I think it is slowly becoming a sort of ordinary part of people's game play.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Obviously it isn't possible to really say if the COUNTER for the number of group members is really accurate or not.




As others have noted, it appears to be almost perfectly accurate. You can list the members of the group, 10 to a page. The number of pages lines up almost perfectly with the reported number of DDI group members divided by 10.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 13, 2013)

Jester Canuck said:


> So... the two possibilities are
> a) DDI has never suffered a noticeable net loss
> b) the numbers in the DDI group are not accurately go up and down
> 
> ...




The edition is only "dead" by your estimation. You hear about people who bellyache on the boards, but again my personal anecdotal experience is that people I know have slowly but surely played 4e and signed up for DDI. I don't know if that number has gone up all the time or not, but with a sample of basically a dozen people its hard to say. The point being MOST PEOPLE are just players, they really don't care about DDNs and other stuff that much, 4e is D&D for them, and DDI is convenient so they use it. Likewise I didn't see some vast rebellion around here when they switched to the online CB. My players mostly had the offline one and kept using it, or not, as convenient for them. I've heard various complaints about deficiencies in the SL version, it is a slow and somewhat buggy pig really, but it does work and is actually pretty good most of the time in a decent machine. 

Overall I think 4e just slowly gains market share over earlier editions. There was a lot of blowback online, etc, but frankly I've never seen much of a sign that 4e was all that unpopular or that people weren't still getting it.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 14, 2013)

Dannager said:


> As others have noted, it appears to be almost perfectly accurate. You can list the members of the group, 10 to a page. The number of pages lines up almost perfectly with the reported number of DDI group members divided by 10.




Yeah, I hadn't seen that post, lol. Seems I remember we all went through this whole process once long ago here on EnWorld and came to all the same conclusions, that there ARE at least 81,000 DDI users that are active now, and possibly many more that never signed up on the community. That really is pretty interesting. DDI HAS to have been profitable for WotC. I mean 81k users is like $560,000 a month. That's no joke. Even with clusters of servers, bandwidth, tech guys, etc there's a lot left over. Obviously production costs of material, upkeep of software products, and general maintenance of DDI itself it would be hard to believe the thing could be a failure. Just perhaps not the kind of success that gets its product line management big promotions.


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## MerricB (Mar 14, 2013)

The one question I have is if you let your subscription lapse and you DON'T visit the community site, whether the group membership properly expires or not. Has this been checked? (It doesn't add you until you have a community membership, but does it unsubscribe you the same way?)


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

MerricB said:


> The one question I have is if you let your subscription lapse and you DON'T visit the community site, whether the group membership properly expires or not. Has this been checked? (It doesn't add you until you have a community membership, but does it unsubscribe you the same way?)




I'd be surprised if this was the case. I'm not aware of any forum community where updates to your account don't propagate until you log in. The only reason you're not added to the group until you create an account is that there's nothing to add before that point.


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

Christopher583 said:


> I just recently got a DDI sub and took a look at the current number: 62396 subscribed members.




How "recently" are we talking, here? Because the group is definitely at 80,000+ members right now.


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## jodyjohnson (Mar 14, 2013)

I watched the numbers a bit yesterday and at one point the number did go down (81265 to 81264) but then it was up again by the end of the day (81270).

They could have a 1000 enlightened or disaffected users leaving per month but have 2200 people ready to jump in or back on to the crunch wagon.  This week seems to be averaging ~+40 per day.

Every gamer you've ever known could cancel this month and they will still end up with positive growth for the month.

BTW 81,300 this morning.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 14, 2013)

MerricB said:


> The one question I have is if you let your subscription lapse and you DON'T visit the community site, whether the group membership properly expires or not. Has this been checked? (It doesn't add you until you have a community membership, but does it unsubscribe you the same way?)




Yeah, that's one of a couple corner-cases that COULD skew things a lot.


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## Obryn (Mar 14, 2013)

Someone over on RPG.net noticed that this means, at a minimum, 4e is making about half a million dollars a month with only token labor. 

The decision not to print more books is making a lot more sense now! 

-O


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## MerricB (Mar 14, 2013)

Dannager said:


> I'd be surprised if this was the case. I'm not aware of any forum community where updates to your account don't propagate until you log in. The only reason you're not added to the group until you create an account is that there's nothing to add before that point.




Yeah, I'd be surprised as well. I just like to be thorough. 

Cheers!


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 15, 2013)

Obryn said:


> Someone over on RPG.net noticed that this means, at a minimum, 4e is making about half a million dollars a month with only token labor.
> 
> The decision not to print more books is making a lot more sense now!
> 
> -O




Not entirely token, but $6 million/yr is easily enough to employ 30 full-time high-end IT people, at a high burdened rate. A fraction of that should suffice for hardware, and bandwidth, so even if you assume DDI employs 10 full-time people with a lot of overhead and high salaries it must be generating some pretty decent cashflow. If not then I'd be wondering about the management a bunch more than the product. I mean, maybe it has potential to do more, but few and far between are the online subscriber-based services that charge $7-10 a month and have 5 digit sized user bases.


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## Dannager (Mar 15, 2013)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Not entirely token, but $6 million/yr is easily enough to employ 30 full-time high-end IT people, at a high burdened rate. A fraction of that should suffice for hardware, and bandwidth, so even if you assume DDI employs 10 full-time people with a lot of overhead and high salaries it must be generating some pretty decent cashflow.




Again, 10 full-time employees dedicated to DDI would surprise me, especially given that there are no apps in active development at the moment. I can see 10 if they were supporting an in-house software development team (and I've worked with teams smaller than that on application suite products), but right now they're sort of coasting on what's already been developed, and merely integrating content from the magazines. That's probably manageable with a couple full-time people, or some part-time work from an interdepartmental software team (WotC has their own software development people working on other IPs like M:tG).



> If not then I'd be wondering about the management a bunch more than the product. I mean, maybe it has potential to do more, but few and far between are the online subscriber-based services that charge $7-10 a month and have 5 digit sized user bases.




We're looking at potentially a 6-digit sized user base by the time 5e rolls around. Heck, given that people aren't added to the group until they create a community account, it wouldn't surprise me if it were already 6-digits.


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## Hussar (Mar 15, 2013)

Obryn said:


> Someone over on RPG.net noticed that this means, at a minimum, 4e is making about half a million dollars a month with only token labor.
> 
> The decision not to print more books is making a lot more sense now!
> 
> -O




I look at it this way.  At what time in D&D's history has anyone ever had the cashflow that they could coast for two years without producing new (as in not reprint) books?  That's pretty difficult for any publishing company.  I've always thought that it was the DDI that is letting WOTC take so long to bring out 5e.


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## darjr (Mar 15, 2013)

I think somewhere I confirmed that you are not added to the group until you setup a community account. I can't find it or really be sure that I nailed it as a fact. And besides it might have changed since then, I doubt it, but it might have.

Though being able to see the folks with a community account listed in the pages of the users makes me think that it still works that way.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Mar 15, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Again, 10 full-time employees dedicated to DDI would surprise me, especially given that there are no apps in active development at the moment. I can see 10 if they were supporting an in-house software development team (and I've worked with teams smaller than that on application suite products), but right now they're sort of coasting on what's already been developed, and merely integrating content from the magazines. That's probably manageable with a couple full-time people, or some part-time work from an interdepartmental software team (WotC has their own software development people working on other IPs like M:tG).



Yeah, 10 was sort of my "it can't be more than this! number", though headcount can tend to pile up. Still, I doubt they have super high overhead nor all $100k salaries either, so you could have 20 people realistically and still probably have PLENTY of cash flow. I'd be surprised if they had less than 5 people, but some of them may have other duties of course. They DID have a number of software guys for a while. DDI may not have ALWAYS been a cash cow, early on.



> We're looking at potentially a 6-digit sized user base by the time 5e rolls around. Heck, given that people aren't added to the group until they create a community account, it wouldn't surprise me if it were already 6-digits.






Hussar said:


> I look at it this way.  At what time in D&D's history has anyone ever had the cashflow that they could coast for two years without producing new (as in not reprint) books?  That's pretty difficult for any publishing company.  I've always thought that it was the DDI that is letting WOTC take so long to bring out 5e.




Yeah, if you imagine it could be 6 digits users, and they seem to be able to run on no book sales you'd HAVE to assume that's at least partly a matter of having some nice cash flow. I'd certainly be QUITE happy to run DDI as a business, I'm sure it would be no problem at all to make a very nice return on that as it stands now. Even counting what they sunk into it, and that a bunch of money was wasted back in 2006-7 it would be hard to imagine bad overall numbers.


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## Hussar (Mar 16, 2013)

And, let's be honest, the losses back in 06 and 07 would be long written off by now.  

I think it's particularly telling that there were zero layoffs this Christmas.  That's like the first time in how many years?


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## Dannager (Mar 16, 2013)

Hussar said:


> And, let's be honest, the losses back in 06 and 07 would be long written off by now.
> 
> I think it's particularly telling that there were zero layoffs this Christmas.  That's like the first time in how many years?




Only a couple. IIRC, there was another year pretty recently where we didn't hear of layoffs in the D&D team.


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## Shemeska (Mar 16, 2013)

They didn't have Xmas layoffs the one recent year that they had a large mid-year purge in May or thereabouts.

I'm not surprised for no layoffs this year. They're already running really thin in terms of staff compared to prior years, and that's even before you consider the needs in the buildup to a new edition.

Plus several people have left on their own terms (Monte and Stan! for instance).


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## Gilbetron (May 3, 2013)

I find the DDI subscriber numbers to be an interesting puzzle, and I like the "detective work" done so far.  But I'm curious:  is there anyone on the community list that is no longer a DDI subscriber?  I don't have access to the list - has anyone copied it in an accessible place?


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## Ferghis (May 3, 2013)

Gilbetron said:


> I don't have access to the list - has anyone copied it in an accessible place?



There might be smarter ways to get this list, but since they're listed at 10 per page, and there are over 80,000 members, it would be a pain in the neck to copy the list.


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## Gilbetron (May 3, 2013)

Ferghis said:


> There might be smarter ways to get this list, but since they're listed at 10 per page, and there are over 80,000 members, it would be a pain in the neck to copy the list.



You'd probably want to do a bunch of curl's stuck inside a script, yes - manually it would be a bit tough


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## Obryn (May 4, 2013)

Gilbetron said:


> I find the DDI subscriber numbers to be an interesting puzzle, and I like the "detective work" done so far.  But I'm curious:  is there anyone on the community list that is no longer a DDI subscriber?  I don't have access to the list - has anyone copied it in an accessible place?



It's been tested with a few examples in this thread.

-O


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## Gilbetron (May 4, 2013)

Obryn said:


> It's been tested with a few examples in this thread.
> 
> -O




There are people that are still members of the group that are no longer DDI subscribers?


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## D'karr (May 4, 2013)

> Kimberly614




Reported


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## Obryn (May 4, 2013)

Gilbetron said:


> There are people that are still members of the group that are no longer DDI subscribers?



No, the opposite.  Everyone who's been tested is no longer in the group and seems to be removed within 24 hours or less.

-O


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 4, 2013)

Obryn said:


> No, the opposite.  Everyone who's been tested is no longer in the group and seems to be removed within 24 hours or less.
> 
> -O




Right, there were a couple of times that my subscription lapsed for a few days or a couple weeks. In every case I was removed from the DDI group (at least the one time I tested it, I guess in theory things could have changed).


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## Gilbetron (May 4, 2013)

Obryn said:


> No, the opposite.  Everyone who's been tested is no longer in the group and seems to be removed within 24 hours or less.
> 
> -O



That's why I'm curious about the opposite.


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## Obryn (May 4, 2013)

Gilbetron said:


> That's why I'm curious about the opposite.



The opposite doesn't seem to happen, by all available evidence, so I'm not sure what you're digging for.


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## Hussar (May 5, 2013)

Gilbetron said:


> There are people that are still members of the group that are no longer DDI subscribers?




No.  Lapsed subscribers have been removed from the group.


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## Dannager (May 6, 2013)

Yes, but why haven't lapsed subscribers shown us the _*real-world politics reference that I shouldn't have made*_? What are they hiding?



*Mod edit:*  No politics folks, sorry.  ~Umbran


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## delericho (May 6, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Yes, but why haven't lapsed subscribers shown us the _*real-world politics reference that I shouldn't have made*_? What are they hiding?




Heh. (Sorry, can't XP.)


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## sabrinathecat (May 6, 2013)

Yeah, I'm technically a member of the "community" because I run & plan PbP games there, but I've never been a subscriber.
On the other hand, there are an awful lot of people who haven't posted in over 6 months, but are still counted as active members.


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## Hussar (May 6, 2013)

[MENTION=89838]sabrinathecat[/MENTION] - we're talking about people who are member of the DDI community.  You are only a member of that community if you are a DDI subscriber.  It's not talking about the WOTC forum community.


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## mudbunny (May 6, 2013)

Last I checked (and this was a couple of months ago), they used to have a couple of days grace period if your subscription expires just in case it expires by accident.


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## MerricB (Sep 10, 2013)

The newest count is 73,387 members, per the community reset today.


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## Dannager (Sep 10, 2013)

It's worth noting that the change is probably indicative of a large number of community accounts being deactivated by the switch, rather than the result of 10,000 subscriptions disappearing over the last five months, and is further evidence that the number displayed in the group membership reflects only a subset of the actual number of D&D Insider subscribers.

While it's not impossible that 10,000 subscribers ended their subscriptions in the last half year, it runs counter to the projected increases we would expect based on data over the last five years. Based on rates of decline in growth over the last few years, we shouldn't expect to see net losses of subscriptions until 2015. It's possible that the announcement of D&D Next caused some to end their subscriptions, but I see that as unlikely given that the practical utility of the subscription won't decrease at all until the game is actually released (and it also occurred well before the last measurement period).


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## MerricB (Sep 10, 2013)

It may also be indicative of the utter disaster the new forum roll-out at Wizards is.


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## Hussar (Sep 10, 2013)

MerricB said:


> It may also be indicative of the utter disaster the new forum roll-out at Wizards is.




This is probably the biggest culprit.  Sigh.


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## jodyjohnson (Sep 10, 2013)

I made a list of My Groups yesterday because I though it might be useful for data on how the Group counts register.

GroupSept. 9Sept. 10DecreaseDungeons and Dragons58234548-21.9DDI8813773390-16.7DDN87514555-47.9LFR28722218-22.8Playtesting31582851-9.7Online RPG4571439273-14.1

Counts from the actual group page

The numbers reported in the My Groups listing are substantially lower than the actual Group Page except in the case of the D&D Next Group where they match exactly.  

On my personal groups page the numbers right now (8:45am Sept. 10):

D&D Insider - 29655 Members
D&D Playtesting - 1755 Members
DnD Next - 4557 Members
Dungeons & Dragons - 3469 Members
Living Forgotten Realms - 1916 Members

The numbers seem to be climbing as users log in.

Maybe update again tomorrow and next week to see if they return to yesterday's pre-upgrade numbers.


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## jodyjohnson (Sep 12, 2013)

Group9/99/109/129/139/10 Group9/12 GroupD and D582334635582584345484566DDI881372965470908874357339073392DDN875145538120875145554584LFR287219162779287222182224Online RPG457141738345614457063927339272Playtesting315817543096315728512850

It really looks like a lot of these numbers only register when people actually sign in to the Forums.  There was a huge jump back to normal numbers on the My Groups listing while the actual counts on the Group page were pretty static.

My 9/9 numbers are from the group pages since the My Groups listing didn't show group size.

LFR, Online RPG, and Playtesting are back to within 100 of their Monday numbers.
D&D and DDN are less than 10% down.
DDI is the only group substantially down still.

But it is the largest group and less likely to be checking the forums religiously.  Between Dragon within the week and the normal weekend gaming I expect a return to near 9/9 numbers Monday or Tuesday.

Edit: added 9/13 data for the My Groups listing,  the group pages have the exact same numbers as 9/12.


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## delericho (Sep 17, 2013)

jodyjohnson said:


> But it is the largest group and less likely to be checking the forums religiously.  Between Dragon within the week and the normal weekend gaming I expect a return to near 9/9 numbers Monday or Tuesday.




So... any update to this? For no reason other than that I'm curious.


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## jodyjohnson (Sep 17, 2013)

There's been almost no change since the numbers on Friday.

DDI is up 2 -- that's fairly significant because it used to grow 30 a day.  I expect the DDI group to DDI account ratio has achieved parity.

DDN group is up 2.
D&D group is up 2.
Online RPG is down 1.

The rest of the numbers are exactly the same.


For actual paying subscribers I think the 73392 range is absolute minimum but given the extremely slow growth on the 87437 number I would doubt there are many more subscribers out there who are going to open community accounts at this point.  While I expect they've been losing ungrouped subscribers for quite some time the subscribed and Grouped numbers will probably start to erode.  Likely at an accelerating rate.

Between the PDFs and DDI WotC is still generating enough revenue to keep the lights on.  This is still the first edition change with that order of subscription revenue and back catalogue sales to float the transition.


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