Well, as they ask for feedback, let us be sure to give it to them.

I’m starting to envision a day when WotC is no longer the big player in this game space. Paizo’s GameMastery stuff seems of a better quality lately and I just saw where Green Ronin (who put out some pretty good stuff too) signed to produce the George R.R. Martin Ice and Fire RPG.

I don’t think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, but it’s still young. I’m slightly curious as to how it’ll develop, though I recognize that it’s not really directed at me.

Further, I wonder if they will support other game systems that aren’t owned by Wizards. If not, that would completely kill it for me.

The website itself seems to indicate that it isn’t gleemax, or that it isn’t a finished product. (Follow the ‘what is gleemax’ link.)

A couple of things that give me hope.

A. They’re going to show it off at Gencon, which has oodles of RPG players, so hopefully they’ll get some good feedback.
B. They say they’re going to set up an “advisory board” maybe some TT readers could get on that and help make it not so unattractive to look at.

One other idea that might make it work better would be to have multiple websites all running off of the same back end. You could have several websites that all access the same forums, for instance. The threads would be the same, the posts would be the same, but the page layouts and graphics (which seem to be the biggest problem) would be different. You’d be able to use data from any of the websites to hook up and find games, but you wouldn’t have to go to the same site. Just find the site that has the layout you like best, and stick with that. The content would be the same, it’s the layout and graphics that would be different. (I personally find the brain in the jar to be particularly annoying, and the entire black and acid green color scheme just… unnerving. However, that’s just me, someone else might think that it’s fantastic.)

Anyhow, I’ll watch to see what happens.

MOCTODSDR
AZIWTAXAM
EELG

Which was a very easy puzzle to figure out.

I sent an email, then got a reply with an attachment that had some fairly odd, non-gaming related questions, but it said not to send back your answers. Another week later I got an email with a link to the gleemax.com site.

So far, it’s not for me either. I don’t like the look or the ‘tude. Maybe it’ll work on the younger crowd. I’ll check back in a month or so to see if turns into something that will be useful for me. As of now, I’m fine just using the regular forums.

Amen to that, brother. Amen to that. (admitted sexist assumption)

“Show off your character?” **shudders** The character aspects I’m proudest of, aren’t on paper…

Wizards should be trying to expand their presence on actual social networking sites instead of trying to remake their own.

yes the brain in the jar runs wotc, but then hasbro transplanted it.

Pretty sure I’m not the target audience, which is a shame. You’d think with twenty-plus years of RP experience, a six-figure income, and loads of disposable income that…yea, I’m not sure what’s going on.

From what I’ve read at EN World, the D&D DI is not Gleemax, but there will be tie-ins. As far as the nerf brains go, yes, a number of people around the US got them. (At some point, there was speculation that the mind-flayer buy-off got misdirected, but I digress…) Apparently (I wouldn’t know, not playing M:tG) there is an uber-powerful M:tG card Gleemax named after the supposed brain in a jar that runs WotC. So there’s the in-joke. But I’m thinking they need to talk the illithids into loaning an elder brain to fix the public relations issues…

Never having used Myspace, I don’t know whether they actively encourage such eyesores, or whether there is some like-attracts-like going on with hideous designs clustering together on their servers.

So, yeah… not for us.

Yep, except:

“There will be features aimed at existing Wizards customers (ways to show off your D&D character, your warband, or your deck, etc.) and there will be plenty of tools that fans of other games can use as well.”

If it had only mentioned CCGs and CMGs, I’d have left it alone — but it sounds like they’re trying to include D&D players, and perhaps by extension other tabletop RPG players as well.