Comments on: Top 6 inches of Gleemax alpha front page look really great

By: BlackDiamond

BlackDiamond — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:00:36 +0000

I’ll second the Enworld comment. It’s the place where I find information about 4E, not from Wizard’s various sites, not from my WOTC account rep, not from game distributors. I think these guys are too enamored with the “web 2.0″ technology. A flat website with a clear message would do the trick nicely.

By: Jeff Rients

Jeff Rients — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:06:53 +0000

I hear you Mike. I can’t follow Wizards’ act these days. What is Gleemax and what makes it
different from D&D Insider? I see the Insider abbreviated as DDI, which makes it easy to confuse
with the Digital Initiave, unless they are the same. I don’t know. Forget all the fussing about
the mechanics of 4e, I can’t even friggin’ follow the development of the line thanks to all this
muddle.

By: Lee Valentine

Lee Valentine — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:43:39 +0000

Gleemax’s primary strength right now is its forums. However, navigation on Gleemax is kind of a pain in the ass to be honest. You know that people are going to want to be checking out the PDF versions of Dungeon and Dragon, but from the main menu that’s not even obviously available.

I gotta tell you, ENWORLD is doing a better job promoting what’s going on than WotC is. WotC DOES have some great 4th edition podcasts they’ve put together, but they aren’t prominently featured on the Gleemax website.

WotC seems to want to leak information out slowly and to create a mystique or whispering campaign in favor of their product rather than consolidating the interesting information all in one place.

If the navigation on Gleemax gets a face lift I can see that site getting a lot of traffic for the 4E launch.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:18:12 +0000

There is a lot of brand confusion currently going on. I have one massive concern for 4e, pretty much over any other single thing: How they lay out the message. I have at least one customer a day coming in asking “what is going on with 4e.” That’s way too many people who 1) want info, 2) aren’t finding it. Wizards simply has to understand how they handle the next few months is gonna dictate how many people have confidence to make this switch. A positive change has already happened in the 4e plan, now that have announced all three books are going to be released at once in June, rather than the original 3 month plan. But, seriously…they gotta get this whole thing razor sharp, convincing, and exciting. I also hope that Gleemax isn’t just drawing away resources that could better be used in MarCom, etc.

By: disziplin

disziplin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:18:16 +0000

I really want to get on board with 4e, so I will buy the books and play. But in my opinion they have really muddied the waters with Gleemax and D&D Insider. I find it difficult to keep straight which is which, what I need to subscribe to, what I get for doing so, etc…

and (sigh), I know it’s been said ad nauseum, but I miss my print Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

By: Josh Street

Josh Street — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:44:14 +0000

Uh…Mike, not to interrupt the hate-fest, but D&D Insider (http://www.dndinsider.com) isn’t the same as Gleemax (http://www.gleemax.com). Gleemax is their new community site not focused on any specific game (though with an obvious bias to WotC). And while not my schtick (not a real big fan of social networking sites) at this point (get some more gaming stuff up and I’ll come back), what is so wrong with it? Prettier than MySpace, less useful than Facebook, it leaves me with more of a “meh” at this point.