Path Of Least Resistance

A river never flows uphill. And an MMO gamer never does more than he or she needs to in order to achieve their objective(s), which is usually either levelling or killing other players. This can be otherwise stated as: in gaming, the shortest distance between two points is the path a gamer will always choose.

So why do developers so often miss this fundamental point?

All too often I seen games designed with the top hand not knowing what the bottom hand is doing. So you end up with a situation where one type of enemy is easier to kill - or farm on mass - than another, and lo, a vast majority of players gravitate towards these mobs rather than others.

City of Heroes/Villains presents an ideal example in the much-loved mechanical anarchists, the Freakshow. Freaks are a favourite for mission farming for three reasons: they only deal out two types of damage (smashing and lethal), which are highly resisted by players; they tend towards melee, so they group nicely for AoEs; and they rarely mez. Plus, for some reason I'm not privy to, they dole out fractionally more xp than other mobs (maybe because they occasionally self-rez - if so, you're double dipping because you get xp when you kill the mob again anyway - gotta love Freaks...).

So why would players take on the versatile Arachnos, or endurance-sapping Malta, the mez-heavy Circle of Thorns, or the kung-fu strong Tsoo (my personal favourites), when they can burn through a Freaks mission in half the time for 200% xp/min?

This is a particularly pertinent question with the upcoming Mission Architect over the horizon (now pushed back to 2009 with Issue 14, sadly). With the MA players will be able to create their own missions, which just puts even more discretionary power in their hands to shape the ideal farming missions. But - and this is particularly true in the world of superheroes - with great power comes great responsibility!

This is a topic of great concern on the CoH/V forums, with people falling into one of two camps: stop 'abuse' by preventing players from creating missions solely for farming. And the diametric view which says: if players enjoy farming, let them.

However, I think this debate misses the point, somewhat. Gamers will always take the Path Of Least Resistance (PoLR) to reach their goals, that's natural - but that path is determined by the game system itself.

Rivers don't flow up hill. But the devs have the opportunity to create the terrain, and the river will find the PoLR all by itself. However, ultimately, the river must flow to somewhere *fun*, and if it doesn't, then players will leave to find something funner.

So, let players make farming missions if they want. Let them play them and enjoy them if they want. But encourage players to make something more sophisticated by rewarding them for doing so. That doesn't mean you punish farming missions. You just make sure you have enough rewards to encourage people to put in the effort to create content that other people want to play. So, shape the terrain and let the players go.

The devs have already announced some checks and balances, such as reduced xp for newly created missions - at least until they become one of the Dev Choice missions. Plus there's a rating system.

I'm more in favour of the latter than the former though. The latter shapes the terrain itself by allowing good content to float to the top (just to mix a couple of metaphors). Whereas the first is top-down and is trying to steer players over the terrain via a path that may not involve the Least Resistance.

It's like the difference between market economics and a planned economy. And even the closet socialists among us will be able to tell you which system works and which doesn't (although now might not be the best time to make that claim - but I do think the point stands even in the face of $700 billion dollar bailouts... Even a recession doesn't compare to the failure of communism in some parts of the world.).

I could go on - such as about devs creating a class with one task in mind, but it being coopted for another (and what is it about crap music in YT videos? Although at least this song has something to do with the vid. Or am I showing my age?...) because that's where it is most potent, even if it sucks to play. But, in the interests of preventing a tl;dr, I'll wrap up here.

Spore: The MMO Gateway Drug

MMOs, as we know them today, are like pinball machines. Here's why: first, for all the blinking and banging and singing and dancing, at the end of the day, you're still the same old ball rattling around the same old space. Second, there's a bunch of new machines about to roll into the arcades, and they're bringing along a whole mob of people who couldn't care less about pinging a ball around table. WAR might be a fantastic pinball machine, but it's still a pinball machine made for people who like pinball machines.

So what is the future of MMOs? What else but Spore.

Spore is incredible. Everything you've heard about it is true: yes, it's a collection of inter-related mini-games; no, the mini-games aren't particularly innovative; yes, the creator apps are terrifyingly awesome; no, the game isn't an evolution simulator; yes, it's a mile wide and an inch deep; and no, that's not necessarily true. But most importantly, it's a portal for the world to experience a game that's massive, multiplayer, and online, but it's not like any MMO out there.

A Spore Story

I suspect my first few hours in Spore were like most players'. I thought the first few stages were neat, but not really revolutionary. Everything was easy to understand, I didn't even have to look at the manual. They were fun diversions, not much more complex than a good Flash game.

After a disappointing three hours of mini-gaming, I finally hit the space stage. This is not just the main game -- it's the game. It's like a twisted form of Elite, only much bigger, more alive, and full of stuff. Everything in Spore is interesting in some way: interesting to look at, interesting to play with, interesting to kill. It's unfettered exploration that encourages you to just roll around the galaxy, running missions, making alliances, trading goods, waging war, whatever, and forever. It has its problems, chief among them being constantly called away from exploring to tend to something that someone else in your galactic empire could quite easily handle, but on the whole, it works.

Then, I discovered Sporepedia. After clicking on a strange creature that looked very much like Cthulhu (an entity in a particular mythos that I'm quite fond of), I found myself engaging with Spore's real vision. I not only found other creatures from the same creator, but I found over 2000 more variants of Cthulhu from other creators. I started subscribing to 'Sporecasts', adding buddies, and even following the adventures of my own creatures in other galaxies. Before long, I had a stream Elder Gods, Deep Ones, and Cultists ready to pour into my galaxy, and Spore went from being an already excellent game, to some kind of super, user-powered platform that allowed me to play inside Lovecraftian universe. For that, Will Wright deserves the Nobel Prize for Awesome.

Insporational

Millions of people are playing Spore and doing what I'm doing. I say millions because it's either true, or it will be. The reason why I'm so confident is that Spore is a game for everyone, whereas MMOs are absolutely not. Not everyone may like Spore -- indeed, it's pretty cool to hate it right now -- but the game is undeniably made for anyone who can hold a mouse.

But why compare Spore to MMOs in the first place? Sure, Spore is single-player, in the sense that you can't directly interact with others through the game, but the meta-level of interaction is deeply social and the game is fundamentally built around the work of others. Hell, you can build someone else's entire galaxy.

I'm not saying Spore will create a rush of new gamers into today's MMOs -- as I've spouted, and will continue to spout, the current model is dated and has a finite audience. Instead, if nothing else, Spore will advertise gaming -- and a particular type of gaming -- to the wider world, and just like the Wii, it will blow the market open to a new type of gamer. And these new guys aren't interested in the Gank & Grind, just as new Wii players aren't interested in XenoKill 2040, or whatever Chet's next third-person space marine game is called. No, these guys want to meta-game, they want worlds created from the bottom-up, they want to interact and play and explore, and they want to create.

Spore isn't actually a great game, but it represents something magical. It's pointing towards something that other developers will hopefully look at and say 'ah-ha!', rather than just dismiss it as 'casual'. And those that can tap into the magic will be the ones that forge ahead.

WAR Postponed (Until Your Box Arrives...)

Woe be to you should you be unlucky enough to have pre-ordered Warhammer Online and your boxed copy has yet to arrive in the post. Woe be, indeed. For this morning (Australian time) Mythic/EA locked out your account, until such time as you can enter the code that comes with your boxed copy.

So woe be to me. I ordered through Gamehead on the 8th of September, and shortly thereafter received my open beta key and the Headstart key. A .torrent download later, and I'm in-game. But not today, I'm not! My boxed copy was shipped on Thursday 18th of September, and according to Australia Post's cryptic parcel tracking system, it's still deep in the bowels of the system. Probably somewhere around the colon.

So the upshot is: no WAR this weekend. Sure, I've paid for the game. Sure, I've done everything by the book. But nup. I get punished for doing the right thing.

And I'm not alone. Customers, quite possibly numbering in the thousands, have been denied access today throughout North America and Oceania.

But here's the twist: Mythic has acknowledged that some customers might not have received their paid-for boxed copies yet, so it has extended the grace period for them. But not all of them. (And certainly not me.) Mythic has only extended the grace period for Amazon, GoGamer, the EA Store and The Source.

Why only them? I have no idea. According to Mark Jacobs they're gathering data from retailers to find out who hasn't received their box yet, and then cutting them some slack. However it appears evident the data gathering is being done very selectively, and as usual, us antipodeans miss out.

I'm sick of this shit. The same bloody thing happened to me with Lord of the Rings Online. And yet it's 2008, for crap's sake. So why, when dealing with many games publishers, do I feel like it's 1988? We have this wondrous thing called the internet these days. The box and the install disc is a mere formality. So why make my ability to play the game dependent on this odd contingent thing such as a mailed out code?

The requirements to play an MMO are the client (downloadable), a code (information) and an account with credit card information (more information). There's no requirement for anything physical in this system. Look at EVE...

Now, I know there are implications to skipping the middle man. Hewlett-Packard tried to do it in the 1990s in response to Dell's soaring direct sales model, and the end result was a mutiny from HP's bricks and mortar resellers for being cut out of the chain. Plus, the middle man can provide a personal touch that can be missing in online transactions. But much of that is moot for games. Steam, Direct2Drive, Battlefront, Stardock... they all do it. And it works.

So, until the MMO developers grow the cojones to go out on their own, they (and we) will be slaves to the behemoth, centrally controlled, bricks and mortar mentality of the EAs of the world. And frankly, for businesses that deal in information, that's just embarrassing.

On a tangential, but related, note, my own studies in evolutionary psychology show vividly that us homo sapiens are hardwired to be particularly adept at detecting breaches of reciprocity - AKA people who renege on a deal. And it drive us nuts. This is theorised to be an evolved mechanism to detect cheaters and usually results in us having an overwhelming desire to punish the transgressor, even at our own expense - a curious phenomenon called altruistic punishment. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if a significant cadre of gamers abandon WAR over this transgression. And it makes me wonder why Mythic/EA didn't just extend the grace period for everyone. They might bow to a few free-riders by doing this, but they would also avoid pissing off a lot of legitimate customers.

And to think, today I was going to post about my positive experiences of WAR so far. Well, that'll have to wait, now, won't it...

Spore: The Intelligent Design Simulator

I need to get something off my chest. Contrary to popular belief, Spore doesn't simulate evolution. But it does very effectively model a universe governed by Intelligent Design.

A popular misnomer is that evolution is a 'creative' process, in the sense that it is a force that necessarily shapes organisms to be somehow 'better' than previous organisms. This was the discredited view held by some Social Darwinists, such as Herbert Spencer, the philosopher who coined the term "survival of the fittest".

However, that's not how evolution rolls. In fact, the operative force behind evolution, natural selection, could be seen as more of a destructive force than a creative one. Natural selection works more actively to eliminate 'unfit' organisms (or traits, or genes, depending on how you look at it) rather than promoting 'fit' ones. Over the long term certain genes do increase in frequency, but the genes themselves were created by random mutations.

Crucial here is your definition of 'fitness'. It's easy to think of fitness as being sharper teeth, longer claws etc, as represented in the creature editor. But in fact, fitness is defined by the ability of an organism to breed and pass its genes on to a subsequent generation - tooth and claw might help in this process, but they're not necessary to define fitness.

So an animal could be the Ultimate Predator on the savannah, but if it doesn't reproduce, then it's fitness amounts to nought. Compare that to the Hapless Herbivore that might constantly become food for the ultimate predator, but old Hapless might breed like, well, rabbits and eventually outlive the Ultimate Predator (or it's genes will) over the generations. In this case it could be said that the organism with the greater fitness was Hapless, regardless of its stunted teeth, poor sense of direction and gift for running straight into the toothy maw of the feisty Ultimate.

So when you're playing Spore, and you periodically pause to 'evolve' your organism, you're not emulating evolution. But you are nicely emulating the way Intelligent Design works.
And I quote (from the Discovery Institute website):

"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."

And in Spore, that "intelligent cause" is you.

Every time you meddle, it's the hand of, um, whatever it is the ID crew think is running the show (just between you and me, I think they might actually think it's God, but it could equally be a player of MetaSpore in another universe) that is shaping the direction of the organism. Not evolution.

In fact, an effective evolution simulator (of which there are many) would have you establish the parameters of the environment and introduce some virtual organisms and let them run their course. As long as they satisfy a few prerequisites - such as reproduction, heredity and the ability to mutate - then we're talking evolution.

As such, Spore: Evolution Edition would not have you fiddling with the organism, but with the environment. And it probably wouldn't be all that engaging, to tell you the truth.

That said, as a staunch evolutionist I'm not suggesting we hit the streets, torches and pitchforks in hand, to attend a mass burning of Spore discs. In fact, I think Spore is an excellent game and a powerful tool to teach some aspects of scientific thinking, as are many of Will Wright's games. But I just want people to stop calling Spore an 'evolution simulator'. Because every time you do, baby Jesus cries. And that's a fact.

Warhammer Online Beta Download Joys

I wanted this:
















But I got this:






Because I was but one of these:









Oh... the joys of beta - and the real beta-ing hasn't even started for me yet...

PS: There's a special place reserved in the darkest, hottest and uncomfortably humid corner of Hell for FilePlanet. I mean, FP is like some shady trenchcoated dude loitering around playgrounds offering the prospect of boiled lollies only to tap you on the shoulder to give you a knowing look and suggesting you actually have to pay a special price to get what's on offer.

And what makes me even more mad is that BitTorrent was designed specifically to deal with situations like a massive beta release. BitTorrent is the way of the future. But some ponytailed (or trechcoated, I'm not sure) marketing guru lines up a deal with a file download site straight out of the 20th century to throttle everyone's download just so the download site can exploit people's eagerness to get them to sign up to its stone-age deviant service.

So it's with great pleasure that I'm now here:

Are You a MMO Fan or an Apologist?

By now, few would argue that Age of Conan has a bright future. There are incredibly detailed reasons why AoC fell on its back and didn't get up -- if indeed it was ever standing up in the first place -- but I also want to use it as an example of what happens when fans go bad.

But first, a story. It's called Don't Let the Reading of the Forums Get You Down after an eloquently titled post on the official AoC forums by a Funcom developer.

It starts like this:

Athelan (FC dev): "...Currently the forums tend to be a very bad snapshot of the game community as a whole. Especially during a turbulent time like an MMO launch, people are far more likely to go and vocalize negative opinions then they are positive ones..."

That this is coming from a developer in response to forums full of negative criticism about a game that has streams of problems says more about Funcom and the state of Age of Conan than any review or blog post ever could, but that's not why I bring it up. Let's look at the fan responses, which start with a bunch of "Well said!" posts, intermingled with "Well said, but can you fix A and B?", before moving onto people saying they like the game, but not Funcom:

"The forums don't "have me down". I am "down", though, and the reason is Funcom's general attitude towards paying customers that have complaints about Funcom's practices, particularly in relation to launch."

Which prompts this:

"Dude, they are trying to get stuff going. You get a free firsts month anyways. So whats the big deal?"

And then this:

"They have their hands full. The world doesnt revolve around you."

Then this:

"if you arent happy then take the game back. you dont deserve to play it if you cant pay the price of a little patience"

There are 40 more pages of this stuff, but we can stop here. The point I'm trying to make is that there are two types of people who like MMOs, and like a particular type of MMO, and the term 'fanboy' isn't specific enough. Instead, i'll break them down into two types: the Fan and the Apologist. One is helpful, the other is poison. Here's a rundown, with some pop-psychology thrown in.

The Fan

This guy or girl likes a game more than the average player. They talk about it to non-players, and even non-gamers, they're fairly forgiving, they identify with other players, they probably paid cash for the game and will buy the expansion, and if they can, they'll probably mod it. They hold the developers to close scrutiny, and they hate it when something changes too dramatically, or doesn't get fixed. In the end, a good Fan will balance praise and feedback (the carrot) with the threat of leaving (the stick), and they're driven by the desire to make their favourite game even better.

Fans are massively important to developers, so long as they know how to keep them. Those developers that do attract Fans will have a captive audience of paying customers -- not pirates -- that provide free, and hopefully constructive, advice.

The Apologist

These gamers share a lot of characteristics with the Fan, but differ on a few points. First, they have a twisted view of the developer-player relationship, where they identify closely with the developers. They feel attached to them -- even indebted to them -- most likely because they lack other sorts of attachment, and they'll reply quickly and positively to every official post.

They're ultra conservative about the state of the game, and they place enormous faith in the wisdom and work ethic of its creators. They'll excuse clearly broken parts of the game as 'design decisions' and they see criticism as a personal attack on the developer -- and thus themselves -- and consequently respond defensively. It's a black and white world for the Apologist and you're either with him or against him.

They're trolls, but not in the traditional sense. They tend to lurk on the official forums, and they'll pounce when someone makes a criticism. In fact, in the twisted mind of the Apologist, the critic is the troll. The critic's coming in to their lair and starting trouble. That's why they'll tell the critic to fuck off or, as in the example above, say they're not "deserving" in some way. Ultimately, they have no overt desire to see the game get better, or if they do, they think it will come from the genius and hard work of the developer, not an ungrateful troll.

Nice Clothes, Boss

But most importantly, the Apologist is bad for developers. Sycophants are always bad, but they exist because people like to have them around, and it's counterintuitive to reinforce behaviour that criticises your actions, and then punish behaviour that praises you. But this is how good business are run, and the more Apologists you have, the harder it is to figure out what to do next.

The take home message for developers is obvious: get rid of the Apologists. The first step is to create an environment that supports fans. For example, don't be an apologist yourself. Take responsibility, don't lie or tell half-truths about the state of the game, just be honest. Fans will respect you for it, and it doesn't leave room for Apologists to come in and... apologise. You could also create incentives for fans to make suggestions, like putting their name in a changelog, awarding subscriptions, and so on.

Next, identify the Apologists and squash them. If you see someone replying to a criticism that excuses or apologises for you, jump in and say something using your own words -- Apologists like to think they can speak for you, but don't let them. And if someone tells a critic they aren't worthy of the game, jump on them, or again, reply in your own words. This is the equivalent to someone, anyone, telling a potential customer to go away, and you shouldn't let that happen.

I wouldn't make the call that Apologists solely brought down AoC, but at a time when Funcom needed good, honest feedback, we had a large collective of people praising the emperor's shiny new breastplate. Worse, those that did complain were left with the impression that AoC was fine (it wasn't) and that everything was going to be okay (it wasn't), implying that the problem was with the critic, rather than the game. Who wants to hang around in such a bizarre environment? No wonder people left the game in droves. Mythic, and anyone else about to pop out a MMO right now, would do well to learn from this.

Star Trek Online: The Problem With Warp

This is the first of several posts I'm planning on the upcoming Star Trek Online MMO, covering what how I hope to see the game unfold. And this post deals with a conundrum that has faced many a space game: warp.

The problem is how to incorporate a gameplay device that effectively allows any player to avoid or immediately escape combat at a moment's notice by fleeing the scene. Many ground-based games give players a 'run' or 'sprint' power, which typically offers a short term burst of speed to get away from something the player should have conned a bit more closely. But very few ground based games give a 'get away scott free' power like warp. And with good reason:

The consequence of having such a power is that combat (particular PvP) happens far less frequently. This is because players can be far more picky in terms of where and when they will engage in combat. And the result of this is that combat happens only under a narrow set of circumstances.

When looking at conflict between two (or more opponents), call them side A and side B, there are three possible scenarios:

1. A is clearly stronger than B
2. B is clearly stronger than A
3. A and B are roughly equivalent in strength

Before entering combat, any rational player will seek to establish which of these three scenarios represents their circumstances. As Zhang Yu says in The Art of War:

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Each player will con their opponent, and if their opponent appears to have a significant advantage over them, they'll simply warp away to fight another day. This means scenarios 1 and 2 end in no combat. It's only scenario 3 where the two sides will duke it out.

But the problem doesn't end there. If either player starts to feel the tide is turning against them, they can simply engage their warp drive and bail - and when they meet their opponent next time, they'll be more likely to avoid them (unless they've brought some friends).

This problem has cropped up in a number of games in the past - one that springs to mind is LucasArts' flawed space strategy/RTS, Star Wars: Rebellion from some years ago. In Rebellion, you could amass substantial fleets and send them against your opponent. But sadly, combat rarely eventuated, so you seldom got a chance to actually flex your freshly built fleet of cruisers and Y-Wings. In fact, the only way to actually engage in combat was to fly in the face of incredible odds and hope to emerge victorious - and even then the opposing fleet would lightspeed away when it looked like it was losing - or employ an Interdictor cruiser.

Another game that suffers from Warp Shenanigans is EVE Online. Whole meta-battles can take place as one side jockeys for advantage with the other, gathering friends, warping to new locations, hoping to hit and run or divide and conquer. Sometimes that in itself can be fun, but often it means spending an hour chasing people around a system or three without actually resulting in a pitched battle. Or worse still, you're caught off guard and overwhelmed by a much larger fleet with warp jammers.

Which brings me to the various ways existing games get around the 'flee' button. A popular one is to introduce things like Interdictors or warp jammers and give players an ability to have another ship "get over here." But the problem with this approach is it tilts things in the other direction and makes ganking more likely, as a large fleet with 'tacklers' (as they're known in EVE) lock down some poor unsuspecting sap and blast him to vapour.

So, how will Star Trek Online treat warp in combat? On possible answer could come from the TV show itself. In the show you will see ships duking it out, and often after one has sustained a bit of a clobbering it's captain will decide now would be a prudent time to turn tail and run. But it's often around then that the warp drive uncannily tends to sustain some significant damage, rendering it inoperable. Aye captain, we canna warp, och aye!

As a game device, fragile warp engines could be a good way of preventing people from simply bailing when they're anything less than certain of victory. However, in order to prevent ganking, the warp drive would have to be relatively easy to repair to at least give people a chance of escape. Thus would a new gameplay mechanism emerge in repairs - again something seen in the TV show. Should we prioritise work on repairing shields, power couplings or the warp drive?...

However, this mechanism wouldn't prevent two opponents (or fleets) from simply bailing at the first sign of trouble. So there might need to be another mechanism employed to force a fight - but not necessarily the use of warp scramblers which can lead to ganking. Instead a middle ground could be a cooldown of the warp drive.

So you warp in and you have a minimum of x seconds before you can warp again. This amount of time could be enough that, should you warp in on top of an opponent, you could end up taking a couple of torpedoes, but it could be short enough that you could escape if you're heavily outnumbered - unless your warp drive becomes damaged, that is!

A final mechanic that would influence all this is the risk of losing your ship. I know that in EVE I still haven't gotten out of the mindset that my ship is precious, and the thought of losing it freaks me out entirely. So I'm particularly risk-averse and cautious of where I take it - arguably sapping some of the fun out of the game, which can often revolve around PvP. I mean, can you imagine if losing in PvP in WoW meant you lost all your items? (I know the parallel isn't quite the same, but you get what I'm saying.)

Another game that got this metric entirely wrong is X3. In X3 if your hull was 20% damaged, it would cost 20% of the purchase price of the ship to fix it! A woe be if you were 75% damaged... The result was I would adopt a risk-averse attitude to combat, and flee at the first sign of real trouble. Yet if it cost, say, 1% of the purchase price to repair 10% damage, then I wouldn't mind throwing my ship into the fray, knowing that if things turn bad, it won't cost me that much.

So for Star Trek Online, the cost of losing your ship needs to be carefully weighed so it doesn't either dissuade people from getting into risky situations every now and again or pushing things too far the other way and resulting in little or no death penalty. For mine, I think something like the death penalty in other MMOs would be a good model. You lose some money on repairs (or influence, or whatever), perhaps some time, and you're back on your way with your ship intact.

With these three metrics: fragile warp drives; warp cooldown; and reasonable death penalty, I believe this will lead to more combat rather than people avoiding combat. And while Star Trek isn't all about combat (a topic I'll broach soon), if there's combat to be had, well let's have at it, I say!

Wizards Of The Coast Duff IT Again

Perhaps magic and technology really are incompatible. At least, it'd be easy to come to that conclusion from looking over Wizards of the Coasts' recent forays into the online world.

The first is something I mentioned recently: Dungeons and Dragons Tiny Adventures on Facebook. It's fun enough (if a little short on interactivity), but pivotally it doesn't work.

I've been tinkering with it for several days now, and I'd have to say it's been down more than it's been up. They've even shut down parts of the app, such as reviewing past adventures, to improve stability. One can only imagine what it would be like if they'd left those features active.

So what were they thinking? Did they think they could launch a new time wasting app on possibly the biggest time wasting site ever made, and run it from a couple of dual Xeon boxes? I don't know who's calling the IT shots at WotC, but they need to start taking their job seriously. So far WotC's virtual ventures have been clumsy and amateur compared to the evident energy and attention to detail they put into their print products.

The other example of WotC's inability (or unwillingness) to take 1s and 0s seriously is the farcical D&D Insider. Not only are several of the tools banal, but the most important - the character builder - still hasn't been released yet.

How hard can it be to program a character builder? Enthusiasts have done it. Why can't the very creators of the game? It boggles the mind.

Still, if you do want to dabble with the three Insider apps that are available today, at least they're free. And two of them aren't too bad. The Compendium has an appalling interface, but it could prove a useful reference. And Dungeon and Dragon magazines are filled with useful resources for players and DMs alike. So get them while they're free!