D&DI Magazines Update

The question a lot of people have been asking lately is ‘When will the free trial end?’ I’m now ready to publicly state a date… it’s still a technology project, of course, and I won’t consider us to be out of the woods until we’re actually collecting money, but we currently believe that we will launch our subscription service at some point in October. So September is the last full month of the free trial and this month’s compilations will be the last full free issues of Dragon and Dungeon Magazines that we make available. We probably will not be done testing our Ecommerce and Entitlements system in time to launch by October 1st, so you’ll probably get a couple of extra articles for free as we continue to publish three times per week, but here’s the short version:

This is the last full month of the Dragon and Dungeon Free Trial.

When we do flip the switch at some point in October (exact date to be announced) here’s what we will be charging for a subscription to D&D Insider:

12 Months = $59.40 ($4.95 per month)
3 Months = $19.95 ($6.65 per month)
1 Month = $7.95 ($7.95 per month)

And here’s what you get if you are a subscriber:

• Access to the pages where PDFs of Dragon and Dungeon can be downloaded (including new articles three times per week and monthly full issue compilations).
• Access to the pages where Bonus Tools are launched (currently the Ability Generator and the Encounter Builder, soon to include a Monster Builder as well).
• Access to the D&D Compendium detail pages.

• Non-subscribers will be able to launch the Compendium, search for things, and see what results are returned. However, non-subscribers will not be able to click on the name of the rules element in order to see what it actually does. In other words, non-subscribers can see what things exist and what book they should go buy if they want to read more but don’t want a D&DI subscription.
• By the time we launch our subscription service, the Compendium will include content from all 4E books and magazines published through the end of September (including Adventurer’s Vault and FR Player’s Guide).

D&DI Tools Update

After we launch our D&DI subscription service, the Character Builder will become our #1 priority. First up will be a public Beta test, then a commercial release, and then our development efforts will move onto the Character Visualizer. The way the Beta will work is that we will first make the application available to a select group of special testers (including folks who signed up to be Beta testers at D&D Experience) and then we will make it available to the general public. Everyone who wants to will get the chance to participate for free.

The Beta version of the Character Builder will have full functionality, but it will only have rules content that covers level 1-3 characters. The same thing will be true of the free demo version of the Character Builder which will be available for folks to sample after the full version goes on sale: it will have everything you need to build a level 1, 2, or 3 character. We have not yet announced a release date for the full version of the Character Builder.

Note that both the Beta and then, later, the demo of the Character Builder should prove extremely useful as-is for folks playing in RPGA events like the Living Forgotten Realms, since those tend to be low-level anyway and all the applicable rules will be baked right in.

That’s it for this week’s update. I’ll see you on the forums.

Randy Buehler
Vice President of Digital Gaming
Wizards of the Coast