Slightly disappointing

[thebitterguy]

Wotc has killed Gleemax.

Comments

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm disappointed. I'd never heard of it until you pointed it out just now.

[granolademonic.livejournal.com]

You and me both, brother. Ol' BitterGuy produces any number of baffling, acronym-stuffed posts that may as well be written in another language for how unfamiliar I am with their subject matter...

Honestly, for me, it's part of his inexplicable charm.

[thebitterguy]

This was an online social networking site for D&D players. If you HAD heard of it, I'd have been forced to eat my Brock Samson t-shirt.

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

I'm deeply unsurprised. Wizbro has shown themselves pretty much congenitally incapable of pulling off anything beyond the most rudimentary web support for their products. I expect their Digital Initiative for D&D 4 will end up the latest version of the eTools fiasco.

[granolademonic.livejournal.com]

And see, two months ago I wouldn't even have known who Brock Samson was! :)

[granolademonic.livejournal.com]

Also, you need more tags.

[doccross.livejournal.com]

I second that. eTools...what a clusterfuck.

[proemial.livejournal.com]

Huh. Gleemax. Hadn't heard a peep out of that thing since the launch.

What? You're surprised I even heard about the launch? Well, I do read /. and digg.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

Huh. I don't read slashdot or digg and I'd heard of Gleemax, back when it launched.

And then forgot about it.

It's not like anyone ever posted anything about it since.

Till now.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm disappointed, either.

I had heard of it. Back when it first launched.

And that was it, till now.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

I'll second the bit about obscure acronyms.

::B::

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Well the social networking will shut down in September as the concentrate on D&D Insider, but they mention that the forums will still be up, and perhaps moved over.

(holds his face in shame as actually knowing this before your post)

::B::

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

sweet!

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

Small wonder, then, that it's folding.

[adders.livejournal.com]

I was looking at it recently.

And my social media professional opinion? It sucked. :)

A mercy killing that will pave the way for better things, I hope. It would have been hard to get where they wanted to go from where they were.

[thebitterguy]

The only person on my FL I can remember mentioning it was srhall79. It seems to have been somewhat neglected since then.

[thebitterguy]

eTools was one of those strange things, wasn't it? Overly ambitious, and then constant delays, and finally, not much of anything. I think the product they released was less useful than the Dungeon Masters Assistant SSI released on 5 1/4's back in the day.

[thebitterguy]

What would they have been trying to do with it? Is it something that could be better accomplished within other social networking sites, or do they need a specialized one?

[adders.livejournal.com]

I think they'd have been better trying to create a set of specific tools that they could be embedded into other sites. Reinventing the blog/forum/socnet wheel is a loser's game for a niche right now, because your product will inevitably look poor compared to that of the big boys. So, Facebook apps, embeddable blog widgets, maybe even a gamer-specific blog aggregator/search/link track service.

That sort of thing.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

Here's how little-noticed Gleemax apparently is. Having seen your posting, I went and looked at the Wikipedia entry. And I was able to "scoop" the entry by posting the notice that it was going offline. So apparently the Wikipedia people don't care much about it. When Wikipedia doesn't care about you, I think you're already dead...

[srhall79.livejournal.com]

And I might not have mentioned it at all if Gleemax hadn't been responsible for me going to GenCon last year. After that (and meeting some of the guys working on it), I felt obligated to give it a go and mirrored my gaming posts to a blog there. Unfortunately, it didn't even have the functionality of LJ, and the frustrations got to the point where I decided to leave it until they upgraded.

I'm still hopeful the D&DI gets fully off the ground. Haven't needed the rules compendium yet, but I'm glad it's there, and the Dragon articles have been pretty good. Tonight, I'll get to play in the first part of the Dungeon adventure path, so I'm excited about that.