An Impromptu Look At Wizbook II

Zerg Infestation

Last time I talked briefly about some of the features Wizbook promises, shortly after using it myself. I said that it was better than Gleemax except for some interface things. Well, I screwed myself karmically on that one, because about an hour after posting that I couldn’t get Wizard’s Community to load at all. Well, actually, I could, but it was like a 50/50 chance of it working and the rigamarole I had to do with Firefox to get it to work was amazing.

It kept telling me that the page would redirect forever or some god damn thing and it still does. I cleared my cookies from Wizard’s Community, and then it let me look at the page, but then I logged in and got stuck in the eternal redirect. Sometimes it actually worked, but some of the more significant features (the videos, the wiki) got screwed over too. This problem seems exclusive to Firefox, most other browsers I tried just flat out refused to load it and gave me generic errors.

This kept on until I got a tip to download Mac OS X’s latest nightly Webkit. For those not in the know, this is basically beta software where you get new features but you’re supposed to help them iron out the bugs from them, and it gets updated much faster than a real software release would. It looks like Safari, works better (for me) and is out for Windows and Mac OS X.

So after downloading what is basically development beta stage software, I finally got Wizbook to work consistently. Note that only with the Webkit could I get the damn thing to work consistently. Shiretoko and Minefield (Firefox’s crazy ass pre-builds of software from THE FUTURE) also choke on Wizard’s community for me, as does Firefox 3.5, and I’ve heard a bunch of other people complain about this as well, so it can’t just be me. I’ve had guys email me saying that my analogy of Wizbook functionality being like a saving throw is incorrect, because saving throws in 4e are 50/50 and Wizbook works less than that.

Perhaps the first two hours of use, when Wizbook actually worked perfectly for me, really spoiled me. I must remember that this is a beta, and from the looks of it, might be beta for a good long time. But really, it worked so well the first few times, without having to download weird development builds of software. What the hell happened after? I’ve never experienced having a web site work perfectly for me, then suddenly decide not to just an hour later.

We have entered an ENDLESS RECURSION OF TIME.

The Forums

This D&D community here is terrible. New software doesn’t mean anything with the same old characters there. You might come and tell me “Call the waambulance Wyatt, go to the Atomic Think Tank or Paizo’s forums or something and then moan about it,” and yeah, I admit my experience is probably limited and some of you out there have suffered worse than I somewhere else.

But in my eyes having to cite worse examples just means Wizbook is in the same league. This community is just unfriendly, unwelcoming, cold and at the very worst are a bunch of crazies! Even among the people who actually want to discuss 4e there’s insufferable jerkoffs who exist only to make the place as thorny and painful to use as possible. And somehow, above all odds, it looks all the worse with the plain white and grey forums laying bare the ill logic and surly attitude of the people there.

I know a guy who’s been called a pedophile. Because of his forum avatar. That just about does it for me.

Wizbook Forums is the god damn jungle folks. They got fun and games there. If you’ve got the time honey, they’ve got the disease – flame wars, redundant never-ending “debate” and insults that are outdated even for 12-year-olds.

And I’m probably still gonna go there to wag around my blog links on my signature. God damn it all.

Social Networking

As said before, the Social Networking aspects work as well as you would expect them to, and in my opinion there’s practically no longer a need for what was once Gleemax. You don’t HAVE to suffer the horrible community at the forums anymore, and here’s why. Forming a group is so easy Lindsay Lohan could do it while driving drunk.

I made one last night in about 5 minutes. It gives you a private forum with subcategories, threads, and all the normal forum features, except you control who you let into the group to use it. You can even kick members out so they can’t ever post to your little piece of the internet again. It’s your sanctuary in a realm of madness.

You can even erase it in one go when you want to ragequit Wizbook. But why would you? The private forums are Wizard’s single best and most incredible idea ever. Now that’s community building – I can escape from your horrible community and make my own with only people that I tolerate. Hell yes. I don’t even know why people bother with the forums.

The blogging feature is actually really nice. I expected it to be bare bones, but the text editor is quite well-featured. It reminds me a lot of the visual editor on WordPress and probably is based around that sort of thing. It has no HTML editing mode that I saw, but come on now. Do you really post things of such complexity to your Wizbook blog that you need an HTML editor in there?

In short, forget the forums. Take Wizbook and make it your own.

So we end on a visual description of my experience with Wizbook for the most part. Is there hope for the future? Maybe.

Will I ever stop with the yukkuri? Probably not.