There I was about to go to bed when I decided to check up on the latest gaming news. Well, in a bizarre 1-2 punch,
- Wizards of the Coast announces they’re giving up on their virtual tabletop
- Paizo announces they’re launching a virtual tabletop that sounds 1000% better
Oh, snap! Wizards has been promising a VTT since the beginning of 4e and has had infinite trouble in delivering. But check out the news on Paizo’s! Runs in a Web browser and is totally cross-platform; will have content from the Adventure Paths and all; and will be free (you’ll pay for some kind of extras). It doesn’t try to enforce rules (which is great), it just does tokens and map and initiative tracker duty.
I tell you what… Everything I hear about the PF MMO makes me think it’s going to suck, but since they are doing EVERY OTHER THING perfectly, it’s making me doubt myself – maybe it will rule too!
Geek Related 
Paizo’s project sounds an awful lot like Roll20, which is not at all a bad thing. My group and I have been using Roll20 for a few weeks now and we love it, and the team seems really dynamically engaged with the service and its userbase. I see no reason why either of these two services couldn’t mutually benefit from each others’ web presence. I have a brief article on virtual tabletops that I wrote over on my blog, if you want to have a look, here at http://realitysalad.blogspot.com/2012/07/implications-of-virtual-gamespace.html
I found it rich that WotC blamed the cancellation of the software on a lack of “support”; well Wizards, if you’d released it when you said you would, perhaps you’d have that support.
Uh… I found a different reason for why it was canceled. Not pretty. http://www.examiner.com/article/the-murder-suicide-that-derailed-4th-edition-dungeons-dragons-online
Sad but not really to blame. I mentioned that on this blog (https://geek-related.com/2008/08/22/wizards-layoffs/) when it happened – four years ago. That Examiner article is dated 2012 for some weird reason but that all happened back in 2008. One guy dying four years ago is probably not “the reason the VTT failed.”
Go Paizo! I might actually use that virtual tabletop…