The Collapse of WotC's VTT - A Depressing Review

Summary

This video provides a critical review of Wizards of the Coast's new virtual tabletop (VTT), Sigil, highlighting its numerous problems and eventual downfall. Sigil, developed using Unreal Engine 5, launched in a near-unplayable state, plagued with compatibility issues, unrealistic hardware demands, and a lack of essential features. These challenges, compounded by poor management decisions and a major overhaul of the development team, have led to its failure. Despite the technical prowess of Unreal Engine 5, Sigil's launch strategy, driven by financial motives rather than community needs, backfired. The creator emphasizes empathy towards the developers affected by these corporate decisions and suggests directing criticism towards the decision-makers at Wizards of the Coast.

Highlights

• Sigil's compatibility issues with OSX, Linux, and Chrome OS make it unusable for many. 🚫
• The VTT's high hardware requirements exceed those of many current video games. 🎮
• Sigil's design prevents it from fully integrating D&D Beyond content, diminishing its appeal. 📚
• The software's cumbersome UI and incomplete feature set hinder effective gameplay. 🛠️
• Sigil's launch lacked necessary marketing support, signaling a lack of confidence from WotC. 📣
• Development was rushed and poorly executed, with most of the team being let go post-launch. 🔄
• Sigil's purpose appears more focused on monetization rather than enhancing the D&D experience. 💰
• Despite its technical potential, Sigil fails to meet the needs and expectations of the community. 😕

Key Takeaways

• Sigil's high hardware requirements and limited compatibility make it nearly unplayable for many users. 🖥️
• Attempts to integrate with platforms like D&D Beyond are fraught with errors, limiting its functionality. 📉
• Despite using Unreal Engine 5, the user interface and features are subpar and riddled with glitches. 👾
• The launch suffered from a lack of marketing and an apparent release-before-ready mentality. 📆
• WotC's focus on monetization over community needs resulted in Sigil's inevitable failure. 💸
• The fate of Sigil highlights the dissonance between corporate goals and community interests. 🤔

Overview

Wizards of the Coast's virtual tabletop, Sigil, has faced significant challenges since its launch. Designed using Unreal Engine 5, it boasted high-quality graphics but stumbled due to severe compatibility issues, requiring hefty hardware that many consumers simply don't possess. The software also struggled with incomplete integration with D&D Beyond, leaving many players unable to use it fully.

The launch was met with a severe lack of marketing, possibly indicative of internal acknowledgment of the platform's weaknesses. This rushed release led to users facing numerous technical difficulties, with many basic features—like character importation and spellcasting—rendering improperly. This mishap reflects a broader issue of prioritizing potential monetization over product readiness.

Ultimately, Sigil's failure is attributed to a disconnect between the company's monetization strategy and the community's real needs. The decision to launch an unfinished product appeared to compromise the hard work of developers, resulting in the project's downfall. The closure of WotC’s ambitious project underscores the importance of aligning corporate initiatives with consumer expectations, especially in niche communities like tabletop gaming.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Context The chapter discusses the controversial launch of Wizard of the Coast's new tabletop game and the subsequent downsizing of the development team. Despite the game's unplayable state, the author intends to provide an honest review and highlight any potential positives. Sigil, created by Wizards of the Coast, utilizes Unreal technology.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Sigil's Compatibility and Performance Issues The chapter discusses the severe compatibility and performance issues of a game called Sigil. Sigil does not function on OSX, Linux, or Chrome OS, making it inaccessible to users of those operating systems. Even on the compatible Windows OS, the game faces major performance issues, rendering it practically unplayable. These limitations severely restrict the user base and usability of the game, causing significant concerns for groups that include members using incompatible systems.
• 02:30 - 04:30: User Experience and Functionality The chapter titled 'User Experience and Functionality' discusses the software's heavy system requirements, which include a high-end RTX 2080 graphics card. It highlights that this virtual tabletop platform demands more resources than several high-profile video games such as Boulders Gate 3, God of War Ragnarok, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Elder Ring, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It also mentions that even a well-known content creator with over 100,000 subscribers could not run the software to review it, indicating significant accessibility barriers for users wanting to engage with this D&D product.
• 04:30 - 07:00: Combat and Character Integration Issues The chapter discusses the importance of compatibility in virtual tabletop (VTT) games. Without universal compatibility among all players in a group, a VTT struggles to serve its purpose. The chapter uses Sigil as an example, suggesting that regardless of its potential as a VTT, its lack of compatibility rendered it ineffective. The user experience with Sigil is also explored, including the necessity of creating a table before beginning a premade adventure, which was a source of frustration for users.
• 07:00 - 12:00: Map Builder and Design Limitations The chapter discusses the performance and design limitations of map-building in virtual tabletop games. It opens with a mention of the slow loading time of maps, using an example of a starter adventure comprising of only three maps taking 2 minutes and 20 seconds to load. This scenario highlights the challenges faced during more extensive campaigns, such as a Dungeons & Dragons session with numerous maps, illustrating potential frustrations for users. Despite these limitations, the chapter acknowledges the visual appeal and capabilities of the Unreal Engine 5, which enhances the gaming experience with its immersive graphics. Features like the ability to move miniatures, cast spells with animations, and physically roll dice on a virtual tabletop are praised as engaging, despite the underlying technical issues.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Character Model Creation The chapter focuses on the creation of character models in relation to various software tools used in modeling, particularly the game Sigil. It critiques Sigil's limitations in spells mechanics, highlighting issues such as its inability to target objects with the Firebolt spell and the lack of detailed spell component descriptions necessary for Dungeons and Dragons (DnD). These shortcomings lead to confusion about spellcasting capabilities when equipped with different items like swords or shields. The chapter underscores the importance of accurate and detailed spell information for effective gameplay.
• 13:00 - 18:00: Launch, Marketing, and Strategy Critique The chapter discusses the challenges and limitations of importing characters from D&D Beyond into VTT platforms like Sigil. It mentions a free browser extension that enables this function for Foundry and Roll 20 VTTs. Despite the perceived ease of importing character models and sheets, users often encounter issues, such as characters not loading correctly. This is primarily because Sigil appears to have compatibility issues with content from D&D Beyond that isn't from the 2024 edition, highlighting a significant limitation in its integration capabilities.
• 18:00 - 21:30: Monetization and Community Impact The chapter titled 'Monetization and Community Impact' addresses the challenges players face when incorporating various Dungeons and Dragons resources into their gameplay using Sigil, a platform intended to sync with D&D Beyond. While players seek seamless integration, discrepancies in character stats and missing elements like items and class features lead to frustration. The text humorously suggests that these issues may invoke a sense of urgency or even aggression among players, prompting a transition into a discussion on combat mechanics within Sigil.
• 21:30 - 26:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts In the Conclusion and Final Thoughts chapter, the discussion revolves around recent scientific discoveries highlighting dinosaurs as an incredible entity within the universe. These studies suggest that exposure to dinosaurs can be significantly more effective than traditional medication for treating depression. The speaker shares a personal anecdote, referencing their own experience with dinosaurs through 'Professor Primula's Portfolio of Paleontology', a substantial supplement designed for Dungeons and Dragons by actual researchers. The chapter reflects on the immense and positive impact dinosaurs have on mental health and overall well-being.

The Collapse of WotC's VTT - A Depressing Review Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 h so this story is kind of depressing we're talking about Wizard of the Coast's new tabletop the baffling state it was released in the crazy launch and the fallout which has culminated in 90% of the development team being fired i'm not going to pull any punches sigil is literally unplayable it is worse than you think and we'll get to that that said we're going to review it honestly and celebrate any areas of potential it might have had before Watsi decimated the team so Sigil is a VTT created by Wizards of the Coast which uses Unreal
• 00:30 - 01:00 Engine 5 and was announced in 2022 it's out now this is it first things first I am not joking when I say Sigil is literally unplayable it does not work on OSX Linux or Chrome OS operating systems that means if anyone in your party uses an Apple Mac your group cannot use Sigil if anyone in the future switches to an Apple Mac the game is over but even if your entire group uses Windows PCs Sigil is still unplayable the hardware
• 01:00 - 01:30 requirements to run this piece of software are insane the recommended specs include an RTX 2080 graphics card this virtual tabletop is harder to run than Boulders Gate 3 God of War Ragnarok Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Elder Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth fact Tactics awesome content creator couldn't even open this software to review it that's an influencer with over 100,000 subs who can't even engage with a D&D product
• 01:30 - 02:00 compatibility is everything for a VTT because for it to be useful everyone in your group has to be able to play this issue alone meant Sigil was always dead on arrival no matter how great it was as a VTT so let's talk about that then what is the user experience with Sigil assuming you can run it so Sigil opens onto this page we have to create a table to play and then we can start a pre-made adventure this is the part of the VTT that made me want to kill everyone in
• 02:00 - 02:30 the world starting with myself loading in this starter adventure which is only three maps took 2 minutes and 20 seconds here is the full unbroken clip on my timeline god forbid you try to run a D and D campaign with dozens of maps but hey whatever we eventually get in and it looks beautiful unreal 5 is very nice you can pick up minis and move them around you can cast fireball and it makes a little animation and you can roll dice and they roll physically on the virtual tabletop rolling dice always
• 02:30 - 03:00 hits like a bump of crack no matter what software you use to do it all this stuff is great except it's not quite right the firebolt spell can't target objects in Sigil it can only target people which is incorrect spells also have descriptions in Sigil but they're not the full descriptions it doesn't tell you the verbal material or sematic components necessary for example that's really important information for Dn D can you cast the message cantrip if you're holding a sword and a shield well Sigil doesn't tell you but the main draw of
• 03:00 - 03:30 this VTT is the ability to import characters directly from D&D Beyond there is a free browser extension that does this exact thing for Foundry and Roll 20 VTTs by the way but don't tell anyone still it's really easy to connect Sigil in D and D Beyond all you do is click a character model click import character sheet and boom then you get a message that says this character doesn't work and then you go through all your characters and realize that none of them work as far as I can tell Sigil can't handle any content from D and D Beyond that isn't specifically from the 2024
• 03:30 - 04:00 players handbook so I guess Sigil is also unplayable for your group if even one character is running one subclass from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything i do have a character who's just a battlem fighter and by importing him his stats appear in Sigil perfectly in sync with D and D Beyond and when I say perfectly in sync I actually mean wrong his AC is wrong and he's missing multiple items and class features at this point you might want to kill something so let's look at combat in Sig welcome back world
• 04:00 - 04:30 scientists have recently discovered the most badass thing in the universe and it is of course dinosaurs studies now show exposure to dinosaurs to be five times more effective than medication for treating depression and I would know because I've been playing Professor Primula's portfolio of paleontology even the bad thoughts can't compete with a freaking T-Rex [ __ ] the Portfolio of Paleontology is a Titanic supplement to Dn D created by real life research
• 04:30 - 05:00 scientists and paleo artists bringing epic TTRPG content based on real fossil animals and locations they've got badass dinosaur subasses stat blocks interactive plants environmental hazards weather effects playable species and the coolest part is the science behind everything the book includes information on real dinosaur physiology behavior and ecology with academic references its badass D&D and a way to learn about the natural world and its history i
• 05:00 - 05:30 referenced the previous book from Paleo Games in a recent video and so many of you went out and bought it that they reached out and booked this ad and the portfolio of Paleontology is all that dinosaur stuff turned up to the max grab it today using the link below and get a free epic dinosaur 3D model file thrown in professor Primula's portfolio of paleontology out now on Kickstarter when the DM decides to enter combat they click the combat button and everyone
• 05:30 - 06:00 rolls initiative automatically that's nice but for the life of me I couldn't work out how to change the initiative order once it was automated that's a problem because my character is supposed to roll initiative at advantage and it didn't also the alert feat is a thing so people need to be able to swap around in initiative this is the problem with any automation in a virtual tabletop if you can't manually override it it is eventually going to break the system somehow in combat the rogue went first and attacked which all works and then
• 06:00 - 06:30 tried to use cunning action except there is no cunning action which is weird because there's an attack tab sigil's UI has some class features like attack but it doesn't have others it doesn't have the dash dodge disengage or hide actions or the rogues cunning action if it's not clear by now by the spells being incomplete and the character imports being wrong you just aren't using sigil without also having your character sheet to hand which is a shame because I think that was kind of the point of Sigil the point was that you didn't have to have
• 06:30 - 07:00 that to solve this stuff I created a new character to test how tight Sigil and DND Beyond actually are i just made a normal monk and to its credit Sigil and D and D Beyond are lightning fast with their integration i made a level four monk and without even having to refresh the page in D and D Beyond I could go to Sigil and import them that's impressive and it worked except it didn't because once again the AC was wrong sigil doesn't account for a monk's unarmored defense also when I went to attack with
• 07:00 - 07:30 the monk it forced me to use strength for attack roles even though I was using a monk weapon I should be able to use dexterity first of all you literally can't unarmed strike in Sigil there is no unarmed strike option so I guess Sigil is also unplayable if anyone in your party is a monk at this point you've probably already noticed something that was driving me insane um for some reason on Sigil most of the tokens and minis are grayed out with these weird lines i have no idea what is going on sometimes a mini will be normal
• 07:30 - 08:00 and then another copy of that exact same mini right next to it will be grayed out with these strange lines it started the moment I loaded up Sigil and it didn't go away and that is a real problem when the main feature of this whole VTT is that it looks nice but that's a lot of negativity uh let's talk about some more positives the little notes pad that the DM can access looks really handy and as far as I can tell every monster in the 2024 Monster Manual is here almost none of them have minis they just have 2D
• 08:00 - 08:30 tokens but I think they all have their stats i don't own the new monster manual i've not got any kind of paid subscription at D and D Beyond this is just free information in the software okay back to negatives this is a small one but you can't place flying enemies in the air which I think is the biggest advantage to having a three-dimensional space that benefit of being able to easily represent verticality in combat is the biggest problem with 2D VTTs and this 3D VTT still doesn't let you do it much more seriously although Sigil looks
• 08:30 - 09:00 really nice when you just take a snapshot of it it's actually quite annoying visually as a VTT take a look at this map can you tell me what is going on can you tell me how many enemies are here can you tell me how far they are away from each other did you notice this guy up here did you see that guy down there i kept losing track of creatures in Sigil contrast that with this 2D map I threw together in less than 20 seconds boom i know where the bad guys are i know where my team is i know where to drop a fireball sigil
• 09:00 - 09:30 takes a lot of time zooming in rotating the map checking measuring distances just to tell what is going on d and D is already famously slow in combat and anything that slows it down even more is a huge issue sigil actually gets in the way of playing the game and the top down view doesn't help at least for me I can't pass this at all there's just too much clutter everywhere but also that clutter needs to be there because without it it wouldn't look pretty in screenshots and that's the whole selling point okay so that's the pre-made
• 09:30 - 10:00 adventure in action but let's check out the map builder maybe that is the real gem is what I'd say if it didn't take 4 minutes and 31 seconds just to exit this software here's the footage from my live capture on the timeline 4 1/2 minutes just to leave okay we're back at the home screen which then takes 32 seconds to load the table we just left so we can delete it we can then load up a new table which is just a totally empty grid we can then build things on i am not
• 10:00 - 10:30 going to mention this again but guess how long it took to load an empty grid in Sigil if you said 1 minute and 41 seconds you get a hug it's not optional i'll find you the map builder is where most of the glitches happen for me let's start with the positives i really like that you can change the lighting with just a click it looks really pretty as for the building assets themselves you get a reasonable amount to play with but this is just a stock asset pack they imported i mean it might be custom they might have built all this stuff themselves but it looks identical to a stock asset pack you can just buy for
• 10:30 - 11:00 any Unreal Engine 5 game so honestly it might as well have been still I like all the little props you can use to populate your map and it's really cute that they included a model of one of the developers after being made to work on this for 3 years i immediately slapped down a bunch of pregened towers and then messed around for about 10 minutes to get a feel of the builder UI first of all yes it's glitchy you can see there's a ton of weird stuff going on with the lighting i couldn't get it to stop a lot of users reported outright crashes when
• 11:00 - 11:30 using the map builder but my glitches were all aesthetic secondly I was surprised to find that the UI for this map builder was created by Satan they brought Satan up from hell specifically to create this UI to give me brain damage for example there is no undo button there is no undo button in a piece of design software from 2025 you also can't shrink or scale objects you can't take a box and make it smaller it has to be the size they give you thirdly
• 11:30 - 12:00 building anything in this map builder takes ages i simply cannot believe any DM would have the time to build even one map per D and D session they run okay so the final thing Sigil can do is character model creation there are only six species you can choose and you can't change your face or expression you can choose between having breasts or not but the body types you get are really limited i am a 30-year-old British citizen i have a god-given right to create a 300 lb mother of 12 dwarf with
• 12:00 - 12:30 more cake than a bakery if I desire instead at the moment you get to choose between thin to kind of curvy also the colors are super limited it's 2025 why are we picking from a swatch just give us a hex code please there aren't many outfits and all of them make your character body type completely pointless but the ones they have actually do look quite cool I think also for some reason about 3 minutes into the character creator every possible character went bald and I couldn't fix it possible Bouldersgate 3 reference maybe also a
• 12:30 - 13:00 lot of the outfit add-ons are kind of lazy they just sort of mesh the textures together it doesn't look very good it looks very glitchy you can kind of see it here if you compare this to HeroForge an online free mini builder it's night and day honestly they really should have just made a deal with Hero Forge to let people import their minis into Sigil but obviously they can't do that because they need to charge microtransactions on every possible cosmetic so you know greed so that's everything on the Sigil VTT software but the most interesting
• 13:00 - 13:30 part of the launch is that there wasn't one this software was kind of the lynchpin of the entire 1D undermonetized push the scheme was to create an online marketplace where existing customers could go where new customers could be drawn in and everyone could be smashed with microtransactions and ideally a hefty subscription fee this game/system/microtransaction hellscape was going to be the main thing to take D&D to the billiondoll brand that Watsie
• 13:30 - 14:00 promised Hasbro it would be this was a huge deal to them and it launched with nothing this VTT cost between 20 to $35 million depending on who you ask and they couldn't even spring for a single Todd Kenrich video the lack of marketing around it is obvious of course these people aren't blind they know Sigil is awful it's not finished at all it's not even ready for beta testing right now i can only assume some random executive demanded it was released right now
• 14:00 - 14:30 because it's already super late and they don't want to pay for it anymore they sent it out unfinished of course everything is broken and unplayable and if all this sounds familiar it is it reminds me of the D&D TV channel do you remember that it's the exact same thing what's he do some random multi-million dollar project to hype up Hasbro executives and investors nobody asks for it or really cares about it in the actual D&D community watsy mismanage it they treat everyone who works on it like crap then they fire them and kill the
• 14:30 - 15:00 projects because again nobody even wanted it in the first place then you give yourself a multi-million dollar bonus and an ethics award that you created it's Hasbro baby even before they were all fired there is no way this approach to Sigil can have been good for the mental health of the developers it has to be embarrassing to release software in this state get it publicly torn apart by reviews then get publicly fired it's not their fault at all but it's got to feel like crap okay so let's address the elephants in the room even if everything was fixed with Sigil and
• 15:00 - 15:30 there was no glitches and the integration all worked and it was on all platforms it was always going to fail even before it was cancelled nobody cared about it people just don't seem to want a 3D D&D game experience/verirtual tabletop if there's one thing that's worse than your software literally not working for 70% of potential customers it's that 95% of potential customers literally don't care that it exists at all elephant in the room number two monetization and I'm not going to paint
• 15:30 - 16:00 this any color than what it is sigil did not come from a creative place it was very clearly D&D trying to emulate the financial model of gacha games microtransactions out the ass with a subscription fee thrown in to sit like a cancer cell on the back of your hobby draining money every time you play that was the vision i feel terrible for the development team who have lost their jobs and who definitely worked as hard as they could to make Sigil good but I think pretty much everyone in the actual community is thankful that it failed
• 16:00 - 16:30 because the vision for Sigil's success was our financial exploitation and you can tell just by using Sigil it's always in your face getting in the way of just playing the game you have to notice the oversized dice and the minis and the clutter because you're supposed to want to pay 99 cents for a different colored oversized dice or mini or clutter in short Sigil can never be a great VTT because it's not made to be a great VTT it's made to be a shell for a
• 16:30 - 17:00 marketplace there's also no plans for any third-party content to be available on Sigil so that's another reason your group can't play if you bought Ryoko's guide or hey maybe that dinosaur book from earlier or maybe you've just made up your own subclass you can't do it on this VTT because then you wouldn't be giving Watsi money would you you'd be giving it to a small third party creator the best thing D and D Beyond has done since Watsiy's acquisition is put great third-party creators on their platform so Sigil failing to do this was a huge
• 17:00 - 17:30 misstep at this point we should all be clear that Sigil isn't literally dead what's he haven't decapitated it it's more like they've blown its kneecaps off so they can watch it stagger around before eventually dying there are still three people working on it however as I hope I have shown this is not a finished piece of software that just needs light maintenance sigil is unplayable it took a full team multiple years to get it to the state it's in now i just can't believe a team of three people could get this playable even within a full year so
• 17:30 - 18:00 yeah I do think Sigil is basically dead i hope the remaining staff do fix some of the more egregious glitches to make it at least a little bit more playable but honestly I would not be surprised if the remaining devs were quietly laid off or just dipped out of the projects in the next few months exactly like the D and D TV channel which was ignored and then silently killed off last year maybe if they just focused on making the best virtual tabletop they could forget about a game experience forget about Unreal Engine 5 just making the best one they
• 18:00 - 18:30 can it would have been okay but even if they did everything right they'd just end up with another VTT and they don't want a VTT really they want microtransactions and hefty subscription fees this video has been very critical of Sigil so please don't take that as me just crapping on the individual developers sigil came from a place of greed and radical misunderstanding of this game and this community it was a vision that is literally impossible to articulate hopefully the employees will
• 18:30 - 19:00 take a minute they'll catch their breath and then they'll go on to join teams and companies that really care about them and the communities they serve and look I know it is gratifying to see a big bullying greedy corporation fail and we should be grateful that they did fail because their plan was to monopolize the online space and then charge the moon for it sigil was always going to have victims if it had succeeded it would have been our community because it's failed it is the developers so I guess let's not be too gleeful about this collapse um please be kind to the people
• 19:00 - 19:30 who lost their jobs and direct any grievances you have with the company towards the powerful not the victims vote with your wallets etc etc you are awesome take care tlddw sigil Bad Sigil dead these videos would be impossible to make without your support on Patreon and through YouTube memberships you can get awesome stuff including monthly D and D expansions that I create please check it out if you can link is in description your support really makes the difference also remember to like and subscribe check out other videos on the channel
• 19:30 - 20:00 and yeah that's all I got i'll see you next time