f13.net

If the Founders are any indication, the answer is an overwhelming "yes". (http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19054&page=6&highlight=Founders+staying)

Founders are people who played the Head Start period, 10-day beta, etcetera.  Not only have they had more time to play DDO, they're almost certainly more likely than the average gamer to put in longer hours.  If anyone would be experiencing DDO's fabled 'lack of content' jones at this point, it'd be them.

And yet, as seen in that thread, they're overwhelmingly sticking with the game, and enjoying it.

The future looks bright for DDO.

Are you lobbying to get unbanned at Corpnews or something?

Haven't we established that I'm a Turbine fanboi?

Honestly, though, I just think DDO is really getting an unfair rap around here, and that's giving people an inaccurate perception of the game's chances.

Unfair rap?  It's a mediocre game with barely enough content to keep players interested for a week or two.  Charging a monthly fee for that is an atrocity. 

I'd say that, if anything, people here have been a bit overly kind to this title.

Questing is central to MMOs, and it has the best questing system on the market.  Barely enough content to keep players interested for a week or two?  Read the fucking thread - it's got people who play 20 hours a week or something insanely catass like that since the Head Start period and have still only seen half the content.

Mediocre is one where you've got your opinion and I've got mine - but the myth that DDO has barely enough content for a week or two is just that - a myth.  Even the players on that thread who play more than any person humanly should seem to recognize that.  All you're doing is parroting the 'conventional wisdom' about DDO - conventional wisdom that, in this case, happens to be flat-out wrong.

Touchy touchy.

For somebody who tries so hard to make his posts sound logical and rational you picked a poor example to support your argument. Try again.

Talk about a self-selecting sample.

The people who already quit aren't reading the boards any more. This question is the equivalent of "say 'hey' if you can't hear me at all!"

You need to take some sort of class on polling and statistics. People who got bored during beta have left. People who got bored during head start have left. People who got bored while live have left.

The only people who are going to respond to that question are people who are sticking around. The best you can do is catch people who are just on the cusp of leaving. By definition nearly all of the people reading the board for a game are people who like that game at least somewhat.

Will DDO survive? Yes. Does anybody care? Other than you, not really.

You've clearly never seen the SWG boards.

I read those forums often because I love watching trainwrecks and DDO is a spectacular disaster.  You picked one fucking fanboi thread out of literally hundreds of "I quit, this game is a worthless shitstain" threads.  The vast, vast majority of posts are critical of the game.  Founders think they are something special and as a percentage are going to post far more often than anyone else so trying to extend how they feel to everyone else is moronic.  Even then the sum total of that thread would be about three hundred people and the thread is almost a week old, that shows really pathetic support from even their most die hard fanbois.  In a few days when 90% of people have let their subscriptions expire the only ones left will be founders, you could fit all of them on one server and just shut the rest down.

Half of the f13 posts I just read are from you trying to pimp this piece of shit, everyone knows how bad it is but you.  The mere fact that you actually like it makes me assume that the only people left playing come mid April will be sociopathic rejects like yourself.


Shit like this is just blatant trolling, the flaws of DDO are so huge and numerous compared to something like WoW that even you can't be dumb enough to believe what you wrote.

I like this bit of sophistry.  It makes a limited featureset sound like a good thing.  WoW doesn't have better PVP/crafting/endgame/whatever than DDO, because DDO doesn't have those things at all.  Now if they just remove the quests and combat, it will be the WoW-slayer.

Unless you're going to have a sandbox (Which is cool in and of itself, but neither DDO nor WoW is one), I firmly believe that a limited featureset is a good thing.  Better to do one fun thing and do it well, than to try a bunch of things at once and end up with none of them being fun (a-la WoW).  I have no problem with playing one game for good exploration, one game for good questing, one game for good PvP.

A game doesn't get any points from me for having more features if those features don't add anything fun.


WoW's PvP is mediocre at best - about the level of DAoC.  There's no twitch skill, and you're automatically shoehorned into sides (Horde or Alliance) with no options of selecting who your teammates are or aren't.  There's no potential for serious politics, diplomacy, or intrigue.  It's like Counterstrike minus any adrenaline rush.

WoW's crafting is, err, crafting.  I've never seen how crafting, in and of itself, can have appeal since it's just a means to an end.  The only game I can think of where crafting could truly be considered 'fun' or 'un-fun' would be Puzzle Pirates.

The closest DDO has in terms of crafting is collecting, and I have a hard time seeing how crafting is significantly different from collecting - they both serve about the same purpose, except at a superficial level.

The very idea of differentiating between a 'game' and 'endgame' is a false assumption.  I firmly reject the idea that games should have an 'endgame' that is in some way different than the 'game' that came along thus far.  That's bullshit in the same way that 'You should do some PvE in order to PvP' is bullshit.


Edit:  Oh, and you still haven't listed something that DDO does that WoW does better.  It's not sophistry, it's the right question to be asking.

You really need to stop talking. You make about half as much sense as I do and make me sound relatively normal even though most of my viewpoints are OFF THE FUCKING MAP. You don't pick your side in arguments because it's the good side and you don't pick your opinions because they're the reasonable opinion - you pick both because you want to make yourself look smarter than you are. Unfortunately you come off as positively nutjobbish. You desperately need to slow down and think before you start typing. I mean, isn't it a clue that even before you admitted to being Mediocre people had already started to dislike you immensely. Your conversational skills are fucking toxic. Get a grip, man.

Edit: And btw, people differentiate the game and endgame because developers do it either conciously or subconciously in their design of a game. It's readily apparently to anyone that's played an MMOG that everything up until the last levels is something entirely different from what you'll be doing when you hit those last levels. Hence, endgame. But you already knew that. You just wanted to be argumentative.

If I were trying to make myself look smart, wouldn't I pick positions that are generally agreed with?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't people on average tend to hold more favorably people with whom they agree?

I don't see how my positions are nutjobbish.  Most MMOs are completely unfun.  Therefore, my approach to MMOs is that I start with the most fundamental, logical question:  "What's fun?"

From there, I sort games into three groups. (This is all assuming I play as the game devs intended, not taking into account griefing or things like that)

Largely fun:  AC1, Puzzle Pirates, Toontown, DDO.  Also probably EVE, if I were into space combat.

Some elements of fun to be had, mayhaps:  ATITD, Guild Wars, CoH, Neocron, UO and Shadowbane (If I could deal with click-movement), RuneScape, SWG post-NGE

Absolutely no fun to be had:  EQ, DAoC, WoW, AO, Horizons, MapleStory, Rubies of Eventide, SilkRoad Online, SWG pre-NGE


From there, I ask myself "What was it about game X that was fun?  What differentiates fun game X from semi-fun game Y and unfun game Z?".

How is that nut-jobbish?


Some devs do that - lazy devs, I would argue.  I would say it's a flawed way of thinking that needs to be stamped out.  But the most enjoyable MMOs don't take this path.  AC1, DDO, Guild Wars (at least when I played), Puzzle Pirates, and ToonTown (at least when I played) all do not make any significant distinction between what you do at the 'end' and what you do on the way there.

Can you point me to a single case where making this distinction has made the game more fun?  AC1 has raid-like bosses, some of which take 10 people or so to take down. But instead, they took said bosses and made 'lesser' or otherwise gimpy versions of them, one version for each level range, so that a group of 5 level 20's and 5 level 100's can each try what is functionally the very same uber-quest - and the game is much better for it.

I've never understood why WoW wouldn't offer a 'lesser Molten Core' suitable for 5 level 10-20's (they could shoehorn it into the lore somehow, just like AC always did), except to keep their players hitting the skinner boxes in the hopes of getting the Big Shiny at the end of the tunnel.

I've never heard a serious argument for an end-game system that benefited from keeping the players who haven't hit the cap from participating.

There is one way that an "endgame" makes sense - if playing the endgame requires the use of skills that are best acquired by playing the "early game".

I do not believe that this is applicable to any current MMOG, however, since MMOG progression usually requires about a week of grinding for every hour spent seeing something new.  (And yes, DDO is one of the better games in this regard, though it still has a ways to go.)  The best example of an endgame in this vein I can currently think of is Spore (which is unfortunate since it's not actually out yet), since in Spore the "early game" is goal-oriented and teaches you to use the various tools, and the "endgame" is a sandbox game that requires you to be familiar with those tools.

I've ranted before about my ideas for a MMOG whose "endgame" is a city/dungeon/whatever-building game that overlays the "early game" that everyone else is playing.  Playing the early game familiarizes you with the game systems and world, and as you acquire money and power through the early game you eventually get to the first stages of the world-building game.  (A bit like Spore's progression is expressed by steadily broadening the player's context into bigger and bigger spaces.)  It'd be the Holy Grail of player content if it could be done right.

You and I are largely in agreement.  Of course, I think in situations of ambiguity, the game should lean toward allowing players to try and fail for themselves, rather than leaning toward the side of restriction.

What you're talking about sounds like something I'd play.

AC1 Darktide had something relatively similar in the early days, in that the big boys were playing Town Control (the towns being already built and non-destructible, but you could force the other guys out) and the little guys, who lived in said towns, became slowly socialized into the system - meeting higher level players, making higher-level friends who would later take them on as guildmates and potentially powerlevel them, tossing low level heals in fights between high levels, being distractions/decoys, or otherwise finding ways to turn the balance.  There were enough towns compared to players that as a lower-level group matured, they could fight over one of the 'lesser' towns against other low-levels, or maybe move into unoccupied territory.

Of course, that all came about largely by accident, and later PvE-oriented developer decisions completely destroyed the mechanic.  But it left me convinced that any game desiring to be a sandbox/world must come with fully fleshed-out mechanisms that encourage high-levels to socialize low-levels into the game's systems.

I apologize if I reference AC1DT a lot - it's just that largely by accident, for a time there occurred in that game/server a confluence of random/unintentional factors that produced some really incredible gameplay mechanics - mechanics that dev teams today should be doing their best to try and bring about intentionally.

I think that a lot of the transient nature of our 'golden age' playing experiences in various games - AC1, UO, EQ - can be chalked up not to rose colored glasses, but to a temporary confluence of factors, such as level distributions among the playerbase or the ratio of content/in-game landmass to the number of players.  The next step for MMO theory, I think, is to come up with a framework in which we can understand (and predict and design with such things in mind, for those on the dev side) how these worlds change with time.  These trends really seems to be systemic and flow according to logical rules, as opposed to being random and circumstantial to each game/server.

Umm...wow. Collection in DDO is a worthless boring piece of shit that serves ZERO purpose other than "uh...this game has no crafting content but here collect something I guess! Depth!"

Christ they could have at least made it interesting like collecting sets of armor/weapons or something pokemon like. Instead collecting consists of you see some glowy group of mushrooms and click on them once. The end. How exciting. I think "press the space bar once every ten minutes" might be more fun than DDO collecting. How anyone can enjoy or even *tolerate* it is beyond me.


More interesting classes.
Better graphics.
Better sound effects.
A sense of world.
Mob variety.
Solo play.
Areas in the game that aren't a guy's basement.
Be fun.
Better combat. (Sad but true)
Better written quests. (Again sad but true)

And again, that isn't the right question. Name something an orange does that a space shuttle does better. Gee that's hard...orange for the win! That orange is worth 100 million dollars!

WoW does a lot more, is a lot better, and costs about the same. Great deal that DDO.

I think I saw something about this on an ad sheet for DDO. Something about "features."

It involves dungeon exploration - alternate paths that have glowies at the end, that sort of thing.  Dungeon exploration is fun, and the glowies serve to encourage dungeon exploration.

What was fun about WoW crafting, again?  Oh, that's right - nothing.


Classes are a means to an end, with the end being good gameplay.  When comparing actual comparable gameplay, such as a rogue in WoW to a rogue in DDO, DDO wins hands down.

Edit:  The more I think about this one, the more daffy it seems.  Compare class fluidity in WoW to DDO, where you can multiclass or play without healers and do just fine if you're smart.  It's not up to the standard of AC1, where mages, archers, and melees could all tank, heal, and play damage dealer, but it's certainly better than anything WoW's got on offer.


A fair point - I like WoW's graphical style as well.  However, pretty pictures are still a much lesser order concern for me.


I never felt this in either game, though DDO has much better written stories.  Blizzard's never been able to write storylines for shit.


Semi-fair point, at least in the graphical department.  In terms of the mobs affecting gameplay, I'd say DDO wins in this arena.


Again, I don't see grouping vs solo as being a major salient point of MMOs in general - if the gameplay is fun, it's fun, regardless of how many people you've got around you.  It's never taken me more than 5 minutes in DDO to find a group and get ready to go.


DDO actually has a lot of varied environments (for instance, fighting on pirate ships or underground mushroom lakes), though I'll agree that they overuse the brown.  However, DDO shines in usable world geometry, whereas WoW does not.


DDO's more twitch-oriented combat system is far superior to WoW's, which might as well be done as a text MUD.


See my comment above that Blizzard couldn't write a decent storyline to save their life, and that goes for pretty much all their games. (Yes, even Blackthorne)  I've not encountered a story they've written yet that was anything but forgettable.  I guess it's a testament to their brand loyalty that they've managed to publish actual books based on the Warcraft franchise.

I believe I speak for sane people everywhere when I say that we don't need a "yes it is/no it isn't" argument over whether WoW or DDO has better writing, prettier graphics, more "fun" combat, or anything similarly subjective.

I would like some elaboration on how WoW's "crafting" gameplay differs from DDO's "collecting" gameplay, though.  I was under the impression that in either system you collect a few sprockets, hit a button to combine them, and you get a widget.  Right?

Nah, they won't shut it down until they've had a chance to put an expansion on the shelves.

 :rimshot:

It's a mole!  :-D

The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.

Hmm, using official forums as evidence supporting a point of view.  Ok let's give it a go, European player's calling for server merges (http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95696).

No, no, no, that's just one thread, it doesn't really prove anything. 

How about this?

First DDO user to register, thur 23rf Feb (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=42)
last user to register, wed 1st march. End of 1st week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=11174)

First user, thur 2nd March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=11175)
Last user, wed 8th March.  End of 2nd week (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=14558)

First user, thur 9th March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=14559)
Last user, wed 15th March.  End of 3rd week (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=17054)

First user, thur 16th March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=17055)
Last user, wed 22nd March.  End of 4th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=18889)

First user, thur 23rd March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=18890)
Last user, wed 29th March.  End of 5th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=20152)

So that means the number of DDO official forum accounts created in the first five weeks are:-

1st Week = 11,133
2nd Week =  3,384
3rd Week =  2,496
4th Week =  1,835
5th Week =  1,263

Can anyone playing at home spot a pattern?  Does all that mean DDO will fail?  Nope, it all depends what the people calling the shots decide to do (http://www.hcp.com/pics/articles/davisglobe.htm).

Retain players?

Nope. In DDO you collect a items that waste a ton of space in your inventory, then sell them to an NPC. That's it. There is no proficiency in collecting things and you don't create anything out of them.

Whether or not you like crafting, some people do, and WoW has it. DDO does not, and furthermore I have yet to meet anyone that likes collecting. The most common sentiment about it is that it's a waste of inventory.

Somewhere, SirBruce is laughing.

Just as before, where people tried to draw statistical conclusions about Turbine's ability to develop popular titles based on a set of three games, this is stupid.  The boards are not a source of accurate information either way.  To look at the WoW boards, you'd think that game was about to collapse from player frustration.  Meanwhile their subsciption count soars past 6 million.

As an example, I could look to the DDO boards and draw the opposite conclusion:  The game is doomed (DOOMED!) because it has no pvp/crafting/endgame and the pve content that it does have is limited.  Complaints of these problems are all over the boards and the only responses so far have been:

play an(other) alt!
You're playing the wrong way!
etc.

So there.   

One of those founders is jonesing for Star Trek Online. I'd say his ability to live on pure, vain hope is a lot higher than most, especially around here.

Except DDO DIDN'T do that one thing well. Their combat really isn't that good; it's not terrible, it's just not great either. It's very Mediocre. WoW's was more fun, IMO, YMMV, YRAFT*.

*You aRe A Fucking Tool.

I have never been a craftsman type going from my EQ days.  But WoW's Engineering and alchemy got me hooked.

Alchemy affects gameplay dramatically - not only with stat adjustments - but with strategic potions (e.g. the one that allows you to go ghost form and travel - used it to explore for random mobs).

The engineering is just hilarious.  Cool items - some thematic - some serious can be created.  The whole idea that these goblin inventions can backfire is a great touch.  A warrior once used some sort of ray gun to shrink the mob to reduce it's attack power - it backfired - and shrunk the whole party.

Like City of Heroes - WoW - drew me immediately into the game the first quest I did.  I realize CoH has not done as well as Wow - but both games had an instant fun factor.

I literally have not been able to play DDO for more than 2 hours in total.

I depart this thread with the ultimate insult:  EQ2 is more fun than DDO.

Thanks for reminding me, I need to cancel my DDO account.

All the numbers have shown thus far is that sales are falling off sharply.  That should surprise no one.

DDO's most obvious problem is that it has a terrible training intro.  DDO is so heavily about forming adventuring parties, but nothing on Tutor Island or even in the earliest parts of the lower harbor teach you anything about how to form a party.  That entire experience is left up to those few intelligent souls who still read game manuals.  That causes a lot of frustration among some players.

The other problems with this game are entirely balance-based.  The nature of treasure-generation and the game-balance issues of elemental-damage weapons is giving rise to goldfarming.  And the rewards for some quests, along with the repeatability of those quests, is causing an issue with certain quests being repeated over and over.

And yet, I have yet to meet a person in-game above level 3 who doesn't love the game.  Some things about this game rock in a way that no-else has yet to match.  In-game voice, interface control, and the level of character customization is pretty impressive.  And it has the best combat system I've ever seen in an MMORPG. 

Its weird.  In most games, the gripes come from the old players who refuse to quit.  In DDO, most of the griping I have heard comes from the people who play the game the least. 

/steelwool

FWIW, DDO is actually rather fun, assuming you have a good group of people or guild to play with to minimize/negate the chance of grouping with a moron in a PUG.

I have very limited time to play these days, so if there is a serious lack of content, I haven't felt it yet.  In fact, I don't think I've repeated a quest yet.

Then again, I didn't come to the game expecting to solo.  Or craft.  I read what was in and what wasn't in, beta tested the game, thought about it, and decided to give it a go.  When I get tired of it, I'll quit  playing.  So far, I'm not tired of it.

My only hope is that the new content patch has stuff for lower levels (from lv 1 to 10).  I have several alts that I'd rather NOT take back through the same few quests in the harbor again.  So far, it has been worth paying for for a month.  We'll see how it goes.

I think there will be.  There are supposed to be 15 quests; 6 of them are related to the Dragon and the other 9 should be for "the rest."

Your problem is you are arguing opinions, and you can never, ever, win at that. You cant tell me that WoW is a unfun game. you can say "I didnt have fun in WoW" but if you try and tell me "WoW is NOT fun" then I call bullshit on you, cause myself (and it seems a lot of other people) find WoW to be a very fun game. So by telling me "WoW is not fun" you are automatically wrong.


Again, same thing, you CANT say that or you are wrong. Plain and simple.

That's funny, I also have very limited time to play, but I didn't participate in the Beta, I knew pretty much nothing about it except it was an "MMORPG" and I tried it out for a good week.  I think I'm close to your average consumer for Turbine, but I feel a lot of buyer's regret.  That's not an MMO to me, but to each their own.   Seems pretty much the norm these days that providers expect you to show up with a guild or a permanent PUG.  But in DDO if no one answers your tell or there's few people on or few people at your level/rank you're pretty much screwed for gameplay.  Honestly, I think that's just bad design.  But only my experience.

Morph, I'm with you that it's subjective.  My rule is that I'll basically go with the same language choices that everyone else does.  So if 50 people post "DDO is shit", and they expect people to read a 'IMHO' into it at the end, I'll post 'DDO is fun' and expect people to read in the IMHO as well.

As for comparing mechanics between games - well, it's subjective, but we all try to do that, with varying degrees of success.  I've had a hard time seeing what mechanics people find fun in WoW/EQ/DAoC or pretty much any Diku for that matter, so the explanation I've had to fall back on is Skinner-box-esque addiction.  I fully understand that everyone has a different experience, I've just never had anyone who's explained to me exactly what they found fun about WoW in a meaningful way.

I mean, isn't that why these rantsites exist?  Because people hate these games, yet they play them anyways?

I mean, if there was fun to be had in EQ, would Lum the Mad have ever been started?  Maybe I'm mistaken here, but I always assumed Lum ranted on LtM because EQ was an irredeemably shitty game but he was addicted nonetheless.

You fail. Completely.

Rantsites exist because yes, we love these types of games, but ultimately because we feel the need to express our likes or dislikes. More so the dislikes in vain hope that the devs and publishers will hopefully catch on to the fact that maybe they have been cranking out some irredeemable shit out and need to change their evil ways. LtM didn't play EQ because it was an irredeemably shitty game. I haven't been playing EQ for 7 years because it's an irredeemably shittly game. It has it's flaws as any other of these games do, and they glare brighter each day. Lum took what knowledge he had and attempted to alter the path of MMOGs after EQ. Unfortunately, I don't know that too much change has been effected. I can see some. Todays games don't have the incredible amount of 'downtime' that EQ had/has. There's virtually no penalty anymore for death. At least no insane corpse runs with half a zone on your backside as you desperatly try to get back to your body. (Actually a few of those runs were kinda fun come to think of it.) If something cons lower than you, it's probably not going to eat your face off.

There's fun to be had in any game. Just some more than most, and as always, YMMV. CoX is my current happy place. I love running around with my army of darkness (necro/poison MM). It's like fainting goats, it never gets old.

That's why I think rantsites exist. Now put me on /ignore 'cause I probably missed the point as usual.

If it weren't for LtM, we might not have these slightly more fun games. Hopefully iin a few more years, we'll have slightly more fun.

Actually I played EQ very little (which became something of a joke eventually amongst my friends) and never got a character past level 50.

UO, on the other hand, I played TO DEATH FOR YEARS, so I guess the addiction thing applies there.

Given Televangelist/Mediocre/Hyu's posting history, though, I am 100% sure that he disagreed with everything that I wrote over the past seven years, assuming he bothered to read it.

Not really sure what any of this has to do with DDO!

 :nda:

I said what had already been said.  That being said, I'm deleting this post.

Sure you create something out of them - when you give them to the NPC, he gives you a magic item.  Aside from the text that's displayed on the screen, that's no different from hitting a "craft" button and having your resources get turned into a magic item that "you" crafted.

Where does the proficiency in collecting things come in for the WoW crafter?  When you collect berries from a silverleaf bush, or whatever, does a little berry-picking minigame come up?

Uhhh, why would anyone play a game they don't like? I thought the purpose of this site was to give me a forum to dump on MMORPGs that weren't designed to my specifications. No?


Personally I love Dikus and I don't see how anyone can think Dikus aren't fun. Now I understand you think differently, however, whenever someone can't explain their own subjective experience in a way that is meaningful to me I simply ascribe them as the product of some sort of pathology. Insanity or drugs are conveniently dismissive ones.


Speaking of successful prognosticating (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5417.msg144778#msg144778), my status as official DDO doomcaster is looking better and better. Pops are low, sales have dried up (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009N5O5E/qid=1144249423/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-9138646-6447351?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=468642) and how they expect to retain players when they run through the very limited content I can't guess. Soon will come the time when I'll be able to  jump up and down and tell you all "I told you so!" , and that will own.

Actually, if you sent a tell to someone you thought was online, there's a good chance they're not.  Apparently the "who is online" lists are rather buggy.  So yes, bad design in that respect.  Also, the chat system allows you to totally miss tells (I know I do on a regualr basis). 

I don't think that the guild is why I am enjoying DDO.  It is a factor, but not the end all be all reason.  I did just fine with PUGs in beta, and have been in some since launch.  I honestly don't expect it to be a game I can play if I can't find a group.  So, I expect to spend some time assembling a group.  Easiest way is, of course, to do it  yourself. 

Extroversion for the win and all that.

Meh.  I just don't see any real reason to spew hate for something you played for maybe a week.  Not you in particular, but most people who tried it only a bit and decided to hate it.  Samwise, I give a free pass, largely because he was a big fan at one point.  I still think they're doing plenty of things right.

Early UO crafting was loads of fun. SWG crafting was also fun, too bad rest of the game wasn't any fun.

What did you actually do in SWG crafting?  Was there some sort of game involved?  I mean, I can understand how someone would describe Puzzle Pirates crafting as 'fun' or 'not fun'.  But how is crafting in other games, such as SWG or WoW, more than a spreadsheet with a graphical layer tossed on top?

You've never even played an MMOG, have you? Between raiding and this comment I'm firmly convinced you're just crazy.

Uh, I have.  The only game where I seriously did crafting was AC1, though, and that was on a mule I XP chain'ed up to the appropriate level.  I've just always seen crafting (except in the puzzle pirates sense) as an ideal activity for mules/alts, a means of facilitating gameplay rather than gameplay itself.

I suppose you could count mining/resource acquisition as 'gameplay', but then that lumps WoW, AC2, RuneScape, and DDO all into about the same category.

No, no, no.  The "crafting" game is not the actual item construction which is typically click and watch a progress bar.  Other than puzzle pirates, there no gaming elements to crafting.  The game part is attempting to sell your player made goods as a vendor thereby winning the "make money" game. :)  People who craft only items they need for themselves and their alts/friends/guildmates arent really playing the crafting game per se other than shrinking the market demand for the dedicater vendor players.

Personally, I'd love crafting to always be some sort of mini games.  EQ2's fails in this respect, but at least you can die while crafting....

Xilren

I make a good bit of money in EQ2's crafting game, I recently reached the 300 plat in total sales mark on my vendor. You also would have a VERY hard time dying while crafting any more. Used to be a missed event on the forge would do 80% damage to you so two of those in a short time would drop you. The most they do anymore is 20% max and you recover a good 10% every six seconds so in theory it may still be possible to die but it would be less than a 1 in a million type chance. Most missed event things don't even do damage any more.

As an ex AC1 player myself, I can tell you that playing AC1 is a wholly different experience from every other MMOG out there. Which, for most people, translates into "It sucked ass." But for those who got into it, it was kinda cool. Having said that, crafting in AC was by no means crafting in the traditional sense, with the possible exception of arrows and those goofy potions and crystals that were of duious use.


Looking at your posts, it's clear that's where you're coming from. That's also the reason you appear to on some seriously contaminated crack when you do post.

You mean it's NOT easy to die while tradeskilling in EQ2 anymore? Damn that's truly a disappointing thing to hear. It was such an awesome mechanic that made for such a wonderful series of running jokes about EQ2 and SoE.

Turbine sez: DDO most successful Turbine game evar! (http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12403&rp=49)


Edit: oh and I forgot to mention that DDO dropped off the weekly sales top 10 list so they better hope they can keep the players they have now.

'The largest in Turbine's history' means in excess of 130,000 subscribers.  Either that, or the guy is talking out of his ass.

I weep for LoTRO.

I am sure the box sales were relatively good due to the D&D license but they aren't going to keep many people around.  We should start a dead pool for it.  Something like x months until server mergers and y until shutdown.  Although I'm sure it will be a long time for shutdown, no real harm in keeping the servers running since they don't do much.

I never played AC1 but I think I will try it since everyone always says it is the MMO Turbine did well.  Maybe after I have burnt through Oblivion's content.

Do I hear a second for folding the threads from this subforum into the main MMO forum?

They don't deserve to pollute the MMO forum, maybe a new subforum dedicated to dead or dying games should be created.  You could stick Shadowbane and Guild Wars in there too!  Plus if anyone ever wanted to make a thread for The Matrix Online they would know where to do it :-).

I was going to say wait until the threads are old enough that they won't show up on the first page, but I like your idea a lot more.

Just name it "I'm not quite dead yet...I think I'll go for a walk"

Xilren

He means more people tried DDO in Beta than the Beta of any other Turbine product.  They are not claiming it has more subscribers than AC1 ever had, that would be foolish as (I fully believe) it's extremely untrue.

Turbine press statements are full of shit, for over a year (up until a few weeks ago) Turbine claimed to be the largest privately owned mmorpg company in North America, despite Mythic clearly having more subscribers and also being privately owned.  Turbine statements quite often boast numbers of forum accounts and beta trials, they will list themselves as having the fastest growing mmorpg, anything, anything at all that doesn't actually list how many paying customers they have.

The release of DDO provided some short term entertainment, but now there doesn't seem to be enough interest to support a forum.

Make money?  Keep players?

I waited for that damn  DDO execrescence for years.. years I tell you.  And I played it for ten days.  If it makes it to a year then I'll go back and try again, because to do that they'll have fixed a ton'o'stuff.

On the upside, it has certainly dampened my unreasonable hopes for LOTRO.

Endie

Again - why should we approach these games from the perspective of a VC investor, rather than an actual player?

As for the 'dead forums' - what I think would be a better dynamic would be forums based on the company involved.  A forum for SOE, a forum for Turbine, one for NCSoft, etc.  Subforums within that if the populations here playing the game really merit it.

It's unlikely he's talking about Beta -- most likely he's talking about active accounts. I agree it's not likely he's counting subscribers since so many people are still on their free month.

On this we agree completely.

So, you don't think the ability of a game to make money and keep players has any correlation to the opinions of the game by the actual players?

Idiot.

Jesus, looking back, I got my custom title rather easily.  Must have been a slow few days.  This guy fucking earned it.

I bet he's talking about Beta, I just can't prove it.

You realize, of course, you're putting yourself in the same camp as WUN saying that Revenge of the Sith was the best movie ever made.

Of course there's a correlation.  But if you evaluated a game's quality solely on how much money it made, you'd be playing nothing but Madden and the Sims.

With regard to keeping players: By no means a correlation to the players we care about - that is, players who think like we do (With 'we' being each of us, individually).  If a niche game is marketed at a mass audience, of course it's going to bleed players who don't get what the fun is all about - but why the fuck should I care what they think?  That's like me asking AM radio listeners for their opinions of NPR.

The very fat that we're here on this forum suggests that while we may disagree on multiple things, few of us have the same tastes as 'typical' MMO players.

I mean, would the converse hold true?  "Hey guys, Myst is making money hand over fist!  Let's go give that a try!"  And why do we not read the reviews in PC Gamer, but instead look to our friends?  Because we trust them to have tastes that are more reflective of what we will and won't like.

"My friend who played DDO said it sucked" is in many ways more relevant than "DDO lost 80% of its playerbase when they started charging".

It's important to talk about how many players a model attracts because the most popular one is where much of the money goes, I imagine.

So, the popular model will be on the cutting edge of technology; it will have resources to provide a huge breadth of content; it will be at the forefront of visual immersion.  These aren't the most important elements of an MMO, but they add to the experience for a lot of people.  If this wasn't the case, the dissatisfied would all play some crazy esoteric MUD or something.

WoW isn't.


WoW doesn't.


Debateable.

But again, these are all qualities we can judge independently; why do we need to look at subscriber numbers to judge these factors when we can just look at the game itself?

I'm speaking in general terms- WoW, EQII, Vanguard, etcetera.  Although WoW doesn't demand much from your computer, it is heavily optimized and was artistically fashioned by a dedicated and skilled team for years.  This isn't a luxury that studios -with less funding, fewer resources, and a consequently limited timetable- have.  I also don't see how you're qualified to talk about WoW's content when you've barely played the game.  It is in fact enormous.

Will DDO be able to keep its purported vision intact when it seems to be on the edge of substainability by some reports?  How entertaining a game is it for the player when some servers are allegedly so sparse that it's difficult to find groups?  Take a trip to the general forums, and the community is openly questioning the game's viability.  Meanwhile, negative word circulates across the internet and disuades new people from subscribing to replace the churn.  This isn't a healthy environment for even the diehard fans.

Anarchy Online had population problems too; they sold advertisement and gave free accounts away as a solution.  This created an influx of new people for a time, but also angered a lot of the veterans who were used to the mature community and the virtual world that they had spent years enjoying.

So yeah, I'd say subscription numbers are fairly important for the game experience.

As much as I say "I'm shocked that 7 million people could be so wrong," they can't be. People vote with their dollars and VC folks and the like see where those dollars go. Don't you stalk the politicosphere (Yea, bitches, I just made that word up). Shouldn't you understand the basic concepts on how people spend money. Your opinion of DDO doesn't mean jack or shit when people aren't spending money there. In FACT, one could easily argue that your opinion is wrong and that you're just a fanboy.

What you're saying makes sense, from the perspective of an investor.  Assuming that's all there is to it, then yeah - WoW, and Myst, and Deer Hunter are the gold standard of everything.  People vote with their dollars, and that's definitely where the VCs should put their money - I'm not arguing that anyone should act against their economic self-interest.  Though, for what it's worth, as the market grows there'll also be plenty of money for niche games according to long tail theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail).

However, that being said, I'm a firm believer in, for lack of a better word, elitism.  The idea that a small number of people can, and often do, have better taste and a better appreciation of a subjective artistic work's true 'merits' than the masses.  The idea that Britney Spears isn't automatically better than NPR because she draws ten times the audience.

Are seven million people 'wrong'?  No, of course not.  They're simply Philistines.


(Caveat: To be fair, sometimes the popular art is truly the best stuff of all. (http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/virg001/dem_franchize_boyz/video/on_top_of_our_game/dfb_i_think_they_like_me_hi.asx?siteid=artistsite))

WTF does elitism have to do with anything?  Blizzard, Turbine, Sony are not in the business to make games for a handful of snooty arses.  They make games to make money.  Money.  One more time.  Money.

 $100 from two Deer Huntin' mouthbreathers is twice as good as $50 from a elitist Eve Online wanker.
 

You playing DDO yet?

This is my whole fucking point!  What you're writing is from the perspective of the money suit.  As a game player, why should I give a shit about, or waste my time speculating on, how the game looks from their perspective?  I'm not in MMOs so that MMO makers make money.  So long as the servers stay open (a la AC1), my interest in the game's financial health is nil, and I don't see why it's worth bringing up as a reason to play or not play the game, as so many do.

The success of DDO affects DDO (duh) & LOTRO.  Turbine made promises for DDO's future content and bug fixes as they did with AC2, if DDO doesn't do very well then it's very possible (as with AC2) that those promises will not be kept.  It's also likely LOTRO will be negatively affected.

Mediocre simply doesn't get it. I don't know what he's doing anyway. If he doesn't want to look at it from beyond the gamer's point of view he should be posting at the Vault.

Now,


But you aren't a game player, you're a self-indulgent prick who likes to pontificate and masturbate endlessly about the business of video games. Get the fuck over yourself. I don't mean that in a bad way, I'm just saying the first step to becoming better is admitting you have a problem.

What's the primary difference between the Lum diaspora sites and the Vault?  It's a more sophisticated level of analysis and better taste, first and foremost.  It's the difference between checkers and chess, not apples and oranges.


I don't think I've ever speculated as to the business side.  Except incidentally, I don't write about what will or won't make money.  I only care about what's fun.  As with any other art, there's often a big difference between what's popular and what's good.

You missed the point. If you ONLY cared about what was fun, you'd be somewhere else. It is completely apples and oranges.

As for your comment at the end, video games very often overlap compared to books, movies, tv, and music. Once you completely ignore stereotypical gamers (people who play just for the sports titles, people under 18 who are influenced by morons in high school, etc) you're often left with a lot of popular games that happen to be very good. For example, God of War, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker, etc.

I really don't understand the reasoning here.  Assuming I were perpetually interested in which upcoming MMO will offer 'the new fun', and preferred to read about such things from a group of people who can reasonably articulate why they find something fun or unfun... I wouldn't come here, why exactly?  With the exception of one or two people, the crowd here doesn't exactly seem to have pretensions of developer-hood or otherwise being involved on the money side of things.

It's probably because of this line:

Because if there isn't enough money made on the game, there won't be any game to speak of. This ain't Zelda. If people don't buy it, the copy you buy becomes worthless, because there aren't players on the servers, the servers cost money and if there are no players, the money is a business loss and the servers get shut down.

If no one else but you play Zelda, you still have a copy of Zelda you can play. The same cannot be said of AC1, or AC2 or DDO.

The comment in question was this.

Tele's making the assumption that the game is doing at least well enough to stay afloat.  What he's saying is that profitability should not the the main criterion for evaluating a game's quality, insofar as its profitability does not directly affect the player's experience.

In other words: embrace the niche, bitches.

Devs should embrace the niches.

But profitability does affect a player's experience. See AC2, hell see AC1 or WWII Online for that matter. If AC1 had been more profitable, there probably would have been a few more expansions.

Luckily, there is a built in failsafe. The remaining players affected just happen to be the least discerning and demanding!

It's good to see St. Gabe back on these boards.

What Samwise said.


Let's toss the AC2 example out the window, since we're not going to see DDO shutting down anytime soon unless there's some incredible dropoff that just doesn't appear to be in the cards.

There would have been more expansions to AC1, sure, but I'm still getting new content every month - the difference in content creation rates is not what one would call a 'make or break' factor in deciding whether to buy the product.  The rates aren't really that different; AC1 patches from when the game had 150,000 subscribers had about as much in them as the ones that now have 50,000.  And WoW, with 7 million subscribers, is really for shit when it comes to creating masses of new content; if you take out the cockblocks involved in beating the content (as games such as AC1 do), there really isn't a whole lot of 'there' there.  AC1 adds between five and ten new dungeons every month - WoW does not.  Sure, that's not a fair comparison for all sorts of reasons, but when you're comparing games with 50,000 subscribers to games with seven million, wouldn't you expect WoW to have an overwhelming rate of content generation?

Hell, what about WoW compared to EQ2?  WoW is significantly more successful, but AFAIK (I'm not really a player of either game) EQ2's two expansion packs and a couple of adventure packs beat out WoW's several raid dungeon additions.

If the correlation you speak of was seriously pronounced and it correlated to the data we've got, I'd honestly concede the point to you.  But I'm just not seeing the numbers that back up your assertion.

I'm not a big fan of the "but it's not popular" argument either. What most people like is generally totally separate from what is actually good.

If Turbine is taking in more money than they spent and are happy with a moderate success that's fine. My problem with DDO is that a lot of things were done poorly that didn't need to be.

It's one thing to aim for one audience and leave another audience out in the cold. But I don't think ANY audience really likes repetitive graphics, the fact that you can't tell solo quests from group ones, etc.

If DDO wants to be a game that is best played in small static groups that's fine. But it should be good at that, and I don't see it. It's not so much what they chose to do or not do - it's that a lot of what they did choose to do is not well-executed.

I'm sure there are other factors involved with the creation of content, such as relationship with the publisher, the experience and structure of the dev team, etc.  I can't see how you can argue that the revenue generated by additional subscribers doesn't at least give the potential for more content, though.

It's not even so significant in WoW's case.  80% of the character population from WoW Census data aren't level 60 (one can ironically calculate the statistic here (http://blogs.parc.com/playon/archives/2006/03/raid_content_us.html#more)), and irregardless of how slow content creation is in the immediate future, the game as it stands is evidently engaging enough to have captured 6.5 million subscribers.  If anything, WoW tells us that it is devilishly important above all else to have good and ample content when the game is released; this is frankly something that I'd like to see from all future releases, DDO notwithstanding, I guess.

Question:  We know that 80% of characters in the census aren't level 60 thanks to the data we've been given.  But if you didn't know much about WoW and just read the forums, is that where you'd put it?

I can't help but imagine there's a similar issue with DDO - while I'll admit that it's easier to hit 10 in DDO than 60 in WoW (I think?), are we really sure that a big chunk of the playerbase is running up against that wall?

"DDO doesn't have enough content" really seems to be one of those forum-amplified gripes that people repeat because they hear everyone else saying it, and before long it's conventional wisdom.

It doesn't really matter if they are now, when it is certain that they will be. The creators have brought forth a game which is content light (in variety if not amount) and whose only end-game is the wait for more content, which a niche game just doesn't have the funding to generate in sufficient amounts / depth. The only really interesting question is what plan they had that led them to this position.

I don't crawl forums as much as I used to, but the complete lack of mindshare for this game is also impressive.

I think you certainly have a point about how forums can paint a picture that is highly disproportional with reality.  However, I do believe that forums show the issues, or issues that players are passionate about at the very least.

I don't believe there were complaints about the amount of content in WoW for several months at least.  DDO on the other hand is in the same situation a straight month in, and their content is far more specialized.

I wonder what effect situations like this will have on the game vs world approach to design.  I can't help but think that if a game like DDO had used a more "sandbox" approach, then the post-release content demand would be lower, as the players could use the game world to amuse themselves and each other while developers squashed bugs and tweaked systems. As it is, the players have nothing to do but run through the game over and over while waiting for more game, a situation that places a huge strain on developers throughout the life of the product. 

oops.

This comes with time, patches and expansions.

1) Compare WoW's available content on release compared to now. (well, if you knew anything about the game and what's in it).

2) Compare Everquest 1's available content between release and Christmas '04 when WoW was released, during which time it was Top Dog of the western MMOGs (again, if you know anything about the game.)

Hard to do a sandbox when your entire game is instanced. And that would swell costs far more than developing content I'd think.

A AO/LDON/COX "mission" type system with random dungeons would work about as well as anything. But then you're losing that handcrafted quality. Probably looking at what is there, they should have done that for "mundane" gameplay and concentrated on handcrafted for some longer missions, similar to the soloquest/instance division in WOW.

Honestly, I can't help but think that everything about this game comes down to it not being a subscription based model. They should have used the GW business model and sold modules. What could have been more D&D?

In the middle of several big nerd fights about an important spell being stealth nerfed there were several people who posted that they are seeing server populations of about 40 in the middle of the day.  They are now recommending people make new characters on four low-population servers, at first there only two.  There are still a surprising number of "I quit" threads.

Choice thread titles from the first page of general discussion:
And that's from people who liked the game enough to get billed for the next month.

At least SWG was funny because there were people defending it, why are we talking about this fucking waste of cardboard and plastic game again?

It sucks.
LTRO will suck too.
The sooner these two piles of shit get released and die horrible money loosing deaths the better off the medium will be.

That is all.

I guess the fundamental distinction between my view on other people's is that to me, what's there is fun.  As quests go, I view DDO's (And AC1's, which is very similar) as being the most enjoyable on the market, bar none.  I've never played another MMO where dungeon-crawling was as varied and as interesting. Things like being able to hang from ledges, disable traps, stealth that varies based on the light conditions you're in, extensive Z axis movement - those are all huge to me.

I agree that I'm surprised by the low mindshare that DDO is getting.  But beneath the questions of variety of content, amount of content, etcetera... what is it about DDO's dungeon-crawling that you guys don't find fun?

Oh, and a serious flaw in their model was that in order to build 'community' they aimed to have many servers with relatively low populations.  This was a stupid idea for a game that wasn't a guaranteed success (i.e. Put out by Blizzard or SOE), because it makes the servers that much more vulnerable to shocks and fluctuations in the number of players, variations in level range, etcetera.

This is the problem with not only Turbine, but MMO companies in general; it seems like whatever they get right or wrong, they get right or wrong by accident.  Nobody seems to think through the consequences of each of their decisions when subjected to human factors and potential variant outcomes.

They need some Ph.D game theorists and human factors engineers on staff, in other words.

Not to mention that the game depends heavily on grouping, and the fewer players on a given server, the smaller the LFG pool gets.

I had a good post here detailing what sucked in D&DO but it was deleted.

It doesn't really matter though. If you can't tell it sucks, hey, I'd love to be viewing this shit with whatever magical shades you have on. I'd suddenly have dozens of mmo games worth playing!

dadowned!


Umm seriously, here's the thing about DDO and why it sucks.

1. The only good thing about it is that the combat reminds me of Diablo.  You know the game that made mindlessly clicking rapidly fun by having the best loot system ever?  OMG built-in voice chat?  Cool but not selling many copies on its own.  There is nothing else special about this game.  NOTHING.

Everything about DDO that sucks basically comes down to, "yeah but Diablo did it better".

DDO tries to not be Diablo by pretending to be an MMO, without any of the features that qualify a game as being a member of the club.  Unfortunately the result is it is a sub-par Diablo clone and a fake MMO, the only MMO "feature" they got right is charging me a monthly fee, yeah fuck you too Turbine.

Here are some reasons why I would rather be playing Diablo:
-The gui, I'd rather have b.net then a pretend "world" that basically amounts to some pointless running around minor timewaste and having inns I need to stand in to regen my hp & mp.  Yeah regen my hp & mp why the fuck do I need to do that again?  Back to basics, if all your combat takes place in instances there is dickall reason to make people regen hp/mp.  L2dev

-The loot, DDO's loot sucks, mostly because of its license, +1 just automatically sucks.  That is a bad system, I dont care that all fantasy MMO loot breaks down to +1 but fucking hide it or something.  Give me two extra shoulder pad spikes and call it Deathguard armor instead of Brigand armor.  Not complicated.  Or better yet, if the only reason to play the game is to get cool stuff, add more cool stuff.  The entire equipment system in DDO is uninspiring, there are too many little stupid icons and not enough OMG shiney!!! Moments.  Again, be more like Diablo if your going to clone Diablo.

-The dungeons themselves, yeah "handcrafted" w00p-de-fucking-doo.  I've watched at least 8 dungeons get crawled through, they all looked pretty fucking similar.  There must be variety hidden somewhere but I've seen 8 different "handcrafted" dungeons that look like the same goddamn sewer system.  Boring.  Oh and whoever told the dungeon crafters that more levers = more better, should be shot.  Levers are stupid, I dont need to fucking play with levers, esp when I can't solo any of this goddamn content.  What good is a puzzle aspect, or just a lever sequence aspect when I've got a bunch of random asshats waiting around, jumping and saying stupid shit I can't ignore because there is built-in voice chat?  Levers = bad when it only takes one person to hit a lever and there are several other people standing around waiting.  Btw, levers = even more badness if you require multiple people to hit a lever at the same time, or in a certain sequence, that is called a cockblock.  So basically, I'd rather play Diablo, the monsters are cooler, the dungeons (compared to the DDO stuff I've seen) are much cooler and the random factor means I get replay value and stuff.

-In closing DDO sucks, it will not see new year's day 2008, Hoax has spoken.


P.S.  Bored bored bored, I'd almost be happy to hear from some ghetto housing subsidy tenant in Oakland right about now.

Good summary of the game actually.

Truth

Wow... it's crazy, almost everything you hated about DDO was what I loved.  The more levers the better, for starters.  The click-to-swing combat system was one of the least integral parts of the whole thing to me.  I also really could give a shit less what the loot looks like, what my avatar looks like, what things are called, etc. Nor was the voice chat a big selling point to me. I also liked the HP & MP regen, as the taverns always had a nice 'communal hearth' feel to me, and provided some nice time to sit around and bullshit about the quest I just finished before the next one.  Also I kind of think it's cool that you have to engage the levers and trap deactivation strategically and prevent your team from being dumbasses, it's definitely a more fun form of 'cat herding' than the few 'raids' I've played in other MMOs.

Levers are actually a big one to me - AC1 had tons of lever and door puzzles, among other types, in its dungeons and it was always something I wanted to see a lot more of in MMOs.

In what world is 25 people sitting AFK outside one of the tavern doors communal?

Damn hippies.

It's more that we're all there, and the tavern music is playing (I really like the tavern music!) and it just has that nice feeling to it.  People are standing around, some people are dancing, others are hopping around... It doesn't really matter to me if they're AFK, my goal isn't really to interact with them anyways.

Did that sound post-apocalyptic to anybody else?

It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore. One last dance...

For a second there, I almost thought you were serious.

That applies to this entire thread btw.

... and you guys call ME a hippie.

Most fetishists know they have a fetish. This is what keeps a person who enjoys having people pee on them during sex from misperceiving that all sex everywhere for everyone ought to centrally involve being peed on.

So it's okay to say DDO suits your fetishistic needs. I have to say that a fetish for levers in dungeons strikes me as a tad more specific than "I like MMOs with strong PvP elements" or "I like MMOs that are friendly to Bartle-type exploration play". It strikes me as peculiarly lacking in self-awareness to assail others for their inability to share your fetish.

More importantly, it's just a mistake to misidentify how common or widespread your tastes may be. A lot of people in this thread are trying to get you to understand a basic empirical fact, that DDO is a boutique product and WoW is not. That they are non-equivalent in the way that their features sets and designs connect to possible audiences. Inasmuch as connecting to a bigger audience is likely to mean a much greater degree of economic success (in relation to the costs of production and maintenance of the MMO in question), this means WoW is a much more successful effort than DDO. It may even mean that DDO will not succeed at all, no matter how much you like it. These are not arguments about whose fetishes are best or most pleasurable: these are pretty straightforward analytic claims about the marketplace for MMOs and about the distribution of preferences among their possible audiences.

No MMO has been without its own fetishists, people who find that for whatever reason, there's a match between what they imagine they desire and what is delivered. On the AC2 forums, you could find plenty of people proudly declaring, six months in, that they were going to be playing AC2 until the mouse was pried from their cold, dead fingers. But anybody who could analytically read the wider marketplace, regardless of their own personal feelings about AC2, knew that those declarations of satisfaction meant nothing.

Combat felt slow and kludgy, and awkward as hell. Monster AI was buggy and inconsistent. Did I mention that combat was awkward. 

Have to rely on pickup groups to even get through first level.

Too many basements. Too much brown.

The UI stunk on ice, and was not worthy of being released.

EDIT: Also, the skill system. I'll put traps forward as an example. I'm walking along as a rogue(thief/whatever). Suddenly my sense danger goes off telling me there's a trap. Somewhere. Could be anywhere. The only indication of where I can disable this trap is that the control box glows. Sort of. No arrows giving me a general hint. Shit, I could stumble across the control box, but if I failed my sense danger roll, I can't disable the trap even though I see the control box. Why do I have this Sense Danger skill again? All it tells me is there is danger somewhere, with no real visual cues about what the danger is or how I avoid it. It feels half-assed. The simplest thing to do to help this skill would be to just throw up an arrow pointing in the general diretion of the box. It wouldn't be that much more fun, since clicking on the box and watching a progress bar doesn't feel like my thief is doing anything, but it would help. The optimal solution would be to make disabling the trap an actual puzzle game, similar to EQGems, or something from Puzzle Pirates, but that's hard.

In the end, the game feels half-assed.

Pretty much what Haemish said.

But there's another thing. All MMOs are to some extent a forward investment of time, money and effort. If all that's waiting for me in a MMO is essentially a rental of content which is functionally indistinct from content-experiences I can get in games that don't charge me a rental, then there's only one remaining reason to pay that fee and make that investment, and that's the game promises a constant, reliable flow of additional content.

Other MMOGs like WoW, ATITD and even SWG, whatever their flaws or problems, provision some gameplay that almost cannot be found in non-MMO designs, a sense of "worldliness", or a way in which persistence matters. DDO is all about the content and experiencing it in a multiplayer format. There's nothing else there save perhaps various small fetishistic hooks like listening to tavern music and pulling lots of levers. No matter how satisfying the initial content is, if the designers cannot demonstrate that they have a reliable business plan for predictable infusions of content, then the investment of time and effort and most especially money isn't warranted.

In this respect, for all its many problems, Neverwinter Nights would be a better *system* for charging a subscription to play, because at least it had a model of how content might be delivered. Turbine doesn't convince me that they have any similar model for DDO, and that's fatal, because it's the only thing the game really brings to the MMO table that is potentially superior as a major feature in the market, given how much the basic importance of "persistence" is downgraded in DDO's design.

Way to break it down like an accountant.  The missing factor in your analysis is the oh so hard to quantify 'fun factor'.  Reason being, it's has long been known, and shown, that players will continue to pay for subscriptions to games where they have exhausted the dev created content, simply b/c they enjoy playing with their friends.  I.e. lets go raid Molten Core.... again.  If mmorpgs have shown anything, it's that people will happily pay to do the same tasks over and over and over, so long as there is enough subjective reasons for doing so (friends, phat loot, bragging rights, emotional feedback when they pwn someone, etc etc).  So it's really not the continuing stream of content which is the make of break you make it out to be.

As I spoke to my Beta writeup, DDO is most definately not for the average mmorpg player.  And in truth, I think it's highly probably Turbine knew that going in and set their own expectations for sucess accordingly.  At least I hope they did; it was pretty hard to miss the writing on the wall that DDO was never going to have the same mass market appeal as WoW or EQ BECAUSE of the way it was designed.  As usual, most of the cries of angst on the offical boards are from personal expectations not being met; whether that players expectations were valid or not can be an entirely different matter.

Xilren

I completely disagree. Could you defend this?

For example:  There are any given number of things one could be doing right now, both within or without of computer games, to have fun.  Why on earth would someone do something un-fun now to have fun later if they can just have fun right now?

God help me, I'm going to bite.


It's quest system is shit.  It's worse than City of Heroes.  Any game that let's you repeat every fucking quest does so because there aren't enough quests to do without doing them more than once.  The people who play 20 hours a week haven't seen most of the content because they all run the same god damn quests over and over and over.  Waterworks and some other stupid one.  The myth that DDO has barely enough content for a week or two is *not* a myth when you can max a character in that time.  Surprise!  By running the same quests over and over.

How's all that content patched in doing?  Ya, the dragon got beat in less than 48 hours after the servers came back up.  Turbines answer to bored players tired of running the same quests repeatedly was to turn the game into AC3 and drop in quest timers.  Can't do that quest again for 66 hours?  Hmm, what's this door I've never decided to open before?

Forcing your players into uninteresting content is bullshit, you should make the content interesting enough to get them to try it without marching them to it.  Here's my conventional wisdom about DDO:  It's a fun game for about 25,000 people, and that's all it will ever appeal to.  I am not one of those people.

If the players got to level 10 by running the same quests over and over, they fucked up.  Why should the game be modified to keep them from fucking up?  I don't play MMOs to be someone else's daddy.


Well, duh.  You've never played a Turbine game, have you?  They've always felt that it was a bullshit mechanic to have a boss that's so tough to defeat that he stands up for weeks or months before someone finally defeats him.  They don't see the fun in that, and neither do I.  The one content piece they ever put ingame that took more than a month to solve (Aerlinthe in AC1) was due to them adding new puzzle mechanics to the game that players couldn't figure out in a month (but made perfect sense once we finally got it), not because there was an uber-mob that we all knew about but was too tough to kill.

Stop using turbine as a gold standard, and you might understand.

The harbinger quest shoots your theory down, and  there were multiple quests that took more than a month to figure out. Asheron's island, some of the stuff from Marae Lassel.

Also remember that AC  was the choice of the exploiter. They didn't do anything to punish that behavior until very very late in the game. It's easy to figure out the quest when you can map the whole thing out by deconstructing the client. and running software on top of the system to bypass  much of the operational design of the game.

You are fooling yourself that turbine has done anything worth mentioning as the way something  "should be done"


I used to think like you, I know better now.

This makes no sense to me.  Sounds like you'd be happy with people in an animated GIF background, like the casino stage in Street Fighter II Turbo.

It isn't the continuing stream of content that makes or breaks a game that makes worldliness and persistence an important part of its design.

But a MMO that is based around nothing more than multiplayer experience of content, where there is no world and where persistence barely matters, content is all that counts. If you don't have a model for pushing content out on a reliable basis, there's no reason to subscribe. As David Gelertner has put it, tangible issues outweigh intangibles every time. The "fun factor" is, I agree, a hard-to-quantify thing in any MMO, and it explains a lot of the "stickiness" that keeps people subscribing. But also worldliness and persistence is a big part of that stickiness. If what you have instead is just a subscription model for consuming content with other people, you don't have anything that many basically free games provide. Unless you've got a schedule for pushing content constantly.


Cool. It's not for the average MMOG player. Then it had better hit its niche and hit it hard, and that niche had better be bigger by a good margin than the costs of running the game are. Otherwise, it really doesn't mean a damn thing to say "it's not for the average MMOG player" as an assessment of the game. A development house could design a MMOG where you got to bake ten different kinds of bread all day, which is not for the average MMOG player, but which might actually be just what a few people out there would actually pay to play. It really doesn't say anything worth saying to say that it doesn't meet the needs of a larger market unless we have some sense of whether the market it does hit is of sufficient size to make the venture pay off. Moreover, it might well be possible that the basic conceptual design of the game is in some respects a misfire even in its own terms--hence, my thought that a game built around experiencing content rather than inhabiting a persistent world is in bad trouble if it doesn't have a content-provision model.

Because the main thing that distinguishes an MMO from a multiplayer FPS (say, Unreal Tournament) is persistence. E.g., that something about any given game session is recorded and persists to the next game session, that the game at N and N + 1 are fundamentally different experiences.

If you don't understand that about MMOs, seriously, you don't understand anything about them. It is their defining attribute. You can certainly question how most MMOs on the market approach that property. I think most of them make the big mistake of investing persistence in the avatar rather than in the world, so that the main thing that changes accumulatively is a given character's level, power, wealth, and so on, rather than the world changing in response to player actions. But in either case, persistence is the defining attribute--and therefore to play an MMO is necessarily to invest in a conception of what's going to happen over time, what the accumulative effects of your play will be.

Who was it that decided that good play should be rewarded by experience points and money, which translates to levels and gear?  Which in turn results in levels and gear which represent status and success? 

Answer:  Turbine.  And so thats what the players go for, in this case by repeating a few quests ad nauseum.  You're blaming the players for simply trying to excel at the game that was provided to them.  The old "you're not playing it right!" gimmick, which is stupid.

On this, we'll agree to disagree.  AC2 aside, I think Turbine is the gold standard for how to get things in MMOs really, really right.  Granted, it's often by accident and any given game doesn't have everything 'right' in it, but I can't really think of any area of MMOs where another company has done it better than Turbine at some point in time.


The Harbinger Quest did not take months to complete - it was set to only spawn once every few months, but when it spawned it was beaten on basically the first try.  Asheron's Island was a similar example; there were no super-difficult-bosses that took a long time, everything was beaten on pretty much the first try.  Marae Lassel?  The Queen was killed within 24 hours of the servers coming up.

Also, keep in mind that the examples you name, as bad as they are, involved players trying to figure out how to solve quests, not trying 100 times to kill the big bad foozle at the end.  Nonetheless, this thread really isn't about AC.


Third party apps were overall an improvement to the game - more companies should lean more toward Turbine's policy than the silly prohibitiveness of EQ or DAoC. It adds a nice metagame layer to the action, and it drove the people who cry about everything being "unfair" out of the game, which was nice to not have to listen to. But again, this thread isn't really about AC.

So far the only thing they have got right was AC1, and I think that was an accedent.

You're right. That's a shock right there. This thread isn't about AC, it's about how Turbine consistently takes the wrong approach in making these game. It's also  three pages too long.

However, AC is the only game Turbine has made that hasn't been closed or look like a strong candidate for closing in the forseeable future. DDO is not going to succeed, due to drab art, forced grouping, bad combat, and shallow immersion. Given as such, I think it's fair to use it to disprove points you make about  how turbine  handles MMOs so well.

However, you can continue to believe your little lollipop munchkin land, where Turbine is the greatest thing ever, where magic dancing drudges dance with kobolds in a sepia toned field while exploiters hand out candy.

I don't see persistence as being the big selling point of MMOs.  Also, plenty of multiplayer FPS'es have worked in persistence: For instance, the Warcraft 3 mod for CounterStrike, which if anything often builds a better 'community' around it than most MMOs do.

Persistence is just a means to an end, which is fun.  There's no reason a MMO has to be persistent; that's just how most of the first MMOs started out, and so it's stuck. (Alternate explanation: Persistence is a great way to hook people with addictive personalities and obsessive-compulsive behaviors who love to watch their stats/loot stats/gold count/whatever rise, which is a good way of ensuring a stable revenue stream)

There's nothing that makes persistence 'special' or the defining attribute of MMOs.  You're just tossing that out there arbitrarily for no good reason.

You can stop with the blatant trolling anytime now.  That goes for any one of the 5+ threads you're currently fagging up.

Forum griefplay gets annoying.

No, it's community that is the big selling point. But since you don't believe that exists either, I guess there is no selling point.

Persistence IS a big selling point of MMOG's, right along with community. Planetside's main selling point was that it was an FPS, only with persistent charcters with stats and places to capture all around the world. IMO, that was a flawed idea, but hey, it was still the selling point.

Considering that an MMO has to be persistant to be an "MMO" as people understand the term, I don't think it would be possible for me to disagree more.

I've always considered the debates over what "is" or "isn't" a MMO (i.e. with Guild Wars, DDO, or Diablo) to be utterly pointless - there's no reason to hold a hard and fast definition of what does and doesn't qualify as a MMO, it's not like doing so makes the game itself any more or less fun.


It's not trolling - it's just that we disagree on fundamental premises.  When there's disagreement on fundamental premises, that's where you have to go to iron things out.  For instance, if two people are debating abortion, to really make headway they have to move to debating life's purpose, when life begins, what are and aren't human rights, etcetera.

When debating whether a MMO is good, if we hold fundamentally different conceptions of what makes a "good" MMO, then that's where we have to go to make headway.


Why can't fun be the big selling point?  "Hey, this game is really fun!  It's fun enough that you'd be willing to pay more for it than some one-time-purchase single player game that isn't as fun!"  Where that fun comes from is incidental.  I don't think it'd be entirely unreasonable to pay monthly access charges for a purely single-player game, if the game was so orgasmically fun that it were worth it.

Come to think of that, many do!  The game is called "masturbation", and plenty of people pay between ten and thirty dollars a month for the game despite its negligible level of interpersonal interaction because it's just That Damn Fun.  (The more I think about it, the more apt that analogy is)


Since when do levels and gear represent status and success in a MMO?  Not in any that I've played for very long.  Since when is experience points and money what the players are after when they play?  I don't see why a player would log in and go "I want to get as much XP and money as possible", regardless of whether that's what'll lead them to fun or not.

XP and ingame cash does not equal incentivization. Not at all.  All it equals is access: A lack of XP and money can serve as a cockblock to keep you from doing something fun, if that's how the devs design the game.  But since Turbine devs didn't design a lack of XP as a cockblock to missing out on the 'fun stuff' in DDO, why pursue XP at all?  (First answer that pops to mind: People are broken)

The best games are both fun right now and foreward investments. Otherwise nobody would ever get past the first level of anything. This allows the individual player to choose for themselves which part of they think of as most fun. Some only Raid, thinking of all other levels as simply something to be endured. Other people don't see any difference between Raiding and general adventuring except in the larger number of people and the much less frequency of rewards.

The point is that it can't be the only one. These games cost too much time and money to make. All games do. Some may want to not talk about the business side of things, but the people making these games live that every day. How do they get 10mil, 20mil, 80mil to develop games? By convincing money holders they've got a plan and a proven track record to deliver it. That's all business there.

Business factors keep games live or not. But ultimately, those are a result on how well a company identified their target audience, identified their needs, fulfilled them and scaled their business revenue needs appropriately. It's why a game like Eve can be seen as growing when a game like SWG, with twice as many subscribers, had to be gutted and redesigned.

The reason we don't talk about just the "fun" anymore is because there's so much more to discuss than whether Feature X in Game Y is good. Why features show up in games is also linked to business. I continually wish CoH was more successful for example because it contains some great ideas I feel will be forgotten when it's so "obvious" (to business folks) everyone just wants another item-based diku.

Wow.  Tele, you really don't understand people's motivations at all.  Take the opposite of everything you just said and you describe the LCD which drives most of these games.  The best most of us can hope for is that it is dressed up in fun systems so those of us not completely motivated by these things have some reason to play, too.

Wait wait wait. You pay yourself 30 bucks a month to spank it?

This thread is great. It's like an intervention where you want to un-program a friend who's spent far too much time with the crazy cult down the street.

Why set your expectations that low?

Not paying yourself.  Paying for access to a monthly service.  Such as (NSFW) Videobox.com, reasonably priced at 10 a month, 15 a month if you want to download DVD Quality.  But please, you get the point of the analogy - let's not derail the thread here.

As opposed to your wondeful idiom?

Where someone spends 2 hours levelling a toon, gets a little cash and one new weapon, and logs in the next day to find they lost that weapon and have to start from scratch, because, after all, persistance isnt important.

Only chumps pay for porn.

Stay in school.

I am owned by Yegolev's response time.

The problem is, you're making the primary measure of what you do in the game the same metrics you'd use for measuring a job - how much money did you earn, what skills did you learn, what were your concrete, resume-suitable accomplishments?

If the player is treating this as a job, and not as a game, there's no hope for them.  I felt bad for Lum when I read on his website about how he was grumbling to Lum's Other Half about going through Molten Core "again" (emphasis his)...  why on earth someone would willingly want to come home from their job and log into another one that's unpaid is beyond me.

If you're playing to have fun, and XP/loot are not used as a cockblock to fun, why does it matter what you did or didn't gain during the session?

When you log off of CounterStrike, which do you feel good about - all the fun you had playing the game, or the fact that you got enough cash to afford a Para?

Every MMO I have ever played?

cash/xp isnt a measure to fun.
To use your 'cockblock' phrase, never getting out of a newbie area because you have to restart the whole game every day as it isnt persistant would be the biggest 'cockblock' ever invented.

Why should you start in the newbie area every time?  Why not have some choices for where you start?

GW let you start in either the newbie area or the level 20 PvP area, and the world didn't implode.  Why not expand upon that mechanic?

Because whatever you do, it will involve redoing it endlessly.

Also in both this and the other thread, all examples you give as shining examples of how non persistant worlds are so good have one thing in common, and also one thing that exempts them from comparison to MMO games.

They have no monthly fee.

If you are saying all MMO's should be like DW , then , as it becomes obvious in most of your comments, you do not play or understand MMO's and you entirely miss the enitire point of them completely.

If you are suggesting a mainstream MMO with character development and a monthly fee can somehow manifest ina non persistant world there are 2 things.

1 Why would the devs make life so hard for themselves
2 Who in the world would pay for it.

2008??? LMAO DDO wont live to the end of this year. I'd put money on it.

I don't know if you're trying to be funny, but that's not a good bet to there, kemosabe.

/didn'tmeantorhyme

/apologiestoeveryone

/sometimesiamazeevenmyself

Goddammit. I knew someone was going to try to muscle in on my status as Official DDO Doomcaster (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5417.msg144778#msg144778)! Away Pretender! Away!

I think you guys completely miss the point.

DDO isn't supposed to be WoW. 

It's supposed the be a game developed on a relatively low budget, targetted to get 100k subs at release (which they more than did) and get a 3 to 5 month average sub.

Anything over that is gravy.  It's simply a different model, and you guys are all freaking out that you can't play it for 20 hours a week for 2 years. 

Turbine is the gold standard for MMO gaming companies? ARE YOU ON FUCKING CRACK!?!?!?!


Turbine's policy? Have you not seen the bazillion player created mods, UIs and add ons made for WOW?
Either you are certifiable or you must work for Turbine and are posting this as a big joke???

It's really not a different model. It's just less than a full game. No one ever said it was supposed to be WoW. Everyone said it was supposed to be fun and engaging. There isn't enough stuff to be fun and engaging.

I feel based on sales which dove faster than a WW2 kamikazi diver its a VERY safe bet. Some one start a death pool!
Hell my local EB store is shipping 16 of the 20 copies of DDO they ordered back to the warehouse this week.

Once again another delusional fanboi. 100k subs???? They didnt even sell 100k games! Present professional market projections for March put them at some where in the neighborhood of 50k.

And that 50k? Was NOT to end users but to stores such as BestBuy or EB Games, so how many of those got returned unsold?

I stopped counting the appearances of "WoW" in this thread at 75.  I

There is easily 150 hours of content.  That's 15 weeks at 10 hours per week. 

Do I like the  game?  No, I don't.  I don't find PvE MMOGs remotely interesting.  Does that invalidate that DDO is a success?  Nope.  Turbine more than reached their target.  I think many people's biggest problem with DDO is that they are not the primary market for DDO. 

Yes they did. Edit (not subs, sales)

You have no way of knowing if they reached their projected or forecasted sales figures or not....unless you work for them.
Additionally and perhaps surprisngly the idiots at Turbine admitted in an interview that their target customers were NOT old school D&D fans of 30+ years of age with disposable income....but the 20-25 year old crowd. ie traditional MMO players.

The idiots at Turbine couldnt even get the right market.

Uhm no they didnt. Not according to any market reports Ive read for March. If you are so sure you're right please post a link otherwise STFU.

heh.

The groupthink in this board is interersting.I get called a Fanboi even though I hate the game.

Way to dodge the challenge....once again....POST A LINK or STFU!

[23:02] <dm^O_o> strange
[23:02] <spongslog> DM sales good for DDO?
[23:03] <spongslog> did you hit your 100k?
[23:03] <dm^O_o> yeah, np
[23:03] <dm^O_o> the doom and gloomers are pretty far off mark atm

That counts as proof? That's pretty sad.

I didn't know there were rules of evidence.

What do you have?

[23:02] <dm^O_o> strange
[23:02] <spongslog> DM sales good for DDO?
[23:03] <spongslog> did you hit your 100k?
[23:03] <dm^O_o> No, and now I will take my own life with a dull spoon
[23:03] <dm^O_o>  {sounds of dull spoon trying to cut threw a neck} Banzai!!!!!


Sad aint the word for that attempt. It was like watching a pole vaulter in the special olympics. "Me special" {splat!}

I think you banned the wrong troll Schild.

And I think you still havent posted a link....now run along. Maybe mommy will tie a steak around your neck so the dog will play with you.

I wish I could argue with that. This fucker walks in like he owns the place.

:-D Well I always figure its best to make a big entrance. Plus I dont tolerate trolls, or idiots who cant back up their arguments well. Old habits from my long ago days on the Genmay forums.
Is that wrong of me?

I know it's poor form to run around blurting out "THAT'S NOT HOW THEY DO IT OVER THERE!"  Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out that on my other forum, making objective claims without verifiable evidence is bannable if you don't retract when challenged.  Sure it sounds uptight, but just think of how quickly Bruce's little chart would have had him run off under such rules.

um, ok?

I still waiting for someone to post a link that contridicts what I said.

YOU are the one who made the claim.
Now myself, another poster and even an ADMIN have challenged your claim of over 100k units sold. You STILL have not posted proof.

Therefore you are NOTHING more than a useless moronic slobbering troll.
Once again...watching you post is like watching a pole vaulter in the special olympics. "Me special!" {splat!}

You misunderstand. It's not the "selling point".

It's the defining characteristic. Like, "A skyscraper is a tall building" or "A steak is from a cow". It's not up for you to "see it" or "not see it".

If persistence isn't a key part of the definition of a MMO, then Unreal Tournament is an MMO. Any game with any multiplayer component is an MMO. Which means we should stop talking about the category, because you're just talking about "multiplayer games" of any kind. Which is a different discussion.

Otherwise, tell me what makes an MMO something different than any other kind of multiplayer computer or video game.

Is there the intraweb equivalent of a full moon going on or something?

This thread delivers


P.S
Also it has provided more entertainment then DDO ever could unless you used the cd as a frisbee and managed to behead some bystander with it, that would be pretty cool.

yea I'm pretty much done. 

Here, let me quote myself:
Now we can quibble what he means by "largest in Turbine's history", however Nichols does say that they had 50K preorders so any discussion of the number of copies sold has to start from that number. The NPD USA PC games sales chart for March (http://www.ggmania.com/?smsid=21395) has DDO ranked at #6 (DVD), #14 (CD), and #16 (LE). The chart also says that the top seller sold 230K copies (The Sims 2: Open for Business) though NPD doesn't track the entire retail channel (I think it's like 75% or so). I have no idea if NPD tracks preorders but those technically were purchased in February or earlier so I doubt they are reflected in the March sales.

I previously said that I thought "largest in Turbine's history" meant most active accounts (not subscribers) at any given time which would mean somewhere around 150K active accounts. If we subtract the 50K preorders from that 150K we get 100K non-preorder copies they would have had to have sold which given the above sales rankings seems a bit of a stretch except that DDO is also available in Europe so something like 75K USA + 25K Europe is certainly plausible.

This thread:

http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19540

would indicate peak concurrent pops are somewhere in the 10k range. Traditionally the ratio of peak pops to subs has been between 1/4 and 1/5. This would indicate that number of subs is somewhere in the 40-50k ballpark. Considering the licence, TV ads, and what must have been a significant budget, that is a shit number.

Not to mention the fact that had DDO been such a resounding success I doubt we would have seen this in the news.....
"Atari could face delisting from Nasdaq if the troubled game company fails to get its shares over $1.00."

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2455&Itemid=2

"Largest in Turbine history" probably means it took the most resources to produce.

Marketing people cannot be trusted.

Learn to read nitwit. I challenged the veracity of the evidence. I don't know whether the game has 10k, 100k or 1 million units sold and/or subscribed.

Ok cockmonkey, that newsbit was dated 3/9/06. The newsbit itself said Atari received their notice on March 3rd. DDO was released on 2/28/06. It would pretty much be impossible for 3 days of sales to turn everything around.

In the interest of fairness, I'm calling upon you to post your sources for these market reports.  And if you're basing your statements upon super-seekrit numbers ala Bruce, prepare to get flamed.

Cockmonkey? LOL  :-D I dont think Ive ever been called a cockmonkey before. Will definitely have to remember that one for future use.
But anyway HERE (http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=charting&mode=basics&intraday=off&timeframe=3m&charttype=ohlc&splits=off&earnings=off&movingaverage=None&lowerstudy=volume&comparison=off&index=&drilldown=off&symbol=ATAR&selected=ATAR) are the stock reports for the last 90 days for Atari. You are right 3 days of sales could not have turned things around....unfortunately neither have the last 45 or so.

Nope not super secret. Feel free to subscribe to this market report company.
http://www.npdfunworld.com/funServlet?nextpage=track_sales.html

None of the servlets I've ever made have been fun :(

It must be nice to work at fun world.

Quote the information this company sends you.  If you cannot do so, you should have refrained from referencing it.

Well I guess I shouldnt have used it. However, that doesnt change the information itself nor the fact that its available should you or the company you work for decide to pay for it.

Neither does it change Atari's nose diving stock price even after the release of DDO. Of course saying the release of DDO should have helped bolster their stock price is in an of itself inherently wrong, since sales of the game to distributors such as Target, EBGames, BestBuy, etc etc all happened and were reported prior to the day it was released to the public. In other words any sales from DDO by Atari should have been reported in their already publicly reported 4Q'05 earnings reports which ended 31 Mar 2006. But I posted the last 90 days anyway just to keep everyone happy above.

NPD only tracks US and Canada. DDO was released in Europe on March 3 so any discussion of their overall player base has to include sales over there as well.

Of course. Projected figures are presently around 20-25k units sold by the European publisher Codemasters. But once again these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt. They are ONLY for the initial number of units sold by the publisher to the retail markets and are not accurate representations as to how many have been actually sold retail, or were returned to the publisher by retail outlets unable to sell the game.

And where do these 'projected figures ' come from?

For someone who was so aggressive to the poster who couldn't produce any proof, you have , so far, not produced anything verifiable yourself. Posting the address of a paid for website you know no one in their right mind will pay money to see just to prove you right or wrong is as straw man as posting an icq chat log.

So, being as you were so insulting to the poster who couldn't provide what you wanted, where, with detailed sales records, is your proof?

Or are you just one of those , 'if I shout loud enough I dint think anyone will question me' types who has no way of backing up your statement.


Indeed, taking your posts here as a whole, we see something surprising.There were, by all verifiable accounts , 50k pre orders in the North American market, which wouldn't be included in your sales to Eb games etc as far as I can tell. You claim they have 'only' sold a further 50k in the whole of the north American market(unless you are saying that does include direct pre orders, in which case you are claiming they sold 0 copies in the entire North American market barring pre orders, which is highly doubtful) , plus a further 25k or so in Europe.

Now, I may not be a statistician, but those numbers you provided seem to add up to 125k sales, and yet you resorted to childish name calling when confronted with someone saying they sold over 100k, something which you here have said yourself.

The trouble with 'market reports' and projected sales, is that ultimately they can be spun to say whatever you want, its also notoriously inaccurate in terms of actual subscriptions, certain mmo population charts are testament to that.

Even 125k sales could mean only 40k-50k subs, depending on the actual rate of loss, and no one outside of turbine likely know that information. That of course, makes your whole rant in this thread as moot anyway, because without knowing the percentage retention theyare getting, sales figures for the box are worthless in terms of assessing subscriber numbers.


My personal opinion, you couldn't pay me to play it, doesn't mean you should be an ass to someone over it without something solid  to back yourself up though.

Based on the number of people I tried to warn who went out and bought the game anyway, DDO probably sold pretty well. The norm for my friends is for them to tell me on day one they think the game is great and I was totally wrong and cancel a week later bored out of their skulls. Sales were based on the name on the box, not on the game features and most people don't seem to see it as having lasting interest.

I implicitly trust a company named "Funworld" for all of my serious, hard-core market trends and retail analysis.  I am also glad the data is presented via the "funServlet".

I get my wholesale data from "Crazyland Incorporated", and as far as real-time datamining of the London Metal Exchange's bullion/mineral stream is concerned "HappyJoyWorld LLC" is the only name you need to know.

Without any real evidence, I found DDO to be so unremarkable and so uninteresting that I can't imagine it being successful.

With other MMOs, there is at least that honeymoon period, the glimmer of hope that this one could be pretty good. There is something in the world that hooks and intrigues. Now, this usually doesn't last too long, but at least it is there.

It was meh at first sight.

Numbers aside, the important thing is that developers realize that this kind of shit won't fly.  Buying a popular license does not entitle you to $14.99 a month. 

Which was the point of my original post in this thread.  Lots of people find it interesting enough.  They just don't read f13. 

I can't say with any certainty that DDO is or isn't successful. I don't think it will be successful long-term, for a lot of reasons.

But since no figures have been publicly released, I would be guessing. And it doesn't matter what the actual numbers are anyway, because few MMOG's not made by Greg's MMOG Shack are going to last less than 6 months before folding.

Also, the actual numbers don't matter, because while it may only have 100k subs, it may only need 25k subs to be profitable. And its profitability is more important than any number you could throw up there. People started prognosticating DOOM AND GLOOM for CoH when it dropped from 160k subscribers to around 120k or so, never thinking that their business model was such that even 100k subs was a FANTASTIC SUCCESS OMG EVERYONE GETS BONUSES!

Turbine went for a much smaller market than WoW. I don't think they fulfilled it well, BUT if they set their business model up to only need 25-50k subscribers to be profitable, anything over that is a resounding success for an indy developer. But 6 months down the line is when it's really going to matter. If they can sustain profitability for 6 months, they'll get at least another year out of the thing barring some NGE-level stupidity.

Anecdotal evidence of lack of content affecting subscription: The friend I carpool to work with bought it and loved it on release. He is a casual player, over the age of 35, with plenty of disposable income. He's not a hardcore guy, not a PVP guy, big fan of D&D and the D20 system, and MMOG veteran from EQ1 onward. Subbed to WoW for over 6 months. Plays with a regular group of guys set nights and week, and augments that with other play times during the week. He's not averse to DDO Pickup Groups. He's probably going to cancel his subscription (he started in the Head Start event) soon because he's playing more Auto Assault. Yes, I can't account for his taste. :)

My gut feeling is that there will be a big number that quit quietly like him within the next 2-3 months. DDO will be at best a modest success, certainly better than AC2, but will never sustain COH numbers. In other words, somewhere in the middle between the fanbois and the groupthink, the truth lies.

Game's been out less than 2 months?

http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=20&pagebuilder[module]=article&pagebuilder[display_item]=401]

7 day free trials!

Ya, it's doing just peachy.

Now all we need to have is somebody post a detailed walkthrough of how they got to level10 during the seven day trial get some of the bigger sites to carry it and we can call it a wrap on this one.  I would do it but you know, EvE + hockey playoffs = no time.

That doesn't necesarily mean its doing bad, hell wow had a free trial.  I played DDO during beta and while i liked it fine it never felt MMORPGy enough to be worth a monthly fee.

I thought people on this site were knowledgable of the gaming industry? Have you never heard of the monthly sales projections posted on Gameamp.com and other gaming websites called Chartspots? They list the weekly and monthly top computer game sales? Where do you think they get their market research from? NPD Funworld.

If you would like here is an article that it took me all of two secs to find on google relating to the company.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zd1up/is_200401/ai_ziff117173

Like the article says.....if you want to know the numbers all you have to do is pay NPD's subscription fee.

You have nothing.  I recommend taking your act to the IGN boards.  I'm sure it will play very well there.

Interesting that DDO has made over 100k sales, can you ask if that figure includes Europe?

The more he says "Just pay for NPD's report" the more I suspect a shill.

But then, I'm paranoid like that.

I posted quite a few links relating to a pay per information company where they could get the information they needed,
and another on the stock performance of Atari. I would openly post the information from NPD, but my company pays the exhorbitant subscription rate and since a couple fellow co-workers post/read on this site I can not openly do so. Now of course the information on Atari's stock prices is circumstantial at best admittedly...I noticed that you yourself have yet to post any evidence of any type relating to your claim.

Arthur,

Slog is the only one making this claim and has yet to post any proof of it. Despite us repeatedly asking him for such.

I can't believe you guys have argued for 2 pages about this.

Broughden, I think I speak for everyone when I say "shut the fuck up and paste the information you have or get out."

Everyone who participates in SUBSCRIPTION NUMBERS ARGUMENTS should be ashamed.

THERE IS NO 'US' YOU STUPID COCK SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Heh, I was thinking the same thing :)

As an individual you would certainly NOT want to pay for NPD's reports unless you were VERY serious into the gaming industry and had alot of disposable income. Their reports cost several thousand dollars because they are marketted to the gaming, advertising, and news industry which of course has the money to pay for it.
But as I said if you work in those industries or have the money to spend individually the information you need.....or someone like SirBruce may need....is there.

You havent posted anything substantial either.

And for the record, I dont htink there is a single person here that gives enough of a shit about DDO sub numbers (which cant be accuratly assessed from box sales anyway) to pay money to find out.

Thats the whole point.
Most people here , me included,wont even pay to find out how shit the game is.

I just object to your ;I know more than you so Ill call you names' bullshit you came here with, when YOU are just as guilty of nonsensical claims as the other poster.

And for the record, Atari stock has been in severe decline for 6months + prior to DDO's release, and again is no indicator of anything.

So because I challenge Slog's claim of over 100k units sold retail I have to bear the entire burden of proof while he gets a free pass?
Hmmm wow that seems fair.
As I said I posted where the information can be obtained. Whether you do or not is up to you.

He quoted a dev to provide proof plus my question was addressed to him.  I have no clue who you are.

We arent arguing sub numbers. Slog and myself are arguing retail unit sales numbers, or at least I thought we were.
Lastly, you are correct Atari's stock price is circumstantial evidence at best. However.....
Their sales of DDO units SHOULD have been included in their 4th Quarter 2005 quarterly financial report. If they had had substantial sales it would have boosted the profitability of the company and we would have seen a corresponding rise in their stock price. We didnt. So one can logically assume that no such substantial sales were reported, and their stock continued to lose value...which it did after their quarterly earnings statement was released.

Actually he quotes an unknown entity from IRC.

WoW had a free-trial less than 2 months after launch?  They had the 10-day buddy codes for the Collector's Edition, but that's all I remember that close to release.

WoW's free trial started around 6 months ago, after they had already crushed the throats of every other MMO.

You already seconded slog's claim of 100K units sold, so why don't you just shut the fuck up now? Or can you not add 50K (presales) + 50K (your claim of March sales) together?

NVM Beaten by Shockeye.

Because
The 50k presales does not include how many were cancelled (and we all know EBgames and other retailers offering pre-sales were inundated with cancellations.
At best? I think they had maybe 30k actual presales US/Canade wide. WHY do I make this assumption? Because their were ONLY 11k initial forum accounts created within the first week of release.

Do yourself a favour, stick to making up bullshit about games and keep away from share prices.
Heres some education.

DDO is a planned release, both the expenditure and income for that release would be factored into the companies net value a year ago, the share price was never going to react to a slightly increased profit of DDO , in any way shape or form.

The price is currently struggling, and has been, because of a short term history of bad investment, and a projection of profitability that doesnt sit well with investors, again, mainly due to ill advised expenditure.

And before you start arguing again, I make my living on the LSE.

You know Im not really understanding this.  :|

A) Am I going to release NPD data which they charge for on an open forum and risk being reprimanded at work or worse have my company's account yanked from NPD? No.  But the information is their for any who want to have it.

B) Given the above problem have I tried to provide the best circumstantial evidence I can? Yes through stock reports and financial analysis.

C) Meanwhile Slog has posted nothing more than an IRC chat log he purports to include testimony from a Dev at Turbine.

Yet Im the one getting all the shit here....hmmmm. BTW I love my fun new forum nickname!

Well now you are just making shit up too.

Actually you would need to check their 2005 4th quarter reports to know when the sales from DDO was factored into their net value. Without any concrete release date a year out I would highly suspect that there was no way for Atari to project or report any financial earnings from the sale of the game to US and Canadian retailers a year in advance. No retailer would have been placing their orders that far out in the current entertainment game software industry.

BTW You are based in London? I absolutely love that town though I detest flying into Heathrow....the airport is HUGE!

Where? The 11k figure is accurate. You can gleen the information from the DDO boards by checking when people activated their forum accounts.

Did someone actually accuse you of being a shill for NPD -- is that what the nickname is from? Because fucking stupid if so -- NPD shills would target people with the cash to pay for their services. Probably not a good idea to quote proprietary information as evidence -- although fundamantally it's identical to Devs talking (in a roundabout fashion) about sub numbers and churn in past games, except they've got more trust on that issue because people know they had access that data, and don't know if you really have access to NPD data -- or aren't even sure what it is or how reliable it is.

You miss the point. The price wont rise without people buying the share. As it stands currently, Atari is not an attractive investment, to either professional or private investors, nor even short term day traders.

The reason is simple, Atari as an entity is badly mismanaged , also you need to understand something fundemental about MMO's, in that the income from box sales isnt going to offset initial development costs. regardless of what sales have transpired, DDO wont be in profit as a project for a long time (given how poor it seems, read :never).
There are others here who have more insight into MMO finances, but I would guess that the average 100k sub mmo would be working on a 3 year turnaround on initial investment.

Yes, London is nice to visit, which I do a couple of times a week,for the most part its a shithole to live in however, as are most capitol cities throughout the world.

Im lucky in that I can choose not to live there and, via direct access, still do my job. I actually live on the border of England and Wales, which is good for mountain biking in my more energetic moments . :-)

Basing the number of order cancellations on how many people created forum accounts is "making shit up" unless you can show the research that establishes the relationship between the two.

Morat....admittedly I have no idea where the nickname is from. I know one of the moderators called me a cockmonkey earlier in the thread but Im not sure what the "shill" reference is for. I agree if they think Im some salesman for NPD or something then they are "fucking stupid."  The subscriptions to their informational market reports cost thousands of dollars. My company has access but I would NOT expect some individual to pay for that no matter how into gaming he might be.
As for posters not knowing what NPD is on this forum that actually surprises me!  :-o
I thought the people here were knowledgable about the gaming industry which is why I started reading the forums and finally registered myself in order to post.

Every month and week professional industry media outlets report the sales of games on various platforms to include PC, Xbow, Playstation, Gameboy etc etc. You can view reports such as this at Gameamp which is just one of a myriad of websites that report them. These weekly sales charts are put together by Chartspot. Chartspot in turn gathers its raw market research data from NPD. Any poster in this thread or the forums could do a simple Google search to confirm everything I just said.

No its called making an educated assumption based on the prevailing information available, a hypothesis. As a matter of fact to date I dont think they have even 50k forum subscribers.

No, you are pulling numbers out of your ass. You are claiming a 3 to 1 forum subscription rate (30K preorders = 11K forum subscribers) based on nada. I could just as easily claim a 5 to 1 forum subscription rate and you would have no way of proving me wrong since we're both just making shit up.

how is this guy not banned?  Ooops...wrong website.  My bad.

As long as things remain civil, why ban anyone? Sometimes it is in fact fun to watch a person dig deeper and deeper holes and not realize they forgot to bring a ladder.

Thats a beautiful area! I love Wales in particular. Have you ever been down to Heresford or up to Stockford? Man I could tell you some stories about some guys I knew from Stockford. When they were drunk you had no hope of understanding what they were saying.

As for the whole Atari stock matter...
Yes I am in business and understand the basics of stock prices rising and falling based on sales, perceived risk, stock analysis and so forth. As for any knowledge of the contract worked out between Turbine the developer of DDO and Atari it's North American publisher, I do not of course have access to the particulars. However from what I read Turbine assumed all cost of development and recruited VC in order to do this. In fact there were a number of industry media reports on them receiving $30 million in VC funds last year.
If Atari was in fact acting only as a publishing house, which all available indications point to, then their primary means of financial gain would be from sales of boxed units unless Turbine cut them in for a share of the subscription fees, which I highly doubt.

In fact here is an article discussing how each quarter's profit is driven by software titles released WITH IN that quarter: HERE (http://webbolt.ecnext.com/coms2/news_59029_COM)
The significant part of the article to our discussion reads-

Oh and I was right about them not reporting revenue from DDO until fiscal 2006. A statement from the company can be found HERE (http://corporate.infogrames.com/pressreleases_story.html?sid=571)
The part relevant to our discussion says-

Where am I digging a hole?

Lets go down the list...

A) Slog claims there are more than 100k units of DDO sold retail and has STILL NOT provided ANY evidence.

B) Voblat claims Atari would have claimed profit from DDO #1 a year ago and #2 possibly based on subscription rates....my post above proves both of those claims wrong FROM ATARI PRESS RELEASES.

C) No one on here even seems to know what NPD market reports are even though the posters are supposed to be knowledgable about the gaming industry....how is this exactly my fault???  :|

D) The ONLY assumption I have made has been 30k initial presales from Atari, based on 11k initial forum subscribers within the first week of release. Now I BELIEVE there is better information out there on that number and am attempting to find it....and post it to you all.



Its not my fault I have to educate forum readers on
A) Market research companies within the software gaming industry
B) How and when profits by game software publshing companies are reported
C) Argue against someone who says "X" and yet Im the only one who supposedly has to prove "X" isnt true. NO ONE else has called him on "X".
This might actaully be a better conversation or debate if I didnt have to continue to prove BASIC FACTS that people knowledgable of the industry should know! :x

I'm pretty sure I made the only inferences possible with regards to your link back on the last page.

Seriously. For someone who keeps harping on evidence he sure can't fucking produce any besides - 'PAY FOR THE REPORT LOLZORWTF?'

I smell a shill as well.

That's cause your own claims agree with his. I don't understand why you are still talking about this.

There are plenty of us who know who NPD is (you can search on my name and "NPD" if you like, I even posted a link to some NPD charts earlier) and I have no problem with the 50K number you say is from the March NPD report (it's a little lower than my educated guess but not by much) though did you actually add up all the different DDO SKUs to get that number?

We seem to be heading off wildly from the genral topic of this thread ehre, which was just how shit DDO actualy is, but to continue the discussion.
I havent looked at the nature of funding or involvement from atari , I have ad no need to.

However, IF what you say is true, and that they are merely a distributor and not either suffuring the expenditure of development or launch, nor the predicted (theoretical here) , subsequent profit , then that merely reinforce my initial statement.

Atari is a company with the very real threat of bankruptcy hanging over them, DDO is merely a niche game, there is no way the income from DDO in your scenario was ever going to overcome the bankruptcy threat, therefore the results of DDO sales , good or bad,were never, ever going to affect  Atari share price, particularly in the short term.

Just for the record, you dont need to educate me of anything, Queens College Cambridge did that much better than you, although Im sure you beleive you know better.

No actually some ass hat named Miasma said:

See? Im arguing with people who argue for the sake of argument! They have NO idea what the hell they are talking about. Based on reading past threads I thought this forum was above such buffonery.

So, are all of the forum posters  more ignorant than you? if not, what percentage?

Also, you should have dropped C and made it a different issue. It doesn't fit with your established trolling structure.

 
Not when the bot we're aruging against is such a spectacular spaz.


 p.s. I was the one who mentioned the shill angle.  It was a joke, but it makes a nice title.

I actually smell teli idiot here, given the first post came about 10 minutes after his ban.

Well YOU claimed you knew
A) When Atari would add profit from sale of DDO into their fiscal reports
B) How they would earn profit from the DDO title.
Obviously I did need to educate you on those two subjects, since you originally tried to discredit my knowledge of the software market based on your business experience with in the LSE.

As far as release of DDO not effecting their stock price...
IF DDO had been a successful title, you do admit it would have possibly boosted their 2006 Fiscal Year results (of course the success or lack of other titles would also contribute)? However, Atari took a quarterly loss and an annual Fiscal Year loss. Therefore their stock price sunk even lower.

LOL yes thats it Im a bot. WOW some of you guys get dumber the more you post.

That should be easy enough to prove, unless he's being hardcore about being a tolling cockmonkey shill.

There is no there there.

So far your argument has been:

Don't look at these numbers because you can't.

and

11k subs new forum accounts implicitly prooves < 30k box sales.

Followed by a lot of whining.  I'm not sure why you don't see where some people around here don't feel particularly inclined to take your word as gospel.

Slog posted numbers that he got from a purported dev on an IRC channel, the people here accept those number as what they are, highly dubious and slightly inflated sounding.

You are posting an Appeal To Authority.  Go look it up, it's under logical fallacies.

He himself said it, indeed.

Unlikely since Tele is claiming DDO is the greatest thing since sliced bread (or at least AC1) because, you know, it supports the Z-axis and stuff. Broughden on the other hand is hell bent on proving DDO is the greatest failure in MMO history (already disproven by the launch of AA), or something. I'm actually not clear what his point is.

I do know when the prices would be taken into consideration in the stock price, when the launch was announced, however long ago that was, a year ago. You are confusing the stock price with ther financial reports, because you can only google search financial reports I would summise, the intricacies of share price fluctuation actually needs some knowledge to follow.

And please try to keep up. Atari are on the virge of bacruptcy, DDO is a niche game.
Even exceeding all sales expectations DDO would not make any dent on the financial situation Atari currently sit at.

Therefore it would not change the current outlook of share value.

In other words, no, even selling 300k boxes (raising what, $3 mill) would not have changed the share price as the company stands right now, they are -much- to far in the shit for investors to consider them on the basis of a few box sales of a niche game in a niche genre.

Im not trolling! I was SIMPLY trying to debate or argue retail sales figures with Schlog or what ever the hell his name was....when every arm chair quarterback on this board decided to jump into the fray and defend him for some reason.

And YES I obviously know more about the gaming industry then people who dont know what NPD is or how sales are reported by publishers with in the industry.

As for trolling that would be EVERY poster who doesnt know diddly squat about the industry and is simply arguing with me for the sake of doing so. Thats the definition of a troll.

(http://www.jeffbots.com/twiki2.jpg)

If you're trying to have a conversation, acting like a condescending schmuck is probably a bad move to get people to not tune you out.

Just a bit of advice, Twiki.

Morgus,

I have also had people post crap who have no idea what NPD is. See my former post to you as an example.
I have had Voblat claim because he supposedly works on the LSE he knows more about industry fiscal reports than I do...which I have proved his claims wrong.
In essence I have had people attack EVERYTHING I have said here.

I admit that not being able to post the NPD is NOT fair....however I have been truthful about EVERYTHING ELSE and posted open public information verifying this. So why would I lie about the NPD data?

Im done with this thread. Its like trying to argue physics with bush tribesmen.

At this point I'm pretty sure no one really cares what the numbers are, people are just displeased that you keep coming up with arbitrary, unproven ones.  Especially since whatever numbers you could come up with would be limited to box sales, only people at Turbine actually know what their active subscription number is.

I think that everyone knows DDO was not a big hit.  A few people here and many on the official forums have tried to move the goalposts to fit their low numbers and that seems mildly absurd.  They did not go through all the trouble involved with developing an MMO based on a major license to intentionally make a niche game with 40,000 subscriptions.  I don't actually have much of anything against DDO, I'm sure that if you have a set group of friends that you like to get together with a few times a week that it's a great game, but that wasn't what they were aiming for.
I know his name (Broughden) from reading the DDO forums to get my daily fix of disillusioned fanboi.  He really doesn't like the game and yet felt the need to rack up over 500 posts in less than two months.

As far as NPD is concerned I only made fun of them due to their poorly chosen name.

You are both wrong until you can actually post numbers from a credible source that no one here has to pay for.

No, "I saw it in a pay for play NPD article" is not evidence. Neither is share price. Neither is an IRC log.

NEITHER OF YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING YOU SAY, AND NEITHER CAN I. NOW SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT.

As I said two posts up Im done with this thread.
BTW I love the big red all capital letters.  :roll:

Being done with a thread implies that you stop posting in it.

Never fuck with an admin.

Another simple rule to live by.

Besides, Haemish is just stating the obvious for you. You should thank him.  :-)

With a "What Murgos said", for good measure.

Is there an updated ban-list somewhere? How do you know he got banned?

Check about 1/2 down the first page (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6626.0).

Well the entity is thought to be Devil Mouse a Turbine dev. 

If I was taking notes, slog would be the fourth person I have encountered who believes DDO is not doing that badly while at the same time admits to not playing it.  I didn't seriously expect an answer to my subscription question, though it would be amusing if Turbine's marketing department was now run out of another rant/news site's irc channel.

As for the subscription numbers, Turbine know, Turbine currently are not saying (irc heh).  I don't mind waiting years to have it confirmed DDO didn't sell very well, a quick study of the pc charts tells that story.

DDO is niche and low budget, fine whatever, can't wait to see if LOTRO is also niche & low budget.

Hey, who needs box sales anyway when they already got a free trial and a downloadable client (http://trial.ddo.com/)? Right?

The only numbers I trust so far are the DDO US official forum account numbers.   Below is the latest, created in the first eight weeks of DDO's release we have:-

1st Week = 11,133
2nd Week =  3,384
3rd Week =  2,496
4th Week =  1,835
5th Week =  1,263
6th Week =  1,372
7th Week =  1,016
8th Week =    721
Total = 23220

Links below just incase anyone wants to double check this information. 

I'm just giving forum account numbers, not stating anything about the numbers of real subscribers, as I currently do not have a clue.  However over 23,000 US forum accounts would seem to indicate over 100k box sales in the US alone is very possible.  Would love to see an accurate current subscriber number but that info can only come from within Turbine.


First DDO user to register, thur 23rf Feb (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=42)
last user to register, wed 1st march. End of 1st week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=11174)
First user, thur 2nd March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=11175)
Last user, wed 8th March.  End of 2nd week (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=14558)
First user, thur 9th March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=14559)
Last user, wed 15th March.  End of 3rd week (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=17054)
First user, thur 16th March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=17055)
Last user, wed 22nd March.  End of 4th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=18889)
First user, thur 23rd March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=18890)
Last user, wed 29th March.  End of 5th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=20152)
First user, thur 30th March (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=20153)
Last user, wed 5th April.  End of 6th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=21524)
First user, thur 6th April (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=21525)
Last user, wed 12th April.  End of 7th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=22540)
First user, thur 13th April (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=22541)
Last user, wed 19th April.  End of 8th week. (http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=23261)

Looks like you're capturing (degrading) momentum adequately.  How do you derive this?  Is it feasible to factor in moribund accounts?  Because that's where retention is defined.  Forums are truly a microcosm of fanbase but they still nevertheless capture representation.

Hey, who needs box sales anyway when they already got a free trial and a downloadable client (http://trial.ddo.com/)? Right?

Holy crap, less than two months old and there is a seven day free trial already?  Is that a new record? 

Why have a seven day trial when people can, apparently, blow through the content in less than half that time?

This plus the comment about LotR online taking on WoW for a million subscribers really makes one wonder just what they are smoking/eating/drinking/introducing-into-their-rectums.

The DDO forums issue each new user a forum account ID number.  These numbers are sequential, so at the time of this post the last new forum account on the DDO boards is shown here http://www.ddo.com/forums/member.php?u=23453

There is a last activity date on each forum account member page, so yes, it would be possible to draw some conclusions on retention if you scripted something to grab the data.   But you couldn't prove much and it does seem slightly excessive (imho) to hit their forums over 23,000 times for the small information reward.

Not really. Not here, at least.

Sure, acting like a complete cockmonkey and then throwing it in an admin's face might get you banned, but if you can structure your opinion as decent arguments without being a complete douchehole, then the Admins here will join in the fray without hotting the ban button whenever someone that they don't like says something.

Doesn't mean admins here can admit when they're wrong, but I've witnessed both Schild and Haemish take a written pounding and argue right back in various threads. My first post here was an attack/argument with Schild in response to something he said I disagreed with. Yet I've managed not to be a complete cunt and/or moron, and hence I haven't been banned.

As for Broughden, he may be a spurned fanboi from the Turbine boards, he may be Telemediocrity, he may be The Worm or he may be some or all of the above, but the important thing is that it really doesn't matter.  :lol:

Crossbow is my favourite console.

:) Argument Clinic FTW! But that was Abuse. You want room 12A, Just along the corridor.

Do people have to register on the forum when they subscrbe? If not, don't most developers claim about 2-5% of their customers participate in forums?

If my impression of the trial is in any way indicative of the rest of the market, I don't see how it will last long.  Movement felt like I was running and turning on a grid.  It was not smooth at all.  Bosses were obliterating me (fighter) and a cleric.  I may try again later, but right now I do not have the motivation to make even day two.

I've heard numbers somewhere around 1% of subscribers actually use the forums regularly. 2% who register on the forums might be a decent number. Of course, if the game REQUIRES a forum ID in order to play... that would be bad. Very, very bad.

I solved my movement problems by lowering some of the graphics settings, so at least that improved on my second try.  Required grouping is still a big turn-off.  I am also annoyed at being taken out of sneak with every door opened or lever pulled.  It makes it difficult to actually, you know, sneak up on enemies.

It does not require forum registration to play.  Unless it does it automatically the numbers are not of the total population.

(irc >100k sales), forum accounts over 23k.  I agree a lot of players will not sign up for forums, but again we are guessing at percentages, 2% would mean over 1 million box sales.

I bet their box sales are not that bad (120-200k worldwide) but the churn is sizeable and stopping them hit AC1 sub figures.  AC1 has been running for years and with the doomcasters hurting sales, I don't see any logical reason for them not to boost about beating AC1 sub numbers unless they just haven't managed to do it.

The 7 day free trial might be an attempt to hit a concurrent user target in addition to grabbing new players but mostly I think the trial is a good idea as nothing will kill a forced grouping game faster than lack of players.

Forums aren't a bad way to guesstimate how box sales are changing, but not a good way to guesstimate box sales. If new forum subs are dropping off, odds are game sales are dropping off. If forum posts are dropping off, odds are sub count is. The only assumption -- which MIGHT be invalid, but's probably a good starting spot -- is that a fairly steady percentage of purchasers register for the forums.

It doesn't matter if that percentage is 2% or 20%, as long as it's relatively steady over the lifespan of the game. (I'm guessing it's not only steady for DDO, but for virtually all games). I wouldn't use it as my only datapoint, but I wouldn't toss it.

I fully agree, I'm making a guess of 120k-200k box sales on an irc channel comment and if it was more than 200k there would have been a statement, not the forum numbers.

I might be reaching, but the way I see it is that the people who are hyped for the game / buy it on release have a better chance of registering on the forum. People who pick it up further down the road - it might be an impulse buy from Joe Somebody at Best Buy. Even if that's week 2 or 3.

Although there could be a cult movement months down the road (Eve) and guilds will migrate from one game to another, and those guys are just as likely to sign up on the forum as the first weekers.

Can you create a forum account with a 7 day trial account?

It looks like it will let me.

It asked for my Turbine Account info, and on the next screen shows "DDO Trial Subscription" under available subs, then asks for the usual info.  I'm not willing to hit Submit here, so I'll have to assume they are not filtering the account at this level.

See, that'd be something interesting one of our lurker devs could talk about. I wonder if the relationship between forum registration and subscriptions are covered under their NDAs.

Don't feel bad, you still beat my "playtime".  I logged in, ran down the dock for a total of 30 seconds, then logged off.  Haven't logged back in since.

When someone's download time is an hour and a half and their play time (excluding character creation) is 30 seconds, you've failed.  You've failed spectacularly.

 Some quotes from Broughden in this thread

Broughden on his sources:
and
and

http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=20&pagebuilder[module]=article&pagebuilder[display_item]=412


In retrospect, I'd like to say that not only are you a complete idiot, but the company(s) that you shill for suck.