Speculation on Declining Population

[Ghoste]

I have repeatedly seen posts on these forums that follow a similar logic:

servers are being merged --> only possible reason could be declining population --> the game is dying

I want to take this opportunity to encourage people to do a more thorough job in making deductions based on limited information.

For example, here is a similar deduction that has had a few more minutes of thought put into it:

servers are being merged --> A) declining population --> AA) severe decline in population --> the game is dying

servers are being merged --> A) declining population --> AB) mild decline over extended period --> the game population is somewhat smaller than it used to be, merge to prevent game from dying.

servers are being merged --> B) no population decline --> BA) population hasn't grown to what was anticipated when servers originally set up --> server merge to encourage milder growth than originally planned on.

servers are being merged --> B) no population decline --> BB) was found expenses could be cut by merging servers into fewer better servers --> server merge to better manage resources.

Any others?

Despite the many possibilities, why do so many people post with such fierce emphasis on DOOM!!!! Take your blinders off and embrace a more expanssive way of looking at things.

[Ron]

If you are the type that believes the numbers on mmogdata.com (which I am, but YMMV), then I think the accurate evalutation would be....

servers are being merged --> A) Severe decline in population in first year --> AB) relatively stable population in second year --> the game population is significantly smaller than it used to be (but now stable), merge to prevent game from dying.

Just my opinion.

[Vua]

Well most of us have played numerous MMO's and when you lose 3/4 of your population in the first year of release, it's not a moderate loss. We definitely don't have the no loss but the game hasn't grown at the rate we thought it would situation. I think it's a somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd. They have had a steep population drop but that doesn't mean the game is dead.

The reason we don't embrace a more expansive way of looking at it is because only 1 answer is true. Whether any of yours are correct exactly I can't say but we can only believe 1 is the right answer.

[Ghoste]

Having all the facts is not necessary to taking an approach of looking at things more expansively, in fact when you dont have all the information wouldnt you think it would make more sense? And it also doesnt exclude having an opinion, but having an opinion while keeping your mind closed to the reasoning of other opinions or to the fact that your opinion is just opinion is an ignorance that, in my opinion, mature people should be easily capable of surpassing.

It's like Treebeard says, we need to be less "hasty" in our decisions.

[Vua]

Having all the facts is not necessary to taking an approach of looking at things more expansively, in fact when you dont have all the information wouldnt you think it would make more sense? And it also doesnt exclude having an opinion, but having an opinion while keeping your mind closed to the reasoning of other opinions or to the fact that your opinion is just opinion is an ignorance that, in my opinion, mature people should be easily capable of surpassing.

It's like Treebeard says, we need to be less "hasty" in our decisions.

I never said you couldn't look at other ideas/opinions. I said you can only believe one is the right answer. No matter how open minded someone is, you can only believe one is right and the rest are differing degrees of wrong. I told you I couldn't tell you if any of yours were right but that didn't mean I said they were all wrong. I just believe the answer falls in between a couple of yours.

Now we've all played the game long enough to know the last 2 situations you propose are incorrect but I can't say exactly which of the others, if any, are correct. I would listen to your argument about any of them, but you'd need to prove to me your opinion is the one I should believe more than the one I already have.

[transtemporal]

I blame those aliens that are terraforming stormreach for their own nefarious purposes. Maybe if we reached out to them in the spirit of brotherhood, they would rescind their evil ways and give us back those people who were lost?

[Snike]

Jumping jebus on a pogstick, everyone knows burrow owls live in burrows in the ground. Why the hell do you think they call them burrow owls in the first place.

[Krell]

Its odd but since the servers were merge I've been amazed by how many new people I've been grouping with. I hear things like "What house is Stormcleave in?" Or " I didn't know the air blasts knocked you off" in VoN2. I think its an encouraging sign. I have seen more server performance issues in the last week though. Loading between houses or dungeons often takes a while. I hope the optimization fixes come soon. I would hate to see potential long time players leave due to server performance.

If we can keep most of the new players coming in I think this game will start growing again. If the cap can be raised faster and another method of gaining character slots is granted, I think we can keep existing players longer. It used to be just the power gamers had all capped characters. Now I think those with average play times are getting close to having all character slots capped. There are things to do even if you're capped but many players are driven by seeing their characters advance and by trying new classes. Fortunately different classes give a different play experience for the same content but there are more character clases than character slots so we have to pick and choose.

[Draclaud]

Game no longer being sold at Best Buy (went there yesterday)--->Declineing Population--->Servermerge---->Turbine no longer interested in marketing and developing said game--->Just milikng the faithfull for a few extra months before they close it OR They're planning on an expansion to include marketing blitz.

[In_Like_Flynn]

Game no longer being sold at Best Buy (went there yesterday ...My local Best Buy has it. EB Games nearby also has it.

mmogdata.com is far from official data, and is like asking Al Gore to be your unbiased advisor on global climate change.

[Riddikulus]

Its odd but since the servers were merge I've been amazed by how many new people I've been grouping with. I hear things like "What house is Stormcleave in?" Or " I didn't know the air blasts knocked you off" in VoN2. I think its an encouraging sign.
Well remember with 14 servers down to 5 we are now seeing three times the number of new players per server, on average.

Before they were all spread out amongst 14 servers.

So merging is a good thing for new players... they have more ability to find each other.


I have seen more server performance issues in the last week though. Loading between houses or dungeons often takes a while. I hope the optimization fixes come soon. I would hate to see potential long time players leave due to server performance.

Most of the lag I see is client side... the servers are fine for the most part.

There is very little lag if your PC is capable of handling the increased number of objects on the screen.

Hopefully they are vastly improving the client side so that maxxed out PCs won't be required.

[PurdueDave]

My local Best Buy has it. EB Games nearby also has it.

mmogdata.com is far from official data, and is like asking Al Gore to be your unbiased advisor on global climate change.

So did CompUSA when I was there last month.

[Krell]

Most of the lag I see is client side... the servers are fine for the most part.

There is very little lag if your PC is capable of handling the increased number of objects on the screen.


I have a high end system. The lag I see is when the whole party says they are hung on a dungeon loading screen or everyone in the group pauses for a couple seconds in a dungeon. I've also seen 3-4 people trying to exit a tavern at the same time, getting a long loading screen, then all appearing outside at once. Long pauses in going to the next page in the auction house I think is is another sign of server lag. At times our group runs into a dungeon area where we expect mobs and none are there, then we see them slowly appear. If it happens to the entire group the odds of it being client side lag are low, paticularly within instances. These are some of the problems we had during past loot weekends although not as bad. As for running around a crowded gianthold area, I'm fine even with 20-30+ players to render. Of course different servers may be performing at different levels.

[Archetype]

MY local Best Buy(es) do *NOT CARRY DDO ON THEIR SHELVES* btw...

and most clerks there asked have never heard of it...

Not crying doom, just stating a fact.

Now, a new DDO Expansion coming out for sale.....*that* would be a very good thing at this point...

[MathGeek]

Jumping jebus on a pogostick, everyone knows burrow owls live in burrows in the ground. Why the hell do you think they call them burrow owls in the first place.

I like you Snike. You're not like the other people, here in the trailer park.

[Ghoste]

If you are the type that believes the numbers on mmogdata.com (which I am, but YMMV), then I think the accurate evalutation would be....
I dont doubt that there is some truth to their numbers, but look at the numbers they have posted for DDO:
May 2006 - 90k
Mar 2007 - 90k
Apr 2007 - 25k
Present - 25k

That in addition to the fact that their FAQ section has multiple entries regarding accusations of their numbers being false, and the answer to those accusations being "I am the first to admit that the data is not always reliable and it is most definitely not made up – or at least, not by me." They also make it clear that anonymous sources are good enough for them.

Like I said, I dont doubt there is some truth to those numbers, but it is not at all what I would call a reliable source.

[Riddikulus]

I dont doubt that there is some truth to their numbers, but look at the numbers they have posted for DDO:
May 2006 - 90k
Mar 2007 - 90k
Apr 2007 - 25k
Present - 25k

That in addition to the fact that their FAQ section has multiple entries regarding accusations of their numbers being false, and the answer to those accusations being "I am the first to admit that the data is not always reliable and it is most definitely not made up – or at least, not by me." They also make it clear that anonymous sources are good enough for them.

Like I said, I dont doubt there is some truth to those numbers, but it is not at all what I would call a reliable source.
And 25K is well below the "critical threshold" of 35K that Turbine's CEO talked about when shutting down AC2.

IMO DDO's population is closer to 50K.

[Cowdenicus]

for me, the population is absolutely anemic for the possibilities this game has.

IMO, what Turbine needs to do is get some more developers for this game, put out a HUGE expansion, add some P&P crafting, guild houses, a whole lot of quests, a couple new races, and prestige classes into it, then put out the expansion to be paid for, and publicize it.

That would likely get the numbers where we need to be, and add some desperatly needed revenue to the game.

[Helmet]

more devolopers is VERY key any hope this game has. Very sadly, they are losing more and more each month seemingly. This game has cancer, and turbine has no insurance. can maybe afford a year of chemo...

[Attomic]

more devolopers is VERY key any hope this game has. Very sadly, they are losing more and more each month seemingly. This game has cancer, and turbine has no insurance. can maybe afford a year of chemo...

That's right - every silver lining has a giant freakin' cloud. :rolleyes:

[Sojourner]

Couple thoughts to add to this:

1) If I remember right, when the game was released 300k units sold, 100k turned into paying subscribers.

2) Since we don't have official numbers, when we did the last population study, there was between 15k and 90k currently paying subscribers. The wide variance is based on the fact that we have no hard numbers about the % of people playing but anonymous, and the fact that we have no idea the % of people paying but not playing. The most reasonable numbers were in the 25k-40k range.

3) An MMO can survive with 10-15k paying subscribers. It can't do it and release content as quick as DDO does. But, it can continue chugging along with that low of a population.

4) I have seen DDO at a few of the local stores, but it has often been in the $15 - $25 price range. Which means those stores are trying to sell the remaining boxes for even cheaper than a direct download from turbine costs ($30)



Overall -- I would guess that a combination of Ron's AB along with Ghoste's BA is the correct answer.

The marketing and executives all saw big $$$ in their eyes when they got the D&D license and thought they would be able to draw in hundreds of thousands of players just from the brand name alone.

What really happened was within the first 12 months we saw a pretty serious decline (300K trying it out, to 100k playing, to 25-40k remaining).

But, in the last 6 months, things seem to have been fairly stable. Some players leaving, some new ones coming in. Unlikely to grow by much unless there is a big marketing campaign surrounding the release of Mod6. And, most likely to only shrink when other new MMO's are released and siphon off a small portion of the population.

[JayDubya]

Remember when Turbine ran an "exit survey" of people who were leaving? People growled about it on the Forums because it was done ineptly, or confusingly.

That's almost certainly what spurred Turbine into merging the servers - because the casual players were unable to find groups. So people were trying the game, playing for a few months, and growing frustrated because they couldn't find groups, couldn't have any fun.

Now, there are constantly low level LFMs up on Thelanis. And I meet with new (high) mid-level characters on a regular basis who don't know quests like Stormcleave or such.

Suddenly, this game is fun again for casual players. And they are the cash cow of every MMO. People who pay month-in and month-out, but rarely log in.

DDO has a found a niche - the grownups. The people who have spare cash lying around, and for whom $15/month or $144/year is no big deal. Turbine is raking in the cash, I suspect.

The server merge seems like just the thing to get the population to increase again. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But it definitely wouldn't have increased with 14 servers - people were just too spread out, and new players were hard-pressed to find groups or ways to have fun. Now, it's a whole new game.


They're probably not advertising it enough, but I don't recall seeing many advertising for D&D on TV or Radio either. And it's not like the D&D community isn't aware of this game. But I still see regular posts from WoW players or EQ players, or what have you, coming and asking about the game, signing up for trial accounts, etc.

Is this game for everyone? No. It is not particularly kid friendly. It is not particularly solo friendly. It isn't friendly to people who love to explore. It is not particularly friendly to hardcore/powergamer types, because they can't come up with nice instanced dungeons as fast as we can consume them.

But for people who like to jump in, have an adrenaline-spiked joyride for an hour or two, and then log off, this game is perfect. For people who don't like ridiculous grinding, who have better things to do with their time than growing flowers or spawn-camping, this game is perfect. For people who love Quake 3 or any high-action frag-fest, this game is close to perfect.


No game can please everyone. It does appear that the mass market of MMO players (so far) prefer time-sink large-world exploration games, rather than fast, intense action games. But that doesn't mean this game can't thrive, and grow and be wonderful. Are BMWs inferior because they don't have as many subscribers (buyers) as Hondas?

[Prinstoni]

I dont doubt that there is some truth to their numbers, but look at the numbers they have posted for DDO:
May 2006 - 90k
Mar 2007 - 90k
Apr 2007 - 25k
Present - 25k

Wow with number like that I don't see why we are not getting new content instead of continious nerfs?

Let's see that means May 2006 Turbine made 90,000X$14.99 (plus initial $40 investment cost not counted) =$1,349,100 in May alone

Still they are bringing in 25,000 X $14.99 = $374,750 per month

I am a co-founder of an international company, and we would be estactic to bring in gross revenue of $374K per month. I think if we were bringing in that kind of gross income as a company we would listen to our customers and see why we are not bringing in $1.3M per month that we initially started with.

I guess to finish all I can say is... You would think they would stop nerfing existing content and bring us some new content...

[Ron]

I dont doubt that there is some truth to their numbers, but look at the numbers they have posted for DDO:
May 2006 - 90k
Mar 2007 - 90k
Apr 2007 - 25k
Present - 25k

That in addition to the fact that their FAQ section has multiple entries regarding accusations of their numbers being false, and the answer to those accusations being "I am the first to admit that the data is not always reliable and it is most definitely not made up – or at least, not by me." They also make it clear that anonymous sources are good enough for them.

Like I said, I dont doubt there is some truth to those numbers, but it is not at all what I would call a reliable source.

Do we really have to have this conversation again? :D

Actually, the numbers show:

May 2006 - 90k
Mar 2007 - 90k
Apr 2007 - 25k
May 2007 - 24K
Present - 24k

(you were close, but he dropped them again in May by 1K). Clearly he has no data from June to March 06. He won't be able to get data every single month (actually, I attribute this gap in the data to the fact that at the time these statistics were still being compiled by the guy at mmogchart, who dissappeared for like a year, so no data was being gathered). So while the chart looks to be flatline during this time, obviously what was happening was we were declining from 90K to 25K during that time. Since then, we've seem to have more or less stabilized. I'm kinda hoping the next time we see the value change it will go up, but that may just be wishfull thinking on my part. Personally, I'd feel a lot better if the numbers went up about 5K or so. 30K would be (IMO) a comfortable place for DDO to be, where I wouldn't give a second thought to whether this game is in danger or not. 24K is a bit low for comfort for me, heh. But I won't REALLY start to worry until we dip below 20K.

Of course he has to use anonymous sources. The policy of a lot of companies (including Turbine) is not to release the population numbers. Informants HAVE to be anonymous or they lose their jobs. Just because they are anonymous doesn't make them wrong. Nor does it make them right. What it makes them is the best source of information we have. Dismissing something because it's anonymous is silly. Election polls are all anonymous, yet a lot of people put a lot of stock into them.

I believe the numbers at mmogdata over the communities population count project, simply because here we have to make guesses on anonymous player percentages, and whenever guesses happen people start interjecting their own personal desires into the numbers.

I think it's pretty clear the guy has spent a lot of time and effort trying to get values for the benefit of the community, a lot of the time from companies that don't want to give them out. Maybe we should give him a little bit of credit and not dismiss his values so quickly?

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that, I'm not getting drawn into yet another one of these arguments over mmogchart/mmogdata. Believe them, or don't. Whatever. If you have a more reliable source of population information, please do share it with us. :D

And Riddikulus, that 35K number for AC2 gets thrown around an awful lot. It's just a number spat out during an interview at a time when AC2 was brand new and expectations were high, and I give it very little credence. The populatin of AC2 fell below 35K in October of 2003, yet the game continued on (with updates) long after that (2 years). They didn't announce a shutdown until it had reached 14K (and had been there for a while).

On the other hand, AC1 has been at or below 10K for the last year, and no word on a shutdown for that one, which I find interesting. Why shut down AC2 which had a higher population at the time than AC1 does now?

Probably something to do with payment of the development costs, which I'm sure AC1 did long ago, and thus it no longer needs such a large population to pay for the live team, whereas AC2 never did recoup it's development costs.

I'd go on about that more, but this post has already gotten about 6 times as long as I meant to make it :D

[In_Like_Flynn]

Wow with number like that I don't see why we are not getting new content instead of continious nerfs? ... We get plenty of content, and frequently too.

[Prinstoni]

We get plenty of content, and frequently too.

Um, Where? 3-4 months since Giant Hold. I am talking about new high level content. Not the lowbie garbage that doesn't get played by a majority of players. (2 l10 House K quests and 1 l4 quest) are kidding. Dude that is a bad joke!

(Oh no here comes the 3-4 for players who have been playing for two months and like new lowbie content so they don't have to run stk for the 3rd time. lol)

How many consistent players have capped level 14 characters (multiple)? most
How many are still rerolling? probably less than 25% of those
How many are taking extended breaks? most

We are still around paying our subscriptions, but we got bored after 3-4 months of no new high level content. Some of us dropped our subscriptions, and some of us didn't.

I just log in occasionally to play a raid, and that is about it. I play the game for story and content (ike D&D was meant to be). Although I like, no LOVE good loot, I find it difficult to keep running the same quests over and over and over until I am sick and still not getting what I wanted.

When mod 5 comes out and we have new high level content we will see a spike (and probably massive lag issues) because there will be lots of people playing the new high level content.

That group will decline over a period of 1-2 months once everyone has everything they need on their characters and have explored every part of every quest. Then many of us will take a break again.

UNLESS there is a release of new high level content withing 1-2 months like we were promised and NO MORE NERFING OF EXISTING CONTENT!!!

That is what keeps games like this going.

Let me ask you in PnP, wouldn't you get bored if your weekly activity meant stalking the same area, fighting the same mobs, in the same location, over and over again for 3-4 months.

What does it matter anyway. I learned a long time ago before mod2 that the devs do not listen to their player base, and that my friend is the biggest problem.

end of story....

/drink another pint of Prinstoni's Dark Elf Ale.

[Ghoste]

Seems people are missing the point of why I posted those numbers. According to that site DDO had a constant base of 90k subscribers until March 07. Then in the 30 days following the number dropped to 25k. Seems like they're missing something here. Why steady numbers that long, then a drop like that in one month?

According to the FAQ section each of those points on the chart is a number that they have a source for. Meaning their "reliable source" was telling them those numbers did not change at all since May 06, but suddenly changed that drastically but only during the month of March 07. The point is, their source doesnt look very reliable.

IF the numbers did drop as much as they say they did, I doubt it was all in March 07. In any case it casts a lot of doubt on the accuracy of their estimates of current subscribers. According to their FAQ section I could send them an email claiming to be an anonymous stock holder of Turbine and tell them DDO now has...oh...let's say 43k subscribers, and that's enough for them to publish that as official data.

[Ron]

Seems people are missing the point of why I posted those numbers. According to that site DDO had a constant base of 90k subscribers until March 07. Then in the 30 days following the number dropped to 25k. Seems like they're missing something here. Why steady numbers that long, then a drop like that in one month?

According to the FAQ section each of those points on the chart is a number that they have a source for. Meaning their "reliable source" was telling them those numbers did not change at all since May 06, but suddenly changed that drastically but only during the month of March 07. The point is, their source doesnt look very reliable.

???

Did you NOT read my post? I specifically addressed that issue.

Short answer: No, they did not drop all at once from 90K to 25K in one month. There is simply no available data for that time period, so the author went with the last known data point during that time.


IF the numbers did drop as much as they say they did, I doubt it was all in March 07. In any case it casts a lot of doubt on the accuracy of their estimates of current subscribers. According to their FAQ section I could send them an email claiming to be an anonymous stock holder of Turbine and tell them DDO now has...oh...let's say 43k subscribers, and that's enough for them to publish that as official data.
I think you misunderstand. The author is not using anonymous sources to HIM. He knows who they are. They are anonymous to US. He can't tell you who they are, because that would violate the condition under which he recieved the data.

[Riddikulus]

We get plenty of content, and frequently too.
True.

But the biggest issue is that they started with half the content they should have had at launch and have been playing catch-up ever since.

IMO until I can take an alt and level up to cap with largely different content than I leveled up my main with there is not enough content. They fail that measure by a mile... every alt I roll up must repeat all the same content.

[Prinstoni]

Seems people are missing the point of why I posted those numbers. According to that site DDO had a constant base of 90k subscribers until March 07. Then in the 30 days following the number dropped to 25k. Seems like they're missing something here. Why steady numbers that long, then a drop like that in one month?

According to the FAQ section each of those points on the chart is a number that they have a source for. Meaning their "reliable source" was telling them those numbers did not change at all since May 06, but suddenly changed that drastically but only during the month of March 07. The point is, their source doesnt look very reliable.

IF the numbers did drop as much as they say they did, I doubt it was all in March 07. In any case it casts a lot of doubt on the accuracy of their estimates of current subscribers. According to their FAQ section I could send them an email claiming to be an anonymous stock holder of Turbine and tell them DDO now has...oh...let's say 43k subscribers, and that's enough for them to publish that as official data.

This is why we are losing the playerbase in my opinion.

I have been playing since Feb/March of 2006, and I first logged into the forums to complain about the enhancement system nerf of mod 3 in Sep/Nov.

1) Constant nerfs to our Beloved characters
2) Constant Nerfs to quests
3) no new high level content
4) Problems with game interface, bugs, etc
5) huge downtime issues

Beta to Mod 2 awesome, new raids, new characters, etc... a little buggie but devs were pumping out content. Limited down time , and new content every month.

Mod 3 nerf our characters (lost some players there)

Mod 4 quests were great, nothing but nerfs to quests and characters (lost a huge amount of players)

***long delays fixing bug issues with mod 4 and character nerfs

Mod 5 more proposed nerfs to characters and devs are not listening to us

Where does that put us DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! hehe. lol

[Riddikulus]

And Riddikulus, that 35K number for AC2 gets thrown around an awful lot. It's just a number spat out during an interview at a time when AC2 was brand new and expectations were high, and I give it very little credence. The populatin of AC2 fell below 35K in October of 2003, yet the game continued on (with updates) long after that (2 years). They didn't announce a shutdown until it had reached 14K (and had been there for a while).

On the other hand, AC1 has been at or below 10K for the last year, and no word on a shutdown for that one, which I find interesting. Why shut down AC2 which had a higher population at the time than AC1 does now?

Probably something to do with payment of the development costs, which I'm sure AC1 did long ago, and thus it no longer needs such a large population to pay for the live team, whereas AC2 never did recoup it's development costs.
I'm sure the AC1/AC2 thing is a matter of amortized costs. Like you said once its been live long enough the initial dev costs have been recouped so it's cost structure goes down.

And I believe he was quite serious about that 35,000 number. AC2 stayed below 35,000 for quite some time, so he finally threw in the towel and shut it down.

Even if DDO is at 25,000 now (which I don't believe, but that's beside the point), I think he will stick with it for another year or so, then abruptly announce a shutdown here as well if numbers do not improve.

I grant that Turbine sticks with it and trys to make it work first, but if we are really at 25,000 there certainly is cause to worry about the future.

[Raath]

Seems people are missing the point of why I posted those numbers. According to that site DDO had a constant base of 90k subscribers until March 07. Then in the 30 days following the number dropped to 25k. Seems like they're missing something here. Why steady numbers that long, then a drop like that in one month?

According to the FAQ section each of those points on the chart is a number that they have a source for. Meaning their "reliable source" was telling them those numbers did not change at all since May 06, but suddenly changed that drastically but only during the month of March 07. The point is, their source doesnt look very reliable.

IF the numbers did drop as much as they say they did, I doubt it was all in March 07. In any case it casts a lot of doubt on the accuracy of their estimates of current subscribers. According to their FAQ section I could send them an email claiming to be an anonymous stock holder of Turbine and tell them DDO now has...oh...let's say 43k subscribers, and that's enough for them to publish that as official data.

The guy worked at Codemasters. He started and was head of their online gaming division. He has DDO (and LOTRO) listed in his resume. He is the "reliable source", with regards to DDO. The 90K he has listed there until March 07 could have been the time he worked there (and shortly after) and was under contract not to say the true numbers.

When he first took that site over, the numbers showed a more steady decline. But since then it was changed to the current 90k until 'March '07, which leads me to believe that he wasnt supose to release those numbers yet.

[Ghoste]

Regarding Pristoni's post:

That's the nature of the beast Turbine created. DDO has way more quest content than any other MMO I have ever seen. Other MMOs compensate by having a quest generating system where you go in with generic objectives and enemies are randomly generated in randomly generated maps (if the quest even has its own instance to begin with). The result: clone quests with weak story lines. They also compensate with time sinks, something I am glad Turbine has avoided with DDO.

Let's compare that to the MMO with the biggest player base: (according to the zaney numbers at mmogdata) WoW. How many instances do they have that were directly designed by the devs? 27 instanced quests. And what are the mission objectives? Kill everything and run from one end to the other. No doors to open, no traps, no puzzles, nothing to make them terribly different from the pile of clone quests players already deal with except that these ones are instanced and you dont have to compete with hundreds of other players to meet the quest objectives. About as much time put into all 27 of those quests as DDO devs put into a single quest.

Maybe that's their downfall. Maybe they're trying to give us too much. Maybe some folks would be satisfied to see a flood of garbage clone quests. I'd rather wait patiently for quality stuff to come out than just demand high quantity of fluff for our high level characters.

I think you misunderstand. The author is not using anonymous sources to HIM. He knows who they are. They are anonymous to US. He can't tell you who they are, because that would violate the condition under which he recieved the data.No I got that. I was saying it doesnt sound like he does a lot to verify the reliability of those sources. I was expressing my doubts that he may have some faulty sources who are either just speculating, or even flat out lying to him. When someone tells him they're an employee or stockholder, or whatever for the company in question, he just takes their word for it, and just accepts that their information is accurate, when it actually may not be.

In any case,my main point with the numbers is that they look wonky. Not that the beginning numbers look off, or the end numbers, but there is obviously a period where he wasnt getting data, yet kept posting numbers as if they were accurate. Just looks bad is all.

The guy worked at Codemasters. He started and was head of their online gaming division. He has DDO (and LOTRO) listed in his resume. He is the "reliable source". The 90K he has listed there until March 07 could have been the time he worked there (and shortly after) and was under contract not to say.
Is that the site manager for mmogdata? Either way, if you search the forums he admits he did not get the data first hand, but that it is second hand information. So his own resume means nothing in regards tot he reliability of those numbers. In that same thread, he aknowledges that most of the numbers he gets are made up.

I'm not saying I know his numbers are wrong, I'm just asking people to have a healthy ammount of skepticism.

[Raath]

Yes.

#11. Who are you?

http://mmogdata.voig.com/Information/FAQ.HTML



Resume:

http://psfei.co.uk/mmoexperience.aspx

[Ghoste]

Thank you Raath for those links. So for DDO we can probably be fairly certain that he does in fact have reliable sources. The numbers posted seem to indicate that he was only getting that info on an intermitant basis.

[Drider]

Game no longer being sold at Best Buy (went there yesterday)--->Declineing Population--->Servermerge---->Turbine no longer interested in marketing and developing said game--->Just milikng the faithfull for a few extra months before they close it OR They're planning on an expansion to include marketing blitz.


LOL.. nice try

[Raath]

Thank you Raath for those links. So for DDO we can probably be fairly certain that he does in fact have reliable sources. The numbers posted seem to indicate that he was only getting that info on an intermitant basis.

No problem. Alot of folks miss that.

[Ron]

No I got that. I was saying it doesnt sound like he does a lot to verify the reliability of those sources. I was expressing my doubts that he may have some faulty sources who are either just speculating, or even flat out lying to him. When someone tells him they're an employee or stockholder, or whatever for the company in question, he just takes their word for it, and just accepts that their information is accurate, when it actually may not be.
Where do you get that idea from?

He rates the reliability of the data he has (the DDO data had recieved a B rating last I looked). I presume this is based on his knowledge of where the data is coming from and how reliable the people giving the data are (and perhaps the amount of agreement between multiple data reports?)

Dang it, didn't I say I wasn't going to get into another discussion on mmogchart/mmogdata reliability!! You are evil, Ghoste, drat you! :D


In any case,my main point with the numbers is that they look wonky. Not that the beginning numbers look off, or the end numbers, but there is obviously a period where he wasnt getting data, yet kept posting numbers as if they were accurate. Just looks bad is all.
Totally agree. The guy who did mmogchart did not do that, he only posted the values he had. This guy likes to have a number for each month, and if he doesn't have one, then he uses the last value he did have. I don't agree with that decision, but that's what he does.


Is that the site manager for mmogdata?

It's the guy who collects the data and put together the site, if that's what you mean.


Thank you Raath for those links. So for DDO we can probably be fairly certain that he does in fact have reliable sources. The numbers posted seem to indicate that he was only getting that info on an intermitant basis.
Keep in mind, he only took over the project (from mmogchart.com) a short while ago. Prior to that, data probably WAS intermiant, heh.

[Ghoste]

You are evil, Ghoste, drat you! :D
Check out my thread in guild matchup for the wf caster guild. Got some great MotD's in there.

[Raath]

Here he talks about the DDO numbers specificlly:

http://www.voig.com/Forums.html?aTopicPath=voig\ContentList\GlobalCont entList\ForumList\General\MMOGData\DiscussionTopic 1