Wow. You think DDO had competion before. Now its going to make you wonder.

[~Taeb]

Ok. I know i've talked about Rift before in a few of my responses but Rift i think is really going to pull ahead of the market. They are going to be completely f2p. I mean EVERY dungeon every raid every area all free. there is nothing hiding them from anything. This letter shows what they're going to do. they even mention not wanting to be pay to win constant weekly updates.

http://www.riftgame.com/en/promo/freetoplay.php?utm_campaign=f2p_announce_may13&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email&utm_content=f2p_faq_text#faq

http://community.riftgame.com/2013/05/14/introducing-rift-free-to-play/?utm_campaign=f2p_announce_may13&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email&utm_content=producers_letter_text


So this isn't a thread to say hey stop DDO, but if a game can truly go this route like Rift is doing it just makes you wonder if ddo can up its game. to me that is a serious change to all mmos. most games have p2p areas or stop at level 20, but to be able to experience all and any part of the game for free. That would make all companies go mmmmm. What are we going to do next? So i'm hoping we will see things to make us happy. With the latest stuff with performance issues, long growing known issue list, the forum issues, lack of release notes on update 18. people are really starting to worry. Some have stopped giving money. Now with Rift announcing something like that you could see some people actually flock to it. They seem to care about their game. We constantly ask for something from Devs and i know they try to do what they can.

Im still a loyal ddo fan, but i can say i probably will be playing a little less knowing these current issues. if they want to get people to come in or back we gotta see some improvement. Im not saying ddo should become f2p like rift but i really want to see them up their game and listen to us. I know a lot of us have felt they just havent and we just dont mean much. So Turbine can you step it up?

[~Lyle]

Rift is nothing more than a WoW clone with poor graphics, bland story, and unoriginal combat engine.

Personally I'm waiting for FFXIV 2.0 to be released, seeing how I bought the original, the remake is free. The game is very hardcore and unforgiving so most players will have to make due with DDO or WoW/Rift, ect.

[ForumAccess]

Rift is nothing more than a WoW clone with poor graphics, bland story, and unoriginal combat engine.
This. RIFT is almost a direct WoW clone, and if that is what people wanted they would be playing WoW, or one of the very similar F2P games that already exist. Not DDO.

I am not saying that DDO is some kind of super-untouchable mega-awesome game or anything. Just that it caters to a rather niche audience, and as such it will take a game that also caters to these niche type players to really draw a significant number of people away.

[~droid_327]

Eh...anytime a company changes their business model, there's a reason for it. LOTRO went from sub to F2P/cash shop model, and it did well. DDO is on a similar model, except its just a little harder/grindier to stay pure F2P than in LOTRO. I'm kinda skeptical that you can continue to develop an MMO with no cash expansions, and nothing for sale other than convenience.

As a player, I'd love it if Turbine unlocked all content, races and classes for everyone and just sold Otto's Boxes and Hearts of Wood, etc...but A) they have to pay licensing fees for the IP that Rift doesnt, it always costs more to have a game based on an existing franchise, and B) going F2P is often a sign of desperation rather than magnanimity...so wait and see, no point in investing time and effort into a character that'll just get sunset in 9 months, right?

[~Taeb]

Eh...anytime a company changes their business model, there's a reason for it. LOTRO went from sub to F2P/cash shop model, and it did well. DDO is on a similar model, except its just a little harder/grindier to stay pure F2P than in LOTRO. I'm kinda skeptical that you can continue to develop an MMO with no cash expansions, and nothing for sale other than convenience.

As a player, I'd love it if Turbine unlocked all content, races and classes for everyone and just sold Otto's Boxes and Hearts of Wood, etc...but A) they have to pay licensing fees for the IP that Rift doesnt, it always costs more to have a game based on an existing franchise, and B) going F2P is often a sign of desperation rather than magnanimity...so wait and see, no point in investing time and effort into a character that'll just get sunset in 9 months, right?

well that isnt really true though. Reason why a lot of people went f2p was to follow ddo's example of letting people into the game to try it. As for the wow clone sure its similar but i wouldnt see the graphics are bad. I think wow's graphics are too comical for its style. of course that is just me. my only thing was its the first that i know of to go completely free. wow didnt nor lotro. you still have to pay for storm legion it seems. So i dunno know. Reason i brought this up was they talk to their customers. They get involved. Their gms are pretty decent. they get weekly updates to their games. new content quite often and fixing bugs. So this is where i was wondering what ddo will do in the upcoming months. i didnt say rift would kill ddo just with it doing this people might give it a shot.

[Deadlock]

Why is it that people keep coming up with the line that DDO is a niche game?

What is it that makes you think it caters to a niche audience? Because it's a fantasy genre? Because it's based on the D&D ruleset? Because it's got a level of complexity and a learning curve?

The only thing that makes it appear niche is the sometimes apparently low population on the servers. And I blame that on lacklustre and unimaginative marketing.

I don't buy the "too complicated" argument - we've been asking for years for more detail on a completely revamped character sheet and that's still one of the things that I would like to see more than new content. Some of the UI mechanics we have in the game show their age and are overdue a touch up. A lot of good work has been done on things like the barter box, and I'll even include the new enhancement UI as being a step in the right direction (albeit with a lot of work done on rethinking some of the actual enhancement options and AP cost calculations). But the cannith crafting UI and the character sheet need some love.

If you think that complexity makes a game less attractive, then all I can do is point you toward Eve Online. It's without question the most complex MMO that I've ever played, and the launcher right now is telling me that there are 43,257 people playing on a single shard. Does that sound like complexity has made the game unappealing? Can you imagine a lag-free DDO with everyone on the same server and a population that drops to 25,000 during the quiet hours?

Give us more complexity, or at the very least, use the character sheet to make crystal clear the numbers that we already have that actually matter .... sneak damage ... spell critical multiplier .... etc etc etc. Give us the numbers clearly presented and differentiate the game from the WoW-wannabes.

[~HerpDerp]

Why is it that people keep coming up with the line that DDO is a niche game?

What is it that makes you think it caters to a niche audience? Because it's based on the D&D ruleset?

Yes. And D&D setting. Sad but true, but that's niche.

[Archangel_666]

Aion has done something similar.

http://truly-free.aiononline.com/truly-free/

That's their stance on F2P. In a nutshell, NCSoft have taken the view that they'd rather have a ton of people that pay nothing but make the Servers more lively and populated. The game is so fun that I've actually been debating spending money on it even though I don't have to. They've set absolutely no restrictions on it, you can reach the cap same as anyone else, run any content, same as anyone else, communicate the same as anyone else, post as many items on the AH as anyone else etc.

Been trying it out with a friend and I must admit to having tons of fun so far.

It's a bit grindy at times and I won't for a second try to claim that builds are as complex as they can be in DDO and there's a very strong PvP influence which isn't really my cup of tea, but...

You can FLY!

Here's a bit of what the link says btw.



We understand that an active player population contributes to the fun factor for the entire player population, so we want everyone to experience the game as it was intended.
If you like the game, we'd appreciate a purchase from our store (game developers need to eat too!). If you don't like the game, can't pay, or don't want to pay—no worries, it's on us!

[~Lorien_]

Hi Welcome to DDO. People have been saying what you just said since 2006.

[TheNameIwasntB4]

Rift or Aion.

I like the way Aion presented it over Rift. Rift still has a paywall because if you want some stuff you gotta pay. (F2P, Patron, Storm Legion)

Aion says, it is on us. If you like it, give us money. I like that approach, eventually the money will run out though. (Hello City of Heroes.)

The only other questions I have are they laggy and how buggy are they. But I can read up on that.

[Archangel_666]

Rift or Aion.

I like the way Aion presented it over Rift. Rift still has a paywall because if you want some stuff you gotta pay. (F2P, Patron, Storm Legion)

Aion says, it is on us. If you like it, give us money. I like that approach, eventually the money will run out though. (Hello City of Heroes.)

The only other questions I have are they laggy and how buggy are they. But I can read up on that.

So far, after about a week of playing I've not stumbled across any bugs. I'm sure they probably exist, but I've not stumbled across any.

With regards Lag. I've had two instances where for about ten minutes I felt lagged slightly. I'd use an ability/spell/whatever and it'd take a second or two to register, but I believe that was due something on my end. I mentioned it to my duo-partner and she wasn't experiencing it at all. Other than that it's amazingly lag free.

One word of caution for you. If you give it a try, make sure you use the NCSoft version, and not the European Gameforge one. The Official version has no restrictions whatsoever, but the European version has restrictions imposed by Gameforge.

I still play DDO occasionally, though no-where near as much as I used to, but that could be due to things like the direction that DDO is going and possibly just me being a bit burnt out.

My approach to Aion was, "Well, it's free and if it turns out that it's not for me, then all it cost me was a bit of disk space".

[Chai]

Pretty much a WOW clone with a RIFT skin. The game had a good launch and a good first year, then went south. They have already crossed the line of a few taboo monetization techniques which are a turn off for a sizable portion of the MMO community - never sell power directly in the store.

[Teh_Troll]

I don't consider any of the WOW clones to be competition for DDO. WOW is for WOWtards and I don't want those people here anyway, and why would you clone a game where people could just stay at WOW? You need to offer them something different, DDO is different.

never played another MMO, never want to. DDO got me hooked because (at low levels at least) it's very much like the D&D I remember playing.

Nice = not developed for WOWtards.

Neverwinter is the only real competition. yeah, the gameplay is garbage and there are ZERO customization options, but that Foundry is their ace in the hole. DDO with a Foundry, which I know is all but impossible, would be unbeatable.

[Gara]

DDO is lucky that is has had very little competition for what it does well. Rift is more for people who want more WoW.

[jalont]

Why is it that people keep coming up with the line that DDO is a niche game?

What is it that makes you think it caters to a niche audience? Because it's a fantasy genre? Because it's based on the D&D ruleset? Because it's got a level of complexity and a learning curve?

The only thing that makes it appear niche is the sometimes apparently low population on the servers. And I blame that on lacklustre and unimaginative marketing.

I don't buy the "too complicated" argument - we've been asking for years for more detail on a completely revamped character sheet and that's still one of the things that I would like to see more than new content. Some of the UI mechanics we have in the game show their age and are overdue a touch up. A lot of good work has been done on things like the barter box, and I'll even include the new enhancement UI as being a step in the right direction (albeit with a lot of work done on rethinking some of the actual enhancement options and AP cost calculations). But the cannith crafting UI and the character sheet need some love.

If you think that complexity makes a game less attractive, then all I can do is point you toward Eve Online. It's without question the most complex MMO that I've ever played, and the launcher right now is telling me that there are 43,257 people playing on a single shard. Does that sound like complexity has made the game unappealing? Can you imagine a lag-free DDO with everyone on the same server and a population that drops to 25,000 during the quiet hours?

Give us more complexity, or at the very least, use the character sheet to make crystal clear the numbers that we already have that actually matter .... sneak damage ... spell critical multiplier .... etc etc etc. Give us the numbers clearly presented and differentiate the game from the WoW-wannabes.


Really? LOL, as an avid EVE player for years, that's not 43,257 online on a single shard. That's online total. EVE has about 450k active users, most likely less than DDO. Further, the actual gameplay in EVE is horrible. That isn't what keeps people around. It's the community, which DDO can never replicate, first, because DDO has no user-generated content, and two, quite honestly, DDO's community is just utterly horrible.

[TrinityTurtle]

I will never play that game, they lifted almost their entire world from the Palladium tabletop rpg RIFTS without permission or licensing. So they'll never get my time or any cash, period.

[dredre9987]

I will never play that game, they lifted almost their entire world from the Palladium tabletop rpg RIFTS without permission or licensing. So they'll never get my time or any cash, period.

^^This

[Deadlock]

Really? LOL, as an avid EVE player for years, that's not 43,257 online on a single shard. That's online total. EVE has about 450k active users, most likely less than DDO. Further, the actual gameplay in EVE is horrible. That isn't what keeps people around. It's the community, which DDO can never replicate, first, because DDO has no user-generated content, and two, quite honestly, DDO's community is just utterly horrible.

You don't think it's on a single shard?

Try: http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/12/07/eve-online-sets-new-peak-concurrent-user-record/

or http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/729907/dust-514-goes-live-with-eve-online-this-week/

Lots of other more recent articles if you care to take a look :)

I saw a clip from the closing presentation from their 2013 fanfest that mentioned they had over 63k concurrent online players as part of the load testing for the Dust 514, and their aim for this year once Dust is live is to have over 100k .... all on a single shard :)

We're not comparing apples with apples, and I'm not saying EVE is the most awesome game in the world ever, simply mentioning what other companies have achieved without crippling lag.

Compare that with DDO stats and draw your own conclusions: http://ddoracle.com/Traffic.html

[Arnhelm]

Tried Rift when it first came out. Wasn't impressed. Won't be going back.

To anyone who does go, I hope you enjoy it and have mucho fun!

[DynaTheCat]

Rift is nothing more than a WoW clone with poor graphics, bland story, and unoriginal combat engine.


LOL exactly this like everyone else says. DDO is its own market because of it's really customizable gameplay / system.

I have played a lotta wow clones.... and never stuck with them for more than 1-2 weeks.

I'm a fish on a hook for ddo's gameplay & style.

[IronClan]

Compare that with DDO stats and draw your own conclusions: http://ddoracle.com/Traffic.html

What are you supposed to conclude based on logins per day? at roughly 100,000 logins per day across all servers it's not outside of the realm of possibility that there could 40-ish thousand "concurrant" at some point during peak hours, considering most logins are happening during the same peak hours on all servers besides Wayfinder.

Yes DDO is a niche game, it's niche because it is a combination of all the harder less casual and more complex things that you can put in a game. FPS controls... the fact that you're at a serious disadvantage if you don't side step fireballs (etc.) and use mouselook. Massive hot bar sprawl, massive numbers of single actions that require their own hot bar icon and to use efficiently you'll need to make those into keyboard shortcuts for the most often used. Then there's character customization that is deeper even than the PnP game, which itself requires reading a rather thick players handbook. There's a million ways things stack or interact and good luck if you're not a D&D person telling what's what... in fact good luck even if you are a PnP vet because DDO does a rather mediocre job of translating PnP rules and has taken many liberties on top of that. I say mediocre because I compare all D&D games to the high water mark NWN.

EVE has a different demographic than "fantasy RPG's" do. You've got the Space sim crowd, the Star Trek crowd, the Babylon 5 crowd... You've got complexity there too but this doesn't make the games alike. There's also a hell of a lot more competition in the virtual gandolf and Conan market than the Virtual Picard and Kirk market. It's a rare gamer that likes all genre's I am one, so I think I have a good perspective, but I suspect most gamers like 2 or 3 genre's and that's it.

In any case it's fair to call both a niche IMO, who cares which one has more players. DDO's marketing is terrible and it's niche has far more competition for players.

[arkonas]

oh i never said rift was better or anything like that. To me that is a great marketing move on their part. i enjoy rift and ddo. both are quite fun. Only reason why i brought it up is because lately there has been a lot of disgruntled ddo players. a lot of things have made them very unhappy and with no word on a lot of stuff would you really support a game? So when i saw rift was going completely f2p it made me wonder if some player might flock to it. i've made a lot of points that whether you like it or not they listen, respond, gms actually help, and get weekly fixes. To me that is pretty good. Whether you think its a wow clone or not. Those type of services are nice to a customer.

So that is why i asked will ddo actually step it up to keep those customers who have been feeling let down? will it up its game to see another game only 2 years old make a huge move. im just saying think about it. As for aion i loved the game but the main city was a huge lag fest. so only reason i quit. Not to mention its ncsoft. knowing them they will kill it after 6 years. sorry city of heroes.

[oweieie]

What are you supposed to conclude based on logins per day? at roughly 100,000 logins per day across all servers it's not outside of the realm of possibility that there could 40-ish thousand "concurrant" at some point during peak hours, considering most logins are happening during the same peak hours on all servers besides Wayfinder.

Oh, so that is why they can't be bothered to fix their memory leak crash bug, they want to keep their logins per day metric up.

You can count the number of concurrent players on DDO. It is nowhere close to 40k. It is more like 6k across all servers at peak.

[Teh_Troll]

You can count the number of concurrent players on DDO. It is nowhere close to 40k. It is more like 6k across all servers at peak.


Dude . . . how can they afford to keep the lights in? The P2Win from Otto's boxes only goes so far.

[Chai]

Oh, so that is why they can't be bothered to fix their memory leak crash bug, they want to keep their logins per day metric up.

You can count the number of concurrent players on DDO. It is nowhere close to 40k. It is more like 6k across all servers at peak.

There are a couple charts now that put DDO near 100k players.

Peak isnt one time frame. For instance on Sarlona there is a peak Chinese time at ~5-6am CST or so even on weekdays.

As far as DDO having competition, some of the habits these other games are forming make DDO look like a saint, even with its increasingly shameless P2W.

[Aashrym]

oh i never said rift was better or anything like that. To me that is a great marketing move on their part. i enjoy rift and ddo. both are quite fun. Only reason why i brought it up is because lately there has been a lot of disgruntled ddo players. a lot of things have made them very unhappy and with no word on a lot of stuff would you really support a game? So when i saw rift was going completely f2p it made me wonder if some player might flock to it. i've made a lot of points that whether you like it or not they listen, respond, gms actually help, and get weekly fixes. To me that is pretty good. Whether you think its a wow clone or not. Those type of services are nice to a customer.

So that is why i asked will ddo actually step it up to keep those customers who have been feeling let down? will it up its game to see another game only 2 years old make a huge move. im just saying think about it. As for aion i loved the game but the main city was a huge lag fest. so only reason i quit. Not to mention its ncsoft. knowing them they will kill it after 6 years. sorry city of heroes.

Everyone needs to pay the bills with something. I'm happy with my subscription service and I think content purchasing is a good option. Other methods of paying the bill are not necessarily better in my experience.

[seebs]

I will never play that game, they lifted almost their entire world from the Palladium tabletop rpg RIFTS without permission or licensing. So they'll never get my time or any cash, period.

Uh.

No.

Seriously, have you played either of those? I've played both, and they are totally unrelated. Seriously, there are no similarities at all except for the first four letters of the name, which appear to be a total coincidence. Palladium filed the obligatory frivolous lawsuit to keep their trademark paperwork looking good, but there is nothing similar in the world or settings.

I've played Rift a lot, and overall I quite like the game. I know a lot of people think it's a WoW clone, but really, it's more a clone of "everything we think looked cool or fun that we found in any MMO", and it works really well as a game. I am a big fan of the game. Community's sorta busted right now, in a few ways, but I have high hopes that they will one day fix that.

Basically, like any EQ-heritage MMO, it'll support people who just want to play a WoW-like game, and they'll have about the experience they expect. If you want to play it differently, there are a ton of ways you can do so that will provide a radically different experience from anything WoW has on offer.

[GoMeansGreen]

well, look what happened to CoH

they went f2p but didn't capitalize

ddo is almost entirely p2w now but they aren't capitalizing, they are just catering to their 'niche' market

they will need to do something radical to stay afloat

i suggest coming up with an alternative to TR (not epic) that really piques people's interest, like enabling a 4 and 5 way split multiclass, extending class levels beyond 20, and stuff like that

i would like to play a character that can do it all, a 9-way or 11-way character, whatever, lol;;; level 120 - 10 levels in each class or 20 or 30, in other words, more flexibility

it doesn't have to be 100% true to paper d&d rules, and it obviously isn't ;; paper and computer are two completely different media

do SOMEthing DIFFerent
ty


[if you REAlly want to do something different, figure out an alternative to 'levels']

[seebs]

well, look what happened to CoH

they went f2p but didn't capitalize

Actually, they did. They were making a ton of money, too. NCSoft shut them down for political reasons, not economic reasons.


[if you REAlly want to do something different, figure out an alternative to 'levels']

TSW.

[Deadlock]

What are you supposed to conclude based on logins per day? at roughly 100,000 logins per day across all servers it's not outside of the realm of possibility that there could 40-ish thousand "concurrant" at some point during peak hours, considering most logins are happening during the same peak hours on all servers besides Wayfinder.

Look again at http://ddoracle.com/Traffic.html and in particular at the daily and weekly details.

These don't show the number of logins, they show the number of concurrent players - basically like running a Who query from 1 to 25 and counting the number of bodies. And yes, Anonymous people might not show on this, but let's not pretend that's a significant distortion to the statistics - or for all we know the API doesn't mask them and they're actually included. Either way, we can disregard Anonymous.

We could say that we have a range of between 700 and 1000 concurrent players per day per server. Ignoring Wayfinder where the available stats drop dramatically, this is across 7 servers, so between 4,900 and 7,000 player per day concurrently. That's based on a snapshot, so not representative of total players who login per day across different time zones. So we're not trying to compare the total player base. We're comparing the "peak" traffic. So for us, that makes a peak of 7,000 in an ideal world across 7 main servers.

Now I'm not crying doom on this. If that means a peak population for Ghallanda of between 700 and 900 players then that's a player base that we can happily work with.

But to be clear, and allowing for different core technologies, on Ghallanda we have a peak of 900 players on our single shard, while another game has 63,000 on their shard ...... and our lag is worse than theirs. There will of course be a thousand mitigating factors, but what it doesn't mitigate is the scale of the lag problem that we have compared to what is achievable elsewhere.

I don't agree that the D&D rule-set itself is a turn-off as it has been adopted as the basic framework for a hundred other clones that need some sort of basis for character stats, but will gladly accept some empirical evidence from players who have tried DDO for a brief time and been turned off because of the complexity. For me, we should be differentiating ourselves by spelling out the "veteran level " complexity of the game. Sure, give us a simplified character sheet that spells out the basics, but give us an option to have a fully detailed character sheet once we've progressed from the simplified view and want to see more. Spell out the complexity and make that our USP in the fantasy genre .... who says that we can't emulate the success that other complex games have had in the sci fi genre?

[khamastus]

I've played both, and they are totally unrelated. Seriously, there are no similarities at all except for the first four letters of the name, which appear to be a total coincidence. Palladium filed the obligatory frivolous lawsuit to keep their trademark paperwork looking good, but there is nothing similar in the world or settings.

Holy ****, palladium filed a lawsuit? Thats nuts.
I used to be a hardcore rifts (palladium) nerd and I totally agree with you. They both have portal rifts but lore-wise theres nothing similar. Not even the source of the portal rifts.

[GoMeansGreen]

yes, it is the ddo ruleset

specifically TR

and level cap of 20


that is about it, the rest we can understand, or overlook; the elite opener thing is just 'whatever'... if you want to pay, then pay
it feels like a computer game in a cardboard box, or a computer game stuck in the pages of a pnp game

time to loosen the chains, break the mold, etc...

[Beethoven]

Ok. I know i've talked about Rift before in a few of my responses but Rift i think is really going to pull ahead of the market.[/quest]

Rift's largest problem it is very similar and directly competes with an already established and extremely popular MMORPG (WoW), without actually adding a lot you cannot have on WoW. What they are doing may help them draw players from that common market and/or potentially LotRO. Most people that like DDO like it because it is very different from WoW and WoW-like games (such as Rift).

[QUOTE=Deadlock;5001978]We could say that we have a range of between 700 and 1000 concurrent players per day per server. Ignoring Wayfinder where the available stats drop dramatically, this is across 7 servers, so between 4,900 and 7,000 player per day concurrently. That's based on a snapshot, so not representative of total players who login per day across different time zones. So we're not trying to compare the total player base. We're comparing the "peak" traffic. So for us, that makes a peak of 7,000 in an ideal world across 7 main servers.

But to be clear, and allowing for different core technologies, on Ghallanda we have a peak of 900 players on our single shard, while another game has 63,000 on their shard

Couple of things:

DDOOracle is a user generated website with no guarantee of its accuracy and even if accurate no attempts made to polish numbers.
The reports you linked are based from data directly provided by CCP who have every motivation to make the numbers look as good as possible.

Also, correct me if I am wrong but isn't EVE basically a single shard game, using one Shard for China and one for the rest of the world? Shards aren't servers either, but a Shard is a cluster of Servers networked together.

So, you are basically taking a single DDO server, remove all Anonymous users (which, from my experience, is an insignificant proportion of roughly 20% ... 90% of all healers I know tend to by anonymous), remove DDO's smallest server from the equation and compare it with the total number of all North American, South American and European players of EVE - not withstanding the fact that for DDO you rely solely on a neutral third party source for your information and for EVE you basically use CCPs press release as source.

It's not that you are wrong, according to most sources EVE online has more players than DDO, but that does not make your numbers accurate or EVE's playerbase actually larger by as much a margin as you portray it.Not that it really matters by how much EVE is larger since the original statement sparking the discussion was this:

[QUOTE=Deadlock;5001615]
I don't buy the "too complicated" argument - ...

If you think that complexity makes a game less attractive, then all I can do is point you toward Eve Online.

So what's your theory then? Even with your numbers EVE still is has a significantly smaller playerbase than, say, LotR and far less then WoW. According to the most generous sources EVE operates roughly in the neighborhood of 400K players. Wizards101 broke 30 million. So, it's not that Wizards101 is appealing because it is mind-numbly simple but the better game? And not just better but 75! times the quality of EVE?

So, no matter by what margin EVE is larger it still leaves us with very simple games (such as Wizards101 as one extreme) being incredibly popular and more complicated games (such as EVE or DDO) have only a fraction of their playerbase.]

[seebs]

Just speaking as someone who played WoW for several years, and played Rift for several (and still does occasionally): There is a ton of stuff Rift does that WoW doesn't. A lot of that is just basic philosophy of play. WoW treats the players like children. It is bannable to find a way to communicate across factions (except for the real name stuff). Lore-wise, it should have worked, and did during early beta, but then they decided that the solution to harassment and abuse was to prevent communication, not to get rid of the 0.01% of players who were causing trouble. Rift went with "of course you can talk, this is a civil war, you all speak the same language". And sure enough, it has never been a problem...

And yes, Palladium really did have a lawsuit about that, claiming the setting was stolen, but there is no similarity at all in the settings, just the word "rift" used to describe some sort of portal between worlds. The lawsuit got tossed out or dismissed fairly early on, but of course, people heard it and assumed there was a basis other than "trademark law sort of suggests you have to sue anyway".

[GoMeansGreen]

i had to quit again, it is just so silly; i deleted my toons because i didn't know what i was doing the first time and wound up gimped (stats, skills, etc.)
i deleted them the second time because i just didn't like what i had made, silly looks, names, etc. (i had all pure characters though)
this time, i am not deleting, but i am not playing either... why? the grind
why would i want to grind to 20 just to go back to 1? i just don't get it; and then some fool is going to grind 37 times? "cause the feats stack!" wow... reallY? omg!
...
i think you have a very nice game and i enjoyed it very much and was frustrated very much at different times
there are some things that you need to change that you simply can't without making it a completely or nearly very completely different game, like the easy, medium, hard settings, for example; i just don't want to play them on anything but elite with a full party; anything less just doesn't do it for me; having a party of 4 with no hires on elite is kinda fun, though
... similar to wow, the game kinda became nerfed because, like someone mentioned about wizards101, for example, most people like a simpler game; so, rather than invent something new and change you do stuff like 'cranium rats'; hey, i bought cranium rats; best looking pet, imo (also cheapest i think :)
... i said it before... a year or so ago... what you need is 'ddo2' ... unfortunately what we get is 'neverwinter online'
i thought the underdark expansion had a new starting area or i never would have bought it; i thought it was basically, ddo2, but it isn't
... the limitations of the d&d ruleset are holding you back; seriously, if you don't think the game is dying, you must not be able to see yourself in the mirror
...
so, you can do two things; continue nerfing the game with jank like hair dye, or be willing to make some tough changes and grow into the next generation game you could become, not the same old stale game with better ui (which is pretty good, but still flawed - no game clock, for example? even the most primitive cultures had a frakkin sundial, but whatever)
...
so, i'm out; it is just no fun anymore; would need some drastic changes to get me back, and to prevent bleed out entirely
...
whats the consensus on the time remaining till ddo shuts down?
less than 5 years, certainly; oh, you could keep it open, and i would, but it will never be what it was, people-wise
...
at any rate, just wanted to chime in and give you my last word; i won't be posting any more
a short-term option would be to merge all your servers into one
good luck

[GoMeansGreen]

Actually, they did. They were making a ton of money, too. NCSoft shut them down for political reasons, not economic reasons.



TSW.

when i played (after the move to 'f2p') i found that the servers were very underpopulated except for 2, and even on those it was often difficult to find a group to 'sewer sludge' with, where you level your character from 1-20 in the only instance available, 6 man i thinK?
the rest of the time, if you aren't soloing, you are doing 'radio' missions with a random collection of chracters of varying levels, if that is possible, meaning if the server population supports it

so, it is/was pointless to even bother to play on any server but the 2 that have a population, unless you just like to solo, which makes me wonder why you are playing a mmo at all, when there are so many other games to play, lol, and so many other things to do in real life

i seriously doubt they were making a 'ton' of money or they would have kept it open; political reasons? gimme a break
it always comes down to the bottom line, especially for big companies; the bigger they get the more they care about the bottom line and less about the customer; you must be delusional

i suppose you think ddo is making a 'ton' of money, too?

****, i forgot i was done posting, lol
ok, last post

what is TSW? oh, the secret world? lol, what a joke

[Sixclicks]

I think I'll stick with DDO for now. I always seem to return to it within a few months after trying other MMOs. It's the only one that can hold my attention. Other MMOs I have played include:

Runes of Magic - Very, very pay to win. No in-depth character customization. Too much like WoW. Annoying fetch quest leveling. End game is too difficult without paying to win.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - WoW with glow sticks. Good storylines, but still no in-depth character customization. Boring end game.

Diablo III: - Lack of content releases and no in-depth character customization.

Path of Exile - Great at keeping up with content releases and updates. Very good developers that actively respond to forums. Great in-depth character customization. Very hardcore game. Full character sheets with every stat you could want. Interesting item barter only (crafting orbs as general currency) trade system. Many skill gem (attacks, buffs, etc.) combinations due to the ability to link support gems to active gems. However, I lost interest because spamming the same attack you focused on over and over just gets boring with time.

Neverwinter - Good active combat. Active dodging and blocking. User content Foundry was pretty cool. However, the game was too easy. Also, while it had some character customization, it wasn't very in-depth. I didn't feel like I was playing a d&d related game.

For me, DDO's best aspects are its in-depth character customization and planning and its good difficulty level in most cases. Its also has active combat, good endgame, and class roles without forcing players into focusing on just one of the dps, tank, healer trinity. However, there is so much Turbine could do to make the game much better. They need to fix the bugs they seem to just ignore such as in the Epic Destinies. They should have finished all of the prestiges a long time ago. Lag is terrible. The new pay to win stuff is going in the wrong direction, but isn't over-doing it for me yet. Regardless, It's the only game I've returned to many times over after trying other MMOs out, so I think I'll be sticking to it for now. At least until Elder Scrolls Online comes out. Hopefully they don't mess that up.

[Uska]

Yeah but its a horrible game that I wouldn't play if they paid me so who cares what abut it is free