Are things dead for a reason right now?

[Qaliya]

Is it just people getting back to work and school? I was away for a couple of weeks and trying to get back into playing a bit, but every evening when I log in the LFM panel is deadsville.

[akash]

If you want to run a quest/raid and see no LFM of it, please update your own LFM. That works 100%.

[BitkaCK2]

Is it just people getting back to work and school? I was away for a couple of weeks and trying to get back into playing a bit, but every evening when I log in the LFM panel is deadsville.

GW2 would be my guess.

bitkaCK2

[DarkForte]

If you want to run a quest/raid and see no LFM of it, please update your own LFM. That works 100%.

This (unless your lfm is for titan).

[Qaliya]

GW2 would be my guess.

Thanks. Is it really having that much of an impact? The place is moribund of late.

And yes, I could start my own LFMs, but I don't know many of the higher-level quests all that well and it's been a while since I led a quest. I may try tomorrow, though.

[seebs]

There's often a HUGE drop in vaguely-similar games (say, "fantasy MMOs" for GW2) when a new game comes out. I think about half the people I regularly talk to who play MMOs are playing GW2 at the moment.

[Thaxlsillyia]

just got bored with it. and i get to have fancy coffee a couple more times a month

[voxson5]

I'm guessing combination of factors:

-Things getting more & more broken
-more lag
-new stuff lacking
-seemingly lack of assistance
-seemingly lack of concern
-new shiny stuff elsewhere


The community has put forward comprehensive lists regarding what they want, what works well, what doesn't, what they would like changed (fixed). As well as documenting conditions for bugs, errors, and problems.

It's pretty self explanatory.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Summer is over. The kids are back in school, and in the States the NFL season and college football have started. The new television season starts shortly. The ads pulled in a lot of new players who needed a temporary distraction, and the need for that distraction just greatly abated. The outflow of a good percentage of those new players has begun.

None of this is too surprising, and would not even be an issue if Turbine hadn't driven away so many committed, long term players with ill considered changes to game mechanics. Now, we enter the phase of DDO where it tries to exist without the missing long term players and their supposed replacements. It could get a little dicey. Fanbois, run for cover!

[Machination]

This is my take: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=14

Is it just people getting back to work and school? I was away for a couple of weeks and trying to get back into playing a bit, but every evening when I log in the LFM panel is deadsville.

[LionHearty]

GW2,the horrendus lag-fest and raiding being mostly pointless at the moment.

[atlantiandreams]

I would have to agree. I am on Orien and the lfm panel seems to be very small to non existant during the week and just average on the weekend. just want to finish this life and say owata!!

[djl]

GW2,the horrendus lag-fest and raiding being mostly pointless at the moment.

This.

They made a HUGE portion of the game irrelevant with the U14 content, which is vastly easier to obtain than the old Epic and Raid gear. As a result, people are running far fewer Eberron epics and raids.

Add in how bugs keep piling up and piling up, and many veterans are reaching their limit of what they'll tolerate. For over a month now, people have been clamoring about a significant glitch that causes you to lose all of your Epic Destiny exp when you reincarnate. For some people, that ranges from between tens of millions to thirty or forty million exp. Turbine has not addressed the issue at all, nor have they tried to make it right for anyone who was a victim of this bug.


I don't want to say doom, but it is looking gloomy at the current point in time. TRing is hard because the vets who were good at it moved on to Epic Destinies since grinding out Fate Points is a better time-investment for character growth than TRing, and at high levels people run the new stuff and then quickly get bored with it because aside from the Caught in the Web stuff there really isn't much of a grind for good high-level gear anymore.

And until Turbine changes their attitudes and starts devoting the proper amount of time to testing their updates instead of rushing them out as quickly as they can and actually tries to provide passable customer support to people who lost FORTY ****ING MILLION experience (or even more than that), more people will continue to trickle out whilst not many are coming in to replace them.



FWIW, Q, since you only have that specific character it might be worth looking into transferring to Khyber. Not sure how involved you are in Sarlona still, but from everything I've heard Khyber is by far the most active server for better and worse. The people on Sarlona are great people, and there is far more "drama" on Khyber so it's a pro and con thing. And there's also the likelihood that Khyber has also suffered at least a marginal decrease in activity as well, so it might not be much of a difference at this point.

[Willibold]

Dooooom.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

We have heard it all before and we are all still here. There is more content,not huge numbers of new players,therefore people are spread more thinly. That and streak freaks are still limiting the number of pugs that are going around. Its life in ddo. maybe if Turbine advertised in the UK there would be more players? radical idea I know.

[Dexxaan]

...snip.... I don't want to say doom, but it is looking gloomy at the current point in time. TRing is hard because the vets who were good at it moved on to Epic Destinies since grinding out Fate Points is a better time-investment for character growth than TRing, and at high levels people run the new stuff and then quickly get bored with it because aside from the Caught in the Web stuff there really isn't much of a grind for good high-level gear anymore.

And until Turbine changes their attitudes and starts devoting the proper amount of time to testing their updates instead of rushing them out as quickly as they can and actually tries to provide passable customer support to people who lost FORTY ****ING MILLION experience (or even more than that), more people will continue to trickle out whilst not many are coming in to replace them.

/QFT

IMO:

* GW? - please... DDO has had a Pendulum_population that sways out (*and back in VERY shortly after) a new cool game comes out. I'd say the only game that has managed to hold back a few extra players is Star Wars and even it is pushing old players I know back to DDO.

* Lag? Some, but not like in the age of abandonment when Shroud was all there was and THAT WAS LAG.

* Raiding being pointless? Lets see, I have 13 active toons, (3 are L25, 3 more 23-24, and the rest are L22) and no less than 10 of them definitely need to run and loot the latest raid. So either a) You cannot figure out the benefits of some of the items. b) You do not know how to run the raid in 20-25 minutes and therefore you probably run with people complaining about Mana Pots and so it is easier to complain and ask the Devs to make it easier for you (instead of learning to run it) c) You care not for performance of your toon and therefore the loot and Raid in general does not appeal to you and its easier to jump on the complaint wagon and see what is obtained from it.

Very few classes / builds have "no use for the Raid Loot".



* Summer is over with, people are settling back into their lives and every year it has been the same thing.....

Now should Turbine take all this for granted? No way. But lets be a bit more objective and recall how things have gone over the last few years.

Many people will leave the game regardless of how good or awful the content, service or lag is..... that is unavoidable, but if you cannot find an LFM of your liking, start your own and use the menu that allows you to state you do not wish to lead it, and ask people as they join if they know the new quest, etc..... i.e. communicate.


.

[Qaliya]

Thanks for all the thoughts. Appreciate the various perspectives.

I hope Turbine is paying attention and will focus its priorities where they matter. I'm not going to go all "doom" on the game myself, but the points beind made strike me as valid. Lately I find myself having a bit less time to play, so maybe others do as well.

Hopefully the slowdown won't reach a critical mass where the game enters a death-spiral, but I do find myself some nights logging in, seeing the server dead, and logging out. And I'd imagine others do the same. It's pretty dangerous for this to happen in a game so party-based.

It's unfortunate that they decided to not bring back Crystal Cove this month, because that might have helped at least get more people online at the same time.

[PNellesen]

Thanks. Is it really having that much of an impact? The place is moribund of late.

Pretty much all the really active players in my guild on Orien have stopped playing DDO and have moved over to GW2, and so far have shown no indication that they're in any hurry to come back.

[Qaliya]

Unfortunate. Hopefully this isn't the beginning of the end.

Personally, I've no interest in starting over in a new game, both because I don't want to deal with the learning curve, and specifically because I don't want something new and shiny to act as a major distraction.

[GermanicusMaximus]

FWIW, Q, since you only have that specific character it might be worth looking into transferring to Khyber. Not sure how involved you are in Sarlona still, but from everything I've heard Khyber is by far the most active server for better and worse.

Hopefully the slowdown won't reach a critical mass where the game enters a death-spiral, but I do find myself some nights logging in, seeing the server dead, and logging out. And I'd imagine others do the same. It's pretty dangerous for this to happen in a game so party-based.

Transfers from lower population servers to higher population servers is likely to be a major trend for the rest of the year. It has already started, and is likely to accelerate. It has the effect of artificially boosting the population of the larger servers, which likely is why some people playing on those servers seem to be unaware of the overall declining player base of the game.

The net effect of players leaving the game or transferring to higher population servers has already started what is essentially a death spiral on the lower population servers.

At this point, the average player experience could be enhanced by doing some server mergers. However, you are unlikely to see that in the near term because

1) Turbine does not want the negative publicity associated with that move.

2) Turbine profits from charging players to change servers.

The unfortunate side effect of this decision is that some players will simply opt not to pay to transfer, and will eventually leave the game rather than attempt to play on a deserted server. Driving away even more players is the last thing Turbine should be doing at this point (if Turbine actually was interested in the long term future of this game.)

Of course, the lower population servers are not an endless source of replacement players for the higher population servers. Eventually, those servers will feel the bite of a declining player population as well. By the time they do, Turbine will likely be making some announcements that will get the attention of even the most die hard fanboi.

[Sirgleno]

And of course the servers are currently down, doesn't help much. Was resisting the urge to consider other games since I have so much time invested in DDO, although with 30 min to kill, and no ability to log in...