Happy Birthday DDO!

[UurlockYgmeov]

Since the terminology was specifically used, by that I mean second expansion, I think it'll be paid content again. Probably with multiple price-point tiers with a lot of the satellite-goodies like Iconic Heroes thrown in at various levels.

time to get another job and get ready for that collector's edition (which am still very happy with first!)

Thanks for the updates, the teasers, and the hard work! Now go enjoy your battle box before the kobold's repossess it! :P (OOOOOHHHH!!! SHHHIIIIIIIINNNNYYYYYY)

[Gkar]

I guess I can see your frustration.. but what you are reading into a "teaser post" is a bit dramatic...

You get plenty of stuff for your VIP dues. Monthly stipend of TP's, character classes, new content (did you pay for Highroad, druids deep, or the Monster Manual? or how about the new Gianthold content and raid?) seriously, to say with a straight face that you don't get anything for your 10 bucks a month is a joke, and I can barely believe that you were able to type that without a smiley face or a "j/k" tag.

cancel your account, and "take some time" but realize that you get a good deal with VIP, and if you don't see that, then by all means cancel either quite the game or by the individual pack as they are released. Either way the whining is getting old.

Palmate

I didn't say I didn't get anything, but the entire point and sales pitch of VIP was that you wouldn't have to keep buying packs. That core reason to be VIP is what they appear to be trying to eliminate.

GH I would have gotten if I owned GH as a premium, it wasn't a new pack.

The monster manual is pretty trivial.

The new content we did get free we got only if we purchased a pack, so not free.

[mrtweakin]

I am a little worried about a level cap increase so soon but we will see how it plays out. The rest sounds great. I can not wait for the enh pass.

[DanteEnFuego]

You need to read more carefully. A year from now and the lvl1-14 game will no longer exist, except for those feeling nostalgic enough to solo forgotten content.

Your assumptions and flawed logic do not equate to any reading failure on my part. Thank you for your opinion on the effects of the changes, for which we are lacking any meaningful details at this point. I hope that you turn out to be wrong.

/game on...

[FZTopaz]

The new content we did get free we got only if we purchased a pack, so not free.

If you are VIP you don't have to buy anything to play Druid's Deep or The High Road packs....both were free to VIP.

[ka0t1c1sm]

The new content we did get free we got only if we purchased a pack, so not free.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't need the expansion pack to access the Forgotten Realms, just the 3 quest chains and CitW that came with the pack. VIP's would still be able to get to Faerun and the content from updates 15 and 16.

[Gkar]

If you are VIP you don't have to buy anything to play Druid's Deep or The High Road packs....both were free to VIP.

Could you get to them without buying the expansion pack?

[DeadRabbat]

Thanks Glin. Good news and better then previous years of..incorrect news.
Really looking forward to enhancement pass (well, sorta...prestige's, yes) & new expansion sounds cool.
I am..not sure on lvl15 start... like others posted about gear.
Owlbears, awesome.

This should at least stop the doomsayers of "DDO is dieing man!" threads... but instead we replace that with the "Money for Expansions, Forum Grief for Free" groups now.

Thank you peoples at Turbine working hard to make our addictions continue...bugs and all.
Looking forward to it all. Thanks and Happy Birthday DDO.

[samthedagger]

Put me down as not being on the bandwagon for the level cap increase. It is too early. However, I might be convinced if they give us other means of increasing power (aside from gear with higher minimum levels). But beyond expanding the Epic Destinies to three additional levels as well, or at the very least giving us 4 more ED points for each additional character level, those character levels do practically nothing for us. I don't need +1 feat, +1 stat, +3 skills, and +30 hp. That represents a very small fraction of what makes my characters effective.

[Deadlock]

i would like some thought put into reducing the TR grind. The high xp requirement belongs to an era of little content and the need to give people "something to do". With the introduction of a new type of TR on top of the recently added classes there will be enough to keep non-basement dwelling people busy for years. So how about dropping the crazy 4.38 million down to something less painful (and utterly boring) please? I loathe taking my top tier toons out of commission to do that grind.

/not signed

Greater Learning Tomes and 30% pots are more than enough. If you get an XP event on, then it's all gravy. I'm not a fan of the 50% pots, but if people choose to then that's up to them.

Actually lowering the bar would only be to cater for those unwilling to commit the time and effort needed. If you want to get a new level every 20 minutes then why not try Neverwinter? It'll give you that easy-no-effort-reward feeling all day .... for a few weeks anyway until you tire of it and get bored.

And your logic is fundamentally flawed. There's more content than ever, so it's easier than ever to gain levels without being forced to grind the stuff you don't want to.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

I think they need to dump the entire leveling penalty for all quests lvl 20+ in the interest of grouping. ED's are going to have a bigger impact than actual character level, and the system doesn't check ED's.

Back in MOTU beta, the dev's had wanted to implement the system to use ED levels instead of character level. Unfortunately, the nerd rage shot them down.

[FZTopaz]

Could you get to them without buying the expansion pack?

Yes. You don't need the expansion to access FR (you just need to complete the free quest line Spinner of Shadows and the free quest Beyond the Rift.) Then you have access to FR, and if you are VIP, access to the Druid's Deep and High Road packs.

[Zenako]

I think the point was, the "goodness" of the deal of being a subscriber aka VIP keeps getting diluted from the original promises that were touted back when F2P was first brought to the table. VIP would get everything in the game, "forever" for only that monthly fee. Well as we have seen, that implied promise has been altered over the past few years and each alteration takes us yet another step farther away from the starting point of the whole dialog. People made long term decisions based on those promises. That they could count on being able to play the game for that level of outlay from then on. When new content or features would appear that those would be part of that outlay and not require the same fees a F2P/Premium player would have to pony up.

I have a pretty good perspective on both sides here with a VIP, 3 Premium and 2 F2P accounts in the household. Those Premium have picked up pretty much all the quest packs and areas over the years. The VIP sprang for the Expansion, although I grumbled a bit, however the special boons in the advance pack were very appealing to our playstyles. That VIP account has my first characters on the 2006 account on it and something like 24 character slots now. DDO has gotten a very nice chunk of change from my household over the past 7 years and I suspect will get more down the road. However it is hard to deny the commercial success many MMO's have from releasing periodically a new expansion and charging to get to add it to the play area for your game.

As always the devil with be in the details as the year pans out. Many of the things talked about by Glin seem very interesting, but frought with peril if poorly implemented in the game. The level gaps are one of some concern, and I agree that some more latitude should be in place at the higher end of the scale for penalties. A penalty of (highest level - your level)/your level would be one way to do it.

Lvl 28 - lvl 20 = 8 / 20 = 40% reduction, down at lower levels, that gives for example these numbers instead.

lvl 12 - lvl 4 = 8 / 4 = 200% reduction or NO experience for the low level.

lvl 20 - lvl 12 = 8 /12 = 67% reduction in experience. All three have an 8 level delta but the impact gets significantly lessened as the base levels rise.

[MnaSidhe]

Happy 7th Anniversary DDO Nation! We’ve been together a long time now; in some US states we’d be common law married! With that, my name is Erik Boyer, also known as ‘Producer Glin’

Where is Fernando... und why doesnt he want to talk to us?

[Matuse]

I'm not happy with another paid expansion. What you basically appear to be saying is that you are no longer honouring VIP and the the only way to get meaningful new content is by paying extra so you basically want people to quit their VIP members.

It's been very obvious since Update 1 that Turbine had no interest in VIP members.

As for the expansion, honestly I look at this with almost nothing but dread. There are SO many bugs right now, and they just keep going on and on and on, and rather than fixing anything, every time there's a patch it's just something else getting broken. When this expansion launches, it will have been a year that you've only ever gotten 1 token fragment from running epic Offering Of Blood...will that ever get fixed? Faerun is still littered with spelling mistakes and string table errors. My ingredient bag slider constantly resets to the middle every time I take an item out, forcing me to scroll around constantly. It's been like that for at least 2 years now. These are such a tiny things, and they never get done. Why should we have ANY FAITH WHATSOEVER that real fixes will ever happen?

3 more levels? That will just thin out the LFGs even more as you're less and less qualified to group with anyone. What will these levels give? A feat and a stat raise?

From everything I could see, the MotU pre-order was a huge success. But Turbine has used up every ounce of goodwill, and without some huge changes in the development process of the game, I'd be amazed if you got even 20% of the same level of participation this time around. I certainly have no intention of paying any more money for sight-unseen content that will barely work, throw the entire game out of balance, and break half of what worked already.

Want to fix it? Make Update 18 consist of 3-400 lines of nothing but bug fixes and quality of life improvements. Oh, and nothing new gets broken. Not so much as a typo. Also, when U18 is on Lamma, when people make a 5 page thread detailing all of the problems they find, those problems should not make it live 3 weeks later.

[THAC0]

Wow...I have been here since long before the day 1 of release. I remember +Sporkfire and other Devs spawning all sorts of critters in the Harbor teasing us and testing server load prior to launch. Ahh...the memories and good old days.

The details of this letter are interesting to say the least. I am hoping they address the bugs and issues ahead of this new expansion...and not compound the problems. Looking forward to more details and info.

Happy birthday.

T.

[jillie]

I'm not happy with another paid expansion. What you basically appear to be saying is that you are no longer honouring VIP and the the only way to get meaningful new content is by paying extra so you basically want people to quit their VIP members. As my renewal is Feb 27, I just took your advice and cancelled my VIP membership and take some time to figure out what, if anything, I should do about playing this game in the future.
.

I've cancelled my VIP membership as well. I'm not thrilled with the changes outlined by ProducerGlin, and have become progressively less happy with the game as a whole, from lag to bugs to unfulfilled promises. I think it might be time to look around and see what else is out there that isn't trying to run on a 7 year old engine.

[FZTopaz]

I think the point was, the "goodness" of the deal of being a subscriber aka VIP keeps getting diluted from the original promises that were touted back when F2P was first brought to the table. VIP would get everything in the game, "forever" for only that monthly fee. Well as we have seen, that implied promise has been altered over the past few years and each alteration takes us yet another step farther away from the starting point of the whole dialog. People made long term decisions based on those promises. That they could count on being able to play the game for that level of outlay from then on. When new content or features would appear that those would be part of that outlay and not require the same fees a F2P/Premium player would have to pony up.

When I started VIP for my wife and myself, I did it fully expecting any expansions to be something I paid for out of pocket on top of my VIP subscription....because that's the way video games have always worked. The deal of VIP is still there....I feel I get a lot for my money...and all adventure packs are still free to me!

[catmamor]

see this puts you in the same boat with another person i responded too. if you really think games should pump out so much content without you paying more money then there is something wrong with you. how on earth do you think these games survive? this is a business and jobs for people. if we want them to make stuff we need to pay them money not just 10 a month.

I understand what you're saying, but there are an awful lot of people paying $10 a month - it adds up to millions a month.

[die]

why do i get the impression that the new Enh. line is going too be a Dumb down tree like the neverwinter online game. and really no update till summer? i mean GH was just a rehash so imo0 thats not even worthy of update statis other than the raid and any that say it is either works for DDO or just a fan boy