A Letter from Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini – February 2021

[Hawkwier]

I'm going to indulge some completely uneducated guesswork here as hypothesis...

The model til now has generally been that VIP get some advantages over Premium including "free" access to content other than expansions, which generally have been major content releases.

The letter mentions adding value to VIP in addition to mini expansions.

A reasonable conjecture may be that this represents a move to make VIP pay to a much greater extent for the hitherto "free" content they have enjoyed in return for their VIP payments, compensated by some other material incentive.

If so, the compensation would need to be substantial. I can't see VIP being happy. I can't see Premium being happy either.

Didn't the recent due diligence papers show that ddo players already pay a larger contribution than other games into SSGs purse?

In that context, as a consumer, the prospect of this new model doesn't exactly thrill!

[Jerevth]

The Nine Daelkyr Lords? Oh I hope that means someday we might see a Xoriat expansion.

Lord of Stone, Lord of Eyes, Lord of Ears, Lord of Noses, Lady of Lag, Lord of Tastes (Flavor Madness), Lady of Feels, Noble of Fluidity and the Lady of Ceaseless Complaint.

I'm going to indulge some completely uneducated guesswork here as hypothesis...
The model til now has generally been that VIP get some advantages over Premium including "free" access to content other than expansions, which generally have been major content releases.
The letter mentions adding value to VIP in addition to mini expansions.
A reasonable conjecture may be that this represents a move to make VIP pay to a much greater extent for the hitherto "free" content they have enjoyed in return for their VIP payments, compensated by some other material incentive.
If so, the compensation would need to be substantial. I can't see VIP being happy. I can't see Premium being happy either.
Didn't the recent due diligence papers show that ddo players already pay a larger contribution than other games into SSGs purse?

Or they are looking to gain back all the VIPs who dropped their subs with value added to a product that lost its luster, at the same price?
Not that that reflects the current trend but playing Devil's Advocate.

[Hawkwier]

Lord of Stone, Lord of Eyes, Lord of Ears, Lord of Noses, Lady of Lag, Lord of Tastes (Flavor Madness), Lady of Feels, Noble of Fluidity and the Lady of Ceaseless Complaint.

That made me chuckle!

[Valerianus]

I thought that's what Feywild was?

Seriously though, anyone know what it's supposed to be? Maybe LOTRO players can shed some light?

At least they appear to have shelved raising the cap for now, so that's good.

i thought that feywild was a mini expansion....

(disclaimer, i play lotro, i lurk the lotro forum, i'm in touch with players there i'm in a kinship (lotro word for guild) with both newbs like me and vets, i personally have not played that far, my first playthrough, that's endgame, and i don't own w3p)


that phrase you wrote, they have actually a lot in common, war of the three peaks and feywild.

hasty release and heavily bugged, customers angry cause the bundles had no value. cash grab accusations particularly in lotro because obvious reasons, expansion, and this mini expansion, are NOT free to vips. w3p was released october 2020 (feywild shortly after in november) and was made available in the lotro store 6 days ago for 1995 lotro points.

why cash grab? let's look the lotro market

https://store-new.standingstonegames...tro/expansions

standard bundle for 20 dollars. the bonuses of the 60 and 100 bundle, a real lot of cosmetics and not much more, nothing special.

vips felt "taxed", even getting the basic for content only, it's 20 dollar. now 1995 points. agree, it's not that much, but...you know, something new at endgame, new stuff, new gear, 20 dollars now or wait for months. a slap in the face, since it's not a real expansion, it's a pack in disguise


disclaimer 2, i got feywild ultimate. i don't know why. i'm an idiot, i regretted it...good marketing....

[beuwolf78]

You have to pay for the cost of the acquisition somehow.

Having said that, it doesn't seem from the letter (to me at least) that the purchase has resulted in additional programming resources being allocated to DDO.

They keep losing paying players (like me) every time they release nerfs so it makes sense they need new revenue streams.
Bottom line: in order to keep operating this game, they need a certain amount of money. Every year, this money keeps going down since the paying player base is diminishing.

To offset that, they need to make sure to have something that everyone will want to pay for every year (like an adventure pack). There is no way around it.
If you want to keep DDO alive then you kinda have to buy it or this game won't be celebrating the 20th anniversary

PS. Like I said, I am out of this equation as of the enhancement nerf in 48.4 so the gauntlet is yours.

[Aelonwy]

I thought that's what Feywild was?

Seriously though, anyone know what it's supposed to be? Maybe LOTRO players can shed some light?

At least they appear to have shelved raising the cap for now, so that's good.

Probably similar to Gianthold, I imagine.

Regular adventure pack is 4-5 quests usually. Expansion pack should be at least 12 IMHO, and more is always welcome.
Regular adventure pack typically has a wilderness zone the size of Red Fens/KotB, Expansion wilderness should be more the size of RL, Sharn, Stormhorns.
Regular adventure packs just have quest chain givers which don't even give anything worthwhile anymore. Expansions have sagas.
Regular adventure packs don't usually come with any new class, race, or trees, but expansions usually do.
Regular adventure packs don't come with any cosmetic or gameplay goodies, expansions always do.
Regular adventure packs don't usually have raids but expansions (Shadowfell) don't always either so... *shrug*

So my expectations for a mini-expack would be 6-8 quests, larger than average wilderness zone, full public zone, mini-saga, possible packaged tree/race/or class, a single cosmetic set, pet or mount, possibly a raid or challenge.

But if they think they can charge as much for it as they did for Sharn/RL/Feywild... I'm thinking I will opt out.

[Falkyron]

I suppose if they make the mini-expansion half the size of a regular expansion, make it available on the DDO store soon after release, and make it cheap (justifying using earned points from playing)? Then it won't be so bad.

Things that are big issues:

• Archmage. Come on guys, just give it a good t5 at least. It doesn't have to be amazing.
• Lag. Particularly, the lag just to log out. It's insane that that lag bug has been in the game for literally years.
• Trapfinding. Let us get it with feats or something. Having to always have one level in rogue or artificer just to do it is obnoxious.

Things I think people are overstating:

• Items being obsolete; they just recently revamped generated loot again. They're working on it. Give them some credit.
• A free legendary raid item being bound do character; Not something I mind. I want to juggle less, honestly, which segues to...

The worst issue in my book is storage.
By the gods it's horrible. It's so bad. I have 6 bank alts and every shared bank slot, but it's a nightmare for me to do anything. An alt just to hold good weapons that can't even hold all the weapons. I'm no hoarding anything, but it adds up. One of each Ravenloft item alone is so much of your space. Then one of each Sharn item, etc etc. If we didn't have crafting storage I'd just give up playing.

Have you seen how insane it is to try and reincarnate these days and empty your cache? What should be an exciting and fun experience is ruined by the extremely strange dread of "Oh no... I found three items that are excellent in that life. Now I need to make space to store it to clear my cache." For some people I know, clearing the cache and reincarnating is a game session by itself. Hours of work, made all the more frustrating by the massive lag delay when removing items from the cache one-by-one.

[carsonfball]

The worst issue in my book is storage.
By the gods it's horrible. It's so bad. I have 6 bank alts and every shared bank slot, but it's a nightmare for me to do anything. An alt just to hold good weapons that can't even hold all the weapons. I'm no hoarding anything, but it adds up. One of each Ravenloft item alone is so much of your space. Then one of each Sharn item, etc etc. If we didn't have crafting storage I'd just give up playing.

Have you seen how insane it is to try and reincarnate these days and empty your cache? What should be an exciting and fun experience is ruined by the extremely strange dread of "Oh no... I found three items that are excellent in that life. Now I need to make space to store it to clear my cache." For some people I know, clearing the cache and reincarnating is a game session by itself. Hours of work, made all the more frustrating by the massive lag delay when removing items from the cache one-by-one.

I agree. And with so many bound-to-character items, I have to store multiples of some of the good items. If they would sell me more character bank storage, I would buy it. But they haven't released any character storage for a long time. I know that they've said there are technical reasons why it is difficult to do so, but they've now had years to either work on that or create a new alternative.

Reincarnation is definitely a nightmare. I've gotten it down to around an hour or two of shuffling items (a lot of that time is because pulling items from out of the reincarnation cache is horribly slow).

[Xgya]

I'm very happy you chose to make the bow pass and new bow-using enhancement tree to be released separately.

New stuff is always welcome.
I do hope there's some major work done on lag still, but I also know this is one very high CL beast.

[cave_diver]

got one warning on this thread, let me try for 2

awesome patch...1st quest in loading screen hang...SSG fix your stuff

[elvesunited]

Well that said they learned lessons from the mini-expansion on LOTR. So it's quite possible that the mini-expansion will be reasonable for what it is. Let's not break out the pitchforks and torches quite yet.

I heard rumor of an archmage enhancement pass. No mention of it here.

No level cap increase. Hopefully when they do mention increasing the cap again they'll give enough details to allay any fears. ( such as the fear that the xp to get an epic past life will drastically increase )

Interesting that there is a potential monster manual update. It's been a long time. I thought I read that the reason was that monster manual updates are too much work for too little reward.

[carsonfball]

Well that said they learned lessons from the mini-expansion on LOTR. So it's quite possible that the mini-expansion will be reasonable for what it is. Let's not break out the pitchforks and torches quite yet.

+1

No level cap increase. Hopefully when they do mention increasing the cap again they'll give enough details to allay any fears. ( such as the fear that the xp to get an epic past life will drastically increase )

They'd said in the past that the xp and levels to get an epic past life would not be changing and that they were going to add a new type of reincarnation in addition (legendary reincarnation?).

Interesting that there is a potential monster manual update. It's been a long time. I thought I read that the reason was that monster manual updates are too much work for too little reward.

They have said that in the past, but still ended up releasing more. I think when they get a critical mass of people complaining about no new monster manuals, they finally release a few.

[Steelstar]

I heard rumor of an archmage enhancement pass. No mention of it here.

We'd still like to do it when we can. It definitely won't be before Epic Destinies release, and probably won't be this year.

[Arkai]

Any chance on the iconic sorc this year?

Thanks!

[L.P]

The game is dead already and SSG knows it.
But it's not wise to say "Yea, we are discontinuing DDO. Thanks for all and farewell". There are yet some whales to milk, who still believe in a bright future coming from nowhere.
So what we see is people begging for attention and hoping for a candy or two (because more than that we know it's impossible), whining about issues like lag, storage... fixing it would take days of work, without fast cash retribution. Whales are the target and whales pay for things way less labor-intensive.
Look, whal err... VIPs, we have "plans to give more value" to you, like a brand new mini-expansion! /s

Note: Don't whine about this mini-expansion, it's real, will come and nothing you say will change it.
Pay attention to the word "first", right before "mini-expansion", in the original post. There will be more and if you want to complain, complain about it. Well, if you still believe your moanings count for something, of course.

[TitusOvid]

Happy 15th Anniversary DDO! We are excited to reach this milestone and are ever-thankful to our players for making this possible. Today I'll be talking about some of our plans for the rest of the year and letting you know what we are looking forward to.

In the coming weeks we will be celebrating in House Phiarlan as we bring out an updated Anniversary Event! This year's event features a few minor updates to the challenge itself along with a large number of new items added to the reward list. We're bringing back all of the House-specific Eberron Cloaks in the rewards list that we gave out a few years ago for our anniversary, in case you missed one or missed it, and we're adding a new cosmetic helm and cosmetic pet as well. We're also going to be distributing two special gifts to everyone! One will be something your character will wear as a cosmetic, and the other is something your character will equip.

80 party favor for each of those cloaks is kinda hefty, don't you think?!
As others said, you didn't account for alts at all with 1/acc. Oversight?
When will you address the storage issue that gets worse with every cosmetic you give away? Don't get me wrong. A lot of people like cosmetics but there comes a point pretty early in the game where you have to decide, if you keep a cosmetic and or need the spot for equipment that actually helps the gameplay.

The release of the new raid, The Dryad and the Demigod, marks the grand finale of the Fables of the Feywild expansion. This raid features the music of our in-house composer Bill Champagne and we think it is a raid unlike any other you may have seen before. The idea of a “musical raid” has been kicking around for a while in the office, and we think players of all types will find something special here. Anyone who has purchased Fables of the Feywild will have access to this new raid.

I tuned down the sounds to 0.01 for the single settings and I still can't hear party members. You pretty much forced us to use other platforms of communicating for month now. So I guess, you could get rid of voice once and for all.
Impressions on the new raid are still too fresh to form an opinion. But it does need to start from subpar. Melees seem to be disadvantaged again.

This spring brings the first Hardcore League season of 2021 to the game! Our 4th Hardcore Season will feature some new and returning guests in the form of the minions of the Nine Daelkyr Lords. You’ve met the Lord of Eyes and the Lord of Stone, but have you met the rest? We're also planning to run a 5th season of the Hardcore League later this year.

One to many, imo. It hurts the population of the other servers too much to have more than 1 a year.

This spring will also bring Update 49 that includes four dungeons where you will help Morgrave University hunt down lost relics in a series of adventures that feel somewhat “Indiana Jones-like”. Alongside this adventure pack the bow combat style is being revamped and will get new animations.

Sounds intriguing.

This summer will see the release of the first "mini-expansion" in Dungeons & Dragons Online in the form of the Classic Adventure: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh! An evil Alchemist's mansion stands alone on a cliff and mysterious lights and hauntings have kept people away despite rumors of great treasure. What is the secret? Debuting alongside this classic adventure will be our next Universal Enhancement Tree called Horizon Walker, which focuses on marking and neutralizing extra-planar and other enemies with a bow. As we get closer to the release of Saltmarsh, we will have more information about what to expect from a DDO mini-expansion, the lessons that we learned from The Lord of the Rings Online’s first mini-expansion last year, and plans to give more value to VIPs.

Mini-expansion ... More details please. Fewer quests, no public area, no wilderness, no race, no class, no cosmetics? The impression I got from the reactions of the LotRo playerbase was not the best to be honest.
A universal tree that focuses on special kind of enemies does sound counter-productive, doesn't it?! But surprise me.
ViP-value. Either dispose of ViP and give them a big fair-well package or make it real good.

The fall will feature a set of new adventures and a raid revolving around the Wild Hunt as well as a significant update to our Epic Destiny system. We are restructuring the core of the system, modernizing some trees and redesigning others, and making Epic Destinies more versatile by allowing players to have multiple Destinies active at the same time.

Sounds good. A similar concept for all trees in the game would make it a lot easier for new folks.
No mention of level increase is a BIG plus.

Other things to look forward to this year include a new Monster Manual volume, a free dungeon to wrap up the year, updates to our various festivals, and more! We want to thank you for continuing to make this game and community thrive, and we look forward to making 2021 a fantastic year for DDO!
Sev

This last paragraph does sound great.


Thanks for the information.
Cheers,
Titus.

[Saekee]

Sev please work on NEW PLAYER RETENTION STRATEGIES we have offered multitudes here, just do some ok?

I like classic modules so +1 for that, rest is gravy

[KoobTheProud]

Sev please work on NEW PLAYER RETENTION STRATEGIES we have offered multitudes here, just do some ok?

I like classic modules so +1 for that, rest is gravy

I'm guessing the substitute for new player retention strategies is going to be another DDOFREEQUESTS promotion this summer to try to get the schoolkids to look at DDO.

[NabeGewell]

We'd still like to do it when we can. It definitely won't be before Epic Destinies release, and probably won't be this year.

Hopefully it has to do with doubleshot, ranged power and int to dmg :P Wasnt Divine disciple fix mentioned along with EK too?

[Tarinia]

Happy 15th Anniversary DDO! We are excited to reach this milestone and are ever-thankful to our players for making this possible. Today I'll be talking about some of our plans for the rest of the year and letting you know what we are looking forward to.



This summer will see the release of the first "mini-expansion" in Dungeons & Dragons Online in the form of the Classic Adventure: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh! An evil Alchemist's mansion stands alone on a cliff and mysterious lights and hauntings have kept people away despite rumors of great treasure. What is the secret? Debuting alongside this classic adventure will be our next Universal Enhancement Tree called Horizon Walker, which focuses on marking and neutralizing extra-planar and other enemies with a bow. As we get closer to the release of Saltmarsh, we will have more information about what to expect from a DDO mini-expansion, the lessons that we learned from The Lord of the Rings Online’s first mini-expansion last year, and plans to give more value to VIPs.
Sev

Hi Devs,

I had a gut feeling immediatly in seeing that mini expansion wrote up from SEV. Where is our free classic pack 2021? Should we now pay for something we got for free in the last years?
And immediatly a lot of other players jumped in before I even could write. Seeing what happened in LOTRO it is a shame that you try such a thing for DDO, too.
Do you think we are dump or do you just forgot to announce the free classic pack IN ADDITION to the mini expansion for 2021?
Perhaps I should go "free to play" to save money for the mini expansion? Is that what you want? Or are you changing the overall strategy to give VIP no more free content, but instead only faster exps and so on?
In that case you should be fast in announce what are you planning for VIPs instead, before lots of them go free to play. It´s all the more disappointing knowing that DDO is earning a lot of money (see selling of "podcasts")
Sorry disappointed....
Tarrinia