A Golden Opportunity

[fatherpirate]

SSG will finally have an opportunity to bring in new players in and around March 2023

because ....

That is when the first Blockbuster capable movie fully based on D&D will
hit the big screen.

It is my hope that DDO does not waste the opportunity.
It is also my hope they do not wait until the last minute to plan for it.

So, what kind of movie could help recruit new players ?

This one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJGBnu-Ko0

A gift from Hollywood itself, don't waste it.

[Eantarus]

We need a good starter pack to help get new people in. That's gonna be the main hurdle to new-player retention.

[ekaterina]

Rightly or wrongly LOTRO hopes for a big influx from a LoTR TV series. One major change they made - and there will be more - was to simplify how people pay for the game and expand what free players could do before they had to play. The front-end cost to play LOTRO is far less than it was before those recent changes.

If the same people decide there is money for the game in the forthcoming movie - they may need to do the same thing. We have a very front-loaded system for buying various parts of the game and rather than buying just a few things (the norm for a MMO today) we have a load of expansions and packs to be bought even by subscribers.

[Eantarus]

Rightly or wrongly LOTRO hopes for a big influx from a LoTR TV series. One major change they made - and there will be more - was to simplify how people pay for the game and expand what free players could do before they had to play. The front-end cost to play LOTRO is far less than it was before those recent changes.

If the same people decide there is money for the game in the forthcoming movie - they may need to do the same thing. We have a very front-loaded system for buying various parts of the game and rather than buying just a few things (the norm for a MMO today) we have a load of expansions and packs to be bought even by subscribers.

That is something else that needs to be fixed. All the content given away in the free quest codes pack needs to be made permanently free. Ravenloft and all previous expansions need to be made permanently 99 points. And the game needs a real starter pack. Its not asking a ton for new players to buy the newest xpacs, character classes, and races; but much more than that is going to far.

[Oxarhamar]

SSG will finally have an opportunity to bring in new players in and around March 2023

because ....

That is when the first Blockbuster capable movie fully based on D&D will
hit the big screen.

It is my hope that DDO does not waste the opportunity.
It is also my hope they do not wait until the last minute to plan for it.

So, what kind of movie could help recruit new players ?

This one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJGBnu-Ko0

A gift from Hollywood itself, don't waste it.

A movie isn’t going to bring in players and more than anything else D&D related without one key factor

Advertising DDO

YW

[Eantarus]

A movie isn’t going to bring in players and more than anything else D&D related without one key factor

Advertising DDO

YW

DDO already has plenty of advertisement. Its also easy enough to find if you're already an MMO gamer, watch the movie, and think "man I wanna play a DnD MMO!"

[Uska]

Looks meh to me

[Oxarhamar]

DDO already has plenty of advertisement. Its also easy enough to find if you're already an MMO gamer, watch the movie, and think "man I wanna play a DnD MMO!"

So Zero is plenty

[Oxarhamar]

Looks meh to me

Can’t be as bad as the last one

Low bar

[fatherpirate]

A movie isn’t going to bring in players and more than anything else D&D related without one key factor

Advertising DDO

YW

On this point I agree,
Advertising + Big Movie will be effective together.

[LightBear]

Show us your ticket, get this "honor among thieves" mini-expansion for free. That's one way to hop on that train.

Included an universal tree that allows you to:
* Pick locks, duh
- morph into an owlbear
- have evil as secondary alignment
- play a tune on a lute (one bard song per rest)
- upgrade your weapons to do elemental damage
- call in a dragon to rain tar from above
- magic shield against all damage

[Oxarhamar]

On this point I agree,
Advertising + Big Movie will be effective together.

Movie has nothing to do with it unless the adverts run on the big screen along with it there are far better places to advert DDO

[fatherpirate]

Movie has nothing to do with it unless the adverts run on the big screen along with it there are far better places to advert DDO

well, not really.

The movie might bring more players to the table
that have never really been exposed to D&D at all before.

The world is a big place, not everyone grew up with the game.

or maybe they heard of it but never bothered to
investigate because they were only into COD games.
and so on.

What a movie like this will do is show people that have
never played a D&D game - 'Look ! this is the kinda of stuff
in this game.'

That is where the advertising now comes in.
People exposed for the first time to D&D being
conveniently told where they can play this kind of game.

[Weemadarthur]

Movie has nothing to do with it unless the adverts run on the big screen along with it there are far better places to advert DDO

Sorry but here you are mistaken. If (and I will say it's still a big if) the movie is popular that on it's own will generate a lot of free advertising by association. Add a marketing ploy to push that association and divert attention to DDO specifically rather than D&D in general and you could expect a very large influx of players. The catch will purely be down to if the movie is popular (which doesn't mean the same as good). Regardless of the quality of the movie it is going to have an uphill struggle purely due to the perception of D&D movies of the past.

As a point of reference when the LOTR movies came out the sales of the books themselves went through the roof. Any games with LOTR in the title sold by the bucketload regardless of quality. Advertising wasn't required as the films were the advertising. Now I highly doubt that the D&D movie will have any where near the cultural impact that LOTR had but if it is popular all that would be needed to "advertise" this game is to name a quest pack/X-pack Honor among thieves and post an intro video to You Tube to generate a huge amount of added interest.

The harder part would be to a) get the game in a state it could handle a large influx of players and b) make the game accessible enough that it could keep a large enough influx of players that aren't already D&D enthusiasts.

[Oxarhamar]

well, not really.

The movie might bring more players to the table
that have never really been exposed to D&D at all before.

The world is a big place, not everyone grew up with the game.

or maybe they heard of it but never bothered to
investigate because they were only into COD games.
and so on.

What a movie like this will do is show people that have
never played a D&D game - 'Look ! this is the kinda of stuff
in this game.'

That is where the advertising now comes in.
People exposed for the first time to D&D being
conveniently told where they can play this kind of game.

I disagree that the movie is going to do all this D&D already has an extremely large fan base that should be advertised to

At least you finally see that adverts are the pathway to new players even if only because of the film

Many non D&D players have already been exposed to D&D in theme episodes of shows and cartoons that are probably far better than the movie will be

[KoobTheProud]

We need a good starter pack to help get new people in. That's gonna be the main hurdle to new-player retention.

The main hurdle to new player retention is going to be the dawning realization that DDO has no reset point and the implications of that unique aspect of the game.

On the marketing side: D&D has a large and varied player base most of whom are very active on the internet and likely would have looked up D&D MMO at some point. DDO has a small player base because the model used is fundamentally flawed in terms of retaining players.

[Eme]

it'll be totally wasted if they can't get the game to run without the: you need to ask on the forums, find what DX/msi package is missing, find the DX/msi package from 15 years ago you need and download +install nonsense

[Jerevth]

Pay search engines, streaming sites and social media the advertising fee to link a new DDO Advert to viewings of the D&D trailer and the streamed RPGs.
Throw in a keycode/ one use per account that gives a little extra starting oomph but nothing crazy (Maybe a free Eleri Hireling, a 30 day horse, etc)?
"Redeem Keycode "Newnewb" in the DDO store for..."

[DirkTyrant]

Show us your ticket, get this "honor among thieves" mini-expansion for free. That's one way to hop on that train.

Included an universal tree that allows you to:
* Pick locks, duh
- morph into an owlbear
- have evil as secondary alignment
- play a tune on a lute (one bard song per rest)
- upgrade your weapons to do elemental damage
- call in a dragon to rain tar from above
- magic shield against all damage

I have often thought they should sell bard song clips in the DDO store... like glamour items... that contain a small sound file to exchange the regular bard songs with. I actually believe that players would pay just to swap out their tunes...

[Valerianus]

Sorry but here you are mistaken. If (and I will say it's still a big if) the movie is popular that on it's own will generate a lot of free advertising by association. Add a marketing ploy to push that association and divert attention to DDO specifically rather than D&D in general and you could expect a very large influx of players. The catch will purely be down to if the movie is popular (which doesn't mean the same as good). Regardless of the quality of the movie it is going to have an uphill struggle purely due to the perception of D&D movies of the past.

As a point of reference when the LOTR movies came out the sales of the books themselves went through the roof. Any games with LOTR in the title sold by the bucketload regardless of quality. Advertising wasn't required as the films were the advertising. Now I highly doubt that the D&D movie will have any where near the cultural impact that LOTR had but if it is popular all that would be needed to "advertise" this game is to name a quest pack/X-pack Honor among thieves and post an intro video to You Tube to generate a huge amount of added interest.

The harder part would be to a) get the game in a state it could handle a large influx of players and b) make the game accessible enough that it could keep a large enough influx of players that aren't already D&D enthusiasts.

yeah, the cultural impact...i like this expression, it's spot on.

with the upcoming amazon lotr series, they changed some stuff in lotro, like, made the whole level 1-95 content free, also older expansions (level cap 140...like if ddo had all content 1-20 made free), removed the f2p gold cap, made free some races and classes, and other stuff i don't remember right now....and this year it celebrated the 15th anniversary and the presents were huge. and announced they are working on better servers. (it's a known fact to lotro players that ssg servers can't handle, based on what you can see from lotro in-game social panel, more than 800-1000 non-anon, like, from years, yeah the lotro side is complaining cause lag exactly like we do, except the ones playing on empty-ish servers)


back to the cultural impact....does a d&d movie may be considered equal to that? imho no.

don't get me wrong people, those changes they did to lotro are right, and the same should happen to ddo NO MATTER if something else may create advertise and interest, just because it feels like the natural thing to do as time passes to destroy walls against new players in both games.

but they don't want new players....not before they fix the servers (it will happen for lotro, hopefully at a later time for ddo too but, i mean, i wouldn't bet my last savings on it)....players are bleeding out cause rage quitting cause bugs, lag, no CS, no new features, no storage no tr cache fix, no ui scaling, awful unreliable payment systems, no nothing, the very foundations of the game are rotten to the core since forever.....they don't want new ones to make things worse. they want only people that randomly get locked in, get past the steep paywall, and spend till it lasts. such a shame, this game is so good, the content is so good, the gameplay is so good. it feels like the devs are doing a good work without getting any help from above...they can do just so much. they put a patch on it with hardcore, some quitters became harcore-only players so some profit is not lost....but it cannot go on like this forever. hardcore lag death also creates a lot of rage quits....

this is not a doom post, this is a hope post that has no real hope for it to happen but it tries and tries.