Hey! Where Did Everyone Go?

[HungarianRhapsody]

We wouldn't need server merges if we could play together. It would probably be easier to put the home server name as an attachment to everyone's name as a new feature and then just let people play quests across servers. Everything is already instanced and if it isn't already on virtual machines, then it should be, so this wouldn't be impossible. It might be hard, but it at least wouldn't be harder than trying to merge servers.

[Sho-sa]

Make sure you have all the classes at the top selected, and your who list fully populated.

Yes, (sigh) thank you for the advice....

been playing this game for a couple of years now. ;-)

[Chai]

(C) Long term, merging the servers will not solve the problem; it just delays the inevitable. There needs to be a complete change in philosophy. DDO's success was blazing their own path and doing what "couldn't be done." Then they started mimicking other MMO producers and find themselves with depleting players (and the summer doesn't make it any easier).

Pretty much this right here.

They need to mimic a completely different subset of MMO producers. The ones who halt their vertical progression to one system and begin horizontal progression in other systems.

In these threads over the years we've seen alot of pre-supposed "seasonal" reasons for why the servers havent seen re-population.

Spring - Its nice out and everyone's outside curing their cabin fever, on spring break, not sitting in their house playing games. They will be back in the summer.
Summer - Its super nice out and people are busy with yard work, on vacation, traveling, they will be back in the fall.
Fall - People are back to school, churning out that new fiscal year at work, getting those last rays before winter, when they will all be back on DDO.
Winter - People are too busy with the holidays....
/rinse, repeat.

[Chai]

We wouldn't need server merges if we could play together. It would probably be easier to put the home server name as an attachment to everyone's name as a new feature and then just let people play quests across servers. Everything is already instanced and if it isn't already on virtual machines, then it should be, so this wouldn't be impossible. It might be hard, but it at least wouldn't be harder than trying to merge servers.

This is what they should implement in an instanced game like DDO.

Make it so players can choose to expose their server name or not, and have it below the guild name. Server Name is part of the ID in the DB so no confusion between characters exists.

SameCharacterName
<hilarious almost ban-able guild name>
(of ServerName)

[Jerevth]

I've never seen DDO advertised.
I found it because I was in the mood for D&D and had no one to play tabletop.

Is there a reason DDO doesn't advertise or am I just missing the adverts?

[Nebless]

I've never seen DDO advertised.
I found it because I was in the mood for D&D and had no one to play tabletop.

Is there a reason DDO doesn't advertise or am I just missing the adverts?

With the exception of when it was first released there really hasn't been ANY support for the game. I think I remember here and there a couple of print ad's but that's been about it. Now it was repeatability talked about & played on 'The Big Bang Theory' but if you didn't watch the show ......

It does get coverage on MMORPG.com when new stuff comes out, but most comments from new people over on the Steam forums come down to 'I didn't know this game existed / still exists / I thought it was already closed'.

TV commerical's I get would be expensive, and with so many channel's where would you put them? Print ad's in gamer magazine's might be cheaper, but with SSG being small I doubt if it's in the budget.

[Jerevth]

I was thinking along the lines of advertising on specific web-comics that run along these lines: Goblins, Giant in the playground, Girl Genius, etc.
Advertising there is cheap, relatively, and hits some of the target audience. I'm sure there are contemporary comics in other nations that would also welcome the advertising.

Who reads print anymore? Dragon Magazine lost most of it's appeal to me... thirty years ago...? Oh my God, I'm old.

[BoBoDaClown]

I'd love to know where people are getting their population numbers from. Your "feelings" are not numbers.

If you actually look at the Who list on Thelanis, the place is booming. People have simply migrated away from posting LFM's. So while there are a HUGE number of people logged in, there are very few LFM's posted.

A lot of the time I'm on (Thelanis), the numbers are 60-80. Pretty grim.

[BigErkyKid]

A lot of the time I'm on (Thelanis), the numbers are 60-80. Pretty grim.

As a reference:

I recently came back, and my guild is down to close to single digits of active characters.

Outside of the very prime time (UTC evenings), there are 1-4 LFMs up.

At some point I looked at the WHO tab and there were around 4-5 people at level 18 (which tends to be, I would say, one of the most held levels to go 18-20 then TR).

My impression is that concurrency fluctuates between 50-300 on most servers; in my opinion this is not enough for a MMO.

[Tyrande]

Hey! Where Did Everyone Go?

Vacation overseas... to see exotic animals, etc.

[BigErkyKid]

Argonessen, right now: 142 players.

[Kutalp]

That seems to be, somehow , right.

Less number of players seem to gather at the Stormreach marketplace and Eveningstar town center. I give it to summer time but also players exploring Sharn, Forgotten realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, Greyhawk , Reaper settings (at the same time?)... with small parties of real life friends (?) untill they feel bored and give a break to game...

[Kaboom2112]

Just move to Ghallanda

[cdbd3rd]

I don't know about everyone, but I was out riding my jetski at the lake last weekend.....

So that was YOU scaring all the fish!!!!



Don't need merger. Just Global chat.

It works for LOTRO, it would work here.

[scipiojedi]

Where did everyone go?

Getting married in 6 weeks leaves less time for play, but I did get the fiancee in the game (she thinks the dragonborn are cute) so it's a longterm win for ddo, just less active now.

[vms4ever]

Don't need merger. Just Global chat.

It works for LOTRO, it would work here.

For some values of "work". Biggest problem is the opportunity for a single rude person to reach and out and annoy a vastly increased number of people. ("You can't make me not post spoilers in world chat. I'm just going to keep posting spoilers.", pro-/anti-vaccination spamfest, "GOAT", etc)

World Chat without active moderation is non-optimal.

[cdbd3rd]

For some values of "work". Biggest problem is the opportunity for a single rude person to reach and out and annoy a vastly increased number of people. ("You can't make me not post spoilers in world chat. I'm just going to keep posting spoilers.", pro-/anti-vaccination spamfest, "GOAT", etc)

World Chat without active moderation is non-optimal.

Oh, yeah, an occasional <person> tries getting all annoying or offensive. Global chat means that many more people either Ignore the person and they find themselves only talking to themselves, or that many more people report a truly offensive person and they just sorta disappear.

[Epicstorms]

I could not disagree with this statement more and I mean that literally with the exception of people migrating away from LFM's. Though I would say that there were probably the same number of people in the private channels / discords it's just that with the population decline they have gone from a minority to a majority.

Seriously, when is the last time, outside of an event, that you or any of us saw more than one instance of an area? When's the last time you saw more than 3? I remember in late 2000's up to right around when MOTU dropped there would ROUTINELY be 3+ instances of the marketplace, sometimes as many as 9. The harbour, same thing. Hell there would be 50 - 100 people in the Lobster alone most nights, with a third or more of them being RPers (a dead breed for a long time alas). In fact I remember often having to change instances to meet up with guildies for a run. I mean, this literally happened daily back then.

And when you think about it, instanced public areas has nothing to do with LFM traffic, at all, it is purely about how many bodies are on the server. I pretty much play on Thelanis exclusively, always have. If by Huge number you mean 500 (which would be a **** good day in T-land) you and I have VERY different meanings of that word. I would say most days Thelanis has, at best, about 300-400 players online spread over 30 levels and dozens of areas. This isn't a feeling it's counting the WHO panel. Right this moment that number is 348 and I would say it "feels" average.

Even if they all showed up in the market place it would maybe be enough to open a second instance. Frankly, these are NOT huge numbers. Maybe multiply them by 10 and you get a "Huge" number, maybe though I would argue you probably need to multiply it by 100 to be truly huge. I don't know that DDO ever had 30,000+ players on at one time, certainly never on a single server at once. Even at the simple 3,500 number though I doubt there are that many people playing DDO at one time outside of weekends on all servers combined, and maybe not even then.

Free server transfers could go a long way to rectifying the populations, but a server merge is probably the "best" option. That said, working with Data all day, I can tell you that the prospect of merging all this server data is an absolute bear of a mountain and almost guaranteed to go wrong. Given the history I would guess that each server has its own completely separate database which means a lot of the "unique" identifiers and keys are going to no longer be unique and it's not the sort of problem you can get around with a couple of sprocks and some complicated data views. You are going to need to merge the data.

Honestly I believe the best idea would be to create a new server and merge several other servers into that one. You get the advantage of being able to run that offline several times until you feel you have it right and then you just giver, knowing there WILL be issues. But how you handle guilds is going to be a bear because you will have people that paid "shards" for guild ships and amenities on multiple servers who will feel "ripped off", etc, etc, etc ad nauseum. I expect that if they hadn't virtualized the servers and each of them were physical boxes we would have seen them shutter the doors and windows quite some time ago.

Long and short of it is server merges are an absolute nuclear last resort option and populations are down, way down but seem to be stabilizing somewhat, albeit they are doing so at very low levels.

It sucks but there you have it.

This. Thanks for writing this, I was too lazy to do it.

[SiliconScout]

This. Thanks for writing this, I was too lazy to do it.

No worries bud, just felt it had to be said with such a ridiculous claim of HUGE numbers.

[Aelonwy]

I also play on Thelanis, when I joined in Fall '09, there were regularly 3-5 instances of the harbor and marketplace pretty much any time I logged on. I remember the first Crystal Cove event having 20+ instances for the first three days maybe longer. The first Mabar also had over 20+ instances. Last year even with the revamp of Cove loot I don't recall seeing more than 3 instances even on the first day of the event. I rarely see more than 2 instances of either the harbor or marketplace anymore and usually its just one.

I don't know how many people are required before a new instance is opened but we don't seem to have enough for that to happen with any frequency. ...And that might be a good thing because the servers seem less stable than they were way back when... I mean I've taken part in Cordovan's anniversary Free-for-alls and it seems like each year it gets less and less reliable that people can even move properly without DC-inducing lag. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes in DDO but I remember in years past NOT having such issues with more people so... what in Shavarath is going on?