Read more about our plans for the year in a new Producer's Letter!

[Cordovan]

Read the letter and see the road map on DDO.com. Thank you and have fun! Feel free to offer your feedback in this thread.

Producers Letter: January 2023

Greetings! I’m Producer Amanda “Tolero” Grow, and today I’ll be giving you a look at what’s coming up for DDO in 2023. I hope that your New Years has been off to a wonderful start, and we’re looking forward to more fun and excitement in DDO this year.

If you’re new to DDO or coming back after a long break, here’s a recap of the latest things that have been added to the game: Last year our story took us to the Isle of Dread, where in addition to fighting dinosaurs, players came face to face with the infamous D&D villain Vecna! We had an exciting Hardcore Season in the summer, as players were hunted down by deadly Hounds throughout the game. We added Archetypes to the game, bringing new ways to play and build our D&D classes. And we introduced a major overhaul of the Character Bank, with filters, customizable tabs, and expanded amounts of storage there. Towards the end of 2022 we debuted our latest Adventure Pack which brought players back to Sharn to continue thwarting Vecna and others over the fate of the Planar Eyes.

Now that I’ve covered the big beats of where we’ve been, let’s talk about where we are going next. Our game will be celebrating its 17th anniversary this year with fun free content! We’ll introduce three new free Archetypes as well as a free Dungeon for all players to play.



Work in progress rendering of our upcoming 17th Anniversary armor!

The free quest will set the stage for the upcoming Mini Expansion in the spring, where players will help Morgrave University try and neutralize the threat posed by Vecna. Our long-running story will reach a peak we know you'll want to be a part of! We’ll have a lot more information about the story and content of our mini-expansion as we get closer to it. After that we’ll be kicking off a new Hardcore season this summer with another rules change up, but we’ll release more details about that later.

We spoke last year about work being done to reduce lag and improve game performance, and you saw some elements of that work get deployed in 2022. This work will continue in 2023! We've been focusing on the way the game communicates with itself, along with making some of our more complex systems more efficient behind the scenes. One reason for this focus is that we are able to measure the impact it has, before and after, and while no one fix will banish lag for good, we are able to see the benefits of these small but steady improvements over time. We know you want us to make lag reduction a focus, and we agree!

There are more features and content happening later in the year, such as a Legendary revamp of Droaam content and another Hardcore redux season, but this should give you a good sense of what is in store for the first part of 2023 and beyond. We can’t wait to see you in game!

Tolero

[Captain_Wizbang]

What about ViP?

[ahpook]

No complaints about what is there but it seems pretty lacking to this reader. Are we to assume

• No level increase this year?
• No changes to VIP benefits?
• No improvements to processes that saw some of the worst updates in DDO history?
• No further changes to banking even though what is there is insufficient and not working?
• ...

Basically, so much not mentioned and nothing to address the drama that has cropped up in the past few months. It is a marketing brochure more than a producers letter, IMO.

[Dandonk]

Lag has been reduced? Where?

Enlarged bank, yay! But very minor and for outrageous prices, it's still buggy, and it's still more annoying to use. So... not quite yay?

Not a word about VIPs, but hey, we can get to pay for a "mini-expansion" - aka rebranded adventure pack that we used to get included in the VIP subscription.

No mention of new classes or races or levels, but more archetypes that have so far been fairly meh. Hopefully the new ones are better.

[Gordo]

This can't be possible. What an underwhelming letter.
Does anyone know another game worth investing 15 years in?

Unbelievably weak.

[Tap4black]

Justifies canceling my VIP even more. Producers "letter" what a Friggen JOKE.

[Valerianus]

what's this?

any of us could have written something like this, if being told that the mini-expansion (it was alredy clear that this year we would have the 2nd ddo mini-expansion) was about Vecna and that the yearly revamp was about Drooam.

and also told to write this thing from lotro forum but changing the words a little, like when we used to cheat some homework when we were kids

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...35#post8173135

(copypaste)
We have spent a lot of time and energy investigating and resolving sources of degraded game performance over the past two years, and that work will continue in 2023. Much of the work is centering on how the game communicates with itself, to become as efficient as possible, and to improve the various game systems when we can in cases where older design perhaps didn't fully consider the ramifications of a game entering its 16th year and the amount of things that would be added to it. You've already seen some of this work, including things like land block loading and the way some deeds query the system, well, also the updated Legendary Item system really, but there is always more work to do. While no one change or fix will permanently remove lag from the game, our ongoing work will chip away at it.
(end copypaste)


all the rest is hardcore and festivals, yeah we know they are going to be a thing. what is this, seriously.


and about vip? i don't care, i don't pay for vip, and i love the fact that ddo lets you play with zero hassle even if you don't subscribe, unlike other games, please go on by this path it's cool and you did and doing the right thing....but i feel so sorry for my dear fellow players who paid and are paying for...what exactly? would you please tell em something?

[GoldyGopher]

At first I thought "you know maybe because I clicked on the link so fast after Cordovan posted it, the real letter wasn't available yet." That was my first thought, honest.

I am shell shocked at how tone deaf this letter is to the requests and comments from the player base.

1 free quest and 1 Adventure pack?
A Mini Expansion?

No comments on VIP.

It would have been better to not release a Producer's Letter than to release this.

[Assassination]

Wow. Really, really bad. Wow.

Looks like the other thread has it right, giving the number one sign to VIP's.

ON a positive note, that armor might be the best thing you guys have done over the last 3 years.

[Gordo]

Justifies canceling my VIP even more. Producers "letter" what a Friggen JOKE.

Other than those that praise anything that comes out of SSG's mouths, everyone else prefers not to be gaslit. The writing has been on the wall for years.

This "update" is the culmination of ever more aggressive means to monetize the game (which I have ZERO problem with as it is a business) but provide incrementally less and less value in return. The constant shard and Otto box sales are a clear indication that SSG wants quantity (money) over quality (content). The value proposition is eroding - fast.

Everyone who is of open mind and has a modicum of critical thought should realize this is a game in slow demise. It happens to businesses all of the time and to pretend SSG is somehow immune to profit/investor expectations is folly.

[cadaverash]

Wasn't there talk of a Ravenloft mini expansion this year?

I still haven't gotten the furries & dinosaurs expansion, but it doesn't interest me as much as Ravenloft.

I'm okay if you forgo the Ravenloft mini expansion for a Ravenloft full expansion next year.

[rabidfox]

No level increase this year?

I assume no level jump with this mini-expansion as it wasn't mentioned; but that would be a big question that would nice to hear officially if we are/aren't getting a bump with it.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Wow. Really, really bad. Wow.

Looks like the other thread has it right, giving the number one sign to VIP's.

ON a positive note, that armor might be the best thing you guys have done over the last 3 years.

A cosmetic armor is NOTHING I will spend money on. So... I'll just go with the rest of your post. +1

[Arkat]

only one update? 58 is it?

4 updates like always.

[WaxLyrical]

You can see the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the production of this epic tome. The effort of slaving over the keyboard for several months, meticulously composing this masterful narrative shines through!

[systemshaker1941]

Anyone wanna go to PAX and ask them point-blank why they are ignoring us? Would be funny.

[systemshaker1941]

You can see the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the production of this epic tome. The effort of slaving over the keyboard for several months, meticulously composing this masterful narrative shines through!

Someone nat20'd their sarcasm role.

[amessi1]

I don't wanna harsh anyone's VIP pitch-fork rally...but, I'm excited about this year.

there's free content for all. new dungeons new archetypes!

i'm most curious as to what the Raid Update bullet is about...anticipation building.

[mbartol]

You can see the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the production of this epic tome. The effort of slaving over the keyboard for several months, meticulously composing this masterful narrative shines through!

Uhh, I think you misspelled “minutes.”

[WiseFreelancer]

I’m not as doom and gloom about this, but it is a weirdly vague letter. The roadmap contains as many updates as normal, and a ‘spring’ mini x-pack is earlier than expected.

What is super noticeable is the lack of character content detailed. Nothing on archetype plans beyond next updates, nothing on the missing three destinies. And I find that weird because there’s no evidence that content is less important - the Druid archetype on lamania looks more involved than the usual 1x universal tree we got per x-pack in the past. Clearly they still have ideas!

The lotro one was more specific and most of their big stuff is longer away. IDK?

Anyway, a strange letter, and bad hype building, but I’m not going to read too much into that.

Sev stream will be interesting after this…