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Having second thoughts about DDO after what Turbine did to AC2
Introspectre
Member Posts: 40
Well, I had been anticipating DDO (and LOTR Online for that matter), both currently in development by Turbine... however, I also recently read that Turbine is shutting down Asheron's Call 2 because of the dwindling number of subscriptions. Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't this the first time a major MMO is being ended? The genre of MMO's is still relatively new, yet some of the much older, ancient games like Meridian 59/Diablo 1/UO/etc. still have live servers running, and many other MMO's with dwindling players have converted to a free service as a favor to the players. Yet here Turbine has pulled the plug on a MMO after a few years, that still had at least 10,000 active players..
It makes me wonder what the future will be for DDO & LOTRO if one or both of them doesn't meet their expectations? Or alternatively, what happens 2-4 years after DDO/LOTRO are released and Turbine decides to develop a new game or two? Judging by how they dropped AC2, it becomes apparent that they are willing to screw over long-term customers if A) they want to make more money, or 
They want to focus all their efforts on something else. As a result I am very hesitant to ever buy a Turbine game again.. after all, why gamble investing huge amounts of your time & money into a game when the company might abandon it in the forseeable future for a "bigger better deal"?
Comments
AC2 isn't the first MMORPG to be shut down. Earth & Beyond, the "Everquest in Outer Space" MMORPG was out less than a year before it was shut down due to lack of interest. Earth & Beyond was the first MMORPG made by Westwood studios. I beta-tested it and did NOT sign up after it was released. At the time, Jumpgate was the only MMORPG in space but it was a "twitch" game. Eve Online was still in production, so you'd have thought that Earth & Beyond would have been a hit since it had no real competition. But it seemed to me that the developers weren't listening to the beta testers suggestions. I think they should have. Sounds like DDO is on track for a similar fate.
Actually Motor City Online was the first mmorpg to get closed down and E & B was the second. For a MMO to make money they need at least 50-60,000 subscribers, any less than that and they are losing money. Turbines decision to shut down AC2 was a valid decision no matter how you look at it. I understand you are pissed that they are shutting the servers down but you have to look at it from their perspective.
I don't know of any MMO that has turned itself from a subscription based mmo to a free one, If you are thinking Anarchy Online it is not free. You can play the classic zones for free but you have to view in-game ads and if you want access to any of their new content you need to subscribe. Also that game is still well above 50,000 players I believe so they are doing ok.
If you want to look at another game that may be shutting down soon look at shadowbane. They are struggling to keep 20,000 subscribers and have consolidated most of their servers down to just a few. There are far too many MMO's on the market or in developement right now and some of them are just not going to survive, there is simply not enough customers for all of them to be successful.
My problem with Turbine is this...
If they were in trouble, why develope and expansion pack? and then shortly after it comes out announce that they are shutting it down?
I played AC2 for quite a while and liked it. It was not the best, but it was OK. But things started to go wrong for me when they went with their big announcement... We are going to stop putting out monthly updates and go to every other month. Why, so we can develope an expansion pack with all of this great stuff in it. Which was promised to come out in future updates (free), not an expansion pack (not free).
That was the straw the broke my back...
Because an expansion pack is something you can put on store shelves. It was likely an attempt to try and save the game once and for all. It appears it didn't work so they made the decision to shut the servers down.
Yes it sucks, but I doubt their intention was to purposely take money from their loyal customers just to close the game down a month later. They likely still lost a ton of money on the expansion.
Minsc is always defending and protective of Turbines.
Just to give you an idea so you understand, if they ruins DDO, I would entertain ideas of lawsuits against them, now I would never do that, but I would entertain the idea!
Turbines was granted far more trust then WotC should have granted them. Turbines think of a balance between MMO and D&D fans, while in fact there is no question of balance, every decision should be for the D&D fans!
Turbines could redifine the MMOs, who care if they anger a few MMOs fans who hardly know what D&D is, the fanbase is not the MMOs guys, it is the D&D guys! They better enter that into their thick skull! (especially that the MMOs guys are angry at the AC2 event, they really should focus on the D&D fanbase and to cater to them in everyway possible, which means NO RAIDING and GOOD SOLO) Many players inside the "Living Greyhawk" campaign doesn't want an "enforced grouping", do you want to even consider non-Living Greyhawk fanbase? If there should be "social D&D folks", such a setting would definitely fit it more than others!
WoW didn't get it success from the MMOs fans, they get it from the Warcraft/Diablo fans, every time they made a MMO currents fanbase decision prior release, it was a mistake and now they must realize it if they read the feedback from their customers (most players are not changing MMOs, they quit WoW and they quit the MMOs, of course even a 20% of them trying another MMO is wonderful for the industry).
The D&D franchise is stronger than any Blizzard product, the fanbase outnumber any RPG or FPS game that ever exist. The franchise has the right to twist what a MMO is to make it a better game and for Instancing they did...somehow after that I see very little efforts to make it a D&D experience rather than an EQ2 variation.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
This is what I'm concerned about... A developer can't do much when a game isn't popular enough to support itself. But when a developers says "Well.... lets make one last ditch effort to save the game by making another Xpack. If it works yay, if it fails we'll have some nice xmas bonuses as we get switched to our next project."
Remember though... the people that make that games... Aren't the same people that do marketing or say what to sell and what not to sell.
DDO must be instanced, ignore the twits from Vanguard. D&D is 5 or 6 people MAXIMUM changing the world for the better, so ignore the twits that want evil characters too.
Soloing should be valid to a point, but don't design the game for it. The game must be designed for 5-6 people in groups to be D&D. That is what the core of D&D is!
Raiding is definitely out, that is a MMORPG poor design feature that doesn't belong in anything with D&D in its name.
Well for a little background on my dealings with Turbine in the past, I tried AC1 for about 2 weeks and hated it, played the AC2 beta for maybe a month and hated that, so I'm hardly a Turbine fanboy. I was skeptical about DDO until I got into the first stress test and tried it and after that first week I was hooked.
Good luck with that lawsuit, I'm sure their lawyers would love a good laugh.
Turbine was not just granted trust by WotC, they are in constant contact with them to make sure they stay within the bounds of the rules. Hell WotC were the ones who suggested they use a spell point system FFS, I'd say that means they like how Turbine are handling the developement so far. From the start Turbine have said that they always try and incoporate the rules in based on the core rule books but at the same time they have to make the game fun as an MMO. Whenever they are forced to make a choice between following a rule as in the book and keeping the game fun, fun always wins, as it should.
Nobody is going to redefine MMO's overnight, it will be a slow transition away from the generic formula that is used in previous generation MMO's. Turbine is taking a few steps in one direction with DDO and others will take steps in another direction. Both can work perfectly fine and one is not right or wrong.
As far as catering to one group of players and not the other, well that is a guaranteed way to fail. See there are always different ends of the spectrum that players will come from. There is the obsessive PnP players who want a literal translation of the rules into electronic form, and there are the hard-core MMO players who must have 12 hour 40-man raids and PVP so they can all stand around and compare their e-peens. The smart money is on the group in the middle who just want a fun game. They will be your PnP players who want to be able to get together with their group and have an experience close to what they used to have when they could all get together regularily for D&D sessions, then there is also the more casual mmo player who doesn't have 6 hours to sit in an instance for a 1 in 40 chance that uber item drops and they roll the highest, they just want to get on and play for an hour or two max and have something fun to do.
I know that you think your version of DDO would be absolutely purfect, and for your tastes I'm sure it is, but there are far more people out there who sit near the middle of the spectrum, and they won't find your version fun.
You're right that WoW got most of it's players from it's Blizzard fanbase, and I believe they have squandered it horribly. They have good subscription numbers right now but I think after they release their new expansion the numbers will drop fast, the expansion simply doesn't add close to enough real content to keep people interested for another 8 months while they work on their next expansion. I don't feel so bad for Blizzard anymore as they are really just a shell of what they were. All of the founding employees have left to start new dev houses so Blizzard as it is now is really just a vivendi marketing tool.