The big loss happened well before any mis-communication or other Turbine issues, DDO launched with a fraction of what was needed to even call yourself an MMO let alone charge people to play month to month. DDO was behind the eight ball from day one because of the their design decisions. Admittingly, over time, they improved the game but even today it is a hard sell as a monthly fee MMO. It should have been done more like Guild Wars was, flat fee to play what is in the box with occasional MODs sold as add ons.
That being said, the lame duck status it was in prior to all the super secret and vast and mysterious BS certainly wasn't helped by turbines mismanagement of the game and the playerbase inlcuding the poor communication, slow updates, and piss poor network quality. But then again, games with niche subs struggle to afford some of that, though there is no excuse for not maintaining a good vocal relationship with the players you do have.
DDO's website went offline at 9am this morning, before going down the development team confirmed they would have news for us on the subject at 12pm when the web site comes back online.
The questions are, is this going to be good news or bad news and is it going to appease those individuals that have been patiently waiting for the past 7 months.
About 70 mininuts till the we should be able to find out.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
This latest announcement underscores the point of the thread. There were dozens if not hundreds of fanboi's screaming at the top of their lungs that all the silence was due to some legal action that was pending, citing numerous "gag orders" and references to civil cases where such an order was issued.
Now that we know what the silence was about, that it was Turbine themselves keeping quiet to reveal the next chapter for DDO, it's even more bittersweet.
Such an announcement should never have been kept in the dark. There is nothing new being told to us here. The gag order cost them thousands of subscriptions, and they won't be coming back since guess what:
I find it bizarre that they held back Mod 9 for this re-launch. On the other hand, if it works, it could mean they put more effort development for this old game of mine. I don't like the idea of buying an in-game advantage with money, but the devil is in the details.
Silver lining for me is that my daughter can have her own account - she's six, loves the game, but all she ever wants to do is jump around the Marketplace. Uh.. thanks Turbine.
There never was a MOD 9, it was simply a ploy to buy time. As for the devil in teh details on the RMT, it is allready obvious it will be game breaking as the IGN preview clearly states that you will be able to RMT a rez, or other supplies, in dungeon to avoid a wipe or failure that forces you to exit and re-enter. This alone is the worst type of RMT and if there is ever any further development to this game (which I doubt there will be) you can rest assured it will go as most RMT games go with changes to encourage the RMT transactions.
There never was a MOD 9, it was simply a ploy to buy time. As for the devil in teh details on the RMT, it is allready obvious it will be game breaking as the IGN preview clearly states that you will be able to RMT a rez, or other supplies, in dungeon to avoid a wipe or failure that forces you to exit and re-enter. This alone is the worst type of RMT and if there is ever any further development to this game (which I doubt there will be) you can rest assured it will go as most RMT games go with changes to encourage the RMT transactions.
Some things are opinions, and some things are facts. It is a fact that you are wrong about Module 9. I can only repeat that I saw Module 9 on the old preview server (the one that was taken down in April). It exists and in fact seemed ready for release then. As the bugs were no more extreme than in past released modules.
The new beta is under an NDA, so we'll have to wait for Turbine to release more details about the micropayment store.
Also, Smith, maybe it would be catharrtic if you told us what your animosity towards this game is all about. You clearly have something on your back -- beyond whether the game is good or bad. Why is this so personal for you?
A gag order's primary purpose is to prevent the media from improperly influencing a jury by editorializing facts in a criminal or civil case. A judge however, CAN issue a gag order to prevent parties to a lawsuit from commenting on it. However, even in the case of national security matters, gag rules are not issued because as a RULE OF LAW - all court matters are deemed public interest. Matters that are resolved through arbitration or mediation ARE closed discussions. This notion of Turbine not being able to comment about a game module's (horrible) delay due to a "gag order" by a court of law is utter garbage. This is yet another way of Turbine fans to justify what the real issue is: Turbine does not find communicating with its playerbase to be a priority. This is the most likely cause of the silence. If gag orders were denied in murder trials, multi-billion dollar anti-trust and intellectual property cases, do not think for a second that some gag order issued by a court of law is what's causing Turbine's silence. At any rate, only the most severe and most intense summons in the United States (summons by the FBI on matters of national security) come with a gag order, or in the case of constitutionality issues during criminal or civil proceedings. Therefore the chances of a gag order preventing communications from Turbine's delay in a module is almost all but impossible.
When was the last time you didn't complain about a game you keep paying for? You are not important and Turbine doesn't have to tell you anything. In the matter of business one company can threaten another company to not go ahead with the contract they are working on if the first party makes it public premature. Turbine licenses D&D, so I would bet for decisions as big as changing the business model they have to get approval from the other company(companies). And one of those companies could threaten with the gag order.
In every post you make you make it clear that you think you're important enough to know everything a business is doing. When in fact you are as unimportant as can be and are required to know nothing. Any company who was changing a sub based game to a f2p game would keep it quiet until they had all the details in order and a proof of concept working. So to think that Turbine was being all sneaky on you is ridiculous.
Some things are opinions, and some things are facts. It is a fact that you are wrong about Module 9. I can only repeat that I saw Module 9 on the old preview server (the one that was taken down in April). It exists and in fact seemed ready for release then. As the bugs were no more extreme than in past released modules. The new beta is under an NDA, so we'll have to wait for Turbine to release more details about the micropayment store.
MOD9 was a red herring, clearly Turbine has been planning their RMT/F2P thing for quite some time so all the MOD9 is just around the corner, be patient it is coming, we are close, blah-blah-blah was total deflect and deny and delay. Turbine NEVER had any intent to release MOD9 as an update to DDO, they planned it for this F2P RMT re-branding. MOD9 is as much vaporware as anything ever has been and for all the flaming the fanboys tossed around they ought to at least shut the hll up now that it has been confirmed that MOD9 is/was BS and that Turbine had other plans all along.
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released.[1] The term is usually applied to products which fail to emerge after having well-exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product. The term implies unwarranted optimism, an as yet unannounced abandonment of a project, or sometimes even deception" - Wikipedia
Man, Turbine must make really good Kool Aid because people just keep drinking it over and over.
AgtSmith makes a good point. After all the months of "be patient", there's this big announcement and yet--no Mod 9.
And btw - I haven't paid Turbine since 2007 for this game. So don't classify me as someone who pays them anything. They don't deserve my money, nor anyone else's. I'm that customer that they pissed off who's telling 100 people about it.
It's pretty obvious they are sandbagging what's been done on Mod9 to give this new re-brand a bigger content update. Sad part is, that would make it close to a YEAR with no updates, by the time it launches. That's utterly pitiful. At that dismal pace, they cannot possibly expect to survive, there are just too many other places to spend money on MMO's.
This go waaaay back folks - back to before MOD 8 this has clearly been the plan. Remember all the confusion about Korthos Island? Now it makes sense as you see in the announcement the reason for Korthos was to package a small download that gets people in the game while in the background the rest of the game downloads. So even as they where making MOD 8 they knew damn well MOD9 would never be, at least not as players expected it and as even turbine themselves promoted it.
A gag order's primary purpose is to prevent the media from improperly influencing a jury by editorializing facts in a criminal or civil case. A judge however, CAN issue a gag order to prevent parties to a lawsuit from commenting on it. However, even in the case of national security matters, gag rules are not issued because as a RULE OF LAW - all court matters are deemed public interest. Matters that are resolved through arbitration or mediation ARE closed discussions. This notion of Turbine not being able to comment about a game module's (horrible) delay due to a "gag order" by a court of law is utter garbage. This is yet another way of Turbine fans to justify what the real issue is: Turbine does not find communicating with its playerbase to be a priority. This is the most likely cause of the silence. If gag orders were denied in murder trials, multi-billion dollar anti-trust and intellectual property cases, do not think for a second that some gag order issued by a court of law is what's causing Turbine's silence. At any rate, only the most severe and most intense summons in the United States (summons by the FBI on matters of national security) come with a gag order, or in the case of constitutionality issues during criminal or civil proceedings. Therefore the chances of a gag order preventing communications from Turbine's delay in a module is almost all but impossible.
There never was a MOD 9, it was simply a ploy to buy time. As for the devil in teh details on the RMT, it is allready obvious it will be game breaking as the IGN preview clearly states that you will be able to RMT a rez, or other supplies, in dungeon to avoid a wipe or failure that forces you to exit and re-enter. This alone is the worst type of RMT and if there is ever any further development to this game (which I doubt there will be) you can rest assured it will go as most RMT games go with changes to encourage the RMT transactions.
Some things are opinions, and some things are facts. It is a fact that you are wrong about Module 9. I can only repeat that I saw Module 9 on the old preview server (the one that was taken down in April). It exists and in fact seemed ready for release then. As the bugs were no more extreme than in past released modules.
The new beta is under an NDA, so we'll have to wait for Turbine to release more details about the micropayment store.
The fact is the MOD9 they released to the preview server was never going to go live as it was. Patience claims they intended MOD 9 to always be released with the new RMT. So MOD9 hype and Soon were nothing but ploys to string people aloing until this announcement was made, which happens to be another ploy to keep you playing until the flood of new players come and Turbine then cares less for its Vets.
Your statement alone pretty much proves Turbine is screwing people, you said it seemed ready for release then, yet you will not see it for about 3 more months.
The weird thing here being that we have seen this tactic of postponing and tricking customers in staying used over and over in the last year, just on different games. Main differences being the design of the company logo and the reason for postponing the update in question.
I really wonder how many game titles it is going to take before the public wakes up and stops taking everything thrown at them for granted, whilst paying the bills of these companies.
Smith and Roku, you are conflating two separate things (and he's piling ad hominem attacks on me while he's at it). Let's recap.
Question 1: AgtSmith said that Mod 9 did not exist. As a simple question as to whether the code was written and was ready for release, his statement is verifiably false.
Question 2: Did Turbine ever intend to release it before "EU?" Did Turbine screw its existing customers along the way? Who knows on the former - can't be proved. I'd say yes on the latter - they had no business suspending the release of new content during the wait for the "EU" announcement.
Smith and Roku, you are conflating two separate things (and he's piling ad hominem attacks on me while he's at it). Let's recap. Question 1: AgtSmith said that Mod 9 did not exist. As a simple question as to whether the code was written and was ready for release, his statement is verifiably false. Question 2: Did Turbine ever intend to release it before "EU?" Did Turbine screw its existing customers along the way? Who knows on the former - can't be proved. I'd say yes on the latter - they had no business suspending the release of new content during the wait for the "EU" announcement.
According to Turbine they never planned to release Mod9 without EU. I would agree they screwed and lead on their current players in typical Turbine fashion.
Smith and Roku, you are conflating two separate things (and he's piling ad hominem attacks on me while he's at it). Let's recap. Question 1: AgtSmith said that Mod 9 did not exist. As a simple question as to whether the code was written and was ready for release, his statement is verifiably false. Question 2: Did Turbine ever intend to release it before "EU?" Did Turbine screw its existing customers along the way? Who knows on the former - can't be proved. I'd say yes on the latter - they had no business suspending the release of new content during the wait for the "EU" announcement.
On question 1: I did not say MOD 9 did not exist I said it was vaporware, there is a difference. One could argue that MOD 9 actually does not exists as it will only be live after the 'new' game launches, in other words DDO has seen its last update and DDO Unlimited starts with the 'MOD 9 stuff'. Furthermore, back to calling it vaporware, it was originally the end of 2008 and by the time DDO Unlimited launces it will be nearly a year late, through the first couple years DDO got around 8 MODs so MOD 9 coming, if you even count DDO Unlimited as it coming, will be so late that it absolutely qualifies as vaporware. Lastly, I allways called it vaporware or BS in the context of it being obvious that Turbine was holding it out as a reason to stay sub'd when it clearly was nowhere near ready, nowhere near eminent, and otherwise bein falsely represented as 'coming' (elements of vaporware).
On question 2: Yes, Turbine definitively lied, and worse, led customers to believe it was eminent when they absolutely knew it was not. Kate was quoted recently as saying they allways intended it for DDO Unlimited so that confirms it was not coming last year or this year or anywhere that they tried to make people think. Also, if you look at MOD 8 changes with Korthos it is apparent that was part of this (it otherwise made no sense to redo the noob area in a game with all vets starved for content). One of the key elements of the F2P thing is that with Korthos they have it setup so someone can download a very small installer and start playing while in the background the rest of the game loads down, this was done in MOD 8 which goes way back and shows this was allways the plan. There is plenty more as well, just because you are not aware of it or won't look doesn't mean it is not pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.
Game companies work on detailed plans - they don't do things like this out of the blue (which is why I say this is a testbed thing for something else as much as anything). This RMT / DDO unlimited thing has been in the works for a very long time and it is apparent Turbine has just written the game and fans off in how they deceived them figuring maybe the RMT brings in cash (how could it do worse) but more importantly they get to develop and test their RMT model for their other projects that are important.
I liked DDO, but I won't play DDO or any Turbine game again. They almost seem to have contempt for their customers, and it's just not worth it for me to put time into something where they will take advantage of the customer the way they do. The game has been live for years, and it still has a ton of bugs. Then they pull the mod9 stuff where they promise it in January then keep subscribers hanging on. My only regret was hanging on as long as I did on empty promises. Hopefully, I've learned my lesson.
Comments
Which comes back to their policy of talking to it's user base. This better be one-humdinger to make it worth the loss they suffered over this.
The big loss happened well before any mis-communication or other Turbine issues, DDO launched with a fraction of what was needed to even call yourself an MMO let alone charge people to play month to month. DDO was behind the eight ball from day one because of the their design decisions. Admittingly, over time, they improved the game but even today it is a hard sell as a monthly fee MMO. It should have been done more like Guild Wars was, flat fee to play what is in the box with occasional MODs sold as add ons.
That being said, the lame duck status it was in prior to all the super secret and vast and mysterious BS certainly wasn't helped by turbines mismanagement of the game and the playerbase inlcuding the poor communication, slow updates, and piss poor network quality. But then again, games with niche subs struggle to afford some of that, though there is no excuse for not maintaining a good vocal relationship with the players you do have.
--------------------------------
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DDO's website went offline at 9am this morning, before going down the development team confirmed they would have news for us on the subject at 12pm when the web site comes back online.
The questions are, is this going to be good news or bad news and is it going to appease those individuals that have been patiently waiting for the past 7 months.
About 70 mininuts till the we should be able to find out.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
This latest announcement underscores the point of the thread. There were dozens if not hundreds of fanboi's screaming at the top of their lungs that all the silence was due to some legal action that was pending, citing numerous "gag orders" and references to civil cases where such an order was issued.
Now that we know what the silence was about, that it was Turbine themselves keeping quiet to reveal the next chapter for DDO, it's even more bittersweet.
Such an announcement should never have been kept in the dark. There is nothing new being told to us here. The gag order cost them thousands of subscriptions, and they won't be coming back since guess what:
Still no Mod 9.
Way to put whipped cream on shit, Turbine.
Welcome to the 'Asian Model.'
I find it bizarre that they held back Mod 9 for this re-launch. On the other hand, if it works, it could mean they put more effort development for this old game of mine. I don't like the idea of buying an in-game advantage with money, but the devil is in the details.
Silver lining for me is that my daughter can have her own account - she's six, loves the game, but all she ever wants to do is jump around the Marketplace. Uh.. thanks Turbine.
There never was a MOD 9, it was simply a ploy to buy time. As for the devil in teh details on the RMT, it is allready obvious it will be game breaking as the IGN preview clearly states that you will be able to RMT a rez, or other supplies, in dungeon to avoid a wipe or failure that forces you to exit and re-enter. This alone is the worst type of RMT and if there is ever any further development to this game (which I doubt there will be) you can rest assured it will go as most RMT games go with changes to encourage the RMT transactions.
--------------------------------
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Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
Some things are opinions, and some things are facts. It is a fact that you are wrong about Module 9. I can only repeat that I saw Module 9 on the old preview server (the one that was taken down in April). It exists and in fact seemed ready for release then. As the bugs were no more extreme than in past released modules.
The new beta is under an NDA, so we'll have to wait for Turbine to release more details about the micropayment store.
Also, Smith, maybe it would be catharrtic if you told us what your animosity towards this game is all about. You clearly have something on your back -- beyond whether the game is good or bad. Why is this so personal for you?
When was the last time you didn't complain about a game you keep paying for? You are not important and Turbine doesn't have to tell you anything. In the matter of business one company can threaten another company to not go ahead with the contract they are working on if the first party makes it public premature. Turbine licenses D&D, so I would bet for decisions as big as changing the business model they have to get approval from the other company(companies). And one of those companies could threaten with the gag order.
In every post you make you make it clear that you think you're important enough to know everything a business is doing. When in fact you are as unimportant as can be and are required to know nothing. Any company who was changing a sub based game to a f2p game would keep it quiet until they had all the details in order and a proof of concept working. So to think that Turbine was being all sneaky on you is ridiculous.
MOD9 was a red herring, clearly Turbine has been planning their RMT/F2P thing for quite some time so all the MOD9 is just around the corner, be patient it is coming, we are close, blah-blah-blah was total deflect and deny and delay. Turbine NEVER had any intent to release MOD9 as an update to DDO, they planned it for this F2P RMT re-branding. MOD9 is as much vaporware as anything ever has been and for all the flaming the fanboys tossed around they ought to at least shut the hll up now that it has been confirmed that MOD9 is/was BS and that Turbine had other plans all along.
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released.[1] The term is usually applied to products which fail to emerge after having well-exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product. The term implies unwarranted optimism, an as yet unannounced abandonment of a project, or sometimes even deception" - Wikipedia
Man, Turbine must make really good Kool Aid because people just keep drinking it over and over.
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AgtSmith makes a good point. After all the months of "be patient", there's this big announcement and yet--no Mod 9.
And btw - I haven't paid Turbine since 2007 for this game. So don't classify me as someone who pays them anything. They don't deserve my money, nor anyone else's. I'm that customer that they pissed off who's telling 100 people about it.
It's pretty obvious they are sandbagging what's been done on Mod9 to give this new re-brand a bigger content update. Sad part is, that would make it close to a YEAR with no updates, by the time it launches. That's utterly pitiful. At that dismal pace, they cannot possibly expect to survive, there are just too many other places to spend money on MMO's.
This go waaaay back folks - back to before MOD 8 this has clearly been the plan. Remember all the confusion about Korthos Island? Now it makes sense as you see in the announcement the reason for Korthos was to package a small download that gets people in the game while in the background the rest of the game downloads. So even as they where making MOD 8 they knew damn well MOD9 would never be, at least not as players expected it and as even turbine themselves promoted it.
--------------------------------
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Lol.. man you all the way to la la land huh..
Some things are opinions, and some things are facts. It is a fact that you are wrong about Module 9. I can only repeat that I saw Module 9 on the old preview server (the one that was taken down in April). It exists and in fact seemed ready for release then. As the bugs were no more extreme than in past released modules.
The new beta is under an NDA, so we'll have to wait for Turbine to release more details about the micropayment store.
The fact is the MOD9 they released to the preview server was never going to go live as it was. Patience claims they intended MOD 9 to always be released with the new RMT. So MOD9 hype and Soon were nothing but ploys to string people aloing until this announcement was made, which happens to be another ploy to keep you playing until the flood of new players come and Turbine then cares less for its Vets.
Your statement alone pretty much proves Turbine is screwing people, you said it seemed ready for release then, yet you will not see it for about 3 more months.
AgtSmith is right on the Money. Like it or not.
The weird thing here being that we have seen this tactic of postponing and tricking customers in staying used over and over in the last year, just on different games. Main differences being the design of the company logo and the reason for postponing the update in question.
I really wonder how many game titles it is going to take before the public wakes up and stops taking everything thrown at them for granted, whilst paying the bills of these companies.
Smith and Roku, you are conflating two separate things (and he's piling ad hominem attacks on me while he's at it). Let's recap.
Question 1: AgtSmith said that Mod 9 did not exist. As a simple question as to whether the code was written and was ready for release, his statement is verifiably false.
Question 2: Did Turbine ever intend to release it before "EU?" Did Turbine screw its existing customers along the way? Who knows on the former - can't be proved. I'd say yes on the latter - they had no business suspending the release of new content during the wait for the "EU" announcement.
According to Turbine they never planned to release Mod9 without EU. I would agree they screwed and lead on their current players in typical Turbine fashion.
On question 1: I did not say MOD 9 did not exist I said it was vaporware, there is a difference. One could argue that MOD 9 actually does not exists as it will only be live after the 'new' game launches, in other words DDO has seen its last update and DDO Unlimited starts with the 'MOD 9 stuff'. Furthermore, back to calling it vaporware, it was originally the end of 2008 and by the time DDO Unlimited launces it will be nearly a year late, through the first couple years DDO got around 8 MODs so MOD 9 coming, if you even count DDO Unlimited as it coming, will be so late that it absolutely qualifies as vaporware. Lastly, I allways called it vaporware or BS in the context of it being obvious that Turbine was holding it out as a reason to stay sub'd when it clearly was nowhere near ready, nowhere near eminent, and otherwise bein falsely represented as 'coming' (elements of vaporware).
On question 2: Yes, Turbine definitively lied, and worse, led customers to believe it was eminent when they absolutely knew it was not. Kate was quoted recently as saying they allways intended it for DDO Unlimited so that confirms it was not coming last year or this year or anywhere that they tried to make people think. Also, if you look at MOD 8 changes with Korthos it is apparent that was part of this (it otherwise made no sense to redo the noob area in a game with all vets starved for content). One of the key elements of the F2P thing is that with Korthos they have it setup so someone can download a very small installer and start playing while in the background the rest of the game loads down, this was done in MOD 8 which goes way back and shows this was allways the plan. There is plenty more as well, just because you are not aware of it or won't look doesn't mean it is not pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.
Game companies work on detailed plans - they don't do things like this out of the blue (which is why I say this is a testbed thing for something else as much as anything). This RMT / DDO unlimited thing has been in the works for a very long time and it is apparent Turbine has just written the game and fans off in how they deceived them figuring maybe the RMT brings in cash (how could it do worse) but more importantly they get to develop and test their RMT model for their other projects that are important.
--------------------------------
Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
I liked DDO, but I won't play DDO or any Turbine game again. They almost seem to have contempt for their customers, and it's just not worth it for me to put time into something where they will take advantage of the customer the way they do. The game has been live for years, and it still has a ton of bugs. Then they pull the mod9 stuff where they promise it in January then keep subscribers hanging on. My only regret was hanging on as long as I did on empty promises. Hopefully, I've learned my lesson.