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Should I pay the sub ?
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
D&D is a good game, I played a Cleric to level 10 about two years ago. Now I'm a level 3 Cleric on Cannith server,and having fun all over again with lots of players. The bottom line with all mmos falls down to just one thing to make or break a game for me, and thats population. Now the first few levels on all servers are high. But sure their high, it's free to play !
Problem I'm having is later on. I'm guessing as you go up in level, less people paying for adventure pacs, and not many subs, making grouping harder. The old " find a good guild " just does not cut it, that's a bull crap answer in any MMO, you need LOTS OF PLAYERS.
Sure people are paying for adventure packs, but as I see it, they need ALL OF THEM.
So with all of this, how is the REAL POPULATION :
1) are people paying the sub price ?
2) are people buying ALL the adventure pacs ?
Comments
I would take a wild guess at a large majority of end-level players having subs. There is just way too much content to buy, and rehashing the given instances over and over to 20 would be a nightmare.
~plus, once you get to 20 you cna just drop the sub and do whatever givens there are at that level till you want to do another char, or more end-instances are released. At which time, it actually may be cheaper to buy the later adventure packs.
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The big thing really comes down to why you're playing. If it's to reach lvl 20 so you can participate in the big dungeon runs then yes a sub may be the way to go. Alternatly there is a guide on the official forms 'Know your Adventure Packs' that rates them in terms of XP vs loot vs price vs popularity vs how many want to do them vs bang for the buck. Per it, some packs are more needed if you are doing the lvl 20 route while others are skippable.
If you don't care about getting up in levels and are just in it for fun, than picking and choosing the packs that interest you would probable be cheaper. I'm of this school and after 7 months and 5 levels finally bought my first packs; Sharn, 3 barrel cove and will be the new carnival one. None of which are on the must buy guide, but I think they are / will be fun.
Bottom line I think is; many of the old timer players are still doing subs and no everyone isn't buying ALL the adventure packs. Some just aren't as popular as others.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
There's a current promotion where subscribers are supposed to get more Turbine Points each month for the next 3 or 4 months. I got an email on June 11th with the following message:
Disclaimer: This is wholly-unqualified, non-empirical and merely my opinion based on my personal conversations and experiences with in-game players.
While I'm sure there are many faithful continuously subscribing patrons, I believe there are many that toggle between subscriptions and premium accounts [premium means I bought something at one time and has more perks than free but less than a subscription]. I can't tell you how many conversations start with '... I used to sub but...' or '... I bought X or Y, but found it easier to subscribe' or 'I used to sub, and I will next month'. Usually a sub is dropped due to lack of desirable new content [where desirable is personal opinion] or picked up when they want to access more than a few hundred points of content sooner. I would also opine that a fairly decent percentage of players who reach cap either earn through favor or purchase the main runs for epic crafting and the most popular end-game / Raid content [i.e. 'Shroud' / Necro 4 and the like] .
VIP allows you to pick and choose, but most people tend to have a group of high xp / bound loot that they run to get to cap quickly and a whole lot of quests they might run once for favor or required flag but otherwise ignore / could take or leave. The guide Nebless mentioned is a very good resource and probably paints a fairly accurate picture of what most people have.
IMO, a good player at cap should have very little problem finding a group to run content with regardless of the VIP/P2P/F2P mix.
Illegible
From my experience people are running Gianthold and Vale of Twilight (shroud) all the time so these are two packs to get. Most of packs is for low to mid level and are very optional (for fun, rerolling or powerful but temporary gear).
Still, I too feel the real population is barely enough; there are groups but given how group centric the game is there is just barely enough so you do not have much choice which group to join. The corollary is if you make your own group it will fill, but you better have some core at start or some other way to ensure solid backbone.
I am not sure why the game has so many servers, when everything is instanced.
Same people who have VIP (generally/almost always) are the same ones buying everything SSG feeds them.
I see you are just trolling around raising all the DDO threads from the dead.. WTF?
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
Pro tip: you should do it on the official forums then, SSG ain't here.
Pop is still in the 'OK' range. I did a count on one of the off servers yesterday morning (Sun) and counted 40 lvl 1 - 5's online. Depending on which server you're on and the time you play finding groups wouldn't be a problem.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
I self identify as a monkey.