Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Sirbruce says about DDO
Jd1680a
Member Posts: 398
I want to take this opportunity to talk about Dungeons & Dragons Online, as it was my Best of Show winner for E3 2005. Despite having a lot going for the title, Turbine failed to execute last fall while the game was in beta testing, and they chose to ignore many of the complaints about the shortcomings of the title and chose to release it this spring anyway. While the game has sold some 300,000 copies, I can tell you the number of subscriptions is far less (although I don’t have exact numbers to report yet – keep checking the main page!), and far below what this game should have attracted. DDO has received modest ratings in reviews, which typically praise the product’s unique strengths before demolishing it with a litany of problems that were identified months previously in beta testing. Can Turbine turn the product around with the next expansion? MMOG history has shown us this is very unlikely, but Turbine is making their best effort, with heavy promotions of free game time, an upcoming patch promising more solo content, and an “updated” release at retail for Christmas 2006. My opinion: while DDO will survive as a niche to midrange MMOG, it will never be the big hit that it could have been. This only underscores how important execution at launch is – even a fundamentally sound product can fall short if the developer fails to devote the time and resources necessary to make it a truly AAA title. http://www.mmogchart.com/
im wondering what is considered a nice to a midrange MMO.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Comments
Captain John Matin
Royal Red
I agree that DDO sold many copies.In the UK it was top seller for nearly 1 month on play.com(oe of the top online retailers).
I for one can testify that many people i know bought the game.But i can also testify that no one i know played past the free month and even left with a bad taste in their mouth on how turbine killed a great licence from the word go.
After DDO and AC2 i seriously have my doubts turbine reputation can take another pounding escially since its no more part of M$ and can't afford expensive mistakes .
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Well Sir Bruce must have a formula that can take peak time users online and figure what the subscription rate is. That must be how the mmorpg chart is derived as most those games don't release subscriber numbers.
I know on my thelanis server low pops are usually 250-300 and peak pops are usually 800-1000.
I think it was reported that at peak times usually 25% of your player base is playing.
So you could assume 4k active subs per server x the number of servers which I think are 14.
That would be over 50k.
The one thing that DDO does have in its favor is the core game is good. The lag has improved alot so they really just need to grind out content more races and expand non quest things to do in the game. It will be an uphill battle but it is not nearly as hard as alot of other games have faced post launch.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Well Thelanis I think is about average because it has been popping up on the server for new players to start on. I am assuming when a server starts to lag behind the others, they are put on the start up page to keep server pops even. The Euro servers is a good point too. My number of 4k is strictly just a guess and hardly scientific. Someone like Bruce should be able to extrapolate the number to get a reasonably accurate guess. Most MMORPG's follow the same rules ie % of active players logged in at peak times.
I do think DDO will be one MMORPG that will have much higher resub's then most other games. It is not a hard game to get back into and it definitely is a more instant gratification game as well. So you resub a few months later play through the content and then cancel out again. To me that seems worth $15 bucks if you can get a few modules worth of playing. I would also expect alot of resubs for lvl cap increases, pvp and crafting additions.
So I do think DDO can actually have more players down the road provided they can execute their roadmap.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
True but we are talking specifically about DDO. He states that he does estimating when other information isn't available. So he must have a much more tried and true formula then us amateur hacks in this forum. He has not released any DDO info yet other then what has been anounced publicly. 300k+ box sales and sub numbers are less then that.
Me personally I don't really care what sub numbers are as it doesn't affect me in the least. But I think his study of the industry and his observations are definitely a good thing. I do remeber reading alot of Sir Bruce's comments in the alpha and beta of DDO and he made alot of very good posts with alot of detail.