This is a work of parody covered by the fair use doctrine under 17 U.S.C. § 107.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 21, 2013

Contact: Associate System Designer David Severs

Phone: 401-992-4050

In order to keep up with the rapidly changing and innovative game mechanics found within Turbine's various industry leading massively multiplayer online games we have decided to immediately release a new and improved slogan that better corresponds to the direction in which we are moving all of Turbine's games. Without further delay we bring you Turbines exciting new slogan:

Turbine Games Powered By Your Microtransactions!

Turbine also wishes to inform the public of it's newest and most exciting change to date. In order to build off of the success of recent game mechanic improvements from the recently released Shadowfell Conspiracy Turbine has added an exciting new system in which players will be required to own Astral Shards at all times when playing Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO). Under this new system players will slowly have Astral Shards deducted from game accounts as they adventure in DDO's exciting and fun game world. A window to track the declining number of Astal Shards that a player owns was conveniently added into the games user interface with the last update. This new user interface improvement will add further excitement as players race to keep up with an always shrinking number of Astral Shards as the counter counts down on them. The speed at which shards are deducted will be sped up on days in which bonus points are available for purchase and at times in which Astral Shards and/or Diamonds are placed on sale. This system is designed to mimic the cost of loot re-rolls from chests on plus loot weekends. The most exciting change with this new system is that when a player runs out of shards that players computer will be placed on a computer ransacked timer that will last until the flames of Turbines innovative new ransack timer go out. Video of this exciting game mechanic is provided later on in this electronic press release.

Dungeons and Dragons Online Terms of Service (Both US and UK) have been updated to reflect the fact that Turbine will not be morally or financially responsible for any minor or major damage done to any players personal computing devices due to the player being negligent in not preventing Astral Shard decay from resulting in a ransacked state to any personal computer devices they may own. Turbine believes that this exciting new game mechanic will make Astral Shard management as important as Hit Point and Spell Point management. This has the potential to add new strategies to the game as players have to quickly decide at times which micro transactions are most important to them and if taking one will result in unexpected real life consequences if an account falls below zero shards.

Extensive Turbine Quality Assurance (QA) testing has shown that new customers as well as currently existing DDO fanbois will quickly embrace the new Astral Shard mechanic. This QA testing was conducted during odd months of odd years on odd days of the week during odd minutes of odd hours. On the Lamannia test server forums a majority of Turbine's valued and highly intelligent fanboi customers were very vocal in defending this innovative new strategy to the small minority of current customers who do not understand innovation or cutting edge game mechanics. Studies also showed that these unintelligent customers who did not understand the need for increased corporate profits were also the same ones who expected "Free-to-play" to mean "Free to play." These customers did not seem to understand that two negative signs in between words actually changed the meaning of Free-to-play to one in which customers would actually be expected to pay ever increasing sums of money. Our use of the negative sign in "Free-to-play" clearly indicates that one is expected to pay to play. Educated Turbine customers understand this principal as it follows the same logic mathematically of a negative times a negative equaling a positive. During extensive Quality Assurance research DDO fanbois were very quick to point out the need for Turbine to make a profit even in spite of the clearly ridiculous extremes to which we have to take things in order to increase corporate profit margins. Many DDO fanbois even posted glowing reviews of this innovative and new game mechanic in windowed mode on various forums even as there own Astral Shard timers counted down.

Senior Community Specialist Amanda Grow then stated "I want to remind DDO players to get there Owlbear pets spayed or neutered!" She then went on to encourage all existing players who do not care for any new and exciting game mechanics (to) "just deal with it" as in a few months time Turbine will most likely be abandoning this new and innovative change in order to invest in even newer and more innovative game mechanic changes. This will most likely be done in much the same way that Turbine has chosen to ignore prior cutting edge game designs of are own like raiding, Cannith Crafting, Guild Augment Slots, Sigils of Leveling etc.

At the end of the press conference Senior Community Specialist Amanda Grow went on to state "The accusations that Turbine has added to many micro transactions are all false. It's not like we are Entropia Universe and charging are players $330,000 for the Crystal Palace Space Station or even worse we could be like Second Life and make you pay real world dollars so that your in-game character could have a penis." Associate System Designer David Severs then quickly stated "I want to assure are loyal DDO gaming community that if penises are added to DDO then I will make sure that there is a random nature to them so that randomly dropped in-game penises as loot all have unique and random loot table mechanics. No one wants to get the same penis as everyone else! Who knows maybe you could possibly earn some penis in the future from grinding favor. I am not saying I am going to add penis's to DDO loot tables or quest completion rewards but if I did then I want you all to know that getting penis would be a fun and exciting grind in which you would scream with joy when you finally unlocked or got some penis of your own!" The press conference then officially ended to loud screams of joy from the fanbois who had been invited to attend.

This is a work of parody covered by the fair use doctrine under 17 U.S.C. § 107.

Below is the actual laboratory footage of a customers account running out of Astral Shards and going into the ransacked mode mentioned in this press release:



For more information, please visit http://www.ddo.com/shadowfell

Dungeons & Dragons Online®(DDO) is a free-to-play MMORPG featuring a massive world with state-of-the-art graphics and gameplay. DDO offers an innovative pricing model that allows players to download and play for free, purchasing adventure packs, items, and account services a la carte from the new DDO Store, or to subscribe to get unlimited access to all of the game’s content. Players can download and play DDO for free by visiting http://www.ddo.com.

About Turbine
Turbine, Inc. is a premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds that foster powerful social gaming communities. Turbine is wholly owned by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group and has created some of the world’s most popular and award-winning online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons & Dragons Online® , and Asheron's Call®.  For more information on Turbine, its products and services please visit www.turbine.com.

About Hasbro
Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) is a branded play company providing children and families around the world with a wide-range of immersive entertainment offerings based on the Company’s world class brand portfolio.  From toys and games, to television programming, motion pictures, video games and a comprehensive licensing program, Hasbro strives to delight its customers through the strategic leveraging of well-known and beloved brands such as TRANSFORMERS, LITTLEST PET SHOP, NERF, PLAYSKOOL, MY LITTLE PONY, G.I. JOE, MAGIC: THE GATHERING and MONOPOLY.  The Hub, Hasbro’s multi-platform joint venture with Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) launched on October 10, 2010. The online home of The Hub is www.hubworld.com. The Hub logo and name are trademarks of Hub Television Networks, LLC. All rights reserved.  Come see how we inspire play through our brands at http://www.hasbro.com. © 2010 Hasbro, Inc.  All Rights Reserved

About Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS), is the leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer. Wizards' players and fans are members of a global community bound together by their love of both digital gaming and in-person play. The company brings to market a range of gaming experiences under powerful brand names such as MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and KAIJUDO. Wizards is also a publisher of fantasy series fiction with numerous New York Times best-sellers. For more information about our world renowned brands, visit the Wizards of the Coast Web site at www.wizards.com.

                                                                                                       #  #  #

Dungeons & Dragons Online, Shadowfell Conspiracy, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Forgotten Realms, Kaijudo,Wizards of the Coast, and related logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of HASBRO, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


This is a work of parody covered by the fair use doctrine under 17 U.S.C. § 107.

notajedi wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 6:57am:


14 of those are my mules
Registered doesn't even mean those accounts played one minute. Lot's of players just registerd 3 mail addresses to get the yellow cube pet.

pape wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 9:47am:


I know it is PFA, but I am working, so I have to waste my time discussing your numbers.

For example, my static group. Very casual players, they only have one account and NO MULES at all. 3 of them have only one account = one active character. They spend maybe 40$ a year for the game.

I wonder how many players like this are around.

I would guestimate at least half the players in the game are managing a single account.

To be honest I didn't create multiple accounts until I started a one man guild to run on alt servers. That was for about the first two to three years of playing the game.

Maybe, just maybe, there have been 5,000,000 accounts registered since 2006. But I would highly doubt that. 

The attrition rates of losing that many players through deletion and/or inactivity is staggering. That alone would have shut the doors to DDO a long time ago, regardless of the (planned) move to the F2P model.

Darth Anonymous wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 5:10am:

lmao nicely done

Darth Anonymous wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 10:54pm:

Fixed.

pape wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 10:36am:

Don't forget that gold spammers used to be terribad.  They were probably good for at least hundreds of accounts per day for quite a while.

I don't know if it still works, but I think you used to be able to count the number of accounts via a new member's number on the forums.  They were sequential.


heh heh, member.

notajedi wrote on Aug 21^st, 2013 at 6:57am:



How many are four year old dormant accounts??  They make the same claim for LoTRO.  Most of it just means that they're
too lazy to clear out old accounts to free up names.  The hardest thing in LoTRO is coming up with a name for your
character.