Ok this started on the DDO forums, but I'm not getting a straight answer there public or private.  I suspect I will here.  What "doom"?

Quote:

Wtf?  The Oracle reports nothing but the facts?

Link plz?

Arkat wrote on Jan 11^th, 2014 at 8:50pm:


https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/433894-Petition-Turbine-Bring-back-API...

Doom DDO is dying.

Since I joined in 2009/2010.

Since It's my post that is quoted in pope linkie to that thread, I have to chime in.

I am not calling the Oracle a harbinger of Doom.
It's just that the data shown by the Oracle on the daily/weekly/monthly graph looks so much like what I see every day that I just can't ignore them. ( basically telecom equipment statistics show similar graphs )

It's some people are so set in the DDO is dying mode that they parse everything written as Doom.

We all start dying the day we're born.

What's the deal with the one server that seems to have about twice the people on it?

The Oracle wrote on Jan 13^th, 2014 at 3:34am:


That's why I keep telling Turbine when they should make their maintenance windows.
The daily graph is close enough to a public exchange call graph :

-starting to rise from background level around 7 AM, morning peak at 11 AM [ In DDO the Peak is at 1PM ] then a small drop between 11:30AP and 1PM [ The small drop is between 3PM and 4:30PM ], then another peak around 2PM [ 5PM in DDO ]....
Then that's where differences occurs. In Telecom we have a big peak starting at 6PM and going on until 10PM. ( varies in time if it's Voice, Data or SMS and with each country, but the peak is here )
Then things slowly go down to background level that is reached around 2AM.
[ Thus the maintenance windows in telecom : Midnight - 8AM, or for critical services : 2AM - 6 AM ]
There is no such peak in DDO, after the 5PM peak things slowly go down... But since the graph is shifted several hours ( compared to a telecom one ) it's quite normal to have the afternoon peak merged with the evening one in DDO.

So it's fun data to look at and compare with Telco because it shows some differences from the typical telco grap, and explaining thse differences can bring some insight to the usage. ( read : how it is used, when, where and how long; not doom )

kavinsky wrote on Jan 13^th, 2014 at 4:52pm:


I'm not called the all-knowing Oracle for nothing.  Click harder! 

(Fixed, tnx. Now with 100% more sating.)

hmm, is it me or DDO servers have generally more logins at peak time than LoTRO server ?

Otherwise, with a few notable exceptions, the graph is flattened out.
Compared to DDO that shows the typical telco load, the LOTRO graphs are just more or less flat, as if they were averaged over a day  [ There's a few notable exceptions though ]

So basically :

DDO has a bigger audience at peak time, but LoTRO has a more spread out audience over time.

All in all a DDO server seems to have more or less the same amount of players than a LoTRO server.

Arkat wrote on Jan 14^th, 2014 at 9:13am:



WB wanted Turbine to consolidate the LoTR license against Saul Zaentz ( aka Tolkien Enterprise, Aka Middle Earth Enterprise ), that way they own the whole package for games and derivative.

Asheras wrote on Jan 14^th, 2014 at 3:12pm:

An interesting proposition, but for the sake of discussion, please consider the following: Store sales are important for the present, but logins are important for the future, and Turbine should watch them closely. Well, probably hours spent in game rather than just the login, but logins are a reasonable approximation to the harder to track game hours.

My reasoning is twofold.

First, current (even free) players are the most economical audience to reach with advertising. Advertisers track a station's ratings because they want their message to reach as many potential customers as possible, and current players have both the cheapest cost per viewer to reach and the highest conversion rate (sales per advertisement viewed). And I don't just mean direct email marketing, every time you see a re-roll loot button or a daily gold dice roll that's an advertisement for astral shards which they sell in the store. Every LFM for a pack you don't own is an advertisement too.

Second, DDO isn't a standalone game, it's an MMO and many people play it for the social aspect. Decreasing the density of players also decreases the entertainment value for many players, making it more likely that they will leave in the future. That's why threads calling for a removal of dungeon scaling or a merge of servers pop up on the main forums almost as often as doom threads. I don't put much stock in either, but their prevalence indicates many people do.

So while I agree with you that current sales are more important than current logins, logins are still very important. Of course, the other way to read your statement is that Turbine can't think far enough ahead to worry about the future so they don't care about login statistics no matter how important they are. I have no counter argument  for that interpretation

The Oracle wrote on Jan 13^th, 2014 at 5:10pm:


I am slightly confused by your data. The Wayfinder server in particular. There are a few hours of the day in which there are less then 30 people on the server, yet I dont see this reflected in your data. Makes me wonder if all the servers data is the same.