geoffhanna wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:12pm:


I just had a sad.

In the Flesh is one of my favourite quests in the game.

Rockingdead if you are reading this: fuck turbine for firing you, you made amazing quests and I genuinely hope you find an amazing new job at a superior company.

That quest chain in its entirety has always been my favourite.

First time in the last quest? I had fucking chills up my spine, it was a truly amazing quest......

And before they nerfed the difficulty of that quest it had a great difficulty level......not complete-able at level by most, but occasionally done (at least from my experience of pugging it pre-u20.....now it is easy) and when you did complete it felt epic.

I HAVE A SAD.

When they:
-Changed EPs
-Announced lvl 30 would the final level cap
-Starting pumping out a ridiculous amount of end game content (HH, 2 new raids)
-Started to pretend to care about player opinions
-Shut down ML (read: dev resources)

The writing is, and has been on the wall that something pivotal was in the pipe.

Sadly, it turned out to be layoffs. Best wishes to all those laid off today, and i hope you fond gainful employment soon.

The only question remaining is: whats the next 12 months at Turbine look like?

-is this the skeleton crew who after this big content push will remain on to janitor/docent DDO into a tasteful slow burn death? Or will there more likely be another purge once U21/22 hit?
-is this a clever ruse and DDO is actually mere months from its death?
-Will they merge servers and make a go of it with a smaller team?


I don't believe DDO isn't making money. I think DDO pulls in the 6-7 figures every month. But, thats only really enough to support 4-6 full-time people if its true, hence the lay-offs.

Anyway, this is definitely the downward slope of the bell graph for DDO. The question is just how along it are we already.

harharharhar wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:36pm:


You can tell that we're on the "downward slope" just from the last login numbers we had. We've been on the slope for a long time. But DDO is old, not a lot to do about it.

According to FoS three content designers were laid off (as well as misc. staff) and now there's four+the lead left. But there's still tons of other positions still filled. I really don't think it's as massive a layoff as people were saying it is, the 50% number was from some anonymous dude on some website. They're hardly being left with a "skeleton crew."

My prediction: fucking nothing will change. Updates will still get released as slowly or as quickly as they have been lately, and they'll still be as low or high quality as they have been. DDO will still get updates for several years. Even Asheron's Call, which is like a thousand years old, still gets updates and it's existing on a cult following alone.

harharharhar wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:36pm:


That would put turbines income from ddo at approx 10mil/year. You do realise that would be about half of turbines entire revenue. cut your estimates in half and try again please 

Meat-Head wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:53pm:


one is subscription, the other f2p. I agree with your characters logged in counts.

HairyO wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:14pm:


nah didn't see hendrik sobbing on the mother boards so unlikely............I mean he would be the first to know right?

kierg10 wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 10:02pm:


I said 6-7 figures a month Kierg, if its 7 a month, that would be over 10mil.

Where are these login numbers? I feel like DDO could be half of Turbines revenue. LOTRO is teh_lame does anyone play it?

What else do they have? AC? That probably makes a small amount over its maintenance cost.

Memnir wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 10:04pm:


There hasn't been much good content since Epic GH which doesn't count because it already existed so really since MoTU which had a lot of content but it wasn't super great. Ditto Druids, Highroad, and Shadowfell.

So, while they were some great designers, for one reason or another they weren't designing great content for a couple years now. Maybe it was from people managing them, or maybe they rab out of ideas though i dpubt it.

I think mostly youre just seeing the result of DDO moving toward less content delivery, and more game engine tweaking and end game adjustments with Lvl 30, more raids, ED expansions, etc. they might add a new class, or more iconics.

The point is a big content push now, then a lot of bug/new system/update stuff for the rest of the year, i think. I think once 2015 rolls around, we'll have DDO in its AC-like maintenance mode for the rest of its life with some small regular little updates and bug fixes. Maybe new items.

TheRockingDead is a huge loss, one of the few remaining early devs who hadn't been pulled for a secret project. He will he missed.

he's already thrown several of his former coworkers under the bus here.

kierg10 wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 9:19pm:


In the flesh blows.  I don't understand how anyone can like that quest.  Rainbow is still awesome and random encounters were a great idea.  Too bad half of them are bugged and can't be completed.

Robairee wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 1:34am:


It's the awesome hidden optionals.

Seriously, when it first came out, that swim was risky on elite, as was the scorpion when i came up.

the air jet pillars are quite a neat obstacle.

I loved seeing dead pixel the first time.

The boss fight is still one of the best ones now, the pods mechanic was brilliant.