Yup, one of them probably read an article like this piece of moron-bait: http://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-dominates-internet-infrastructure-2014-2 and went, "ooooh, shiny". Happens so frequently in corporate IT it's not even funny.

Meli wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 8:45am:



Sadly I have no faith at all in Turbine's Manglement...

Bill Z Bubb wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 12:55pm:


From your list, 100% of the problems got fixed, the longest taking "months".

You're not making the other game sound so bad.

Bill Z Bubb wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 12:55pm:


Wow, assume much?

I haven't played GW since the first one, and even then it was briefly, so I can't speak to this personally.  From what he describes to me, he simply never runs into these kinds of obvious flaws.  Since he is not a "hard core" gamer, I find that easy to believe.

There are some differences if I am understanding his descriptions correctly.  In DDO special events are usually fairly contained (Harbor, Bongwater Tavern, Delera's, etc.) so in theory they should be more easily managed.  It sounds like in GW2 the special events can affect much of the world so, at least to me, it sounds pretty impressive, and I would imagine that it's much more immersive.

So you have (seemingly) much more ambitious events with (seemingly) much fewer obvious problems.  Not surprising really, considering the relative amount of $ and staff involved in each game.  But when a typical consumer is trying to decide where to spend their game time/$, should they have to consider the size of the company behind the curtain?  I don't think they should.  The game/experience is either entertaining or not.  The average consumer is not going to adjust their scale of enjoyment based on the resources that went into the creation and support of the game.

I submit to you that obvious flaws, that are easily encountered by even the most casual user, definitely detract from DDO's appeal.  Imagine recommending this game to a friend, and then having their first experience go like this:

1) Install game
2) Login
3) Loading screen says "The"
4) Login takes 5 or 6 minutes while progress bar shows nothing happening
--) At this point many folks will just assume a crash and shut down the process via the control panel.  If not...
6) Eventually get into game
7) Oops, everything is frozen - not connected to server
8) Quit game
9) Oops, not closing cleanly, gotta use control panel
10) Try starting game again
11) Takes 'only' a couple of minutes this time
12) Actually get into a working game (finally)

I don't know about you, but if I was trying out a game for the first time, I'd probably be giving up before the second try.

So no, I'm not naïve enough to imagine that GW2 is flawless.  But I'll bet the overall user experience, for the average user, is a damn sight better than DDO's.  And don't give me "Then go play GW2 then."  We all know why we are still with the filthy lying whore that is DDO.

GooFY wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 5:29pm:

Yeah, I have. I don't reccommend it to friends anymore. I'm embarrased to post about it, and none of my friends post about it anymore either.

GooFY wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 5:48pm:

You want graphic details and maybe a few pictures and see if you can figure it out? Make sure you have a bucket handy. And maybe a spoon for your eyes (though it won't help)

Sim-Sala-Bim wrote on Mar 14^th, 2014 at 3:07am:


I liked that loading screen so much I recorded it and used it for scene changes in some of my videos.

Since it is now open to interpretation per person on the forums its more likely that they are trying the route of appeasing all and retaining public face, anything that can be construed as a complaint or damage to reputation ... means that there is major concern over the direction of public appeal of the game.

EQ1 had a window where it was the dominate MMO with an absurd number of players (at least compared to DDO). 1% of the population wanting to just keep playing probably was more than enough to keep it alive with a larger population than DDO has ever had.

GooFY wrote on Mar 13^th, 2014 at 5:29pm:


this is what hapening to me all the time.. thats why i play less, spend less.