Quote:I don't see anything groundbreaking about reciting DDO's launch fails and how F2P microtransactions model swooped in and saved asses. We all know that history.
I recited those to prove that Google Trends graph shows exactly what we know happened. Same with the WoW graphs. Google trends is a near perfect match.
Quote:Nobody is debating that the player base isn't near it's prime. But I don't think Google Trends is going to get you any good dirt on the player base at current. The only people who legit know what the pop is, well that's SSG and they don't really feel like telling anybody.
By looking at Google Trends I can confidently say that DDO has been floating around its lowest player population for the past two years. Its basically bottomed out and has been coasting along. Just vets left playing. It a good metric to see what mmos are healthy and which are essentially dead. Neverwinter is actually beating out most of the f2p mmos. Star Trek, lotro, DDO, Tera, Blade and Soul. Most likely due to the console port.
Someone could count the /who list on each server at set times for a period of time. This could give us concrete numbers although if I were to guess I'd say around 10k players. Give or take 5k.
Asheras wrote on Jan 2
nd, 2019 at 9:49am:
I don't think the problem was with the D&D brand. The brand is strong. (Maybe not 6 million subscribers strong, but you can run a profitable game and be a success at much lower levels than that)
I'd argue that they didn't lean into the Dungeons and Dragons brand enough. The biggest issue wasn't that it wasn't "MMO" enough. The bigger issue is that it wasn't RPG enough. And they tried to course correct in the wrong direction to capture a wider audience that wasn't pure D&D enthusiasts.
Dungeons and Dragons did not need to be like every other MMO. It doesn't need PvP or heavy grind or moar bigger numbers that become meaningless. D&D should not have characters with 5k-9k HP fighting mobs (even bosses) with 6 million HP. That's purely an MMO. As is the single character only unlimited progression model. That is not consistent with D&D.
They moved the game from close-ish to D&D to being more like other MMOs. That will bring in MMO lover eyeballs while costing you D&D lover eyeballs. The idea being that there are more MMO lover eyeballs than D&D lover eyeballs. The problem with that strategy is that the MMO lover eyeballs are less "sticky" with one game than the D&D lover eyeballs. So it is short term gain for long term loss.
Its hard to theorize what would have made ddo successful. The D&D brand is strong but I think the D&D fandom is a bit weird. Im probably wrong but it seems like they would prefer the paper version instead of playing an mmo. Especially a game without a dungeon editor.
Its hard to make a online D&D game since the game itself limits you. You have to follow a strict set of rules. Compare that to the pen and paper version. Nearly zero limitations (player vs world). I dont think it would work. So by DDO taking a middle point seems like the best option.
DDO did have a bad launch with server crashes and limited content. The biggest issue most likely being the instanced content along with the boring combat. Sewers, boring enemies, and auto-attacking. I think partly why WoW blew up was the massive, beautiful world you could explore. It created mystique or some shit.