DDO is dead!

[MarauderX]

I logged on to D&D Online last week in the morning and there were 12 people on my main server. Including me. So I checked another server: 13 people.
Last night I logged in and there were only 13 people around the same levels to adventure with. Ouch.

So it is with much sadness that I declare that D&D Online is dead.

With dwindling numbers, Warhammer Online about to start up, and WoW being such a big community, DDO has taken too many hits to keep going. Perhaps they started it too early without all the kinks worked out. Perhaps they didn't think about adding Drow as a playable race before Half-orcs. Perhaps it was Turbine working on other projects, within the same genre. Perhaps it was Turbine suspending people for minor infractions.

FYI, overall, the class I liked the best: Bard.

Fascinate is the most powerful method of crowd control in the game, and only Bards have it. Add on other controling spells, healing, and buffs, and they can do almost anything from ranged to melee, casting, wands, staves, and everything in between. The only thing they couldn't do was find traps - still needed a rogue for that.

Is anyone still online? I'm a week away from dropping my account like a rock. How about you?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Unfortunately, Turbine -- which is the most prominent publisher of MMORPGs that have gone belly-up -- tried to sell everyone half a loaf.

The D&D players got something that wasn't quite D&D.

The former D&D players got a setting they didn't recognize and that didn't fit the tropes they remembered from back in the day.

The MMORPG players got something that didn't really work the way they wanted an MMORPG to work.

The IP is so good, it'll be back. Hopefully the developers will know who their audience is, instead of trying to compromise and get everyone, which usually succeeds in getting very few people at all.

 

[GlassJaw]

Grossly exaggerated.

 

[MarauderX]

Grossly exaggerated.

I'm guessing you don't play DDO. Try it, you'll like it! Then try to find others to group with that aren't level 12...

Edit: This AM there were 56 on. 1/2 hour later it dropped to 32.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm guessing you don't play DDO. Try it, you'll like it! Then try to find others to group with that aren't level 12...

Edit: This AM there were 56 on. 1/2 hour later it dropped to 32.

I play. A lot.

What server are you on? Yes, some of them are much quieter than others.

Playing in the AM? What do you expect?

A lot of people run invisible nowadays so they won't show up in the Who panel. Most people are in guilds now too so pick-ups can be difficult at times.

I'm not saying that DDO is on the WoW level (far from it, but so is everything) but rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. The game was packed last week for the loot/XP weekend. They also just came out with a new enhancement system (which will be great for the game in the long-run) and they'll have a paid expansion later this year with monks and half-orcs.

The game is better now than it ever has been.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Most MMOs hit a maturity level in terms of population and stay relatively stable. DDOs numbers are low, but I think it's past the make-or-break stage. Now, if LotR On-line turns into a breakaway hit, Turbine might reconsider whether or not the resources are worth it, but I think DDO is stable.

Monks and half-orcs, though, are so not going to get me back into it. Monks and drow are two/thirds of the unholy D&D triumvirate for me.

MarauderX was right, though -- I enjoyed the hell out of playing my bard.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

All my DDO playing buddies are looking for new games lately. I'm working on switching them to WoW.

I would have played DDO, but it wasn't D&D, and playing in Eberron is not for me. I hope it dies soon so a new D&D game in the FR or Greyhawk can get started.

 

[Grog]

If DDO is in trouble, it doesn't surprise me in the least. The game was pretty obviously rushed to market, which is the absolute worst thing you can do with an MMORPG. At launch, you could only go up to level 10 and it didn't even have all the core classes, let along PrCs and such. It always struck me as being a pale shadow of what it could have and should have been.

 

[GlassJaw]

If DDO is in trouble, it doesn't surprise me in the least. The game was pretty obviously rushed to market, which is the absolute worst thing you can do with an MMORPG. At launch, you could only go up to level 10 and it didn't even have all the core classes, let along PrCs and such. It always struck me as being a pale shadow of what it could have and should have been.

Blame that on Atari. It's pretty obvious that Turbine bore the brunt of Atari's piss-poor management and draconian timelines.

In Turbine's defense, while they've made some blunders along the way, have really done a good job bringing DDO closer to PnP.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Blame that on Atari. It's pretty obvious that Turbine bore the brunt of Atari's piss-poor management and draconian timelines.

In Turbine's defense, while they've made some blunders along the way, have really done a good job bringing DDO closer to PnP.

No. You are absolutely incorrect on this one. The only mistake of Atari was giving the title to Turbine in the first place.

Turbine self-financed DDO, such that Atari had very little control over the project. And Turbine didn't have enough money to do it. They were not pressured by Atari to release - they ran out of their own dev cash and vastly underestimated what it would take to do DDO.

Sorry. Not everything is Atari's fault.