📊 DDO Population Post-64-Bit [EDITED Oct 26 - DDO Audit Focus]

[Furyous]

EDIT: MMO-Pop dropped. Pivoted to DDO Audit (most reliable in-game data): DDO Audit Home Live Servers

TLDR: Audit shows stable post-Jul peaks: 600+/server (Moonsea), 1,200+ Shadowdale weekends. No crash, healthy for F2P MMO despite lag complaints (3+ mo).


Audit Highlights (Jul-Oct 2025):

Source	Peak Pop	Notes
Live/Server	600+ Moonsea, 1,200+ Shadowdale wknds	Stable post-transfers

Lag Timeline: Jul 15 live → patches 75.2+ → still "atrocious" per forums.


DDO Steam Charts Concurrent Players (2012-2025 Highlights)
Apr20 remains all-time peak (avg 568.6, peak 961). Current Last 30D (351.8 avg) is the highest since then.

DDO Steam Charts concurrent players from 2024 to 2025
Recent months show a significant uptick, with Last 30D avg at 351.8 (peak 720) vs Sep25 avg 304.2 (peak 595). This is the highest monthly avg since Apr23.

Data from Steam Charts

 

[Alternative]

Damn, so one person has to buy 4 coffers now.

 

[Blunt Hackett]

25 players today. I'm surprised AO hasn't pulled the plug with those kind of numbers.

Edit: I've uninstalled DDO. I've done it before though. I've decided to play other D&D and Pathfinder games for a while. Lag may be better, but confidence isn't. I'll probably return for winter events. Hopefully the population doesn't dip as low as AO.

 

[Yulrem]

Where from mmo-population.com gets the data because I don't think it's accurate.

ddoaudit.com has completely different numbers and that takes it directly from the game. Steam too shows significant increase instead of decrease also contradicting your analysis.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Other thing to consider on those metrics is the spike in activity due to all the transfers (stop sniggering at the back there! ).

If that spike is your datum then there is bound to be a significant drop thereafter.

 

[Geezer]

I would imagine that the population had to drop here on DDO. With the absolutely terrible lag we had here after all the transfers, people had to stop playing. Hopefully now that the lag has been reduced quite a bit, people will come back. But then, as the OP said, if a whole lot of people come back, maybe the lag will increase also. If this would happen, then we know that the fixes didnt do as much good as they seemed to.

 

[Smokewolf]

Where from mmo-population.com gets the data because I don't think it's accurate.

ddoaudit.com has completely different numbers and that takes it directly from the game. Steam too shows significant increase instead of decrease also contradicting your analysis.

Consider that gaming sites such as Steam have a financial interest in promoting positive reviews. If for nothing else, so that they don't get sued as an MMO implodes.

 

[Dude]

Consider that gaming sites such as Steam have a financial interest in promoting positive reviews. If for nothing else, so that they don't get sued as an MMO implodes.

No one has mentioned reviews. They only mentioned numbers. Unless you're saying that Steam and DDO Audit are falsifying their numbers?

 

[Smokewolf]

No one has mentioned reviews. They only mentioned numbers. Unless you're saying that Steam and DDO Audit are falsifying their numbers?

Numbers, reviews, whatever... Point being that if it can be proven that a games decline could be directly linked to Steams' mishandling of information, then I'd fully expect that Developer to sue them. Thus, as such, Steam is NOT going to openly post information that can be later viewed as negative or hurtful. Not when it makes far more sense to maintain positive hype, as this promotes sales, which Valve makes a nice percentage from.

Is this clear enough for you, Dude?

Edit: Data that's provided by the developer of a product, should always be treated as suspect. Especially when there is a financial interest in controlling the hype-train (narrative) and thus how players perceive the game.

 

[Smokewolf]

I fully expect DDO's population numbers to be very low as it enters this holiday season. Possibly with a sizable rebound after the fact... But only if SSG can fix its performance issues, and somehow reincarnate casters as a viable builds. Hopefully, while not nerfing physical-dps into oblivion in the process.

 

[Dude]

Numbers, reviews, whatever... Point being that if it can be proven that a games decline could be directly linked to Steams' mishandling of information, then I'd fully expect that Developer to sue them. Thus, as such, Steam is NOT going to openly post information that can be later viewed as negative or hurtful. Not when it makes far more sense to maintain positive hype, as this promotes sales, which Valve makes a nice percentage from. Is this clear enough for you, Dude? Edit: Data that's provided by the developer of a product, should always be treated as suspect. Especially when there is a financial interest in controlling the hype-train (narrative) and thus how players perceive the game.

Yes, it's very clear that you don't understand basic English words. I will assume that you aren't familiar with the language and wish you the best.

 

[Smokewolf]

Yes, it's very clear that you don't understand basic English words. I will assume that you aren't familiar with the language and wish you the best.

Lol... Your welcome, and try not to be so hurt over it.

 

[Qubert]

Hey, thanks for posting your sources. When looking them over I noticed some inconsistencies that I will talk about below. I did notice from those first two websites there numbers are estimates from public signals (Reddit, Steam, Twitch). They don't list where or how they use this data. Which I find odd, anyways.

DDO
I'm assume that these numbers are pulled from the Deeper Analysis section with "Last 12 Months". July's number is listed as 15,418 there compared to the 11,400 you listed. What is weird to me is that whole chart. Firstly, it is missing the whole month of June. Secondly, if we look at the monthly numbers it looks like:

Month	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October
Players	30,545	1,864	1,864	Doesn't List	15,418	16,070	11,397	3,471

These numbers honestly don't make sense as a player. Assuming these are real going from from 30k to 1.8k is a huge drop off that would've been felt in game and posted more here and elsewhere. Additionally, going from April to July would have been buttery smooth in terms of server load. Which was not true in mine and others experience leading up to the transfers.

Anarchy Online
Following the logic of using the "Last 12 Months" as your source for pulling your numbers I found nothing that comes close to what you posted. Even looking at all the other charts nothing comes close. Here is what is listed on that site:

Month	March	April	May	June	July	August	September
Players	337	215	215	Doesn't List	194	271	198

According to this, from May to August there was signs of a slight increase in players during this seam backend transition. When looking further into AO's seam backend transition I found no source of it. In fact the last known update for this game via steam and their forum page was Oct 2020. Do you happen to have that source?

Have some people quit DDO because of the recent lag? Of course. Do I think enough people have left to cause a better server load? I don't have enough data to make an educated guess. The data and the narrative that these two things are going the same path makes me suspicious.

 

[Smokewolf]

Hey, thanks for posting your sources. When looking them over I noticed some inconsistencies that I will talk about below. I did notice from those first two websites there numbers are estimates from public signals (Reddit, Steam, Twitch). They don't list where or how they use this data. Which I find odd, anyways.

DDO
I'm assume that these numbers are pulled from the Deeper Analysis section with "Last 12 Months". July's number is listed as 15,418 there compared to the 11,400 you listed. What is weird to me is that whole chart. Firstly, it is missing the whole month of June. Secondly, if we look at the monthly numbers it looks like:

Month	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October
Players	30,545	1,864	1,864	Doesn't List	15,418	16,070	11,397	3,471

These numbers honestly don't make sense as a player. Assuming these are real going from from 30k to 1.8k is a huge drop off that would've been felt in game and posted more here and elsewhere. Additionally, going from April to July would have been buttery smooth in terms of server load. Which was not true in mine and others experience leading up to the transfers.

Anarchy Online
Following the logic of using the "Last 12 Months" as your source for pulling your numbers I found nothing that comes close to what you posted. Even looking at all the other charts nothing comes close. Here is what is listed on that site:

Month	March	April	May	June	July	August	September
Players	337	215	215	Doesn't List	194	271	198

According to this, from May to August there was signs of a slight increase in players during this seam backend transition. When looking further into AO's seam backend transition I found no source of it. In fact the last known update for this game via steam and their forum page was Oct 2020. Do you happen to have that source?

Have some people quit DDO because of the recent lag? Of course. Do I think enough people have left to cause a better server load? I don't have enough data to make an educated guess. The data and the narrative that these two things are going the same path makes me suspicious.

I tend to believe that most of the veteran players are taking an early holiday pause giving SSG time to right the ship as it were. Beyond that, a good percentage of players leaving were either new and could not believe the chaos, or experienced players unable to complete the transfer. Which all goes back to a prior post I made that predicted that the Holiday numbers will stay low. Followed by a surge, as players attempt to return, in the hope that SSG has fixed its playability issues.

While one can be optimistic here, historically speaking SSG has a really bad track-record fixing anything not directly tied to the DDO store. Especially when it comes to admitting that mistakes were made, and rolling back harmful changes. Case-in-point: Caster nerfs are pretty-much universally hated and acknowledged as being overbearing. That being said, SSG is more likely to nerf physical-dps than rollback caster nerfs. Making the situation for both groups equally bad, and then calling that balanced.

 

[PaleFox]

Hey, thanks for posting your sources. When looking them over I noticed some inconsistencies that I will talk about below. I did notice from those first two websites there numbers are estimates from public signals (Reddit, Steam, Twitch). They don't list where or how they use this data. Which I find odd, anyways.

DDO
I'm assume that these numbers are pulled from the Deeper Analysis section with "Last 12 Months". July's number is listed as 15,418 there compared to the 11,400 you listed. What is weird to me is that whole chart. Firstly, it is missing the whole month of June. Secondly, if we look at the monthly numbers it looks like:

Month	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October
Players	30,545	1,864	1,864	Doesn't List	15,418	16,070	11,397	3,471

These numbers honestly don't make sense as a player. Assuming these are real going from from 30k to 1.8k is a huge drop off that would've been felt in game and posted more here and elsewhere. Additionally, going from April to July would have been buttery smooth in terms of server load. Which was not true in mine and others experience leading up to the transfers.

Have some people quit DDO because of the recent lag? Of course. Do I think enough people have left to cause a better server load? I don't have enough data to make an educated guess. The data and the narrative that these two things are going the same path makes me suspicious.

The numbers feel made up, when I look at the chart, everything before 2025-03 has the same number... that is really odd.
The drop is prob because the new servers are not added?

Also, steam shows an upward trend when you look at the alltime chart.

 

[Elfishski]

DDO’s 64-bit server migration happened in July 2025, two months later. The population trajectory since then has closely mirrored AO’s.

In both cases, lag improvements were reported, but these coincided with a sharp drop in player activity.

I think what we can infer there is more that in both cases lag improvements coincided with a sharp drop in people talking about DDO on Reddit, Steam, Twitch [e.g. people stopped complaining about lag] - as that's the entire source of where they're getting their numbers it sounds like. Nothing to see here.

No long-term trends showing on DDOaudit at the moment but that's way more robust and at least over the last month shockingly stable considering the state of play. It certainly hasn't dropped by 75% since the server move, although it's hard to quantify the missed opportunity to grab the attention of old players who dropped by to migrate and check out the state of the game and might have stayed but didn't.

 

[Rage]

I was bored and researched something interesting: another MMO with a dedicated fanbase went through the exact same situation DDO is facing now.
Anarchy Online had a backend migration in May 2025 that triggered a sharp population drop. Like DDO, they didn’t revert the change. They tried to fix it on the new infrastructure while revenue and resources declined.

DDO’s 64-bit server migration happened in July 2025, two months later. The population trajectory since then has closely mirrored AO’s.

4-Month Decline Comparison (Monthly Active Players):

Game	Hardware Change Trigger	Change Month	Month 0	Month 4	Decline
Anarchy Online	Seam backend transition	May 2025	~9,000	~2,250	-75%
DDO	64-bit server migration	July 2025	~11,400	~3,495	-69.3%

In both cases, lag improvements were reported, but these coincided with a sharp drop in player activity. The reduced server load seems to be a result of population loss, not successful optimization. AO’s population continued to fall and now averages ~33 monthly players.

Sources:
MMO Population Tracker – DDO
MMO Population Tracker – AO
Steam Charts – DDO

Interesting coincidence, especially considering how similar the trajectories look.

Shadowdale’s pop has only been growing since the transfers… not sure if there was any decline much less a insane 69% decline post transfers.

Where are you getting these numbers?

We’re clocking in 1200+ players on Shadow over the weekend evenings now.

 

[Smokewolf]

The numbers feel made up, when I look at the chart, everything before 2025-03 has the same number... that is really odd.
The drop is prob because the new servers are not added?

Also, steam shows an upward trend when you look at the alltime chart.

After a three week pause, I logged on to Moonsea during it's Friday prime hours (8pm onwards). Per DDO-Audit, there were 600+ people in attendance, and man did it feel like a ghost-town. Only one guild specific Raid was active, and next to no Epic LFM's. Not sure what was going on, but I've never seen a Friday so dead. I'm thinking that either the numbers seen on DDO are wrong, or there's a whole lot of people online doing nothing.

Side note: Was hanging out in the Portable-Hole and was randomly rubber-banding just walking around. I'm not sure what the Dev's have been working on, but it doesn't appear to have helped if I'm still ping-ponging around a small instance, ungrouped and alone.

 

[Rage]

After a three week pause, I logged on to Moonsea during it's Friday prime hours (8pm onwards). Per DDO-Audit, there were 600+ people in attendance, and man did it feel like a ghost-town. Only one guild specific Raid was active, and next to no Epic LFM's. Not sure what was going on, but I've never seen a Friday so dead. I'm thinking that either the numbers seen on DDO are wrong, or there's a whole lot of people online doing nothing.

Side note: Was hanging out in the Portable-Hole and was randomly rubber-banding just walking around. I'm not sure what the Dev's have been working on, but it doesn't appear to have helped if I'm still ping-ponging around a small instance, ungrouped and alone.

DDOaudit fudging the numbers?

 

[Smokewolf]

DDOaudit fudging the numbers?

No idea... Just didn't feel like 600+ people were actually playing. Few LFM's and most of the common areas were sparcely populated.