Is the 64 bit server a stealth relaunch?

[Jummby]

Cormyr is only for VIP and has an incentive for people to play there with an optional, quasi hardcore event.

Step 1: introduce a year long year event that conditions the community to anticipate a monthly rewards while simultaneously and aggressively push a VIP loyalty system.

Step 2: Put as many VIP players as possible on 1 server. Isolate the monthly revenue players to 1 server and hope some "cashers" will just spent the money to be where they were at on their previous server.

Step 3: Keep the VIP players that didn't transfer and free to play grinders on the hook dangling the carrot regarding free transfers and whole guild transfers so the game is still supported.

Step 4: Once the VIP only server has all the kinks worked out, start marketing to new players. While some think, hey why doesn't ddo market ro new players now? News flash, the current game and 32 bit servers would never be able to handle it.

Step 5: Sorry people who have playing the game for 10 to 15 years+, we don't have the "resources" to transfer your guilds and current characters. We will be leaving the 32 bit severs for another 6 months and thank you for being such a loyal client base.

 

[Aelastiar]

Lol no

 

[Jummby]

Lol no

No?

If you have already either grinded out or bought the boxes to get your past lives while as a lagecy player that owns everything, what potential upside do we offer for Daybreak Games to make money? It's business.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

No, because it’s a dumb plan.

Oh wait, so, yes, that’s probably right .

 

[Aelastiar]

No?

If you have already either grinded out or bought the boxes to get your past lives while as a lagecy player that owns everything, what potential upside do we offer for Daybreak Games to make money? It's business.

No

 

[AMess]

I dunno Jummby, your 5-step plan implies a lot of foresight.

I had been staying at end game for the past year and with Myth Drannor being such a fun-killer I started doing some past lives recently on an alt & I can't possibly imagine starting over. Heroics has been painful slog.

It's also hard for me to get excited about DDOs future b/c 2024 has been a rough year for me as a DDO fan.

I'm guessing this is what we can reasonably expect:

1. Reduce lag
2. Convince users to come back by deploying influencers
3. Lay low until the end of January
4. Think about the future
5. Pick step 5 in time for an end of Q1 producers best guess letter

 

[mikarddo]

I very much doubt it - mostly because it would be a horribly bad plan as very few players would care to start over so SSG would lose most of their playerbase.

 

[Blerkington]

If SSG could continue running the game at a similar or better level of profit without doing the work and incurring the expense of supporting legacy characters they would drop us in one second flat.

There is zero doubt in my mind of this due to the astonishingly crummy treatment of the community I've seen in my years as a player.

All we have protecting us from this is their inability to attract new players who would spend enough to replace veteran spenders. We also have to be very clear that we won't support them if they try it.

I'd say right now they are testing the waters.

 

[Thumbed_Servant]

Um, no.

I have more faith in my fellow human beings who run SSG than the OP does.

 

[paddymaxson]

SSG would not risk losing the long term whales as that's literally the only source of cash for DDO. Unless they made DDO WAY more new player friendly there is not a cat's chance in hell of attracting a large new player base, just fixing the server infra would not be enough.

 

[Jummby]

I very much doubt it - mostly because it would be a horribly bad plan as very few players would care to start over so SSG would lose most of their playerbase.

There is a large segment of the player population that owns everything and has most of the past lives on toons. So, what can those people spend money on?

Why keep clients when they aren't making the game money and cost overhead?

 

[paddymaxson]

There is a large segment of the player population that owns everything and has most of the past lives on toons. So, what can those people spend money on?

Why keep clients when they aren't making the game money and cost overhead?

Those people buy 3 ottos boxes every time a new race/archetype comes out. They buy the collectors eds of the expansions/mini expansions, they pay for VIP out of loyalty, they buy raid timer bypasses.

 

[gringlebort]

Nope

 

[DDO Gaming]

Cormyr is only for VIP and has an incentive for people to play there with an optional, quasi hardcore event.

Step 1: introduce a year long year event that conditions the community to anticipate a monthly rewards while simultaneously and aggressively push a VIP loyalty system.

Step 2: Put as many VIP players as possible on 1 server. Isolate the monthly revenue players to 1 server and hope some "cashers" will just spent the money to be where they were at on their previous server.

Step 3: Keep the VIP players that didn't transfer and free to play grinders on the hook dangling the carrot regarding free transfers and whole guild transfers so the game is still supported.

Step 4: Once the VIP only server has all the kinks worked out, start marketing to new players. While some think, hey why doesn't ddo market ro new players now? News flash, the current game and 32 bit servers would never be able to handle it.

Step 5: Sorry people who have playing the game for 10 to 15 years+, we don't have the "resources" to transfer your guilds and current characters. We will be leaving the 32 bit severs for another 6 months and thank you for being such a loyal client base.

SSG are very much a "hmm let's poke the bear {the gaming system] like this and see what happens". Your complicated nosferatu blah blah implies there is a mastermind behind the scenes actually putting effort into planning. If only...

 

[5 Other People]

Those people buy 3 ottos boxes every time a new race/archetype comes out. They buy the collectors eds of the expansions/mini expansions, they pay for VIP out of loyalty, they buy raid timer bypasses.

True, but those people were burned by MD, so we are not buying more boxes until they fix the rare loot system...this is the real sadness of it all...long term casual whales won't be burned twice.

So, if they want to change their model from boxes to re-rolls Jumby's plan could be feasible. Forcing users to buy digital content twice to get the top-tier items is such a harsh vibe...but this is capitalism, so if folks are buying they'll be selling.

 

[Smokewolf]

Cormyr is only for VIP and has an incentive for people to play there with an optional, quasi hardcore event.

Step 1: introduce a year long year event that conditions the community to anticipate a monthly rewards while simultaneously and aggressively push a VIP loyalty system.

Step 2: Put as many VIP players as possible on 1 server. Isolate the monthly revenue players to 1 server and hope some "cashers" will just spent the money to be where they were at on their previous server.

Step 3: Keep the VIP players that didn't transfer and free to play grinders on the hook dangling the carrot regarding free transfers and whole guild transfers so the game is still supported.

Step 4: Once the VIP only server has all the kinks worked out, start marketing to new players. While some think, hey why doesn't ddo market ro new players now? News flash, the current game and 32 bit servers would never be able to handle it.

Step 5: Sorry people who have playing the game for 10 to 15 years+, we don't have the "resources" to transfer your guilds and current characters. We will be leaving the 32 bit severs for another 6 months and thank you for being such a loyal client base.

lol Wut ?

 

[paddymaxson]

True, but those people were burned by MD, so we are not buying more boxes until they fix the rare loot system...this is the real sadness of it all...long term casual whales won't be burned twice.

So, if they want to change their model from boxes to re-rolls Jumby's plan could be feasible. Forcing users to buy digital content twice to get the top-tier items is such a harsh vibe...but this is capitalism, so if folks are buying they'll be selling.

Hey I'm not saying people aren't sick of the game's money grubbing, I'm more saying that you'll never onboard new players to that money grubbing. There's no incentive for new people to spend that kind of cash for an old game that's impenetrable to them, so DDO's only hope at this point is retention which makes the idea of a soft relaunch that pisses off the existing playters to try to onboard new ones vanishingly unlikely. You'd have to be properly stupid to drive the die hards away from this game on purpose for hopes of new blood that spends as much as the die hards. It's just not that good a game if you aren't already invested in it and it's a great game, but I can't recommend it to people because it's expensive to get to endgame, both in cost and time.

 

[Kimbere]

No?

If you have already either grinded out or bought the boxes to get your past lives while as a lagecy player that owns everything, what potential upside do we offer for Daybreak Games to make money? It's business.

You think we should be offering SSG incentives so they retain us as customers (or future customers)? Really?.... /facepalm

That's literally 100% opposite of how this works.

They should be incentivizing us to remain paying customers and to entice currently non-paying customers to become paying customers in the future.

I can only imagine how quickly the company I work for would go under if our salesreps' pitch was, "Hey, you should become a customer and buy our products. But before we get you an account setup, what are you going to give us?"

 

[Refutor]

Those people buy 3 ottos boxes every time a new race/archetype comes out. They buy the collectors eds of the expansions/mini expansions, they pay for VIP out of loyalty, they buy raid timer bypasses.

and cakes for R10 zerging...you die, here's a cake! and lots and lots of astral shards for re-rolls. there's lots of stuff to spend cash on if you have it