Yet another topic about Storage Management killing the Game

[Helke]

This topic has been raised many times over the years, and I think there is a very good reason why it keeps coming back: DDO desperately needs a major storage and inventory management revamp.

Right now, I have a capped character ready for another TR. I want to reincarnate. I want to try a different class. But I simply cannot bring myself to spend my Friday evening sorting through my Reincarnation Cache, Personal Bank, Shared Bank, and several mule characters.

I'm not new to the TR process. I have over 30 reincarnations, 10+ dedicated mule characters, and even a dedicated Google spreadsheet to track my inventory. This isn't a case of mindless hoarding.

I'm a returning player, and I'm already finding myself unable to tolerate this system again.


What makes this particularly frustrating is that DDO has repeatedly shown that removing obsolete barriers is good for both players and the game.

Over the years we've seen:

• Sigils of Leveling removed.
• Large amounts of older content given away for free.
• Adventure packs permanently unlocked through promotional codes.
• Older expansions sold for 99 DDO points.
• Most races and classes become F2P
• Free Epic Destinies

None of these changes hurt the game. On the contrary, they lowered barriers to entry, improved player retention, and likely increased revenue by encouraging players to spend money on new expansions, VIP, cosmetics, boosters and other convenience features.

I know this issue affects players differently. Veterans with fully upgraded accounts or established builds probably feel it less. But for casual, returning, and newer players who enjoy experimenting with different builds, inventory management is a nightmare.

If I discovered DDO for the first time in 2026, I honestly wouldn't start playing. The only reason I'm still here is because I fell in love with the game back in 2013. But it's 2026 now. Storage limitations are no longer a hardware problem; they're a design problem.

Please let us spend our time playing DDO instead of managing inventories, spreadsheets, mule characters, and overflowing banks.
I want to spend my free time reincarnating, trying new builds, and running quests — not doing inventory maintenance.


P.S. The solution doesn't have to be complex.

Larger Shared Bank upgrades (100+ slots instead of 10) would eliminate much of the need for mules. We will buy more Shared Bank upgrades, instead of character slots. Likewise, folding the TR Cache into larger Personal Bank upgrades would remove the need to constantly empty it after every reincarnation, becouse of BtC.
Anything that reduces inventory management between TRs would be a huge quality-of-life improvement.

​

Spoiler: Proposed solutions datailed

Problem #1: Mule characters are the most cost-effective storage option, while the maximum Shared Bank capacity is insufficient.​

A 600 Point character slot can provide ~220 storage slots, while 1000 Points only buys 10 Shared Bank slots. As a result, players are pushed toward managing mule characters instead of buying storage upgrades.

In addition, the maximum Shared Bank capacity is only around 500 slots and costs a small fortune to reach. Two mule characters can already compete with that capacity, while four mules provide significantly more storage at a much lower cost.

Proposed solution: Increase Shared Bank upgrades from +10 to at least +100 slots. Crafting Storage upgrades already grant 250 slots each, proving that larger storage upgrades are entirely feasible.

Revenue impact: Five mule characters cost roughly 3,000 Points and provide about 1,100 storage slots. With +100-slot Shared Bank upgrades, a player would need roughly eleven upgrades to reach the same capacity, costing around 11,000 Points instead. That's roughly 3–4x more revenue for SSG. Personally, I would gladly pay that premium just to stop managing an army of mules.

Veteran players: This also benefits existing players by reducing the need to manage large mule networks. Even with all available storage upgrades, many veteran players still rely on mules because the maximum Shared Bank capacity remains extremely limited. In addition, all storage obtained through VIP rewards and Ultimate Bundles becomes significantly more valuable, as every additional storage upgrade can potentially eliminate the need for another mule character.

Problem #2: The TR Cache is a poor user experience​

Regardless of how much storage a player owns, emptying the TR Cache is slow, laggy, and turns every reincarnation into inventory management instead of gameplay. Players still have to spend a significant amount of time clearing it before every TR.

Proposed solution: Remove the TR Cache and fold its capacity into Personal Bank upgrades. Increase Personal Bank upgrades from +20 to perhaps +50 slots so players can store BtC items directly in their bank instead of repeatedly moving them through the TR Cache.

Revenue impact: The TR Cache currently provides a large amount of storage for free. By moving that capacity into Personal Bank upgrades, SSG could monetize storage that is currently free while simultaneously improving the user experience.

Veteran players: All the Shared Bank storage they get from existing upgrades does not solve the TR Cache problem. They still have to spend time slowly pulling items out of the cache before every reincarnation.

UPD: The other day I spent 30 minutes cycling through my mules looking for an item that I had apparently placed on the wrong character. I accidentally found it the next day on a completely different mule than the one I expected.

 

[Blaster]

Then don't hoard so much crap.

 

[Elfishski]

Moreover, no amount of money can save you from having to manage your TR Cache before reincarnating.

Please let us spend our time playing DDO instead of managing inventories, spreadsheets, mule characters, and overflowing banks.

Luckily something like 4 of the last 5 times I've TR'd my main I've had the bug where nothing in the bank goes into the TR cache, only things in inventory, and because of the extra bank space from expansions/the extra given on server transfer I have enough that this is extremely convenient instead of totally crippling as it would have been in the past.

Huge quality of life if this was the norm for everyone - no need to deal with a TR cache, everything just stays in the bank, enough bank space that it fits.

Amazing quality of life if the shared bank was 10x bigger and there was no need for mules [at least for one each of named items - there'll always be someone who wants to hoard every random item] - I'd pay! Surely the server load of having people swapping back and forth between a heap of mules with hoarded items is higher than the cost of that same number of items being in one shared bank?!

 

[Gruben]

seems like inventory managment is an issue for you everytime you're playing. transfer all your junk to a different toon. feed your junk to a sentient weapon. really dont see this as an issue you could have been enjoying your new build instead of shaking your fist at the sky.

personally: filter your TR cache and bank so you see as few items in your bank as possible and then flip through the categories in your TR cache this method removes the bank delay between items. i just emptied a 300 item tr cache in 10 minutes

 

[norriskwondo]

This topic has been raised many times over the years, and I think there is a very good reason why it keeps coming back: DDO desperately needs a major storage and inventory management revamp.

Right now, I have a capped character ready for another TR. I want to reincarnate. I want to try a different class. But I simply cannot bring myself to spend my Friday evening sorting through my Reincarnation Cache, Personal Bank, Shared Bank, and several mule characters.

For the second week in a row, this has completely killed my motivation to log in. I haven't stopped playing because of a lack of content. I stopped because storage management has become exhausting.

I returned to DDO less than six months ago after a four-year break, and already I find myself stepping away from the game again: managing items feels more like work than gameplay.

I know this issue affects players differently. Veterans with fully upgraded accounts\maxed characters, established gear sets, or those grinding past lives on the same build probably feel it less. But for casual players, returning players, new players, people experimenting with different builds, or simply enjoying the game's huge amount of content, inventory management is a nightmare.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that DDO has repeatedly shown that removing obsolete barriers is good for both players and the game.

Over the years we've seen:

• Sigils of Leveling removed.
• Large amounts of older content given away for free.
• Adventure packs permanently unlocked through promotional codes.
• Older expansions sold for 99 DDO points.
• Most races and classes become F2P

None of these changes hurt the game. On the contrary, they lowered barriers to entry, improved player retention, and likely increased revenue by encouraging players to spend money on new expansions, VIP, cosmetics, and other convenience features.

Storage management feels like one of the last major obsolete barriers still left in the game.

If I discovered DDO for the first time in 2026 and saw that even basic account-wide storage is heavily restricted and that mule characters are still considered a normal solution, I honestly would not start playing. The only reason I still was playing DDO is because I fell in love with the game back in 2013, when MMO standards were very different and players were far more willing to tolerate friction.

But it's 2026 now. Storage capacity is no longer a hardware problem. It's a design problem and an outdated monetization barrier. Moreover, no amount of money can save you from having to manage your TR Cache before reincarnating.

Please let us spend our time playing DDO instead of managing inventories, spreadsheets, mule characters, and overflowing banks.

I want to spend my free time reincarnating, trying new builds, and running quests — not doing inventory maintenance.

An inventory management tool where you could manage your inventory and find location of items without logging into character by character would be nice.
I had a bunch of extra character slots I wasn't using so I created 8 bank toons, one for gloves, rings, bracers, necklace, helm, boots, belt, cloak, goggles, and 2 for armor. So I at least I know what character to go to if I'm looking for an item. And I use one of the characters slots with the expansions to hold the gear from that expansion so I know where to go for that. I realize most players don't want to or have the resources to organize how I have. I refer to my first statement, an inventory management system would be nice.

 

[Helke]

Then don't hoard so much crap.

That is a classic veteran player response. It's a perfectly reasonable perspective, but it does not reflect the experience of the entire playerbase.

Not to mention that the game itself actively encourages hoarding by introducing hundreds of new items and gear combinations with every new quest pack and expansion.


And not every storage issue in this game is caused by hoarding.

First, there are plenty of Bound to Character items that cannot simply be moved to mule characters. They become a permanent burden that has to be sorted through every single time you TR. Sure, if you play the same build over and over again, or if your character is already min-maxed, you can get rid of a lot of that gear. But not everyone plays like that.

Second, on every life I keep multiple gear sets for leveling: level 5, level 15, level 20, level 34, clickies, etc. Those items have to be stored somewhere, and in practice that usually means sorting them across multiple mule characters before I TR.

Third, I still need to collect a lot of gear from content released during the four years I was away from the game. Considering how low drop rates are in newer expansions like MD and CoR, I cannot realistically afford not to keep potentially useful items. If you play multiple classes, you often have no idea what you might need in the future. And as a casual player, I don't have a static six-person group with multiple alts that can ransack a quest in a single evening whenever I need a specific item.

The reality is that DDO has evolved into a game with thousands of named items, augments, artifacts, sentient gear, multiple leveling sets, and constant reincarnation. The storage system simply hasn't evolved at the same pace.

 

[Helke]

because of the extra bank space from expansions/the extra given on server transfer I have enough that this is extremely convenient instead of totally crippling as it would have been in the past.

Sure, but not everyone got 100 extra bank slots from a server transfer. And yes, veteran players who own every Ultimate Edition expansion and have purchased all the Shared Bank upgrades are naturally affected by this issue much less than everyone else.

 

[norriskwondo]

That is a classic veteran player response. It's a perfectly reasonable perspective, but it does not reflect the experience of the entire playerbase.

Not to mention that the game itself actively encourages hoarding by introducing hundreds of new items and gear combinations with every new quest pack and expansion.


And not every storage issue in this game is caused by hoarding.

First, there are plenty of Bound to Character items that cannot simply be moved to mule characters. They become a permanent burden that has to be sorted through every single time you TR. Sure, if you play the same build over and over again, or if your character is already min-maxed, you can get rid of a lot of that gear. But not everyone plays like that.

Second, on every life I keep multiple gear sets for leveling: level 5, level 15, level 20, level 34, clickies, etc. Those items have to be stored somewhere, and in practice that usually means sorting them across multiple mule characters before I TR.

Third, I still need to collect a lot of gear from content released during the four years I was away from the game. Considering how low drop rates are in newer expansions like MD and CoR, I cannot realistically afford not to keep potentially useful items. If you play multiple classes, you often have no idea what you might need in the future. And as a casual player, I don't have a static six-person group with multiple alts that can ransack a quest in a single evening whenever I need a specific item.

The reality is that DDO has evolved into a game with thousands of named items, augments, artifacts, sentient gear, multiple leveling sets, and constant reincarnation. The storage system simply hasn't evolved at the same pace.

That, and you're only going to get an item once if you get it all

 

[Helke]

seems like inventory managment is an issue for you everytime you're playing. transfer all your junk to a different toon. feed your junk to a sentient weapon. really dont see this as an issue you could have been enjoying your new build instead of shaking your fist at the sky.

personally: filter your TR cache and bank so you see as few items in your bank as possible and then flip through the categories in your TR cache this method removes the bank delay between items. i just emptied a 300 item tr cache in 10 minutes

I do feed duplicate items and very outdated sets to my sentient weapon. But that does not solve the issue of my TR Cache being full of BtC items that I cannot simply throw away because of how difficult some of them are to reacquire, and because I still have many classes and builds left to play.

Sure, I don't keep every single BtC item, but I keep enough of them that managing my inventory before every TR has become something I actively dread.

And that's before dealing with everything else: moving leveling gear sets from my current life to different mules, sorting newly acquired items from content I missed during my break, and deciding which character should store what.

Spending 10 minutes emptying the TR Cache and another 30 minutes cycling through mules is already an issue in my book. And then, when I start a new build, I have to go through all those mules again looking for leveling gear.
On top of that, I still have to run around collecting Saga rewards. And if I'm doing an Epic + Heroic TR, I still need to manually click through levels 1 to 20 after the Epic reincarnation in order to perform the Heroic one.
All of this adds up very quickly, turning reincarnation into an exhausting administrative task rather than an exciting gameplay moment.

And how many times are players expected to go through this process? A hundred times or more if they want to fully max out a character?
I've done 30+ reincarnations already, and honestly, I'm reaching my limit.

 

[Helke]

An inventory management tool where you could manage your inventory and find location of items without logging into character by character would be nice.
I had a bunch of extra character slots I wasn't using so I created 8 bank toons, one for gloves, rings, bracers, necklace, helm, boots, belt, cloak, goggles, and 2 for armor. So I at least I know what character to go to if I'm looking for an item. And I use one of the characters slots with the expansions to hold the gear from that expansion so I know where to go for that. I realize most players don't want to or have the resources to organize how I have. I refer to my first statement, an inventory management system would be nice.

I also manage an army of mules, with separate mules for different expansions and additional organization by item level, since quests drop gear across many level ranges.

I even maintain a Google spreadsheet to keep track of which items I own and from which quests they come. Usually, I also note which character is storing each item.

And yet, despite all of that, I still struggle to sort everything in one go.

To me, the fact that players resort to external spreadsheets and elaborate mule systems just to manage their inventories is further evidence that the storage system could use some modernization.

 

[Helke]

An inventory management tool where you could manage your inventory and find location of items without logging into character by character would be nice.

Just a shared bank of an size of an crafting bank - would work well enogh

 

[NOOBMASTER]

This topic has been raised many times over the years, and I think there is a very good reason why it keeps coming back: DDO desperately needs a major storage and inventory management revamp.

Right now, I have a capped character ready for another TR. I want to reincarnate. I want to try a different class. But I simply cannot bring myself to spend my Friday evening sorting through my Reincarnation Cache, Personal Bank, Shared Bank, and several mule characters.

For the second week in a row, this has completely killed my motivation to log in. I haven't stopped playing because of a lack of content. I stopped because storage management has become exhausting.

I returned to DDO less than six months ago after a four-year break, and already I find myself stepping away from the game again: managing items feels more like work than gameplay.

I know this issue affects players differently. Veterans with fully upgraded accounts\maxed characters, established gear sets, or those grinding past lives on the same build probably feel it less. But for casual players, returning players, new players, people experimenting with different builds, or simply enjoying the game's huge amount of content, inventory management is a nightmare.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that DDO has repeatedly shown that removing obsolete barriers is good for both players and the game.

Over the years we've seen:

• Sigils of Leveling removed.
• Large amounts of older content given away for free.
• Adventure packs permanently unlocked through promotional codes.
• Older expansions sold for 99 DDO points.
• Most races and classes become F2P

None of these changes hurt the game. On the contrary, they lowered barriers to entry, improved player retention, and likely increased revenue by encouraging players to spend money on new expansions, VIP, cosmetics, and other convenience features.

Storage management feels like one of the last major obsolete barriers still left in the game.

If I discovered DDO for the first time in 2026 and saw that even basic account-wide storage is heavily restricted and that mule characters are still considered a normal solution, I honestly would not start playing. The only reason I still was playing DDO is because I fell in love with the game back in 2013, when MMO standards were very different and players were far more willing to tolerate friction.

But it's 2026 now. Storage capacity is no longer a hardware problem. It's a design problem and an outdated monetization barrier. Moreover, no amount of money can save you from having to manage your TR Cache before reincarnating.

Please let us spend our time playing DDO instead of managing inventories, spreadsheets, mule characters, and overflowing banks.

I want to spend my free time reincarnating, trying new builds, and running quests — not doing inventory maintenance.



P.S. The solution doesn't even have to be complex.

A shared bank with a capacity comparable to the crafting bank would already solve most of the problems (+250 slots instead of +10 per upgrade). Veteran players with Ultimate Editions or VIP rewards would still retain an advantage through their additional storage.

I'd also gladly see the Reincarnation Cache removed entirely, with its capacity folded into the Personal Bank through larger bank upgrades (+50 slots instead of +20, for example).

Anything that reduces the need to constantly sort and reshuffle items between TRs would be a huge quality-of-life improvement.

I think more inventory space would be awesome. Even if it was sold in the store, so many people would pay to have more storage space. I see that storage is an incentive to buy the ultimate expansions too. I would actually pay a bit more in store to have the space, but personally cannot justify upgrading expansions purely for the extra storage space.

 

[Ying]

I want to unsubscribe from DDO's inventory management game. I put everything I can into the shared bank, and then on mules when the shared bank is filled. Because the TR user experience process is the worst gameplay I've ever experienced in a game. Dragging items from your TR cache to your inventory/bank for 15-20 minutes (because bank lag is real) is not how I want to be spending my time.

Allow players to buy 1500+ shared bank space. I hate having to search through mules. And I hate having to rely on Trove to do it.

 

[NOOBMASTER]

We all know that a lot of people would fill SSGs coffers for that right? I certainly would. Also the lack of mules and transferring stuff all the time may drop the lag a bit.

 

[Helke]

I want to unsubscribe from DDO's inventory management game. I put everything I can into the shared bank, and then on mules when the shared bank is filled.

Allow players to buy 1500+ shared bank space. I hate having to search through mules. And I hate having to rely on Trove to do it.

Exactly. But those 1500+ shared bank slots would need to be offered at a meaningful price.

Right now, if I have to choose between spending 1000 DDO Points for 10 additional shared bank slots or spending 600 Points for a character slot that effectively gives me 220 storage slots, I'll still choose the mule every time, despite the headache of leveling it and managing items across multiple characters.

In the current state, there is very little incentive to keep buying +10 shared bank upgrades considering their price.

If, for example, I could buy 100+ shared bank slots for 1000 Points instead of 220 mule slots for 600 Points, but without all the inventory management headaches, I would absolutely buy those upgrades. I'd gladly pay two or even three times more than I currently pay for mule storage if it meant I could spend more time playing the game and less time managing inventories.

 

[Helke]

Because the TR user experience process is the worst gameplay I've ever experienced in a game. Dragging items from your TR cache to your inventory/bank for 15-20 minutes (because bank lag is real) is not how I want to be spending my time.

Exactly. Getting rid of the TR Cache and folding its capacity into the Personal Bank by increasing the number of slots granted per bank upgrade would go a long way toward solving the problem.

 

[Kimbere]

Exactly. But those 1500+ shared bank slots would need to be offered at a meaningful price.

Right now, if I have to choose between spending 1000 DDO Points for 10 additional shared bank slots or spending 600 Points for a character slot that effectively gives me 220 storage slots, I'll still choose the mule every time, despite the headache of leveling it and managing items across multiple characters.

This.

I'd definitely be willing to pay a bit for what would effectively be an end to inventory/storage space problems in DDO.

The catch is, I most certainly wouldn't pay large amounts for it since the problem is one of arbitrary, artificial scarcity created by SSG in the first place. The price would have to be reasonable.

One thing to keep in mind however is that a large amount of additional shared bank space doesn't necessarily solve the personal bank space issue due to SSG's love of making things BTC instead of BTA.

 

[woq]

People are paying 100$+ for 10 storage space from ultimate expansions. They're not gonna offer 1500+ shared space for anything short of a yacht.

 

[Ying]

As for the cost, I'd pay $100 for effectively unlimited shared bank space. That's unrealized revenue for SSG. Yeah maybe that's a steep cost up front, but over the lifespan of an account it's not. I'm not holding my breath for the commerce folks to change from the meager 10 or 20 shared bank slots in each coffer. They would have to play DDO the way that we do to understand what we want. Given that hasn't happened in 20 years, it's never gonna happen.

 

[Helke]

We all know that a lot of people would fill SSGs coffers for that right? I certainly would. Also the lack of mules and transferring stuff all the time may drop the lag a bit.

SSG might actually make more money by selling larger Shared Bank upgrades.

Right now, I can get roughly 220 storage slots by buying a mule character for 600 Points, whereas 10 Shared Bank slots cost 1000 Points. In 99 out of 100 cases, I'll choose the mule.

But if I could buy, say, 100 Shared Bank slots for 1000 Points, I would absolutely choose the Shared Bank instead.

Here's the math: if I use 5 mule characters, that's effectively around 1100 storage slots for 3000 Points. Replacing those mules with Shared Bank upgrades that grant 100 slots each would require 11 upgrades, costing 11,000 Points in total.

And I'd gladly pay that just to get rid of the headache of managing mules.

So, in my case at least, SSG could potentially earn three to four times more revenue from storage while simultaneously improving the player experience.