Dungeons and Dragons Online – Page 3

Communication 101: STOP DELETING MY ****ING THREAD

Being an MMO Journalist affords one the opportunity to make fun of a company, yell at them for a stupid mistake, and then praise them all in one day, or even in one article. Given that I’ve managed to fake myself as a trusted journalist this far, I think I can afford to take some of those perks with me.

MMO Fallout is all about the PR, so naturally my editorials revolve around public relations, and how developers and publishers react when the times are good, and when the times are bad. I’ve talked about everything from subscription convenience in Final Fantasy XIV, to the turing test for MMOs, to identity crisis, permanent death, to more famously charge-backs. I’ve discussed the public relations nightmare that was the Allods Online cash shop, the Aion server mergers, Turbine’s fraudulent surveys, the Square-Enix HR rep who said Final Fantasy XI was shutting down this year, Atlantica Online’s near-fraudulent charity scheme, and far more.

Forums are a place where we go to communicate with the developers on a mass scale. When something bad happens in-game, like say a bunch of players get banned under suspicious circumstances, or a massive void appeared where a city used to be, killing everyone who was standing in it prior to a patch. It also happens to be a place where developers can keep users up to date on breaking news, like why players should steer clear of ___ because it is killing people randomly.

What irks me the most, however, is that in the grand majority of these cases the developers manage to inflame the situation by, doing what? Deleting threads and posts made on the subject. What this tells your players is that while you have someone with enough time to scan the forums and delete their posts complaining about this issue, you apparently don’t give enough of a rat’s ass to have that same person just give a response and negate the need for the threads.

Of course I am most recently referring to Turbine, and an accidental mass banning on Dungeons and Dragons Online that left thousands of players locked out of their accounts for more than just a while, which Turbine later announced as a glitch in the automated system that handles bans for exploits. Massively had an article on it, since the mass bans happened to crash in on their public event on DDO. Of course, when the rants started hitting the forums players were met with threads being locked, deleted, and forum infractions handed out.

Part of working in retail has taught me that when you screw up, you can’t blame the customer for getting pissed, a point many of these developers seem to have missed. You can’t falsely accuse someone of cheating, ban them with no real explanation or method of appeal, and then expect them to not head to the fastest method of handing feedback in a white hot rage. This compounds when most of them just want information, something that you do not supply until it is at your own convenience.

As much as I’m sure my viewers think it pains me to knock Turbine; this isn’t good PR, especially toward those paying your bills. The bans themselves don’t even factor in as, as I have said, mistakes happen. Instead of letting people vent while you leave them in the dark, you decide to add insult to injury and give up infractions because people had a crazy notion to get angry over unjustified bans. The comments of the developer being too busy fixing the problem to comment on it are also utter garbage. This always crops up when an incident like this takes place, and every time those throwing around this talking point fail to respond to a simple comment: It takes less than a minute to write up “we’re aware of the situation, working on it,” on a forum. Hell, I did it in fifteen seconds, and doing so did not hinder my completion of this article.

So I will reiterate what I have said time and time again: Response means everything, and right now Turbine are about a step behind Star Vault’s “sorry, no patch to fix this gaping void in the map because the developers are off for the weekend,” in terms of taking a bad situation and turning the flames up to 11.

Why Turbine Saved The Industry: The Safety Net of Free To Play

Here at MMO Fallout, I don’t think it is any surprise that Turbine is essentially my deity, and for numerous reasons. The one I’d like to get into today is what I call The Great Safety Net, not invented but popularized by Turbine. Before Dungeons and Dragons Online went free to play as a saving grace, an MMO losing its subscription was generally accompanied by an announcement that the game would be shutting down. The company couldn’t sustain the title anymore, and hell since the game was shutting down in a few months why not let everyone enjoy it while it lasts?

Dungeons and Dragons Online is a perfect example of a game that was falling down hard, and moved to what was, at the time, a fairly experimental system involving Turbine points, a VIP system, an allowance, and the contents of the item shop itself. Of course, communities saw this and immediately called the impending death of the game. After Turbine launched the free to play effort, Dungeons and Dragons increased its paying subscribers by 40%, with a 500% increase in sales over the first year.

So why do I say Turbine saved the industry? With Dungeons and Dragons Online, Turbine has proven that there is an option other than simply shuttering a title. Following Dungeons and Dragons Online, Turbine has proven that even a healthy title can become an even bigger cash cow when Lord of the Rings Online went free to play. Since Dungeons and Dragons Online, we’ve seen Everquest II move to free to play, alongside Pirates of the Burning Sea, and upcoming Champions Online, Global Agenda, Alganon, and more. Even the normal banter has changed. In many of the forums I visit, the phrase has changed from “I wonder how long until it shuts down” to “I wonder how long until they go f2p with a cash shop.”

Granted, taking the plunge into free to play cash shop is not a guarantee at success, but rather it’s like putting a cast on your horse’s broken leg in hopes that it will heal, rather than outright shooting it. In the case of Chronicles of Spellborn, well you can’t go free to play if your developer goes out of business. Perhaps if Turbine had popularized this just a year or two earlier, we might still be playing Tabula Rasa, The Matrix Online, and other titles.

More and more we can see companies experimenting with or thinking about the Turbine model. Sony is getting into the system with Pirates of the Burning Sea and Everquest II. Funcom and Mythic have discussed such moves with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online respectively, noting that the option is not off the table but not being considered at the moment. Cryptic is taking Champions Online to such a model. The option is no longer cake or death.

Of course, there are some companies that would rather shoot the horse than risk the cast, although with the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons Online, more of those companies might start seeing the light. I’m looking at you, NCsoft.

Which MMOs would you like to see go free to play? Drop us a comment below. Want MMO Fallout beamed directly to your email account? Sign up in the sidebar. Follow us on Twitter: @mmofallout.

Atari Vs Turbine: The Aftermath

For people like me, lawsuits are a swing and a miss, mainly because after all of the legal jargon, reading long court documents to figure out what is happening, and trying to get both sides to speak on the case, there comes the inevitable deal breaker: The settlement. A settlement, often out of court, is generally always secret, none of the agreements are released to the public and neither side can talk about who was wrong on what accord.

So you’ll have to accept my apologies when I tell you I was well aware that the Turbine/Atari lawsuit ended, not only that but it ended four months ago, around the time Turbine was acquired by Warner Brothers. The major changes? Not much to speak of, aside from Turbine reacquiring their publishing rights in Europe, although this could be a decision under the new ownership.

The lawsuit went out with a fizzle and not a bang, and it’s anyone’s guess who won, if there is a “winner.” I’m removing the lawsuit category at the end of the month, as it will no longer be needed.

Dungeons and Dragons Online Going Free To Play August

LOTRO — Just replace September with August.

I know what you’re asking: Omali! Dungeons and Dragons Online is already free to play! To which I answer: Not in Europe. No, for the past ten months or so North American players have been enjoying the freshly free to play Dungeons and Dragons Online, while our compatriots over the ocean have not. When Turbine’s title went into cash-shop-freemium mode this past September, the dungeon crawler saw an enormous revival both in players and revenue. Since then, Turbine has added yet another server, and has seen increases in revenue in the triple digits.

This fall, not to be out of line with a few other developers, Turbine is taking back Dungeons and Dragons Online in Europe, from the current publisher Codemasters (this is not the first time Codemasters has lost their rights to an MMO), where the title will be reworked and re-released under the Eberron Unlimited title. I don’t think many people should be surprised at this, given the recent introduction of Warner Bros. into the workplace, as well as Europe’s transition being in the cards for some time now.

Turbine is promising that the transition will go as smoothly as possible, hopefully even more smoothly since the transition has already happened once. Dungeons and Dragons Online is currently the third most played MMO in the US, according to NPD Group.

More on Dungeons and Dragons Online as it appears.

Double The Turbine Points: In Plain English

If you are, or have been, a VIP player on Dungeons and Dragons Online, you already know how the system works: In addition to the normal perks of being a VIP player, you are given 500 Turbine points a month as something of an allowance. These extra points can go towards anything that the VIP program itself does not give, be it mercenaries or other perks.

From now until August 10th, VIP’ers will receive double the monthly alloted, one thousand points, to spend on their liking, and I found a number of people were confused as to how this will work out.

I receive my points on:

Before June 11th: You will receive your double points in July and in August. Your points for June will have already been deposited.
After June 11th: You will receive double your points this month, double your points next month, and August will be back to normal.

So those of you with current subscriptions will receive two months worth of double points, no matter what part of the month your subscription renews.

If you are not a VIP member of Dungeons and Dragons Online, you have until July 11th to enjoy two months of VIP, otherwise those who subscribe after July 11th will only receive one month.

Hopefully when Lord of the Rings Online goes free to play this year, we may see a similar promotion. This promotion does not include regular players buying their points.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: TV Advertisement

Television advertisement is a barrier that few MMOs break if their names are not World of Warcraft, so it’s good to see Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons on the semi-big screen.

Warner Brothers Owns Turbine Now

Warner Brothers has been on a spending spree this week, and their latest acquisition? Turbine Inc, in case you didn’t read the title. I won’t say much about Warner Brothers, considering they own virtually my entire childhood, but my favorite part of acquisitions always comes from the press releases, where both the purchaser and the purchased have a chance to perform the introductory sniffing.

“Turbine is a leader in online entertainment and a strong strategic fit for Warner Bros. as we continue to broaden our games portfolio and development capabilities,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. “Turbine’s renowned online game development and publishing expertise will help us develop additional online product offerings, while also providing us with new and innovative ways to market and communicate with our consumers.”

And…Turbine?

“We have been looking to expand access to our online worlds to more players and more markets,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO, Turbine, Inc. “This acquisition is very exciting because it allows us to expand globally while continuing to focus on creating spectacular online games that our loyal fans and players have come to expect.”

The technically-no-longer-independent studio has a point! According to the press release, Warner Bros hopes to utilize Turbine’s experience in a pay-wall free cash shop to introduce new features to give people incentives to hold on to their games, such as charging people for upgrades to movie-themed games to update the title to correspond with the movie. Yes, what they are proposing is essentially a new name on DLC, but it is the thought that counts.

“The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online have both been an enormous success for Turbine and we look forward to working with their talented development team to continue creating award-winning online games.”

Yes, thank you Warner Bros! By the way, how much did Warner Bros pay for Turbine? You guessed it, $160 million, including sums to be paid to shareholders if they meet financial requirements over the next few years.

Why We Love Turbine

Here at MMO Fallout, it’s essentially my job to cover the the good and the bad side of corporate PR, and I have to say that ultimately the two traits that can make or break a company following an “incident” are communication and timing of response. On one hand, you’ll find that a lot of the negative attention towards Cryptic Studios here has to do with announcements that are originally poorly worded and full of holes, that not only allow but generate their own wild speculation that causes an uproar by the community, only for Cryptic to post a slightly more articulate explanation days later after the forums have drowned in its own rage.

Since this is a direct followup to the Turbine Offer Wall seen below this, I won’t be redundant and pack the whole article into one sentence: In a p osting on Turbine’s forums the day of the “incident” with the offer wall, Turbine’s own Marketroid posted to clarify that, aside from username and email, nothing was being transmitted to offerers, and ensuring players that neither Super Rewards nor Playspan were selling that information to outside companies. You can take this with however much salt you want, but the post goes on to mention Super Rewards has also deleted the email addresses from their databases.

Meanwhile, what is the status of the offer wall? For now: Defunct.

“Based on your feedback, we’re stepping away from the ‘Offer’ category for now. We’ll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We’ll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that’s who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We’ll collect all the feedback we’ve received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions.”
-Marketroid, Turbine, on DDO offer wall.

For a company to clean up a mess like this in less than 48 hours is pretty impressive. I’ve always said that, say what you want about Dungeons and Dragons Online or Lord of the Rings Online (both of which are quality games), but Turbine has a long history of righting what they genuinely screw up on, and in a quick and efficient manner that doesn’t condescend to their players, or even get into flame wars with their players.

This unsolicited testimonial to Turbine is brought to you by: Turbine Points! The-I’m just kidding.

More news on Turbine and Dungeons and Dragons Online as it appears.

Turbine: Sorry We Directed You To Scams/Phishing

As some players point out to me in the numerous emails I receive each week, I apparently look like an idiot/hypocrite/uninformed child when I praise a company one day, and then crush them like a bug the next (literally) for doing something insanely inane. What these emails forget is that here at MMO Fallout, we shy away from sticking labels on a company, as long as that company is not Mythic entertainment and that label is not Mark Jacobs. But I digress: I feel that events should be taken as they come, and that there really isn’t some kind of point system you can keep to tell how good an MMO is in your graces. Oh well, Turbine gave us some free stuff so that gives them…five points? And the pay wall…You see my point.

Yesterday Turbine introduced the Dungeons and Dragons Online pay wall, where players could opt to complete offers to gain Turbine Points, not unlike MyPoints. The community, for lack of better words, exploded in response to this news. What originated as a shady new way to gain Turbine Points by taking an IQ test by some company in Malaysia quickly turned into controversy:

Players discovered that the user’s username and email address were being transmitted, unencrypted, just by looking at the wall, to the survey providers.
Forum users confirmed that one of the offerers, SuperRewards (or one of its affiliates) was harvesting emails for use in World of Warcraft phishing emails. A number of users, some of whom who have never played World of Warcraft, received similar looking phishing emails shortly after viewing the offer wall.
Offers that require users to download software that secretly harvests information, cookies, and potentially passwords, credit cards, and social security numbers.
Cell phone scams that require you to send a text to complete the offer.
Offers that require you to partake in long surveys that then disqualify you.

Turbine has since completely removed the offer wall, temporarily, to address these issues, but the fact remains: For a few hours yesterday, Turbine was literally walking their players directly into a developer-backed trap. Players who were offered an alternate method to paying for Turbine Points were herded into a trap where they could have had their accounts compromised, or possibly even becoming victims of identity theft, depending on what some of the advertisers were sticking on player’s computers.

Players are, understandably, livid about this and Turbine has released a list of rules that offerers must adhere to. Hopefully this will calm down an inflamed situation.

Offer Wall Rules

Any offer to be published on the Offer Wall must meet the following criteria:

1No unapproved required downloads – ever. This includes toolbars, helper applications, plug-ins, and ActiveX Controls. Player security is our top priority.
All offers must be certified spyware-clean and confirmed in internal testing against a cleanroom environment.
Surveys must be legit. No lengthy prequalification surveys followed by a disqualification and no points. If the pre-qualification is more than 20 questions for our test cases, we won’t host the survey.
Surveys must not ask for game account information or information which could be used to discover a player’s credentials.
No deceptive offers – i.e. take this IQ test and get the results via SMS (free IQ test, SMS costs $).
Partners must display a privacy policy in a public location that can be checked.
Offers must pay out as expected. All offers must deliver the points promised in a clear and straightforward fashion.

More on Dungeons and Dragons as it appears, and no there is no news on the lawsuit.

Going Free Pays: Dungeons and Dragons Online

When Dungeons and Dragons Online went free to play last year, it sparked quite a few questions as to the game itself. How was it doing, subscriber-wise? Was this a desperate attempt at new players, or just a smart business move? Of course, now we know that it was just a smart business move. Shortly after DDO went free to play, Turbine announced a 40% increase in paying subscribers, and a new server to hold all the incoming players.

Since Dungeons and Dragons Online went free play, they have amassed one million new players, as well as twice the number of paying subscribers. The cash shop on Dungeons and Dragons Online leads the industry with a 500% increase in sales.

Well, the success just keeps on coming. Jim Crowley: CEO of Turbine had this to say:

“The response from players to DDO Unlimited has been nothing short of phenomenal. We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game. Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!“

Indeed it is, Mr. Crowley. Indeed it is.

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