DropBear wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 9:21pm:


This is where Turbine has always dropped the ball.  Any other major corporation will totally kiss a clients ass to get them back.  Keep offering them more for less until they come back into the fold.  Turbine should constantly be sending emails to old players to update them to whatever new changes are being made and offering incentive programs to return. 

Been gone a year?  50% off an Otto boxes or 75% off a class of your choice. 

Cancelled your subscription?  Special offer for 3 months subscription for 5 dollars a month. 

They should be giving shit away left and right to hold on to their player base.  Exclusive pets for keeping a subscription for a year or whatever.  Anything to keep players playing and old players coming back.

In case no one in Turbine has ever taken even a basic business course, let me spell it out for you -

You know what's better than making NO money from a former client?  Making ANY fucking money you can from them.

Skoodge wrote on Jun 5^th, 2015 at 4:09am:


I'm surprised they haven't tried it, but in some ways it's probably for the best.
Bringing people back to the current game would not be good.

I think all they have internally are a bunch of computer geeks who think the world (and business) operates like software development.  Actually, I wouldn't even say they're competent software development professionals as they don't even have the fundamentals of version control, alpha/beta/delta testingand QA/QC.  I'm not sure what project control philosophy they run - seems like the anarchy model?

Maybe a few of them like Paiz have done a weekend course in business and think they're Harvard MBA material.

Whatever they're doing isn't working and they need to change.
The decline in DDO has been constant and it shouldn't be attributed to the age of the game or the visuals.  People don't play DDO looking for Far Cry 10 visuals.  The attraction is old school like Civilisation - changing challenge, replayability, nuances in the complexity.

The low budget, bottom of the barrel approach is a terrible way to do business unless you're in the 1800's or you mass produce widgets and the only way to survive is to be bottom quartile on the cost curve.

Software doesn't work that way
Turdbine have a niche - they should embrace it and use it.
Aim for a small team environment - that's fine, but get the best you can afford.  And get the right people, not just the leftovers from previous retrenchments, because their desk happened to be on right side of the building.

Flav wrote on Jun 5^th, 2015 at 1:20pm:

They own Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment which has the following studios under it:

- Monolith Productions in Kirkland, Washington, founded in 1994, acquired in 2004
- NetherRealm Studios in Chicago, founded as Midway Games Chicago in 1988, acquired from Midway Games on July 27, 2009 and renamed in 2010
- Rocksteady Studios in London, founded in 2004 and majority stake acquired in February 2010
- TT Games in Maidenhead, England, founded in 2005, acquired November 8, 2007 Traveller's Tales in Knutsford, England, founded in 1989, reorganized as division of TT Games in 2005
- TT Fusion in Wilmslow, England, founded in 2005 as Embryonic Studios, acquired by TT Games in 2006
- Turbine in Needham, Massachusetts, founded in 1994, acquired in 2010
- Warner Bros. Games Montréal in Montreal, founded in 2010
- Warner Bros. Games San Francisco in San Francisco, founded in 2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Interactive_Entertainment

Lego Worlds is TT.

WoTC owns it all Time Warner is the only authorized user!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wizards_of_the_Coast_products

Luxgolg wrote on Jun 5^th, 2015 at 3:06pm:



Nope, Codemasters was the European Representative for running the game... Basically they were to Atari what Turbine was at that time : the company that ran the game.

And be careful with the Atari name...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infogrames_Entertainment,_SA

Atari life is as messy as their relation with DDO... if not more...

And see there I went...Down again

Atari(infrogames SA) sold Cryptic, who was bought by ... wait for it. PERFECT WORLD  in May 2011. Neverwinter was released 2 years later.

Ah Pook wrote on Jun 5^th, 2015 at 4:15pm:


I think this applies to media in general, not just gaming. Some major changes are in progress and being enormous conglomerations of companies wont save them from the culture shift

mystafyi wrote on Jun 5^th, 2015 at 6:39pm:


This. Companies like Goblinworks and Grinding Gear Games are going to eat the Turbines of the industry for lunch. It will be only a nibble each, but they will swarm like piranahs. Steam starts delivery of The Steam Machine this fall, a whole school of Indie developers is about to breach the shieldwall. Release the Sardaukar!

It's exciting, but then you have stuff like CLANG, where people feel hosed.  That's probably inevitable, but it does shift the burden of risk to the player.

Fun though.  I'd rather fund some dungeon crawling thing than Madden '42.  They can pay for that one themselves. 

DropBear wrote on Jun 6^th, 2015 at 1:07am:

Ride the F train.

Flav wrote on Jun 6^th, 2015 at 2:24am:

For the metaphor maybe, but I still believe it could be recovered.
It would take a thorough clean out of the F virus to start with.
Anyone hitched to that stupid train would have to be shunted.

The problem with growing too large is that people care less about the entity and more about themselves.  It just becomes a gravy train to stepping stone your own career.
Unless they have some personal stake in Turdbine, they couldn't care about it beyond their ability to secure another job.
Smaller entities with some shareholding keeps the employees invested in the future, not just the here and now.  I wonder if F virus has his own cash invested in the Turdtanic?

Mr wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 12:15pm:


I don't know, IC resulted in Eladrin being moved off of DDO.

Which is possibly the best thing to ever happen to the game.