Free DDO boosts subs by 40 per cent

By Oli Welsh Published 16 October, 2009

"Hundreds of thousands" playing for free.

Turbine has said that its free-to-play relaunch of Dungeons & Dragons Online has actually boosted subscriptions by 40 per cent as well as attracting large numbers of free players.

Internal growth projections have been doubled, executive producer Fernando Paiz told Ars Technica. "We're hitting and exceeding our internal targets, so far we're very happy," he said.

"All aspects of our business are growing. Hundreds of thousands of new players in the world are playing for free, with a very high percentage using the store."

Players who aren't paying a subscription can buy chunks of content, as well as classes, character slots, items and the like, from the game's micro-transaction store. Many of them, though, are choosing to pay the now-optional subscription to get unrestricted access to all of the game's features and content - resulting in the bump to subscriber numbers.

Some players are even exceeding what they might have spent on DDO before the relaunch. "We have a good chunk of the population that is spending more than $15 a month," Paiz said. "The traditional subscription model can only make X dollars off a player. This kind of removes that cap."

So DDO's relaunch has been a commercial success for Turbine. To find out how it worked out creatively, check out our recent re-review.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Retroid #1 2 years ago

    People like free things?

    Who would've thought!

  • WinterSnowblind #2 2 years ago

    I'm hoping Old Republic goes this route as well. Give us the option of paying monthly, for those that like that sort of thing. But making it free to play, with less frills for everyone else will definitely hugely expand the user base.

  • ZuluHero #3 2 years ago

    I don't think The Old Republic will have a problem in that department...

    ;)

  • Rubarack #4 2 years ago

    People like free things?

    Who would've thought!

    Evidently not Codemasters. Can we get this locally any time soon?

  • Balboa #5 2 years ago

    It's not really a "less frills" thing - it's very hard to level once you reach the marketplace if you don't buy some extra content. It's more of a really generous demo than free-to-play.

    Buying this content ends up more expensive than subbing, unless you sub for years. Actually I guess they admit that in the article, heh.

    The problem with the store model, for players, is that it reduces incentive for the company to roll out content as part of subscriptions. You can see this happening with Lotro; Mirkwood has about the same level of content as some previous book updates, but they're charging for it. Subscriptions are becoming access fees, rather than funding content updates.

  • moshegy #6 2 years ago

    It's more expensive and yet they sound it off as something they've done for their customers. Hah. The more of these mischievous business plans I read about the happier I am I play eve-online. Sure CCP charges me a monthly fee, and sure I can't decide whether to pay in euros or dollars despite using neither which effectively doubles the cost for me; but there is an option to buy gametime for ingame currency and I get my expansions for free so technically eve-online is completely free to play.

    I honestly doubt there is much of a future for me in MMOs unless other developers start taking hard lessons from the awesomeness that is CCP. Not just on how to charge people money, but on what kind of behavior you ought to have towards your customers who aren't just cows you need to milk.

    Or maybe they are? Heh, the critical consumer sure seems dead.

  • Nephirion #7 2 years ago

    I wouldn't pay a monthly fee to play this

  • WJF #8 2 years ago

    'It's not really a "less frills" thing - it's very hard to level once you reach the marketplace if you don't buy some extra content'

    It's not that hard. It just requires you to repeat the earlier dungeons at higher difficulties (and the dungeons are much more interesting than most MMOs so that isn't as dull as it sounds). I don't remember getting stuck for choice at any point before the PC side on the Mac packed in.

    Of course, the urge to see something new for a change will inevitably drag out cash from most players who reach the marketplace. It's a clever money-making system, especially as they give you free points and a low level cap, thus forcing you into visiting the store at some point early on into the game.

  • Balboa #9 2 years ago

    Sure, but there are diminishing returns, and you need a lot of XP to level past the Marketplace. Grinding isn't really DDO's thing, unless you want more than one of the quest rewards (or a levelling token).

    When you have fresh stuff to explore, the game is pretty awesome. The quests are it's strong point; and if you don't buy them, you're not losing frills, you're missing out on the core game.

  • Vandrius #10 2 years ago

    Balboa, thats wank. F2P players in DDO don't have to grind. Yes, they have less dungeons, but in DDO you might run a dungeon 2 to 10 times as opposed to, say, another MMO where you run through the same content at the same level for days on end.

    I've started playing DDO since it went F2P, and I was impressed enough that I subbed to get the extra stuff (mainly the character slots!). Its at the stage now that it should have been at launch, but that just means im joining a more polished game.

    The dungeons and quests are by far the best I've played in a MMO.

  • Balboa #11 2 years ago

    You need 50k XP to hit level 5, and you get between 1 and 2.5k base XP per quest. There are 5 level 4 quests available. I'm not going to total up the number of purchasable quests and XP, but I'm willing to bet it covers the deficit.

    This is what I'm talking about when I say DDO FTP isn't less frills. There is plenty of content at the start (18 quests at level 2), and then it drops off rather quickly.

    I'm sorry if this seems critical of a game you like, but I think the numbers speak for themselves.

  • iokthemonkey #12 2 years ago

    I dunno how it'll stand-up at later levels, but I've had a quick dabble tonight and it seems pretty interesting - especially for free.