Dungeons & Dragons Online Interview

A two-page transcript of Ten Ton Hammer’s recent podcast interview with Turbine’s Fernando Paiz and Erik Boyer is now available, during which the Dungeons & Dragons Online producers talk about the game’s successful shift to a free-to-play business model, the number of people that use the game’s microtransaction system, their plans for bringing more content to the game, and more. A few snips:

Question: Why did Turbine decide to go free-to-play?

Answer: There are a couple of things combined that made us decide to go free-to-play with DDO. I guess the first, and most obvious, is making it easier for a lot of people to get into the game. We really thought that the game had come such a long distance since launch, and that so many players, if they got into it and tried it, would really enjoy it and realize that we’re an unique MMOG and not another classic open world RPG like so many others. We have a unique take that we bring to the genre, and we saw this game as being worthy of a lot more success than it had at the time. Part of it was getting people to come in who weren’t necessarily willing to pay a subscription. That’s the number one reason why people don’t get into an MMOG is because they fear the recurring subscription.

Another reason is that we really believe that this model was going to become very important in the market here in the West and in North America in particular. Rather than wait on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to figure it out, we decided that we, at Turbine, were going to pioneer here and develop this model and adapt it to the West. Once we decided on doing that, it became clear that DDO was the right choice for the game to do that. We’re very excited that those things worked out.

Going back a little bit, we were getting ready to launch in China when we started looking at this. Obviously, this has been a successful business model in China, but hasn’t been adopted in North America or taken to the level that we have this year. That’s when we started playing with is this something that this game could do? We were looking at it from the perspective of that market, and then ultimately realized that there were a lot of things that we could do to fit into the North American market. The types of offerings we would have of not making it a game that you could buy your way through it, but making it something that offered you conveniences in the game. That was the kind of approach of what things we would make purchasable.

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Question: How many of the player base, percentage wise, actually uses the store?

Answer: I’ll answer that in two parts. For people who may not know, one of the cool things about DDO is that you can earn points from playing the game. We actually give you points for playing and amassing favor, which is our patron system where you accomplish more and more quests for certain patrons, you get more favor from them. As you get more favor, you will earn Turbine Points to spend in the store. That’s been a very successful part of the model, and as a result of that, we see about 70% of our users in a given month use the store. That doesn’t mean that all those people are spending dollars. The number of our active users who are spending dollars on Turbine Points is around 20%, but I would note that this number is a very successful number compared to other games in this genre.

Going into this, we had some third party research numbers that were showing from 7 to 12 percent, so we’re building things based on that expectation. We found that our choice of what we put in the store led to us being more successful than that. You have to be pleased for doing better than the average.

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Question: Is there anything else you want to say about DDO?

Answer: Half-Orc smash! We are going to be releasing a new race this fall, I believe, so it’s part of this year’s release plan. A new race of half-orcs. They are going to be the biggest, toothiest thing that we’ve ever had in-game. They’re a little larger than the warforged, and those are in development here. We’re getting stuff back from the art department: nice looking models and some really cool dance moves for those who want to do the emotes. They have some really cool abilities. They start with enhanced strength so they’ll be great barbarians in the game. That’s one that we’re definitely excited about. It’s been on every player’s question list for the last four years when are we doing half-orcs? We’re finally delivering on that.

To add some more on what’s coming out later in the year in update 7 and 8, the other thing that I’m excited about is an overhaul to the user interface in the game. This is another thing that we’ve gotten a lot of player press on, and the players will be very excited to see a face lift UI as well as some much requested, and justifiably griped about, fixes to auctions. Players can be happy to know that we’ll be doing string searches in auctions, proper sorting of the search results, and other improvements to the UI that they’ll really enjoy. As a player, I’m so excited to be able to be able to properly search the auction and see the UI get a little bit of a refresh.

Half-Orcs have been promised for a long time, so it’s good to hear that they’re eventually going to make it in.