Games: Let my gamers be free

Today a number of blogs are trying to raise money for charity. This initiative, MBACD, has been organised by Ferrel of Epic Slant and Brian "Psychochild" Green of Psychochild's blog has hosted our mailing list. Thanks a lot to them both.

The charity I have chosen is Amnesty International.

To donate money follow this link:
Amnesty International Donate Now page

This charity fights for human rights. Whether it is civil liberties in a more progressed nation or a campaign to stop torture and political executions in repressive regimes.

They have fought campaigns in just about every nation in the world because the struggle for liberty needs to be constantly fought in every country.

It was with immense sadness that I read of the fight for freedom to play video games in Venezuela. Raph Koster reported this news and the original piece, written for Boing Boing is heart-rending.

Here are some excerpts from this shocking and appalling piece but please do follow the link and read the whole of Guido Núñez-Mujica's article.

This law makes selling video games to anybody actually worse than giving real guns or cigarettes to a minor, or even forcing him or her to work, as you get less jail time and lower fines if you do any of those things. 

These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.

Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted.

But I won't obey, I will be an outlaw gamer, and I vow to teach him as much as I can and as much as he is willing to learn, as early as possible. I refuse to give up my rights to a government that is commanded by Vuitton clad jerks asking sacrifices from us, I refuse to stop gaming because a bunch of control freaks tell me that I will become a killer and that the wonderful games that enriched my childhood are psycho factories.

If I get fined for writing this (Article 13, promoting the use of violent videogames), so be it. If I go to jail because I carry rooms in my hard drive or in an R4 card for my brother, next time I return to the country, so be it. But I'd rather go to jail than betray the gamer culture, partially responsible for making me the person I am today

Again the link to donate money to Amnesty International is

Amnesty International Donate Now page

It breaks my heart that we gamers need them now simply to play our games.

Do have a look at the other bloggers participating in the charity drive:

Ysharros - Stylish Corpse - http://stylishcorpse.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/mabcd-2009-its-good-to-give
Spinks - Spinksville - http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/mmo-blog-alliance-charity-drive
Psychochild - Psychochild's Blog - http://www.psychochild.org/?p=828
Slurms - Multiplaying - http://www.multiplaying.net/2009/11/08/mbacd/
Ferrel - Epic Slant - http://www.epicslant.com/2009/11/mbacd-2009/

MMOs: The use of subscriber numbers as a statistic

Frank at Overly Positive has written a rather scathing post about The Silly Subscriber Number Worship.
Aiiane at Up Past Midnight also feels too much weight is given to subscriber numbers. Syncaine crows about Aion struggling while explaining how in his view subscriber numbers mould the games that get produced.

I think subscriber numbers are a reasonable indication of a good game.

Of course there are niches and one has to respect that a full loot pvp game or a permadeath mode only game are unlikely to get high numbers since they appeal to a small subset of the gaming public.

Still I think in general that the audience is discerning and good at filtering out what it likes from what it doesn't like.

The McDonalds analogy is flawed. There are genuine medical reasons why living on McDonalds food is bad; there are environmentalist issues arising from the company's ranching practices in the Amazon Basin, there are aesthetic issues regarding the look of high streets and there are social justice issues around low pay. So many people dislike McDonalds for reasons that aren't related to the product.

Subscriber numbers point to WoW being a better game than Warhammer, once seen as a potential "WoW-killer". Looking more specifically at that subset of the WoW-playing population who cancelled their WoW subs and bought Warhammer one sees that the majority went back to WoW. These are people capable of making choices about what they like. To assume they are all sheep or stupid or tourists is to denigrate them.

One can further analyse the game mechanics to see specific reasons why WAR failed to retain high numbers of players. It's a mass pvp game and didn't function very well. Keeps were takeable using weak points. RvR generally does not work well with two realms. You get the everyone joins the winning side bandwagon effect.

Next just as the presence of an observer distorts an experiment the mass of subscribers or lack of subscribers distorts the numbers. Most people want to play a game with tons of other people. It's sensible - why grind to level 80 in a game which only has 10k players and thus might get closed down by the time you max out?

My main caveat is that companies distort their numbers. WoW for instance counts every unopened gamecard they've ever sold as a "current subscriber" and counts people who pay 5 cents to play an hour in a Chinese cybercafe once as "current subscribers".

In any event now that WoW has lost the rights to operate in China it's unlikely we will ever see WoW numbers released voluntarily again. (People may be able to deduce numbers from company financial information they are legally required to submit). Most people think WoW has 11 million subscribers, in fact they may well have less that a million active subscriptions.

Some marketing people even scroll through all their available stats before dredging up some number that sounds good. Champions Online recently announced one million characters have been made in the character creator. What the hell does that have to do with anything? They may have ten thousand players. Or less. By all accounts the character creator is the best thing about the game so it's hardly surprising people are playing with it.

What's even more astonishing is that a number of bloggers and games journalists have divided it by four to suggest that Champions Online has 250K subscribers. Huh? Sorry guys if you take a figure that means nothing and divide it by four you still have a figure that means nothing, not a point of information.

It seems to me that if the only stat you care to reveal about your new game is something completely out of left field like people playing with the character generator your real stats must be shockingly bad. If CO actually had 250K subscribers they would be telling everyone. It's like claiming your game is a success because the /dance emote has been used a million times.

In conclusion once one gets past the deceptive methods generally behind any figure you get a ball park idea of which games are doing well. A game that is doing well is generally doing well because people enjoy playing it which may be a sign that you too would enjoy playing it if it's your style of game. Further a game with good numbers is protected from some of the calamities that strike games that are financially challenged: lack of extra new content, failure of game elements that require massive participation to work, lack of people to group with and so on.

WoW: some thoughts on game economics

The launch of the World of Warcraft item store with two minipets available has provoked a lot of discussion on various blogs.

I'd like to look at the bigger picture because some of the views I've seen seem misinformed or (frankly) naive.

Opinion has generally split into two camps whose beliefs are as follows:

Either: Blizzard owes us, man, they'd be nothing without us loyal customers, charging us money is biting the hand that feeds them

Or: Get real, they're a business run by android accountants, $0.001 more per head is the only thing they look at.

Both have a grain of truth but distort that element to get a position that is nonsensical.

First the "Blizzard owes us" viewpoint. Yes, customers make the company profitable and the company recognises this not only with respect to those of us who have contributed money in the past but also looking ahead to people who will continue to regularly buy their games in the future.

It goes to quite sophisticated lengths to keep people happy while increasing revenue. For example the controversial petshop is mitigated by the announcement that half of the proceeds for one of the pets will go to charity. This costs them money but increases goodwill. Blizzard clearly feel that goodwill is crucial to their business and that it's worth several thousand dollars. It's not all about wringing the last cent out of their customers, they clearly want to be liked despite raising the cost of the game for those people who don't want to miss out on a cool WoW feature.

Next, the blaming the accountants viewpoint. First off accountants generally don't run companies. Also they are people too and probably a high percentage of the accountants who work for games companies are games fans too (otherwise they'd be working in better paid accountancy roles in other industries, for example the financial sector). Next not all accountants are pencil-counting morons who will run profitable businesses into the ground by grubbing every cent they can at the price of customer good will. Just because their job is counting the cents does not mean they are devoid of common sense or any recognition of the other elements that make a business profitable.

By and large Blizzard has handled this introduction of an item store well.

They let their competitors go first. SOE introduced an item store to EQ2 amidst storms of protest a couple of years ago and then went further and introduced special RMT gold-buying servers. Eve has its plex system. Champions Online recently tested whether respecs would be a viable shop item and got a pretty resounding No from its player base. This is generally not an area where pushing the boundaries is rewarded.

They tested the waters with veiled item store like offers. You could get in-game items with the collectible card game, with the collectors' edition, with blizzcon tickets. This has been amazingly effective camouflage for a fundamental change in charging policy. People who have recently been upset by the item store pets get responses of "spectral tiger dude, it's been in the game for years". But it is different to have an in-game item shop. So it's very clever of them to muddy the waters.

They're giving 50% to charity! Or wait actually they're not. They're giving 50% of one of the two pets so about 25% to charity and only for slightly under 2 months. Plus their accountants will claim back a lot of tax (that's what accountants actually do btw for those out there who still think their job description is to destroy games companies and make fans cry). Still people in general are terrible with numbers and 50% sounds like a lot even though the net cost to Blizzard will almost certainly be under 1% of what the cash store takes in over its lifetime in WoW.

However the main thing is the pets are nice, gorgeous even, they aren't game-breaking or even capable of any gameplay impact if you don't have them (except for achievement completion and arguably achievements are fluff anyway) and the fans I'm sure will love them and buy them in great numbers.

They've made two mistakes though.

First, they've screwed the non-Americans.

Gordon of We Fly Spitfires explains it here.

It's astounding considering how careful they've been in so many regards of the goodwill of their fans that they screwed half of their premium price fanbase. Essentially they've ignored the real exchange rate and gone with an exchange rate of $1 = 1 euro and a rate close to $1 = £1.

People have suggested that it is reasonable because the dollar is weak. This is nonsense. Back before the Euro Europe had several terribly weak currencies like the Italian Lira and the Turkish currency and those countries were over-charged just as much as the rest of us.

Exchange rate is not value.

People have suggested it's a cultural thing, like Coca Cola being cheap in the US and expensive in Europe. I don't buy this because I think virtual game fluff is too young a commodity to have this kind of cultural identity.

I think rather that they decided to have a comparitively cheap price point in the US to keep their more vocal fans calm and are comfortable with a more expensive overseas price point which collects more revenue out of foreign fans.

Remember what I said about goodwill above? Goodwill is very important to Blizzard, they will get a lot of future sales simply because "it's a Blizzard game". For Blizzard a big part of goodwill is US goodwill. The US players are the people Blizzard developers meet at conventions, they are the people who post on the WoW forums that Blizzard developers read (a summary of the Euro WoW forums is compiled weekly and sent but that's obviously a much lower impact) and I think Americans in general are more expressive and quick to vocalise complaints than we Europeans who are descended from stock that decided to meekly submit to authority rather than brave the frontier life hundreds of years ago.

This is what I think of the price points: $10 is too cheap from a bean-counting point of view. Sale volumes would be almost identical if they charged US customers $20. £10 or 10 Euros is probably about right for Europeans - if they pushed it any higher I think sales would fall off sharply.

But the big advantage of making it cheap to Americans is that their most vocal, closest and most important fanbase can accept this change comfortably.

That's what I think they are doing.

The reason I think it's a mistake is that they are causing a big backlash of goodwill loss this side of the pond in exchange for a small amount of extra revenue.

Had they charged us £7/7 euros people would not have had any issue other than general discontent about being triple-dipped (ie we've bought the box, we've paid the subs and now we're getting microtransactions too? Meh).

But they're adding insult to injury by over-charging us. Because we're passive. Schmucks. Too spineless to object. After all, we're descended from the timid ones too scared to get on ships like the Mayflower, right?

Now that's not worth three quid. We're actually not spineless even though we generally don't complain. Unlike Americans who as a people will generally complain about something for a long time before ditching it, we tend to stifle our complaints for a limited time then say "stuff this" and leave. We are much less likely to complain but we are much more likely to up and leave.

For me Blizzard has been off my "must buy their game the day it comes out list" since November 2004. That was the month WoW did not launch in Europe. It eventually limped over the Atlantic three months late.

Treating customers differently is a fundamental cause of loss of goodwill. Treating customers unfairly for three lousy quid is just bad business.

The next mistake I think Blizzard has made with this making the pets transferrable. This makes them similar in some ways to plexes in Eve and diamonds in Runes of Magic in that people can spend dollars on an item they can sell to another player for gold, effectively legal gold-buying.

I don't have a problem with legalising gold-buying as such but I think it opens up two potential problems for WoW.

First the gold-buying mechanism is pinned to a highly volatile good. These pets will be cool for a few weeks then people will be just as impressed with a whelpling. So the first few sold will get a fair whack of change,. player speculators will then step in to try to flip, the price will soar, then once interest in owning these wanes at the same time as interest in using them to legally buy gold booms the market will crash and many speculators will dump their stockpiles.

Speculation is a huge part of this kind of tradeable in-game item, in Eve which is a much smaller game a recent dev blog revealed there are about 16 000 plexes (about $240K) being sat on by speculators.

So whatever your views on legalised gold-buying establishing a legal gold buying facility which will inevitably crash like it's 1929 is a terrible way to implement this feature.

My advice to readers is don't touch this market, even if you would like to legally buy gold except in one circumstance:

If you want a panda and don't mind waiting a month or two buy one for 50 gold or so after the market crashes instead of paying £10 now.

WoW: new users figure - and it's so low!

"In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Richard Ji said World of Warcraft had experienced strong momentum since its launch, with nearly 1 million peak current users."

WoW is pretty famous in the blogosphere for having 11 million users. However Wolfshead pointed out not too long ago that there's a fair amount of creative counting behind that statistic (and we found even more loopholes in the statistical methodology in the comments).

Now Reuters has mentioned a new figure - WoW apparently peaked at nearly 1 million.

Reuters is a well respected news agency used by just about every major news paper and television news service.

It could be unreliable of course, earlier in the same piece Reuters describe WoW as "recently launched".

But it's very interesting isn't it?

Internet: Fry ponders leaving Twitter site

I was very sorry to read this link today and see that Stephen Fry has been upset by another Twitter user to such an extent he is thinking of never using it again.

He's a hero to a significant proportion of the MMO blogosphere. Tiger Ears describes meeting him with great affection. On Kiasa his site is listed under category "God".

Just in case anyone has missed his work here's a clip of him at his funniest: Hugh Laurie interviews Michael Jackson.

MMO players will need no introduction to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

People do behave more anti-socially and something I've observed is that they often define certain other people as there to serve them.

What can we do as internet users to raise the bar? Can peer pressure improve our virtual social spaces?

For myself what I sometimes find hardest is not that someone gives me verbal abuse but that no one else says anything. For example if I'm healing a pug group in a MMO and we wipe and some idiot starts berating me when it wasn't my fault I don't mind that he's an idiot. I mind that no one else speaks up, giving the impression that they agree.

Afterword: it ended amicably but the issues raised are valid ones.

DDO: Microtransactions analysis

I'm going to look at two areas in this analysis: the types of items sold and the types of spender buying them. I will also be looking at the new items in the DDO Store that were launched today.

Types of spender

Impulse or planner?

Each of the following types can be split into impulse buyers, people for whom money generally burns a hole in their pocket and needs to be spent, and planners, misers who begrudge wasting a single point unless they see long term benefit and great value for money.

I'm a good example of the planner type. I only bought points because they were on sale (5000 TPs for $49.99). I plan to make these points last for as long as possible, ideally for the rest of the time that I play the game. I have only bought adventure packs that were on sale and (in a moment of weakness) the Monk class when it was on sale. I systematically work to grind more points in game whenever I can. I have about 3300 points left despite having bought over 3000 non-discounted TPs worth of content.

1. The Veteran VIPs

Long-term players of DDO were given a bundle of Turbine Points when Eberron Unlimited launched based on the Favour standings of their characters. Many had close to the Favour cap (which is around 3500) and had multiple characters across several servers. So many of these players found themselves with several thousand TPs, in receipt of 500 more TPs per month and with no plans to not be VIP in the future.

Effectively these players have money to burn.

These, I think, are a big part of the reason experience and loot potions are consistently high in the Bestsellers list for the store. There really isn't all that much for these players to spend their money on. While they could buy permanent access to content it's not worth it for them because they plan to stay subscribed for as long as DDO interests them.

They are very noticeable in game - players who have exp and loot potions running but who will patiently wait while some newbie is lost.

Impulse VIPs will burn through these points quickly. Whether it's permarunning exp potions or handing out guest passes to newbies they will spend them in the next few months if they haven't blown them all already.

Planner VIPs will stockpile points for if they ever quit. Having a large points stockpile will allow them to convert a lapsed subscription account into a premium account with most of the same features.

2. The new generation Premium/F2P grinder player

These players are paying as they go, whether by buying TPs from the store or by grinding Favour in Elite dungeons. I'm one of these.

We tend to be very cost conscious. Grinding 25 TPs takes an evening or two so we're not likely to blow 300 TPs on an exp potion.

Main attractions for us are adventure packs and other permanent account upgrades. Possibly sigils too as they're semi-essential and not everyone knows the optimal way to grind them.

Impulse pay as you go players may spend silly amounts of money. One forum thread recently concerned a player who had spent $200 on mana potions healing groups with his mid level cleric. He could have kept them healed using wands bought from vendors cheaply for in-game gold.

Planner pay as you go players will wait for sales and other discounts and then buy permanent content. We will promote the game by telling people how cheaply we got access to it all without generally realising that most non-planners will spend much more money to get to the same level.

3. The F2P tourist

This player just popped in for a look while his WoW server is down for maintenance. He has a very cursory grasp of the game and has no interest in saving points. In fact if he gets more serious about the game later he can always just make a new account if he wastes all his TPs.

These players are the reason healing potions and level 1 hirelings are so high in the Bestsellers list. They sign up, log in and spend.

Impulse players are actually the smart ones. There really is no reason for tourists to save points, they can always make a new account if they actually decide to play more seriously.

Types of purchase

1. Levelling enhancement potions. Experience and loot potions give you greater rewards for your time. In some cases these players are paying real money to miss the game because they are obsessed with end-game. Most of these sales are driven by VIPs who know the levelling content well and no longer wish to dwell in it for long.

2. New player experience items. Low end healing potions, level 1 hirelings, +1 weapons and armour sell well because people start with money and are encouraged to spend. For many players they simply don't expect to play for long and are better off spending their points than keeping them.

3. Account options. Shared bank is a significant upgrade for alt players for 2 main reasons. It allows you to dump loot for your Hagglebot Bard to sell (a character specialised in the Haggle skill for maximum profit) and it uniquely allows Bound to Account items to be transferred (they can't be mailed, so basically without the shared bank Bound to Account = Bound to Character).

For us miser types there are three workarounds to the shared bank. You can mail high value items to your Hagglebot. Not as efficient as the shared bank but it saves you 1500 TPs. Or you can just play a Bard. Or you can just vendor stuff for whatever price and simply not make as much gold. It seems that after a while people have more gold than they know what to do with anyway.

Extra character slots will sell particularly well to players going from VIP to Premium as the number of slots drops dramatically from about 14 to 4.

4. Spells and potions. Most of this stuff is stuff you can pick up pretty easily in game and seems rather pointless to me. The unique utility though is that you can get them instantly in a dungeon. So if you've soloed a long dungeon and get blinded right near the end you can buy a Cure Blindness potion rather than quit.

The most interesting buy here are the Teleport Rods and Friend-Summoning bracelets. These significantly improve travel times. Of course you still have to do just about everything in the game as part of a group so I'm not sure that teleporting to a dungeon while your friends have to run there is a huge advantage. Also most content is pretty centralised.

5 Healing. This is a huge money pit for the unwary. Basically it allows players to throw Turbine Points at problems to solve them. Obviously it appeals strongly to people who don't pay for or grind TPs.

I honestly think most sensible players will get their healing supplies in game for gold and/or go somewhere easier, take more than one healer in the group. It seems daft to me in a game with healer classes to spend real money on healing. I'm mean, I know.

6. Stat buffs. Buying temporary stat buffs can be a way to unlock certain runes in the game which will let you access additional areas. You can however find potions in game that boost stats or even clickable items that buff you 1/rest or 3/rest.

Buying permanent stat buffs may seem appealing but it's really not. If you really like the character you will raid and in raids +3 or +4 tomes drop. So why spend real money on a +1 or +2 stats tome when you may get a better one later? Also tomes used are wiped if you True Reincarnate. "Permanent" stat buffs are less permanent than they sound.

7 Levelling sigils. These sell quite well as many players don't know how to farm them. They drop as quest rewards for appropriate level quests so if you want a silver sigil you have to run short level 5-8 quests with an end reward. They don't drop in Korthos or in wilderness areas. You are not farming them efficiently if you do long quest chains with rewards only given at the very end like Waterworks.

For many people it's best to just enjoy the game and get one if you get one without optimising your farming. If your mates want to try a wilderness area it's a bit churlish to say, no, I've got to farm Harbour quests.

For what it's worth I've had about 10 characters to level 4 now and every single one has got his Copper Sigil from questing. Another tip is that you can go over your maximum level and still collect exp while your bar is blue. I think it caps out at +2 level's worth of exp.

Personally, being the miser/altoholic type if I couldn't farm a sigil before I maxxed out on experience I'd probably just make a new character. At least I'd earn some more TPs levelling back up.

8 Bigger bags. A staple of every cash shop game. As a miser my advice is just to empty your bags of junk more, you don't need 30 different types of potion. Coin Lords rep gives you more bag space, one of the other rep gives you more bank space. You have enough, really people. Medium size bags are available for in-game gold from a vendor in one of the Houses (House P maybe?). Large bags occasionally drop as loot or can be purchased in the Marketplace for an in-game shard turn-in.

Unlike many games you don't accumulate quest items in your bags. You may pick up quest items in a dungeon but they are dropped when you zone out.

9. Hair dye. An extremely popular seller and one I have regularly seen in the cash shop Bestsellers list. People love to make their character look unique. Vanity items have been at the heart of the microtransactions revolution.

New store items: 28/10/09

4 new products were added to the store today:

32 Point Build Characters   
Allows you to make more powerful characters! This account upgrade allows you to make characters with 32 points to spend on stats at character creation instead of the standard 28 points. Without this account purchase, you can still unlock 32 Point Builds on a specific server via the total Favor reward.
Price: 1495 Points

I can see this appealing to a great many players. It's a hell of a grind up to 1750 Favour to unlock this facility on a server.

How much do you really need those extra 4 build points? On casters and fighter types not much. On MAD (multiple ability dependent) characters like Monks, Paladins and Rogues it's pretty useful.

It doesn't seem to have much effect in-game. Grouping is mainly a matter of good character build and not doing stupid things like running into traps.

Hair Dye Reversion Tonic   
Permanently changes the color of your character's hair back to the original color he or she had at character creation.
Available in single and x5 applications.
Price: 15 Points for single application
Price: 50 Points for 5 applications

Heh. Well I suppose there must be a demand for it. Thanks for financing my game to whoever is daft enough to pay real money for this.

The Path of Inspiration Adventure Pack   
Level 17-19 quest series with 5 adventures.
The Inspired rebuilt Stormreach’s Old Harbor, but are the Inspired a dream come true or a nightmare? Explore 5 hand-crafted adventures that take you beneath the Harbor, to a savage island, and into your own mind as you discover the Inspired’s terrible secret.
Price: 495 Points

Definitely one I will be looking out for in the sales. Can't fault them for adding end-game content (well almost end-game).

+1 Shuriken x50
A small circular throwing weapon with a serrated edge. These +1 weapons give a small bonus to your attack chance and do 2 to 3 points of slashing damage. NOTE: Requires the Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Shuriken feat. Contains a stack of 50 shuriken.
Price: 120 Points

You can now literally throw money away! Huzzah!

Again thanks to Daddy's credit card for financing my game. This and the other +1 and +2 weapon and armours are just junk for clueless new people. +1 and +2 stuff drops all the time in quests and chests. It's sub-optimal anyway, elemental damage weapons is apparently what clued up twinkers use.

DDO: What's hot in the DDO shop

DDO's microtransactions work on an in-game currency called Turbine Points that you buy with real money. Subscription players (called VIPs) receive 500 Turbine Points per month as part of their subscription although this stipend has been subject to some delays since Eberron Unlimited went live.

Turbine Points have a real world cost that varies according to how many you buy at once. It is also occasionally possible to see them offered at discount prices. At their absolute cheapest you can buy 5000 points for $49.99. The standard rate for the smallest points package is 400 points for $6.25.

So the real world value of Turbine Points is between 1 cent and 1.56 cents each.

The current top sellers in the store are:

Major experience elixir (grants 20% bonus to experience for 6 hours) 295 TPs

Siberys spirit cake (returns target to life, 1 use, not usable in raids) 150 TPs

Moderate heal potion X 50 (each heals 5-19 hit points) 150 TPs

Greater experience elixir (grants 20% bonus to experience for 3 hours) 195 TPs

Medium Jewel of Fortune X 5 (each grants +1 level to loot found in chests for 6 hours) 125 points

Drow race (create a Drow character on any server, permanent upgrade) 795 points

Cleric lvl 1 - Dryad Willowisp (level 1 cleric hireling, 1 hour Gold Seal contract. Gold Seal contracts allow the use of multiple hirelings) 10 points

Lesser experience elixir (grants a 10% bonus to experience for 3 hours) 50 points

Moderate heal potion X 10 (restores 5-19 hit points per use) 50 points

Secret Door Divining Rod (reveals secret doors for 5 minutes, 1 charge) 30 points

Barbarian lvl 1 - Byron Scoutsword (level 1 barbarian hireling, 1 hour Gold Seal contract. Gold Seal contracts allow the use of multiple hirelings) 10 points

Shan-To-Kor (level 3-5 adventure series with 4 adventures and 2 combat area objectives)

I've listed the items in the order they display in the Bestsellers section of the DDO store. I believe it's in order, ie the first item on the list is the item they sell most of.

None of these packs are on special offer. The only notable thing missing which is usually on the bestsellers list are the sigils of levelling. However these have been on sale the last few days so possibly there was a rush for these on day 1 of the sale so no one needed to buy them in the time period for which the data for this bestsellers list is collected (I'm guessing it's based on a 24 hour period, collected once daily)

I'll analyse the list tomorrow, I think it's very interesting to see what most people are buying.