Turbine has announced that they'll be holding a hireling preview night where players can try adventuring with some of the new hirelings that have been added to the game.

At 6:00 PM EST (-5 GMT) Hireling vendors will appear in the game worlds on all servers. From 6:00 PM EST to 10:00 PM EST you will be able to purchase and quest with Hirelings! Need to know more about how to purchase and play with a Hireling? Read more in our handy guide to Hirelings by clicking here! You can also view the Hirelings now in the DDO Compendium by clicking here!

After the preview event, you'll be given the opportunity to participate in several forms of Hireling related feedback activities. It's the perfect time to tell us about your experiences with the Hirelings! So come out and contract your very own Hireling during our Hireling Preview!

Read more here.

a hireling?? is that something like the henchmen from guildwars?

Honestly, I hope hirelings suck. Why would someone who loves that game say that? 'cause since a year ago population has been dwindling down to dangerously low levels and joining a pick-up group for anything other than raids has been quite difficult. Now, assuming hirelings are half-way decent you'd see the already-low number of LFMs drop to almost zero. To me this game is ALL about grouping, and in fact what lured me back to this game (after a short hiatus) is the grouping aspect; hirelings if well implemented will only create an environment where people with no desire to join a guild or even part of a small guild won't have as much chance to group with fellow adventurers other than for raid content. I understand this might be a precursor to pets and familiars; however, Turbine better monitor LFM rates to make sure unguilded and/or new players are not left out of the fun.

More and more mmo players like to solo and do their own stuff am afraid , i remember when i played everquest for the first time in 1999 soloing was not even in peoples mindset .

Even though i loved my time in DDO because of the grouping ! , i agree that hireling will simply kill what lefted

of the community actually , already in ddo chat channels are really quiet , so let face it ddo has population problems and this is their only option i think .

great game imo quite unique , low interest from most peoples .

I hope ddo survives

I understand what you're getting at toord, but the fact remains is that those dwindling numbers probably aren't going to increase anytime soon. The game was certainly designed around grouping, but it was also designed with the assumption that more people would be playing than there currently are. As such, some adjustments have to be made so that any potential new players aren't run off by the current issues with grouping. When I started playing again, I ran into that issue: trying to find groups for lowbie quests was frustratingly hard, and even when people were nice enough to help out, they were almost always veterans. Usually, that meant they were more interested in speeding through the quest which, of course, ruins the experience for someone going through the first time. So judging from the way hirelings are set up, it seems to me that they took a fairly good look at the way grouping is playing out. 1 hireling can make a big difference when you have only 1 other person in the area doing the same quests as you. On the other hand, the 12 man instances which still have a fair amount of LFMs up can't use hirelings at all which elliminates the worry about grouping going down the toilet there. In addition, I don't care how well the hirelings are implemented, they will never be coded well enough to be chosen over a human player. I've been playing Guild Wars since it launched, and despite the fact that I love the henchmen, I'll drop them in a heartbeat if there are players out to do the same thing I'm trying to do. So I don't think the hirelings will have the negative impact you think they will, but of course, that's just my opinion. All we can do is wait and see what happens.

Hireling's are being put in because of populations problems imo , i played almost a year and yes new players get scared because of the vets wanting to zerg through missions because they have done them 1000 times before .

I went through this when i started the worst was when i made a rogue , everbody knew where the traps were they would just stand where the trap was and jump where i was suppose to disarm it , talk about killing it for me at the point .

all am saying this game is good with some RL friends or friends in game but not worth 15/month anymore .

I had good times in ddo and had alot of friends i lefted back there .

Sadly, reading Kate's (DDO's chief producer) latest interview with GameBanshee, you can see that Turbine (and Atari) have given up on this game. In fact, there are a few quotes where she states something to the effect that they have no intention of luring new players in (which begs the question about the new lowbie area), but, rather, they want to keep the subscribers they still have. However, if hirelings are "good enough" for most zergers but not accesible enough for new players (because of cost and complexity); then they're gonna lose both a lot of new players and unguilded veteran folks who can't find groups.

Yup been a while i realise turbine is not ganna do much with ddo , i play Lotr now and this is their baby now with a new expansion out in a few days .

so all their energy is in Lotr now where population is really healthy and game is somewhat fun nothing earthbreaking but still fun plus i got a 10$/month deal so i 'll stay here for now .

look at DDO not even 1 expansion only updates , so their team is probaly really small jut to keep this game alive .

Originally posted by micona

Yup been a while i realise turbine is not ganna do much with ddo , i play Lotr now and this is their baby now with a new expansion out in a few days .

so all their energy is in Lotr now where population is really healthy and game is somewhat fun nothing earthbreaking but still fun plus i got a 10$/month deal so i 'll stay here for now .

look at DDO not even 1 expansion only updates , so their team is probaly really small jut to keep this game alive .

 

Funny thing - your situation is 180 opposite mine - I have 2 lifetime LOTRO accounts and never play [my wife likes it but won't try DDO]; I have 2 DDO accounts, pay $10/month and I like DDO better.  I either solo or play with my 4 year old nephew [which is usually harder than soloing] - for me, the hirelings will probably be a good thing.  I've only used one on Risia - took him back to Korthos to do hard/elite with 2nd level rogue - hireling wouldn't even open doors, so was not much help [I wanted him to open the doors so I could get in a backstab or 2].  Anyway, I play casually - maybe 4-8 hours every 2-3 weeks, no characters over 7th level and many 3rd - I think hirelings could keep me subbed.

Originally posted by uncus

Originally posted by micona

Yup been a while i realise turbine is not ganna do much with ddo , i play Lotr now and this is their baby now with a new expansion out in a few days .

so all their energy is in Lotr now where population is really healthy and game is somewhat fun nothing earthbreaking but still fun plus i got a 10$/month deal so i 'll stay here for now .

look at DDO not even 1 expansion only updates , so their team is probaly really small jut to keep this game alive .

 

 

Funny thing - your situation is 180 opposite mine - I have 2 lifetime LOTRO accounts and never play [my wife likes it but won't try DDO]; I have 2 DDO accounts, pay $10/month and I like DDO better.  I either solo or play with my 4 year old nephew [which is usually harder than soloing] - for me, the hirelings will probably be a good thing.  I've only used one on Risia - took him back to Korthos to do hard/elite with 2nd level rogue - hireling wouldn't even open doors, so was not much help [I wanted him to open the doors so I could get in a backstab or 2].  Anyway, I play casually - maybe 4-8 hours every 2-3 weeks, no characters over 7th level and many 3rd - I think hirelings could keep me subbed.

I do love DDO more than lotr all my characters are over lv12 and game really opened up at this point grouping is more fun for me once i reached lv12 wait t'ill you get there .

yeah ddo is the a nice casual mmo i met alot of folks that play only a few hours a week ,let all hope the hireling does not do what i think to the game , i really like grouping and am not much of a solo person and ddo was perfect for that .i get my solo thing with all the Jrpg's i play on my ps2 and xbox360 .

No, it's not because of 'problems' with population . They did it just because many people solo even now, and mostly because new players who don't know the game like to solo before they get confident enough to group - or like to solo in other games.

There's nothing wrong in this, as there's no way that someone wouldn't like to group in DDO later ;). That's just more efficent and rewardnig, not mentioning better fun.

DDO is in better and better condition, and just hear what DDO developers, Turbine, have in store for DDO's future:

www.massively.com/2008/11/12/massively-speaking-podcast-episode-31/

As you can see, DDO will get marketing push after all 'wrinkles' have been tended. This is the case with hirelings too - these events now are to gather feedback and allow players to help them test it for bugs etc. There will be more such event, because they constantly work on them. I have found some bugs already and reported them to Turbine.

So, seems like bright future is ahead for DDO :).

Originally posted by kingtommyboy

a hireling?? is that something like the henchmen from guildwars?

Yep. 

While D&D have had them for MANY years, DDO is only getting them now.  Those old D&D games for the Commodore (Pool of Radiance; Azure Bons; etc) had them although they were terribaly stupid AI.