They wouldn't have had to do this if they actually listened to the playerbase on the forums. The signs of this game being ready to collapse have been recounted on there, both with and without viable solutions appended, for well over 3 years.

What happens is someone comes along and says "DDO won't work for long, guys, this experience is slow and terrible because I don't have 300 hours per week to play this game! It's going to fail, but could be fixed by doing thing X."

Which is answered by members of the same community, loudly making fun of that person for proclaiming that "the sky is falling". Then they are made fun of for not being "hardcore" enough to stick with the game. Then they are told that the game is absolutely fine and better than every other MMO. Then they are reminded that 3 years have passed with people proclaiming that the sky was falling and nothing happened.

Guess what. The sky fell. DDO now has one final step to take before being in MMO Purgatory with Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst.

The good news: Mabinogi and Domo aren't tough competitors.
The bad news: Turbine may have learned something from this experience, but I doubt the general MMO community has... the "hardcore" crowd of an MMO, if listened to by developers, can drive said game into the ground.

http://www.judgex.com/