How to Apply

We are once again taking applications for a new DDO Players Council! If you would like to apply to be considered, please fill out the following application before 11:59pm Eastern on Sunday, February 14thm 2021: DDO Players Council Application. We will have future application opportunities at various times moving forward, but any applications sent in when we are not actively seeking applicants will be ignored.

Who is Eligible

Anyone that plays DDO is eligible to apply; this includes people who have been a part of the Players Council in previous years or even people that have only just started playing recently.

What is the Players Council?

The DDO Players Council program is meant to allow the development team to gather feedback on potential changes and ideas for new features at earlier stages in the development cycle than we would be able to share with the general public. Council members will have access to a hidden section of the DDO Forums where developers will post proposal threads looking for feedback, a newly set up Discord channel where developers will sometimes ask for quick gut checks on small ideas as well as host voice chat feedback sessions, and occasionally access to an early development build on the Lamannia server that will almost certainly be full of bugs, unfinished areas, and not be well balanced. So, if you are accepted, you'll agree to an NDA. If you break the NDA, there will be consequences, up to having your game account permanently banned.

One of the larger misconceptions we hear from people who haven't been on the Council is the belief that this is a voting body. It isn't, and never has been. Participants don't decide on our schedule or represent the DDO community-at-large. They represent themselves, their personal opinion, and to some extent the kind of playstyle and subset of the community they gravitate toward. This is BY DESIGN. We don't do votes because the point isn't to get a majority opinion. Rather, it's to get diverse and comprehensive feedback from as wide a cross-section of the community as we can manage in a small group setting. So far we've been pretty successful at this, and we hope it continues in the future.

As with the previous Players Council, we are not predetermining a fixed "term" for this council. Instead, this council will run until such a time as the development team feels that it's time for a refreshed roster. No member of the council is obligated to serve the entire duration of this Council's lifespan and can drop out of the program at any time. In addition, there may be points during this Council's lifespan where we will look to open applications up for additional new members from the community to join those already on the Council. Overall, we're aiming to make the council structure flexible enough to best suit the needs of the development team.

Finally, we would caution that while this is a nice opportunity, it's not well suited for everyone. Some people don't like and can't handle "seeing how the sausage gets made." If you read something one of us says and react with extreme emotion and the desire to warn the world about impending doom, this isn't the program for you. If you are on the Council, I promise you will see bad ideas along with good ideas. Sometimes it's deliberate, sometimes we brainstorm with the Council, and sometimes we test the waters to see if there's an aspect of a thing we hadn't considered. You will also see things that never happen! As previous Council members will tell you, that's part of the process. Maybe these things will happen someday when the time is right, maybe not. So, if you read an idea and consider it a promise or set in stone, the Council is also not for you.

BUT - if you want to get a peek behind the development curtain, provide valuable feedback to us on a variety of topics, and interact in a civil, intelligent, and positive way with others, please apply!

Don't forget to read our FAQ and NDA here!