Is Rift dead?

[Edge-]

Rift had 99 full servers at launch back in 2011...

Rift shrank to 19 servers by mid 2013 and so they decided to go free to play.

Today Rift has only 13 servers world wide mostly at low to medium levels...

That's a capacity loss of 85%...over less than 3 years DESPITE going free to play ...

Make your own conclusions. My bet is server shut down by 2016.

During a few of those mergers, server capacity was increased. We don't have numbers or anything, but what was once "high" or "medium" pop is not what it was when the game launched. So while servers may have contracted by 85%, the playerbase has not.

As for population, http://www.riftstatus.com/ shows servers pretty consistently bouncing between medium at non-peak hours (with a few lows) and high during peak times.

In fact games like Rift killed the subscription based MMO industry overnight. It killed the industry overall even.

Except the MMO genre is still growing both in terms of playerbase and revenue? Yeah...except that.

If it weren't for Blizzard, MMO's would now represent the same niche market as hex wargames and point and click PC adventures.

See above statement. Despite WoW shrinking, the MMO genre as a whole is growing. Not sure what kind of myopic view you're taking of the industry, because it does not sync up with reality.

I am pleased games like Warhammer, Vanguard, Rift, Aion and other WoW copy cats die a very fast death. But it makes me sad ....because they hurted the MMO industry overall.

Vanguard was anything but a copycat. If you think it was a copycat, then you clearly never played it. Vanguard was the most ambitious MMO to launch in the past decade in terms of its scope.

As for Rift/Aion, neither of those are dead. Aion is still chugging along as usual in the West, and Rift is doing pretty well on its own ($36M in revenue last year). Unless your using some kind of subjective, completely meaningless definition of "dead" akin to "isn't as big as WoW", in which case...yeah.

Free to Play and commitment are not supposed to be together.

Why not?

Persistent worlds, either sandboxes or themeparks are not good to F2P philosophy unless you pay! P2P going F2P is a dead product extending its lifetime. People start to realize they either pay or they are going to spent a LOT of time not having 100% "potential of play".

I'll be sure to tell that to LOTRO (generated $130ish million last year), Tera ($300ish million last year), SWTOR ($160ish million last year) and the host of other F2P MMO's that have been stable and strongly supported for years.

Meanwhile, the biggest subscription based MMO in the world, one generating over $1 billion annually, has a live client abandoned for 14 months. None of the major F2P Western MMO's have ever had a content drought that long, not even Champions Online (which barely sees any support).

Well, I know for sure my day only have 24h and I don't plan to waste it on semi-full games (F2P model without pay). AND I'm not for sure, pay just to feel superior.

You're free to play and enjoy what you like, I'm not one to tell you what to do. But to call F2P games "semi-full" is pretty false. There are plenty of them that gate little to nothing off from free players, and most that do gate off content/features provide those as part of an optional subscription.

[notorious98]

Free to Play and commitment are not supposed to be together.

F2P is cool for LoL, Dota2, etc. Games where you invest your time on a daily basis are not going to benefit from F2P model.

Persistent worlds, either sandboxes or themeparks are not good to F2P philosophy unless you pay! P2P going F2P is a dead product extending its lifetime. People start to realize they either pay or they are going to spent a LOT of time not having 100% "potential of play".

Well, I know for sure my day only have 24h and I don't plan to waste it on semi-full games (F2P model without pay). AND I'm not for sure, pay just to feel superior.

You're right. LotRO went F2P, has been that way for 4 years, and has put out more content since the transition then they did beforehand. TOR went F2P, has been that way for 2 years, and has done nothing but expand their game. EQ2 has been F2P for 4 years. EQ has been F2P for 2 years. EQ Next is coming out and is designed to be F2P.

As for Rift, there is no such thing as "semi-full game". The game is absolutely, 100% free to play. The entire game. They gate things like new souls behind a paywall, but the rest of the game, all raiding, all dungeons, all warfronts, absolutely EVERYTHING is free to the player.

But that's the best thing about F2P. You can subscribe when new content comes out, unsubscribe when you're waiting for new content, and still be able to play the game and maintain relationships with the people you play with without having to lay down a dime.

[Slipmat]

WOW did not loose more than 85% of its population like Rift did

My Maths might be rusty, but even Blizzard stated that over 100 million people played World of Warcraft across the years and it's down to ~6 million

That's some serious 'retention' of subs right there, think i'm exaggerating.......?

From the rise of Onyxia to the fight for Pandaria, more than 100 million of you across the globe have visited Azeroth since the first realms went live in 2004.

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/123...bers-1-28-2014

It seems ~94 million players didn't find WoW good enough to keep paying and playing, funny old World....

[Lathais]

Rift had 99 full servers at launch back in 2011...

Rift shrank to 19 servers by mid 2013 and so they decided to go free to play.

Today Rift has only 13 servers world wide mostly at low to medium levels...

That's a capacity loss of 85%...over less than 3 years DESPITE going free to play ...

Make your own conclusions. My bet is server shut down by 2016.

Yes they had 99 at launch, which was far too many. During that shrink to 19 though, they had also increases server capacity by a fair margin, so it is not as many as it seems. They then decided to go f2p because it is more profitable. Look at most of the other games that went f2p as well. Most are still alive, still have an active player base and receive frequent updates. So, with the server capacity increases along the way, there is not a capacity loss on 85%. There was some loss yes, but that happens in everything. Lots of people start playing, some stay, some move on. Very normal.

My bet is, the servers will still be running 20 years from now.

- - - Updated - - -

Free to Play and commitment are not supposed to be together.

F2P is cool for LoL, Dota2, etc. Games where you invest your time on a daily basis are not going to benefit from F2P model.

Persistent worlds, either sandboxes or themeparks are not good to F2P philosophy unless you pay! P2P going F2P is a dead product extending its lifetime. People start to realize they either pay or they are going to spent a LOT of time not having 100% "potential of play".

Well, I know for sure my day only have 24h and I don't plan to waste it on semi-full games (F2P model without pay). AND I'm not for sure, pay just to feel superior.

Some other f2p games that may be true but it simply is not in Rift. Since going f2p they make more money than before(even if it is off less people) because some people spend more than 50 players spend in a month on a sub. These players are known as whales and keep games afloat.

[Khelendros]

At this rate the last servers will be merged by 2016 and unplugged.

Oddly enough, it will have had the EXACT same life span as Warhammer (2008-2013).

That's very logical too.

Edge covered the rest of the junk you are spewing, but let me address this specifically.

MMO's don't shut down. Licenses lapse. SWG and Warhammer could have continued indefinitely if not for licensing.

Case in point DAOC. Once one of the best (imo the best) MMO out there now over a decade old and still alive and kicking. Its population is small spread between 3 servers but if you play it the game feels alive still. Its insanely rare for a MMO to tank so hard it shuts down and Rift is nowhere near that level of failure and has faired better than TESO, Tera and Secret World. Wildstar? early to tell, they are doing server consolidation but that happens to every MMO. In fact Rift is now making a profit for Trion, so yea, not dying. The new expansion will bring back alot of people as well.

WoW got lucky and it launched at a time when the market was able to sustain a massive increase in the MMO genre, Rift does most of what WoW does better except for one key thing holding it back, performance. Once they can get that sorted then Rift will be not just the best F2P MMO, but the best MMO period. Some open world pvp would be nice too....

[Eon Drache]

WOW did not loose more than 85% of its population like Rift did WITHOUT going free to play...

I never understood this Rift game by advertising "you are not in Azeroth anymore"

That policy is one straight line to extinction in 4 years time. You can never beat the original by copycatting.

In fact games like Rift killed the subscription based MMO industry overnight. It killed the industry overall even.

If it weren't for Blizzard, MMO's would now represent the same niche market as hex wargames and point and click PC adventures.

I am pleased games like Warhammer, Vanguard, Rift, Aion and other WoW copy cats die a very fast death. But it makes me sad ....because they hurted the MMO industry overall.

I dont really play rift anymore but WoW is one big ass copy cat XD

[Chickat]

I find it hard to believe 30m a year is enough to be profitable. How much does a game like WoW spend on development per year? Im not sure how well Rift is doing Financially, but there are still plenty of people to play with.

[sonshinegreene]

Rift isn't dead, in fact I think I like it better than I ever did WoW.

[Fencers]

I find it hard to believe 30m a year is enough to be profitable.

Their operational budget and on-site staff could be dramatically and substantially lower than Blizzard's operations. The cost of development isn't really the issue- it's staffing, office space, non-development staff, et cetera which racks up the bills.

Having an HR staff service 200 employees in three regions is not the same cost as an HR staff for 1000 employees in six regions.

It is almost certain Trion's operational costs are hugely lower than Blizzard's operational costs.

[Lathais]

Once they can get that sorted then Rift will be not just the best F2P MMO, but the best MMO period. Some open world pvp would be nice too....

I dunno about that. Yet to be seen of course, but judging from the ArcheAge open beta and a lot of info I have read on it, it may take that title.

[Edge-]

MMO's don't shut down. Licenses lapse. SWG and Warhammer could have continued indefinitely if not for licensing.

Well, they do. CoH, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa (all NCsoft games, oddly enough) and Vanguard all shut down despite NCsoft owning the IP's. So it happens, it's just either because the game was horrible and broken (Tabula Rasa/Auto Assault) or because the game was always a very small, niche game and eventually closed down. It's rare, but it's a thing.

I find it hard to believe 30m a year is enough to be profitable. How much does a game like WoW spend on development per year? Im not sure how well Rift is doing Financially, but there are still plenty of people to play with.

It's a matter of scale. Blizzard is a massive company with offices and support staff all over the world, and huge teams working on their games. Trion is comparatively very small, with only a few locations in the US (I think they're closed down entirely in Europe, maybe a support office but that's it) and smaller teams that are more than likely paid lower than Blizzard staff.

In terms of Rifts financials, we don't have any specifics beyond Daglar saying it's profitable, but we can surmise that it's doing well from Trions situation. End of Nations got abandoned after years in development, Defiance bombed pretty hard, they're just getting around to releasing ArcheAge after a ton of work, Trove is still in alpha. That's all a ton of money that's been spent on various products with little to no return on them as of yet. So it's been a mixture of Rift and outside investment keeping Trion going, and unless rift was performing strongly, outside investment would be difficult to come by.

[notorious98]

Well, they do. CoH, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa (all NCsoft games, oddly enough) and Vanguard all shut down despite NCsoft owning the IP's. So it happens, it's just either because the game was horrible and broken (Tabula Rasa/Auto Assault) or because the game was always a very small, niche game and eventually closed down. It's rare, but it's a thing.

Same for The Matrix Online. SOE made the decision to shut down servers.

[PhillyTNGee]

Is Rift Dead?... Kind of compared to when it first launched. Since everyone and their mother, father, sister, brother was playing it as far as I knew. Hell just about my entire guild from WoW was playing it. It was probably the first MMORPG that I knew of that I knew more females than males to play the game lol. Good times, good times. But as of now it does seem to be a bit lacking, with more noobs that don't know that reading what an ability does can help you in the long run instead of just using everything and trying to learn as you go >.<

[OhpUldum]

Oddly enough I decided that I wanted to level a new character prior to Warlords of Draenor being released for WoW. My conclusion brought me back to Rift lol.

[Geckoo]

So i was going to try Archeage, it was so boring... but since i had Glyph i simply downloaded Rift to check out my old abandoned toons from a few years ago... i don't know how it happened, but i'm now on my way to 60 with a fresh new character.

I'm having a lot of fun leveling my rogue, just finished cape jule, i see a good amount of players out in the world, dungeons queues are usually fast. I usually opt as DPS, healer or support, i also like tanking but since i don't know the dungeons and usually everybody else in the group does i rather take another role to learn them so i'm not a burden. The versatility in this game is simply amazing.

I don't know if Rift is dead, maybe when i'm 60 (well... 65, the expansion is just around the corner and i'm totally going to play it ) i don't find so much activity or so many things to do, but so far i think Rift is still the best MMORPG out there, it was back in 2011 and all the new things i found are improvements, more options... this game deserves more attention.

[Deleted]

Mostly dead, the game is just not what is supposed to be.. "We are not in Azeroth anymore".. yeah sure.. far far away from Azeroth and not better to replace it.

Don't listen what Slipmat try to convince you, he works for Trion.

[Lathais]

Mostly dead, the game is just not what is supposed to be.. "We are not in Azeroth anymore".. yeah sure.. far far away from Azeroth and not better to replace it.

Don't listen what Slipmat try to convince you, he works for Trion.

Don't listen to slipmat, but listen to some guy with 9 posts I've never seen post here before? Yeah, right. Game is hopping, just log in and see. Especially with new expansion in just over a week.

[Deleted]

Don't listen to slipmat, but listen to some guy with 9 posts I've never seen post here before? Yeah, right. Game is hopping, just log in and see. Especially with new expansion in just over a week.

Knowledge have nothing to do with number of posts

[Deleted]

Well, as long as people keep bloodiron alive I'm good, I'd hate if the game went all pve servers =(

[RoninaThorstone]

How is this thread not locked yet? Lol.

Seriously, only people who don't play MMOs other than WoW + MMO hopping would think that Rift is dead.