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Survival of Rift
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
The future of Rift will depend on a lot of things. Will Trion learn from others mistakes ?...Only Trion could answer that.
This is my view :
WoW vs. EQ2- Both released around the same time when the mmo market was young and starving for improvement. I believe WoW excelled above EQ2 for three reasons.
1) WoW had much better coding and played better. Sure everything was a gamble back then. But Blizzard guessed right.
2) Blizzard catered to the EMOTIONAL needs of the players much better than SOE. They made a more fun lite friendly world that lifted the spirits of players, making it just more fun for kids and adults. EQ2 had a dullness about it.
3) Reinvestment of funds- No one here can prove this either way, and only the marketing, developers and managers can really answer this one for sure. But from my experience of playing both. I can say Blizzard was much smarter than SOE. SOE took the profits and ran. They never improved there coding or game world to any real noticeable improvement. EQ2 still looks the same. YES they improved somewhat but with paid expansions. This made the game a mess with there zoning, maps and where to go next.
Now, with the above mentioned. What about Rift :
It's obvious that Rift is at least a short term success. We all know that we have two heavy hitters in the Future. GuildWars 2, and StarWars Old Republic. I don't think StarWars will be much computation as many think whit there cut scenes, zoning, and solo based world ( heading down the same road as Star Trek ). I believe GuildWars 2 may blow everything out of the water, just because it's innovative free to play after purchase. This alone may blow Rift out of the water no matter what Trion may do.
" But " if Trion players there cards right with reinvestments of funds, they may have a WoW killer, as Blizzard is screwing up as of late. Add to the fact that they are starting down the same road as EQ2 with paid expansions . Blizzard gave us several good years with there vanilla WoW until they pulled there crap like SOE did.
On a side note:
Don't believe active subscribers numbers. I played most all popular mmos on the list. No one knows how many subscribers any game really has. This is a marketing trick, that can easily be fudged legally.
In my findings of most mmo's I actually spent time logging in to all servers, and doing a head count using the Social panels only to find very very few real time player base at prime times. Sure, It's almost impossible to do this with WoW. But given other games beefing up there numbers, I could safely guess that Blizzard is by far doing the same.
It's all about reinvestments of funds, and really catering to the mass populations !
Comments
/facepalm for not reading the post =P
As to a real post about the not much said in the first...
Dungeon Finder. Rift needs a LFG tool at the level of WoW's DF to keep growing. Its great that we can miss the dungeons on the way to 50 and not really miss them since they all have expert modes but I don't want to solo to 50 and I don't want to spam zone chat all night like that bard last night
I love my guild, and they do runs for me when they can but our levels are spread and runs are for look sees since bringing 50s to RoF is not challenging. So to recap, love Rift but not being able to run instances any night means I might be back to DCUO or WoW very soon just because they have the tools to run groups any day.
Actually the beauty of now playing the instances in expert mode tier 1 (there is a tier 2) is that both the bosses that you played in earlier level have upgraded abilities, but there are also new bosses in the same dungeons (usually extra two). These new bosses come in various ... variants. Some share the same room like the rest of the mobs, just in a secluded area or a corner. Some have their own private rooms that open up in expert mode. And some you fight when you kill the end boss of the normal mode.
So the dungeons definitely don't feel same old only updated to level 50.
As for the dungeon finding tool, I'm all up for it, as long as it's not cross server.
Honestly if rift goes dungeon finder route the community dies. WoW community is shit for a reason. Vanillia WoW and old school EQ forces people to talk and interact with people so you don't have WoW's Barren chat. In open beta minus the WoW kids that flame and spam public chat the people I met are all very easy going and willing to help versus "LOL I PWNED YOU, NT NUB!"
Really.. GW2 wont blow anything, it wont kill any game.
It's B2P which means MOST P2P players will still keep a sub to their MMO and play GW2!
atleast I will and i think it's the case for most people.
Rift a wow killer made my day again.
When will people finaly learn ?
You realy expect that Blizzards warcraft is going anywhere ? they have 12 mil loyal subs as playerbase, they dont need anything else.
I quited after Cataclysm, but alot of the Vanila players came back for the Rated Battlegrounds.
I played wow for around 6 years people, 6 whole fucking years and only had a few burnout moments at the end of the expansions.
There is never ever going to be a WoW Killer, not Rift not SW and also not GW2.
Blizzard players are fans of blizzard, not only for warcraft but Stacraft and Diablo.
They created some of the best games ever made, dating back to Rock and roll racing on the NES if i remember correctly and never ever made fail games.
Diablo 3 is going to be a monster hit again.
We do not have any numbers of how many players are playing wow atm, but a year ago they still had over 12 mil Active subs running and gunning.
Most Rift players are based from Aion - Warhammer - or any other mmo that dint appealed to them anymore.
Sure wow players are checking it out, but Rift aint no serious competition for Blizzard.
As it is like i said, Blizzard has their own lore following fanbase from multiple triple AAA games.
They are also making a new mmo named Titan, i aint no fanboy as i hate what blizzard did to WoW in the last 2 years, but i am smart enough to see that they are very busy with something big :P
Just stop saying WoW killer it makes you look funny ^^
I completely agree Mothonos,
What I was trying to suggest is that if Trion Reinvest funds and with a lot of luck on there side, they have a chance. They will have to act quick and smart, along with fresh content ready to be up loaded any day.
It would be hard to take down WoW. But we only have three possibilities is the near future :
Rift
GW2
Star Wars
With at least a short term success, Tron has potential if more content is prepared in advance and ready to go and without expantions to show greed !
Iam sure Rift can stand on its own feet, no doubt about that.
I heared its a great succes atm, and i hope it will be after 3 to 6 months with a growing playerbase.
But i was there in Warhammer from Mythic
And i was there With Aion from NCsoft
That dint worked out as they showed little support after the innitial funding of the players.
Also you realy dont want the WoW fanboys in your current mmo's, nothing but epeen and hate from the younger playerbase.
Trion needs to be smart but if they are going to fish in Blizzards pool, they get eaten alive.
Listen to the playerbase and make the playebase happy with good improvements, or Rift might turn out like Warhammer and Aion did after a few months with 30% of the players lift who bought the game and all other back on their previous mmo.
Yessss,
I was their for Warhammer.......That game was high on the radar.........People absolutely loved it for weeks........Then around week four, BAM it was hated, and went down hill fast. Video games and mmo's are a funny market.
I did not forget about Titan ( Blizzard ) either, it's just way far down the pipe !
In this day and age, it is completely unrealistic to expect to retain 50% of your playerbase.
Even the sub-number king WoW only retains 30%. (only 30% get above level 10 - Blizz CEO)
The trick is to keep on advertising and keep getting more and more people to come and play the game.
Rift is a good game from what I hear from my friends/co-workers so good on them and good luck!
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Advertising is a key,
Video games are different in the way they advertise. And in my opinion they are doing it all WRONG, EVERYONE OF THEM ! ..........Advettisement has to be done in news papers TV, and off game web sites. The way it's set up is first you have to be a gamer to even find out whats new. Then you have to care enough to do research to find adds like Gamestop, and mmorpg.com.
Everyone knows World of Warcraft, It's a household word. Even by non gamers. I could go to work and tell a person that I play WoW, and get one of three reactions.
1) They would roll there eyes and say your one of them.
2) I play that too
3) My kids play that game
I worked in a very large factory for 22 years, and now work for the Army, with a lot of people. In all my years of working with such a population, and talking about Video games. I had met one EQ2 player, one FF11 player and hundreds of WoW players............No real life people know about Rift or any other mmo. WoW players don't know anything else, or do they care ( in real life )
So yes Rift may have a hard time beating WoW !
Few points.
my son is an avid wow player....he played rift over the weekend and his reaction was " this is actually better than wow, just smaller...dad can you get me a copy" Not saying he will stay but, hey you never know!
stop talking about this 12 million active subs...we all know the facts and stats now as we have talked about it so many times......i am actually classed as one of those active subs...i get emails from them weekly, i get offered all kinds of stuff from blizzard.....i havent paid a sub for 3 years now? but technically to them i am still active lol.
No please dont bring a dungeon finder to Rift...pleeeaseee dont destroy the game. My son does not play much content in wow, he just uses that damn DF over and over.
Rift is far too fast levelling at the moment...dungeon finder will just get everyone to max level too soon and they will have nothing to do...then they leave! whats the point?
Actually, no.. if your not currently subbed, then your not added as an active sub in terms of player numbers etc.. although your son probably is... because he is subbed to WoW
Not 100% sure i'm just guessing on this.
But they still send me mail, they still send mail telling me my account has had someone attempt to change the password and that if it is me i need to verify it to keep it active...i also sent Blizzard a mail asking them to de- activate it completely so it couldnt be hacked....they didn't reply.
Makes you wander how many old accounts that are being hacked are counted in this 12M?
those emails arent from Blizzard.. but phishing attempts.. even clicking on them is enough to verify your account exists in that email form, and use it to steal it.. phishing attempts are regular, and the amount of hacks is due primarily to the lack of an authenticator. and the email address used for WoW being the same email address used for regular everyday correspondence etc.. its WoW's success unfortunately that has attracted the criminals.. Rift apparently is moving towards something similar for protection, so i half expect authenticators to start being an option..
if someone is sending you those types of emails it is probably not blizzard it is a keylogger. blizzard sends one emails that says your account has been banned for suspicious activity if you want to keep it contact blizzard customer support. its a bit more long winded but that is basically what it says. if i was you i wouldnt respond to those emails but contact blizzard by phone if you want to get through to them, takes longer but takes the keyloggers out of the loop also. sorry did not mean to derail the thread but this seemed important enough for me to say something.
Even though GW2 is B2P it will req. almost the same amount of money as a P2P. I know this first hand having played GW and all of its expansions. They introduce a lot of content freely but they also roll out expansions every 6 months or so.
Ahh thank you friend!
I had been suspecting they were fake but the address had me fooled! i will add them to spam as soon as i get home.
Thanks again...i have been close to opening one just to see where it takes me!
Yes thank you friend!
I hope i have not done any damage by responding to these mails
But thanks again for pointing this out, will be adding these address to spam once i get home, and also will call blizzard to speak with them about it.
Honestly i see Rift as being Trions baby.. And Trion is working on other games, hopeing Rift will make a name for them.. I hope/think they will reinvest their profits back into Rift or their other RTS game.. Honestly, i see them as contenders for the MMO market and to be honest i think Rift will do good, IF, it can start to diffientiate (sp?) itself from WoW and other MMO's with future content/expansions.
I myself am gonna cave in and buy RIft this weekend.. Was holding off but i think a 2month break from MMO's has been long enough for me, i'am ready to jump into and live in another game world.. Even tho i wasn't that impressed during beta's i still saw the ammount of polish there and only made it to lvl 20.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
The future of Rift as I have foreseen it since beta...
- End of first included "free" month: loss of some players, retention rate of approx. 60% due to many people having still not hit max level.
- First couple of months after end of "free" month: loss of more players, many now have reached max level and seen the content is just not on par with other games. They either went back to their previous game or simply just stopped playing.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic or Guild Wars 2 releases (most likely SW:TOR first , and quite soon now): massive player bleeding for whom Rift was only a transition game waiting for one of those two titles. Only players remaining are die hard fans, the game is now in the same shape than Conan, Warhammer, Aion. Server merges start now, if they haven't already.
- The second game (Guild Wars 2 most likely) releases. Rift player base is vestigial, the game is reduced to a few servers. Trion pays the price for releasing a "counterstrike" MMORPG, a "3-monther" throw away game, lacking variety, racial lore, exploration, all things that make MMORPGs successful on the long term.
We'll see if I'm right or wrong, but I'd bet real money on that progression.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Im no blizzard fanboy but i just want to point out thats this is not true, they only count active subs "that have been payed for" in the last 30 days, says it on their site.
Only thing missing was "IMO" spread about every other sentence. Other than that, it was a "by the book" doom prophecy.
It's actually not just doom for the sake of doom, but based on my experience with MMOs.
This game is not different from Warhammer or Conan except it's just more polished and less bugged.
It's a quite good hint about the sad state of the MMORPG market when people hype and praise a game just because it's polished and relatively bug free. Problem is, polish alone doesn't make a game interesting on the long term. While enjoying Rift, I've always (since beta) questionned its long term survivability and its replayability.
How many times do you think people will enjoy going through EXACTLY THE SAME CONTENT, NO MATTER RACE OR CLASS, before they are bored? Some like me will roll one char on each side since the quest lines are different... but then?
This game badly lacks lore, notably racial lore. It also badly lacks varied end game content. People spent 50 levels grinding rifts, how many more do you think they are gonna grind before they are bored? How long will they be blinded by the "fake dynamic world" before they realize rifts are actually nothing dynamic at all, since the world is exactly the same after the rift has been destroyed, but just another disguised type of mob spawn point? How long before they realize rifts are actually a very cheap way of adding content without having to design new dungeons or areas? How convenient, add a random mob spawn point, call it rift, pretend it's dynamic, and people all cheer! Cash in and profit for VERY little work done.
Time will tell. Maybe I'm wrong. As you said, everything I write is only opinion based on some facts.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Comparing EQ2 and WoW is like comparing a street corner hooker to a high class escort. They are two different things completely.
1) WoW played better?
Anyone who played at launch would disagree with that. Took them 3-4 months to get things ironed out. I remember getting 2-3 weeks of free play time for how absolutely terrible the game was when released and how much downtime there was.
2) WoW is a game that was so easy to play, a monkey could be taught to mash the same buttons and power level a character. EQ2 was trying to ride off the success of EQ1 and in such put in the same type of mechanics. EQ2 was trying to immerse people into the game world. WoW was trying to find something that kids would play and enjoy and make their parents spend money on.
The whole thing with mmo's now a days is that they release in a terrible state full of bugs and glitches/exploits. From what I have heard about Rift, it is going very smooth and has little/no problems so far.
Now, for Rift to survive it has to do one thing; focus on end game content. Most people who will play Rift will be the kind of people who power game to the lvl cap and say "what is there to do now?". If there is nothing to do, they will go back to WoW. Trion needs to do what Bliz does and release mini-content patches that open up new areas for the people at end game. Then they need to focus on PvP.