This game have been out for a while now. It is normal that sub's will drop after first months, but how much they have dropped in rift? Many servers merged or many new low population servers?
Atleast drop doesnt seem as brutal as it was in WAR and AoC
There has not been a clear indication as to a drop in population. Servers are pretty populated and some still even get ques. The problem with Rift was that early on they put out too many servers with low population caps out so some servers were just naturally low population. Since then they have upped the population caps and offered server transfers (free, every 7 days) off those servers. I could see why someone might say the population has gone down since launch if they played on one of the low population servers, but all we have heard from Trion is that the population has grown. No server merges, they did make a few low population servers "Trial servers" though and do not allow server transfers to them..only from them. They also serve as the only servers trial players can pick so that they do not overpopulate the main ones.
Originally posted by Celcius There has not been a clear indication as to a drop in population. Servers are pretty populated and some still even get ques. The problem with Rift was that early on they put out too many servers with low population caps out so some servers were just naturally low population. Since then they have upped the population caps and offered server transfers (free, every 7 days) off those servers. I could see why someone might say the population has gone down since launch if they played on one of the low population servers, but all we have heard from Trion is that the population has grown.
No server merges, they did make a few low population servers "Trial servers" though and do not allow server transfers to them..only from them. They also serve as the only servers trial players can pick so that they do not overpopulate the main ones.
They upped the population caps because they don't allow new players to roll on those 38 servers marked "trial". That's more than a few, it's actually more than half of what they had out, which combined with all the fire sales almost weekly now doesn't look good.
It only stands to reason if you 'encourage' (which is what they say instead of mandatory right now) people to move from 38 servers you'd have to increase the population caps to the places where they were going. That is the reason some servers look full.
Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting.
Right now Trion counts people who bought a six month sub at launch but quit after one/two months still as a 'subscription' because they can still play. They started 'trials' when they got an indication of how many three-month planholders decided not to renew and realized they would have to close all those servers in the future.
I was curious about this myself. I trialed Rift and now get regular emails offering me deals on the game and most recently subscription rates. It didn't give me a lot of confidance they were doing as well as they hoped. I agree with the notion they started with too many servers. I guess time will tell.
Since Trion hasn't released any sub numbers, it's hard to say. But looking at various player activity monitoring tools it looks like the current Rift player base is currently 40-45% of its initial playerbase in those first launch weeks.
Their last additions were indeed too many, they should have stopped at 80-90, not 99 servers.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting.
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It's refreshing to see someone who doesn't fall for marketing talk and half truths. Still I've been wondering about something, since I keep seeing this come up often. About the 6 month subs. Is that a substantial amount anyways?
If it is then I can totally see what you're saying with "and that's when things will get interesting".
Six month sub vs. 3 month sub. vs. monthly sub. I always thought the majority went with the monthly sub, fewer for the 3 month sub and even less for the 6 month sub.
Originally posted by nblitz Originally posted by popinjay
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<> Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting. <> It's refreshing to see someone who doesn't fall for marketing talk and half truths. Still I've been wondering about something, since I keep seeing this come up often. About the 6 month subs. Is that a substantial amount anyways? If it is then I can totally see what you're saying with "and that's when things will get interesting". Six month sub vs. 3 month sub. vs. monthly sub. I always thought the majority went with the monthly sub, fewer for the 3 month sub and even less for the 6 month sub. I would agree probably more people went with the three month than six month, but you see and AWFUL lot of people on the official forums who say they actually bought a six month, don't play but still post around hoping things change. They could be lying but idk why they would.
My way off-base guess with nothing to back it up and highly speculative broken crystal ball is that 15-20% of the base bought a six month sub due to the excitement they saw off of the betas. Plus, the six month sub wasn't that expensive because you only ended up paying $10/month and a lot of people would do the math and opt for that.
But until late October/early November it's a crap shoot. But again, signs don't look well especially when you figure in Trion's quietness the last few months. There is absolutely no talk from the leadership there as to how the game is going or what the direction of the game is.
I have no way to understand how anyone could think being quiet as a company four months after launch is a good thing in any way.
1. They have not sold 1M clients yet, so the number must be less than 1M
2. They have basically closed 40% of their servers. You have to figure they are being conservative with closing servers, so the number they have left is less than 60% of what they had at launch.
I don´t fault them for doing a lot of free trials and reduced priced sales.. that is smart if they have servers available and no queues.
The thing is, it is NEVER going to get as high as it was at launch. Everyone who wanted to play the game was able to play the beta, and the game launched during a lul in WOW´s content. WOW has new content now and SWTOR and GW2 are on the horizon.. there just are not that many people who are going to ´find´ Rift that haven´t found it already.
Actually from what i can see many new comers come to Rift each day; but also many veterans leave.. ATM i'd still say theres more of a influx of new people coming in (evidence is argent glade sometimes has even more of a population in it then Sanctum does) but a lot of them tend to leave shortly after hitting 50 for one reason or a nother.
Im a little different then most as while i was lvling 1-50 I logged for maybe 30mins-2hrs each day and ran through some questing zones, possibley did an invasion or warfront.. But now that i'm 50 i've found theres much variety for me to do and a lot of gear i need to attain so i've been putting in 3-5hr days into Rift since then working hard on dungeons and gaining end-game currency.. Sure, it's sort of like a hampster running on a wheel but it keeps me entertained lol..
But yeah i'd say the population is still very healthy compared to most MMO's that are 5months post-launch.. AION had a quarter of the population RIft did at this time (NA servers) and DCUO is a ghost town from what i hear.. And with each new event i see a influx of older characters logging in to see whats being offered.. My guess is Rift's population probably won't climb higher then what it was ever; or atleast until a good expansion or two.. But if Trion continues pumping out content as it is now then I think those that have stayed this far will prolly end up staying and it might attain some newer players with the free trials.
Overall i say it's healthy but no where near being a wow-contender.. But EvE's survived with less players im sure Rift can too.
Currently Playing: Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
There has not been a clear indication as to a drop in population. Servers are pretty populated and some still even get ques. The problem with Rift was that early on they put out too many servers with low population caps out so some servers were just naturally low population. Since then they have upped the population caps and offered server transfers (free, every 7 days) off those servers. I could see why someone might say the population has gone down since launch if they played on one of the low population servers, but all we have heard from Trion is that the population has grown.
No server merges, they did make a few low population servers "Trial servers" though and do not allow server transfers to them..only from them. They also serve as the only servers trial players can pick so that they do not overpopulate the main ones.
They upped the population caps because they don't allow new players to roll on those 38 servers marked "trial". That's more than a few, it's actually more than half of what they had out, which combined with all the fire sales almost weekly now doesn't look good.
It only stands to reason if you 'encourage' (which is what they say instead of mandatory right now) people to move from 38 servers you'd have to increase the population caps to the places where they were going. That is the reason some servers look full.
Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting.
Right now Trion counts people who bought a six month sub at launch but quit after one/two months still as a 'subscription' because they can still play. They started 'trials' when they got an indication of how many three-month planholders decided not to renew and realized they would have to close all those servers in the future.
The information on a 3rd party website does not prove anything in regards to server population when they do not specifically know how many people are on each server. A better indication of this would be the actual server list. These "38" servers marked trial is actually only 1. Please note that this is only the US servers obviously, but that would be the bulk of their subscriptions anyways.
The reason they allow the server transfers is simply because the servers which were initially low population...stayed low population. Notice that this list contains only 3 low population servers with only 1 being a "Trial Server". Where there are plenty of medium/high servers and one with a que. (This was not at prime time, btw was about 3 P.M CST)
I understand wanting to simply believe an MMO fails to succeed because you personally did not enjoy it, but the fact of the matter is that no one knows one way or the other...but it leans more towards the direction of success.
It is also important to note that since they raised the population caps, where some servers used to be High are now marked Medium, some which were Full are now high,ect.
Only indication besides this in population thus far:
Originally posted by Azrile My guess is 400k -500k. My evidence? 1. They have not sold 1M clients yet, so the number must be less than 1M 2. They have basically closed 40% of their servers. You have to figure they are being conservative with closing servers, so the number they have left is less than 60% of what they had at launch. I don´t fault them for doing a lot of free trials and reduced priced sales.. that is smart if they have servers available and no queues. The thing is, it is NEVER going to get as high as it was at launch. Everyone who wanted to play the game was able to play the beta, and the game launched during a lul in WOW´s content. WOW has new content now and SWTOR and GW2 are on the horizon.. there just are not that many people who are going to ´find´ Rift that haven´t found it already.
I'll agree with everything you said here, except the numbers. I'd guess south of 400k at the moment is what I see in game and on different servers.
I think the game will settle around 150k max but do okay with that.
Those games coming out is gonna hurt RIFT pretty bad. That's a one two (and possibly) three punch coming.
Firelands already pulled back people already from RIFT.
The problem with Rift is that you can max out in 2 weeks. i didnt play past beta cause i got to level 42 already. I felt Rift was less than a grind like Aion, but atleast Aion has content. Rift was a good game, just too easy and fast for me.
I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money. But even if they don't want to publicly admit it, Trion did want to dent WoW. You can tell by their advertisements and their response when Blizzard announced they lost 600K subs.
They should just settle on making a good game instead of trying to compete with WoW. All that will do is ruin their product.
Things might have been going better if they released a full game & not half a Game , 9 zones to level in ? a joke , zero replayability = a joke , no creativity "apart from Rifts" but there just like Warhammer onlines with a different skin
Trion isn't a big company like Blizzard or Bioware so I didn't expect rift to be groundbreaking but what I did expect was the company to put all its efforts into making the best MMO they can , But what do we get ? A company thats working on a New MMO months before releasing Rift .. its like rift is there test MMO .. oviously they didn't want to put all there eggs in one basket .
Originally posted by SpectralHunt I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money.
This is sketchy but I'd agree exactly with your overall subs.
The reason for the sketchy part is Trion sold a ton of packages at Headstart and launch. They were selling the game at $10 a month for six month people so even though they made a lot of upfront money (in lump sum payments), the long term was they lost 18% each month for 3 month subs and 31% for six month subs.
If they were getting what other games got without plans $15/mo, then I'd say they were doing very well. But giving flat discounts early can mess you up as people lock into those low prices. So what seems like good numbers (400k x $15) is really less than that in average fees because of discounts.
If someone buys the yearly plan now, Trion is guaranteeing they lose 40% in income over regular monthly plans($15/mo) for a year.
I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money. But even if they don't want to publicly admit it, Trion did want to dent WoW. You can tell by their advertisements and their response when Blizzard announced they lost 600K subs.
They should just settle on making a good game instead of trying to compete with WoW. All that will do is ruin their product.
Of course it's all speculation, but I think they had around 800-850k players in their launch weeks based upon their 99 servers and a (rough) estimation of an average 10k players per server, that seems to work for other MMO's (eg. AoC had 49 servers at its launch for 500-700k players, WAR had 95 servers for its 1 million).
I think that no matter what they do, Rift will still be compared with WoW, because of the kind of game it is, a themepark MMO (which is btw exactly the reason why a number of people on these forums'd deny Rift had any success and want Rift to do bad: anti-themepark sentiment )
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money. But even if they don't want to publicly admit it, Trion did want to dent WoW. You can tell by their advertisements and their response when Blizzard announced they lost 600K subs.
They should just settle on making a good game instead of trying to compete with WoW. All that will do is ruin their product.
Of course it's all speculation, but I think they had around 800-850k players in their launch weeks based upon their 99 servers and a (rough) estimation of an average 10k players per server, that seems to work for other MMO's (eg. AoC had 49 servers at its launch for 500-700k players, WAR had 95 servers for its 1 million).
I think that no matter what they do, Rift will still be compared with WoW, because of the kind of game it is, a themepark MMO (which is btw exactly the reason why a number of people on these forums'd deny Rift had any success and want Rift to do bad: anti-themepark sentiment )
To deny Rift was a 'success' is like saying 'sky is green' or something.
Close to a 1M sales with around 500k subs paying $10-15 a month is around $5M-$8M revenue a month plus around 40M in initial sales.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money. But even if they don't want to publicly admit it, Trion did want to dent WoW. You can tell by their advertisements and their response when Blizzard announced they lost 600K subs.
They should just settle on making a good game instead of trying to compete with WoW. All that will do is ruin their product.
Of course it's all speculation, but I think they had around 800-850k players in their launch weeks based upon their 99 servers and a (rough) estimation of an average 10k players per server, that seems to work for other MMO's (eg. AoC had 49 servers at its launch for 500-700k players, WAR had 95 servers for its 1 million).
I think that no matter what they do, Rift will still be compared with WoW, because of the kind of game it is, a themepark MMO (which is btw exactly the reason why a number of people on these forums'd deny Rift had any success and want Rift to do bad: anti-themepark sentiment )
To deny Rift was a 'success' is like saying 'sky is green' or something.
Close to a 1M sales with around 500k subs paying $10-15 a month is around $5M-$8M revenue a month plus around 40M in initial sales.
Yeah not a bad score for a first time companie.. And with all the love Trion has been showing on Rift my guess is they are willing to invest a good portion of that money into making more content and tweaking Rift.. Thus far they havn't slowed down atleast
Currently Playing: Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
To deny Rift was a 'success' is like saying 'sky is green' or something. Close to a 1M sales with around 500k subs paying $10-15 a month is around $5M-$8M revenue a month plus around 40M in initial sales.
It's nowhere as simple as that.
Trion sold quite a bit of subscription packages because everyone liked the beta and though that the game would be great. On that, many people bought three, six month packages, etc.
Given that those deals can subract anywhere from 18-40% or so, that really isn't 5-8 million dollars a month.
Also given how many servers Trion has running still, and how much they have to pay in everyday expenses such as rent, taxes and such.. there is no way you can consider that all profit.
That money you speak of is BEFORE profit expenses and taxes. Name something else Trion sells that brings them money. Nothing. They only have one game.. RIFT.
The other games they have are in development which means.. they are paying for those and getting no revenue from them.
I simply don't believe how many people keep thinking they get $15 a month for all these subs and they don't spend any of that on costs.
To deny Rift was a 'success' is like saying 'sky is green' or something.
Close to a 1M sales with around 500k subs paying $10-15 a month is around $5M-$8M revenue a month plus around 40M in initial sales.
It's nowhere as simple as that.
Trion sold quite a bit of subscription packages because everyone liked the beta and though that the game would be great. On that, many people bought three, six month packages, etc.
Given that those deals can subract anywhere from 18-40% or so, that really isn't 5-8 million dollars a month.
True, so that means that if 15% of the initial players in the launch weeks went for the 6 month package, that's revenues they already received on top of the 800k sales; that'd be like 120k * 6 * 70% * 15 = 7.5M dollars on top of the 40M initial sales, even if those players stopped playing after 2-3 months.
That money you speak of is BEFORE profit expenses and taxes. Name something else Trion sells that brings them money. Nothing. They only have one game.. RIFT.
The other games they have are in development which means.. they are paying for those and getting no revenue from them.
I simply don't believe how many people keep thinking they get $15 a month for all these subs and they don't spend any of that on costs.
Well, ANet had GW running for years with no sub revenues at all, with more players than most other MMO's and no incoming revenues from new expansion sales as well, so... if that'd be 5 dollar per player per month that it'd cost them with no revenues incoming, I think they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
Some people did some calculating server and maintenance cost a while ago, and they came up with 1-2 dollar per month per player on average as an end figure. I've read amounts like this a few times, so it sounded a reasonable estimation to me.
That still leaves them quite some money of the incoming revenues every month to spend and invest however they like.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
There has not been a clear indication as to a drop in population. Servers are pretty populated and some still even get ques. The problem with Rift was that early on they put out too many servers with low population caps out so some servers were just naturally low population. Since then they have upped the population caps and offered server transfers (free, every 7 days) off those servers. I could see why someone might say the population has gone down since launch if they played on one of the low population servers, but all we have heard from Trion is that the population has grown. No server merges, they did make a few low population servers "Trial servers" though and do not allow server transfers to them..only from them. They also serve as the only servers trial players can pick so that they do not overpopulate the main ones.
You must be joking!!!!!!
The server I played on was quite busy at launch, and about 1 month after, it was all but dead.
Well, ANet had GW running for years with no sub revenues at all, with more players than most other MMO's and no incoming revenues from new expansion sales as well, so... if that'd be 5 dollar per player per month that it'd cost them with no revenues incoming, I think they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Some people did some calculating server and maintenance cost a while ago, and they came up with 1-2 dollar per month per player on average as an end figure. I've read amounts like this a few times, so it sounded a reasonable estimation to me. That still leaves them quite some money of the incoming revenues every month to spend and invest however they like.
ArenaNet could run GW1 on low budget because the game had a easily repeatable formula with instances. There were not huge zones to worry about, nor were there constant and frequent requirements to updates early. Plus that game was built long ago for a much lower price, and ArenaNet was able to fund it by doing other things.
Plus they sold six million copies of that game. As critics like to say GW1 isn't a mmo.. or at least they say that when it suits them, so models are different. ArenaNet also holds competitive tournaments that they work with other sponsors and that type of stuff generates income as well.
Another dirty secret is that with games that have cash shops, they make more selling items monthly than they ever could on straight subs. People can end up paying three or four times what they'd pay for a sub in a cash shop.
I don't think GW is a good comparison to put up when comparing RIFT financially because the ways they make money are totally different. Plus RIFT has at least two other projects in the works now that have to be paid for.. the deal with SyFy network to make a mmo and their own game End of Nations which is going to cost.
I don't think Trion has any revenue income stream other than RIFT at the moment because they only have one game on the market, which ArenaNet also didn't have to worry about, so paying for two games production while operating one doesn't really leave quite a bit of money monthly especially when you figure in taxes, expenses, building space, employee pay, etc.
On June 24th Trion released that they were almost at 1 milltion active subs. Granted that counts people that were on multiple month subs that don't play but still thats alot. and btw majority of the servers are still medium/high with some even beeing full at all times of the day. This game is easily the most succesfful since WoW. If they play their cards right they will continue to grow.
ArenaNet could run GW1 on low budget because the game had a easily repeatable formula with instances. There were not huge zones to worry about, nor were there constant and frequent requirements to updates early. Plus that game was built long ago for a much lower price, and ArenaNet was able to fund it by doing other things.
Plus they sold six million copies of that game. As critics like to say GW1 isn't a mmo.. or at least they say that when it suits them, so models are different. ArenaNet also holds competitive tournaments that they work with other sponsors and that type of stuff generates income as well.
I don't think GW is a good comparison to put up when comparing RIFT financially because the ways they make money are totally different. Plus RIFT has at least two other projects in the works now that have to be paid for.. the deal with SyFy network to make a mmo and their own game End of Nations which is going to cost.
I don't think Trion has any revenue income stream other than RIFT at the moment because they only have one game on the market, which ArenaNet also didn't have to worry about, so paying for two games production while operating one doesn't really leave quite a bit of money monthly especially when you figure in taxes, expenses, building space, employee pay, etc.
Sorry, but you make little sense and I'm starting to think that you just hate/dislike Rift very much, so you'll just keep on making any argument something about putting Trion and Rift in as negative light as possible, even if it means making strange turns with the truth and logic
Well, dislike Rift and Trion all you like for whatever weird reason, I think that GW is a perfectly good example of server costs and that server maintenance is only a small fraction per player per month of a sub.
As for Arenanet not having to worry about anything, are you for real? Arenanet has only 1 game on the market and had huge costs of development for GW2 just like any other MMO developer. They literally said that everything depends on the success of GW2, they've invested everything in it, so...
I don't know, but to me after the constant negative posts of you with trying to portray Rift or Trion as bad as possible, it seems like you have Rift in your crosshairs and don't want Rift or Trion to be seen as successful. My advice, get over it.
For the new studio on the scene as they are, they delivered a solid MMORPG, with a better launch and product than most of what we've seen in the past couple of years. It wasn't my kind of game, but what I heard from friends and read on forums, Rift left its players behind with a more satisfied and less embittered and disillusioned feeling than most of the other MMO's the past 5 years. Add to that close to a million sales and still a lot of sub revenues incoming, and I'd say that they did pretty good. imo.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Actually RIFT announced in a recent patch like last week they had 1 million active accounts.. I am on Keen Blade and the server is always very active.... Now that doesnt mean people people at least in the lower levels are grouping up all the time.. RIFT is one of the most solo oriented games going in the lower levels.
Even when people are doing dynamic events. They join public groups do the event, many times without so much as a hello or a goodbye.
If you can find people to talk or group up they are usually friendly.
Comments
There has not been a clear indication as to a drop in population. Servers are pretty populated and some still even get ques. The problem with Rift was that early on they put out too many servers with low population caps out so some servers were just naturally low population. Since then they have upped the population caps and offered server transfers (free, every 7 days) off those servers. I could see why someone might say the population has gone down since launch if they played on one of the low population servers, but all we have heard from Trion is that the population has grown. No server merges, they did make a few low population servers "Trial servers" though and do not allow server transfers to them..only from them. They also serve as the only servers trial players can pick so that they do not overpopulate the main ones.
It only stands to reason if you 'encourage' (which is what they say instead of mandatory right now) people to move from 38 servers you'd have to increase the population caps to the places where they were going. That is the reason some servers look full.
The disturbing thing is even with doing that, RIFT still has over half of it's NA servers in the red after doing those changes.
Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting.
Right now Trion counts people who bought a six month sub at launch but quit after one/two months still as a 'subscription' because they can still play. They started 'trials' when they got an indication of how many three-month planholders decided not to renew and realized they would have to close all those servers in the future.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I was curious about this myself. I trialed Rift and now get regular emails offering me deals on the game and most recently subscription rates. It didn't give me a lot of confidance they were doing as well as they hoped. I agree with the notion they started with too many servers. I guess time will tell.
Since Trion hasn't released any sub numbers, it's hard to say. But looking at various player activity monitoring tools it looks like the current Rift player base is currently 40-45% of its initial playerbase in those first launch weeks.
Their last additions were indeed too many, they should have stopped at 80-90, not 99 servers.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It's refreshing to see someone who doesn't fall for marketing talk and half truths. Still I've been wondering about something, since I keep seeing this come up often. About the 6 month subs. Is that a substantial amount anyways?
If it is then I can totally see what you're saying with "and that's when things will get interesting".
Six month sub vs. 3 month sub. vs. monthly sub. I always thought the majority went with the monthly sub, fewer for the 3 month sub and even less for the 6 month sub.
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Trion doesn't actually have to release sub numbers so no one really knows. But around late October/early November will be the first time most of the six month subs will truly all be gone and that's when things will get interesting.
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It's refreshing to see someone who doesn't fall for marketing talk and half truths. Still I've been wondering about something, since I keep seeing this come up often. About the 6 month subs. Is that a substantial amount anyways?
If it is then I can totally see what you're saying with "and that's when things will get interesting".
Six month sub vs. 3 month sub. vs. monthly sub. I always thought the majority went with the monthly sub, fewer for the 3 month sub and even less for the 6 month sub.
I would agree probably more people went with the three month than six month, but you see and AWFUL lot of people on the official forums who say they actually bought a six month, don't play but still post around hoping things change. They could be lying but idk why they would.
My way off-base guess with nothing to back it up and highly speculative broken crystal ball is that 15-20% of the base bought a six month sub due to the excitement they saw off of the betas. Plus, the six month sub wasn't that expensive because you only ended up paying $10/month and a lot of people would do the math and opt for that.
But until late October/early November it's a crap shoot. But again, signs don't look well especially when you figure in Trion's quietness the last few months. There is absolutely no talk from the leadership there as to how the game is going or what the direction of the game is.
I have no way to understand how anyone could think being quiet as a company four months after launch is a good thing in any way.
"TO MICHAEL!"
My guess is 400k -500k. My evidence?
1. They have not sold 1M clients yet, so the number must be less than 1M
2. They have basically closed 40% of their servers. You have to figure they are being conservative with closing servers, so the number they have left is less than 60% of what they had at launch.
I don´t fault them for doing a lot of free trials and reduced priced sales.. that is smart if they have servers available and no queues.
The thing is, it is NEVER going to get as high as it was at launch. Everyone who wanted to play the game was able to play the beta, and the game launched during a lul in WOW´s content. WOW has new content now and SWTOR and GW2 are on the horizon.. there just are not that many people who are going to ´find´ Rift that haven´t found it already.
Actually from what i can see many new comers come to Rift each day; but also many veterans leave.. ATM i'd still say theres more of a influx of new people coming in (evidence is argent glade sometimes has even more of a population in it then Sanctum does) but a lot of them tend to leave shortly after hitting 50 for one reason or a nother.
Im a little different then most as while i was lvling 1-50 I logged for maybe 30mins-2hrs each day and ran through some questing zones, possibley did an invasion or warfront.. But now that i'm 50 i've found theres much variety for me to do and a lot of gear i need to attain so i've been putting in 3-5hr days into Rift since then working hard on dungeons and gaining end-game currency.. Sure, it's sort of like a hampster running on a wheel but it keeps me entertained lol..
But yeah i'd say the population is still very healthy compared to most MMO's that are 5months post-launch.. AION had a quarter of the population RIft did at this time (NA servers) and DCUO is a ghost town from what i hear.. And with each new event i see a influx of older characters logging in to see whats being offered.. My guess is Rift's population probably won't climb higher then what it was ever; or atleast until a good expansion or two.. But if Trion continues pumping out content as it is now then I think those that have stayed this far will prolly end up staying and it might attain some newer players with the free trials.
Overall i say it's healthy but no where near being a wow-contender.. But EvE's survived with less players im sure Rift can too.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
The information on a 3rd party website does not prove anything in regards to server population when they do not specifically know how many people are on each server. A better indication of this would be the actual server list. These "38" servers marked trial is actually only 1. Please note that this is only the US servers obviously, but that would be the bulk of their subscriptions anyways.
http://imageshack.us/f/683/serverlist1.gif/
http://imageshack.us/f/840/serverlist2.gif/
The reason they allow the server transfers is simply because the servers which were initially low population...stayed low population. Notice that this list contains only 3 low population servers with only 1 being a "Trial Server". Where there are plenty of medium/high servers and one with a que. (This was not at prime time, btw was about 3 P.M CST)
I understand wanting to simply believe an MMO fails to succeed because you personally did not enjoy it, but the fact of the matter is that no one knows one way or the other...but it leans more towards the direction of success.
It is also important to note that since they raised the population caps, where some servers used to be High are now marked Medium, some which were Full are now high,ect.
Only indication besides this in population thus far:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35044/Interview_trions_debut_rift_closes_in_on_1M_sellthrough.php
I think the game will settle around 150k max but do okay with that.
Those games coming out is gonna hurt RIFT pretty bad. That's a one two (and possibly) three punch coming.
Firelands already pulled back people already from RIFT.
"TO MICHAEL!"
The problem with Rift is that you can max out in 2 weeks. i didnt play past beta cause i got to level 42 already. I felt Rift was less than a grind like Aion, but atleast Aion has content. Rift was a good game, just too easy and fast for me.
After that, it drives people away.
odds are its around 500k+ and it seems to have settled there. Depending on how trion handles the game it will either go up or down.
I think it's a bit less. My guess was that it launched with around 700-600K subs and now they are around 400K or slightly below. Mind you, these are still excellent numbers and Trion is making good money. But even if they don't want to publicly admit it, Trion did want to dent WoW. You can tell by their advertisements and their response when Blizzard announced they lost 600K subs.
They should just settle on making a good game instead of trying to compete with WoW. All that will do is ruin their product.
Things might have been going better if they released a full game & not half a Game , 9 zones to level in ? a joke , zero replayability = a joke , no creativity "apart from Rifts" but there just like Warhammer onlines with a different skin
Trion isn't a big company like Blizzard or Bioware so I didn't expect rift to be groundbreaking but what I did expect was the company to put all its efforts into making the best MMO they can , But what do we get ? A company thats working on a New MMO months before releasing Rift .. its like rift is there test MMO .. oviously they didn't want to put all there eggs in one basket .
The reason for the sketchy part is Trion sold a ton of packages at Headstart and launch. They were selling the game at $10 a month for six month people so even though they made a lot of upfront money (in lump sum payments), the long term was they lost 18% each month for 3 month subs and 31% for six month subs.
If they were getting what other games got without plans $15/mo, then I'd say they were doing very well. But giving flat discounts early can mess you up as people lock into those low prices. So what seems like good numbers (400k x $15) is really less than that in average fees because of discounts.
If someone buys the yearly plan now, Trion is guaranteeing they lose 40% in income over regular monthly plans($15/mo) for a year.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Of course it's all speculation, but I think they had around 800-850k players in their launch weeks based upon their 99 servers and a (rough) estimation of an average 10k players per server, that seems to work for other MMO's (eg. AoC had 49 servers at its launch for 500-700k players, WAR had 95 servers for its 1 million).
I think that no matter what they do, Rift will still be compared with WoW, because of the kind of game it is, a themepark MMO (which is btw exactly the reason why a number of people on these forums'd deny Rift had any success and want Rift to do bad: anti-themepark sentiment
)
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
To deny Rift was a 'success' is like saying 'sky is green' or something.
Close to a 1M sales with around 500k subs paying $10-15 a month is around $5M-$8M revenue a month plus around 40M in initial sales.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Yeah not a bad score for a first time companie.. And with all the love Trion has been showing on Rift my guess is they are willing to invest a good portion of that money into making more content and tweaking Rift.. Thus far they havn't slowed down atleast
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Trion sold quite a bit of subscription packages because everyone liked the beta and though that the game would be great. On that, many people bought three, six month packages, etc.
Given that those deals can subract anywhere from 18-40% or so, that really isn't 5-8 million dollars a month.
Also given how many servers Trion has running still, and how much they have to pay in everyday expenses such as rent, taxes and such.. there is no way you can consider that all profit.
That money you speak of is BEFORE profit expenses and taxes. Name something else Trion sells that brings them money. Nothing. They only have one game.. RIFT.
The other games they have are in development which means.. they are paying for those and getting no revenue from them.
I simply don't believe how many people keep thinking they get $15 a month for all these subs and they don't spend any of that on costs.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Well, ANet had GW running for years with no sub revenues at all, with more players than most other MMO's and no incoming revenues from new expansion sales as well, so... if that'd be 5 dollar per player per month that it'd cost them with no revenues incoming, I think they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
Some people did some calculating server and maintenance cost a while ago, and they came up with 1-2 dollar per month per player on average as an end figure. I've read amounts like this a few times, so it sounded a reasonable estimation to me.
That still leaves them quite some money of the incoming revenues every month to spend and invest however they like.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You must be joking!!!!!!
The server I played on was quite busy at launch, and about 1 month after, it was all but dead.
Plus they sold six million copies of that game. As critics like to say GW1 isn't a mmo.. or at least they say that when it suits them, so models are different. ArenaNet also holds competitive tournaments that they work with other sponsors and that type of stuff generates income as well.
Another dirty secret is that with games that have cash shops, they make more selling items monthly than they ever could on straight subs. People can end up paying three or four times what they'd pay for a sub in a cash shop.
I don't think GW is a good comparison to put up when comparing RIFT financially because the ways they make money are totally different. Plus RIFT has at least two other projects in the works now that have to be paid for.. the deal with SyFy network to make a mmo and their own game End of Nations which is going to cost.
I don't think Trion has any revenue income stream other than RIFT at the moment because they only have one game on the market, which ArenaNet also didn't have to worry about, so paying for two games production while operating one doesn't really leave quite a bit of money monthly especially when you figure in taxes, expenses, building space, employee pay, etc.
"TO MICHAEL!"
On June 24th Trion released that they were almost at 1 milltion active subs. Granted that counts people that were on multiple month subs that don't play but still thats alot. and btw majority of the servers are still medium/high with some even beeing full at all times of the day. This game is easily the most succesfful since WoW. If they play their cards right they will continue to grow.
Sorry, but you make little sense and I'm starting to think that you just hate/dislike Rift very much, so you'll just keep on making any argument something about putting Trion and Rift in as negative light as possible, even if it means making strange turns with the truth and logic
Well, dislike Rift and Trion all you like for whatever weird reason, I think that GW is a perfectly good example of server costs and that server maintenance is only a small fraction per player per month of a sub.
As for Arenanet not having to worry about anything, are you for real? Arenanet has only 1 game on the market and had huge costs of development for GW2 just like any other MMO developer. They literally said that everything depends on the success of GW2, they've invested everything in it, so...
I don't know, but to me after the constant negative posts of you with trying to portray Rift or Trion as bad as possible, it seems like you have Rift in your crosshairs and don't want Rift or Trion to be seen as successful. My advice, get over it.
For the new studio on the scene as they are, they delivered a solid MMORPG, with a better launch and product than most of what we've seen in the past couple of years. It wasn't my kind of game, but what I heard from friends and read on forums, Rift left its players behind with a more satisfied and less embittered and disillusioned feeling than most of the other MMO's the past 5 years. Add to that close to a million sales and still a lot of sub revenues incoming, and I'd say that they did pretty good. imo.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Actually RIFT announced in a recent patch like last week they had 1 million active accounts.. I am on Keen Blade and the server is always very active.... Now that doesnt mean people people at least in the lower levels are grouping up all the time.. RIFT is one of the most solo oriented games going in the lower levels.
Even when people are doing dynamic events. They join public groups do the event, many times without so much as a hello or a goodbye.
If you can find people to talk or group up they are usually friendly.