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Rift Lite went live today: nail in the coffin or innovation?
I didn't see anything about this, so i though i would post something.
As of today (Feb 1st) Trion is offering a limited free-to-play mode up to lvl 20, also known as Rift Lite. Rift lite allows for you to play your existing characters up to level 20. Lite also allows for the creation of new characters which are limited in pre-chosen skill tree sets. If you already have a rift account but are unsubbed you can log on and play!
Some people probably think this is a desprate move to keep populations up in a game that doesnt manage to keep most people's attention long enough to warrant a subscription, a nail in the old proverbial coffin, if you will. Others may see it as a way of bringing back past users, as well as new players, in order to experience the mass of new content the developers have been steadily adding to the game.
As I logged in this morning I couldnt help but notice how many great features Trion has put into rift: halt xp was a nice feature I noticed in the preferences section, amazing graphics with great anti-aliasing options for those with top end graphics cards, gear previews in the character creation screens, beautiful graphics and so much more!
The free to play option that Trion added today is great, if not limiting in how much you can individualize your talent trees. It is, however a great way to experience just what the game has to offer in a limited capacity. If you like what you see then subscribe to the game, which seems to be the purpose for this option.
What are your thoughts on this recent move by Trion and will you be trying Rift Lite?
Comments
I posted last month about Rift being in the F2P section, looks like this Lite version is the reason why. Looks like Rift has followed AOC with the Lite version, i hope it works (for really it is a free trial) which cannot be wrong, you can make up your own mind about the game.
"what else can we copy from WoW?"
It's neither. They just want more new people in the game. They've gone through the advertising, and gotten all the people who would buy the game without actually trying it out. Now they're going after all the people who need to try the game before really buying it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Im a long time WOW player and just dont see Rift as a WOW clone.
The skill trees are the most similar aspect, but Rift's is much more advanced allowing far more freedom in class building/mixing.
Sure their similar in other ways as well but WOW pioneered the popluar MMO as we know it.
Thats a realy good point Lizardbones .
As i get more experience under my MMO belt I find myself being less caught up in the hype and wanting to try a game before i buy or subscricbe to it.
AoC had this feature way before WoW jumped on the bandwagon. The Halt XP feature is genius. Why every game doesn't have this, especially when they fast-track leveling so much, I don't know. I see this is a big positive for rift as your character only really starts to flesh out at 20. That's also when a few of the major story quests begin if I'm not mistaken.
No one says to themselves "wow this game had a 20 level perpetual trial. Must be crap so I'll pass". That doesn't happen. The player simply thinks how much it costs to try = £0. What have you got tto lose?
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
So by your logic WoW copied WAR, sicne it had an unlimited trial long before WoW did.
Nice try WoW fanboys, but wow isnt the onnovative giant you think it is.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
Blizzard has made quite the living copying other companies IPs. warhammer - warcraft. warhammer 40k - starcraft. anyone who copies Blizz is merely giving them a taste of their own medicine. all is fair...
The problem i've got with this move is that Trion wasn't honest about it, but again tried to wrap it up in another PR stunt.
Recently they closed/merged servers, that is in their PR language "opening(!) trial servers". People wondered: what do they need 40+ trial servers for? Then, just in Janury Trion cleared things up, reporting
"Bottom line is that we’re not merging any servers. The 11 shards in question are being turned into trial servers for a future large-scale trial promotion."
Ok, now they have a madness of like 40+ trial servers. According to their statement they prepared the latest 11 for a future large-scale trial promotion. But now the trial players can join any server they want?!
Why setting up "mo' trial servers" in first place when at the end of the day the trials can pick just any server?
They just closed those servers because they were dead. Despite people constantly spounting "but my chat is full!! the game is fine!!" the game unfortunately isn't doing very well.
I'm not saying that free to 20 thing is bad. But they used that momentum to cloak the closing of 11 more dead servers and tried to sell it to us as if they would expand the game instead.
As i get more experience under my MMO belt I find myself being less caught up in the hype and wanting to try a game before i buy or subscricbe to it.
I think it shows a certain amount of confidence on their part as well. If they didn't think free players would like the game, they wouldn't be doing it. It only makes them money if players buy the game and subscribe.
Trion has demonstrated a good bit of flexibility and responsiveness to their players. They don't seem to worry too much about the past either. They do what they think will make more players happy, and it seems to work.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Another thought:
People saying that "WoW has free to 20, too", "Trion copied that" and such.
WoW invented their "free to level 20" trial somewhen in June 2011 (after like 7? years).
-how many total levels has WoW had at that time?
-how many addons has WoW had at that time?
-how much of the total world in size and zones do you experience in WoW in the first 20 levels?
-how much percentage did 20 levels made from the total content at that time?
The experience of 20 levels in WoW can indeed be considered being just a "trial".
Now compare that with Rift, just approximately. Level 20 in Rift is like you've seen say 1/3 of the whole game. Free to 20 in Rift is almost like 1/3 F2P.
Free 20 level in WoW is a trial.
Free 20 level in Rift is desperation. Desperation leads to anger about low subs. Anger about low subs lead to the dark side which is total F2P.
Level 1-20 takes 5 hours of gameplay. Almost everyone I know in Rift has 50+ days played by now. Thats over 1000 hours of gameplay. Level 1-20 is not even 1% of gameplay. It is just the starter zone Freemarch or Silverwood.
It is simply marketing. Trion believes a high percentage of people that try the game will like it and subscribe. It may be free but they plan to make money on it. Trion cntinues to invest in the game and push out content. They do not do this on a whim but because they believe the game has a future so they keep investing in the game. Unlike most all failed releases they put their money back into the game. They are hiring people where all new games cut staff to barebone levels. They are kicking out new content. This is No Vanguard, AoC or Warhammer where the developers ran and hid with their box sale money a month after releae.
Going to the dark side leads to hanging out with undesirables. Hanging out with undesirables leads to marrying undesirables. Marrying undesirables leads to having a new MMO with a dog collar. Don't have a new mmo with a dog collar....
Sorry couldn't resist. Your argument was just about as logical as those commercials.
Actually, my point was about how the amount of available content in both games relate to each other and respectively to lvl 20 in both games.
I wasn't talking about the amount of time you can spend in both games. You can't really calculate time vs content in an mmorpg like you did and say "people have got X hours playtime, therefore reaching level Y in Z hours makes it % percent of content available".
@JimmyDean: nevermind, i still love your movies anyway
Just clarifying how much of the game is covered in 20 levels, and since I wrote a leveling guide and posted an entire 1 to 50 timed run on youtube I think I have an accurate assessment on this.
Getting to 20 on my 4th run and using the guide that I wrote took me 8.5 hours. Getting to level 50 on the same character took me 65 hours. So you're looking at about 13% of the leveling process being offered for free. As for actual quests you're looking at about 130 quests getting you to level 20 and over 700 quests total getting you to 50 so that's about 18% of the quests being offered for free. Once you start factoring in level 50 dungeons, raids, pvp stuff, adventures, dailies, planar attunement, and the whole of Ember Isle, the percentage being offered for free ends up being much, much less.
Some may say this is smart business and some may say it is desperation and both sides have valid arguments. I think it might be both. Rift's numbers are hurting a bit right now. At the same time, were I a Trion exec I would be very excited about my prospects after having played swtor. My next question would be, "how do I get all those people who will abandon swtor to come play my game?" Perhaps the answer to that question is to offer 20 levels for free. IMO, Rift deserves a lot more subs than it has. I'm hoping this offer works.
http://www.youtube.com/flymolo
Even if I did like Rift I wouldnt pay a sub fee for it. No MMO warrants a sub fee. I just tried the trial and got bored of the game in 5 mins. I did like the class customization and the UI though.
-I am here to perform logic
Bored of the game in 5 minutes? That would have been just enough time for you to see the class customization and UI that you liked! Personally, I'm a proponent of the f2p market and although I don't particularly want to see Rift go down that road, I sure love that DDO did. But I've never played a game for 5 minutes and said I didn't like it. That's a strange comment to make if you're trying to be objective about whether or not a game warrants a sub fee.
http://www.youtube.com/flymolo
Those shards might have more to do with the upcoming expansion into Korea. Depends how they have those servers setup but I wouldn't be surprised if they get a bit of localization.
http://www.thisisgame.com/go/2011/10/20/rift-in-korea-starts-off/
They've been extremely succesful from a monetary view and have plans for picking up China though no timeline is given. Some concern about undead? and other content might slow that down.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/19/rift-revenues-reached-100-million-in-2011-trion-secures-new-fu/
There was someone on my server lastnight very much like Theon.
They wouldn't shut up in chat. Where's the trainer? When can I respec? When can I craft?
I asked "So where are you? I'll help"
The reply "Oh I'm level 4".
They weren't even out of the starting area. They weren't even OUT of the city in the starting area (prior to the battle).
That tells me they only had their first MAYBE second soul. They hadn't gotten the quest to talk to the trainers.
I told them to stop rushing. It would be painfully obvious when they hit the real world. They kept persisting with questions that would be answered through gameplay so I started ignoring chat.
Had a level 8 in Meridian last night looking for a guild in public. Of course I stopped to chat them up to see what kind of guild they were looking for. Unfortunantly we couldn't accept them as they didn't meet our age criteria. They were only 13. (Sure do hope they found a friendly guild though!)
mmo consumer attitudes are ridiculous, since when does any company marketing their product been a sign of desperation. Trion's business model has been top notch. They have a decent connection with their customers, the flow of updates has been constant and with this offer they still show an interest in bringing in new clients. I think it's a great thing. Some of the disconnection and arrogance of some of these other mmo companies amaze me.
I love people who don't think Rift is sucessful, it is in fact the most succesful MMO in years. 100 million in revenue destroys games like Aion,War, etc. Rift is getting huge i see new 50s everyday. Unlike most dying MMO it is very easy to pug raids in rift because the population is so healthy.
I think Aion is doing very well for itself in the Asian market. In the west - not so much.
Interesting and nice of Trion... but the end game in Rift still needs a lot work, and is the major reason I'm not playing Rift.
I should add the end game in SW:ToR is also the reason I didn't even buy it.
Guildwars 2 and ArcheAge can't come out fast enough.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Aion is currently only behind WoW and Swtor on MMOs on xfire and while it is not a good indication of how many people play a game I think it's accurate to say it is doing rather good.
Btw this is a very smart move from Trion, it's the same when they do the sales with the incredibly cheap boxes, they realise the money is in long term subscriptions when you aim to be a healthy MMO company.