Scott Hartsman Discusses Rift's Memorable Launch Campaign and Lessons Learned After Initial Success

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Scott Hartsman Discusses Rift's Memorable Launch Campaign and Lessons Learned After Initial Success | MMORPG.com

Scott Hartsman, the former CEO of Trion Worlds, has shared a new blog reflecting on the Rift launch campaign over a decade ago and lessons learned after a successful launch. 

Read the full story here

Viper482

Did you ask him how his company destroyed one of the best MMORPGs ever? Fuck Trion.

toljar

I loved Rift... I really wish the ball was not dropped so hard on that game.

BrotherMaynard

Oh look, Scott Hasbeen is peeking from under the rock, testing the air - perhaps enough time has passed for him to start rewriting his and Trion's history, right?

It was Trion under his management that made Rift into a game worthy only of Gamigo's takeover. It was during his time at Trion that the spectacular shitshow called Defiance took place.

Rift's start was not as rosy as he tries to paint it, he was among the people who began running the game into the ground on the very first day. Remember the security scandal? Remember how he immediately gave in to the loud ex-WoW players complaining about rifts (in the eponymous game!) and invasions killing quest mobs? And what did he do? Ruined the best, game-defining, feature of Rift for good and on day one, no less.

The whole "we're not in Azeroth" campaign and game strategy was completely moronic and harmful to the game and to the studio and after all those years he still doesn't get it. Rift ended up chasing WoW and instead of doing its own business, desperately tried to replicate all WoW's features and additions. WoW added this? Rift must too. WoW introduced that? Here comes Trion with its copycat approach. Trouble is, Trion's version was usually half-arsed mess and very inferior to the polished (back then) WoW features. Where Blizzard had a huge well-established team and expansive and polished game and features, Trion had a fraction of the resources, with a brand new base game that needed to define its own place and start growing.

Instead of focusing on its own show and on stuff that made Rift special, like rifts (what a shocker!), souls, conquest, dimensions, collections, instant adventures, qol additions like mentoring and tons of other stuff, they lost their steam (and a boatload of cash) trying to roll out anemic imitations of the market leader. And we all know how that turned out.

Scott would do best if he remained under the rock he's been occupying for the past few years and never touched game development again. That includes life lessons from his Trion days.

Kyleran

Interesting that MOP just ran an editorial on the stupidly of game devs trying to slag on their competitors and held up Rift's "not in Azeroth anymore" campaign as Exhibit A of how to do it all wrong.

Iselin

BrotherMaynard said:

Rift's start was not as rosy as he tries to paint it, he was among the people who began running the game into the ground on the very first day. Remember the security scandal? Remember how he immediately gave in to the loud ex-WoW players complaining about rifts (in the eponymous game!) and invasions killing quest mobs? And what did he do? Ruined the best, game-defining, feature of Rift for good and on day one, no less.

Not going to defend Hartman but I clearly remember quest NPCs being killed by mobs in zone invasions after the game was live.

IDK when they stopped that but it wasn't day one.

I do agree that it was an awesome feature when the invasions happened.

Slapshot1188

Kyleran said:

Interesting that MOP just ran an editorial on the stupidly of game devs trying to slag on their competitors and held up Rift's "not in Azeroth anymore" campaign as Exhibit A of how to do it all wrong.

Not sure how you can read MOPs Editorials anymore.  I can't get myself to even peek in there more than once every few weeks.  All I see and hear is screeching from the staff and the few posters that remain.

BrotherMaynard

Iselin said:

BrotherMaynard said:

Rift's start was not as rosy as he tries to paint it, he was among the people who began running the game into the ground on the very first day. Remember the security scandal? Remember how he immediately gave in to the loud ex-WoW players complaining about rifts (in the eponymous game!) and invasions killing quest mobs? And what did he do? Ruined the best, game-defining, feature of Rift for good and on day one, no less.

Not going to defend Hartman but I clearly remember quest NPCs being killed by mobs in zone invasions after the game was live.

IDK when they stopped that but it wasn't day one.

I do agree that it was an awesome feature when the invasions happened.

It could occasionally happen even in Rift's later days, especially when a major invasion was launched and not enough people were interested. Major invasions always spawned big elite mobs and if they were close enough to NPCs, they often killed them.

But it was nowhere near the first day events. That was the last in my gaming career that I remember genuinely losing track of time and finding out it was dawn outside. Trying to push back a fire invasion that had completely taken over Silverwood. That was a proper invasion and the central hub (Argent Glade) was literally owned by the planar mobs. They had erected several spawn points throughout the town and were teleporting in massive elite mobs and monsters. After an hour or two there must have been a hundred of them occupying the town. After a few hours of battle, our lowbie group grew into a full raid party (another excellent Rift feature, auto-join open world rift groups!) and we were desperately trying to wrest control of the town back from the rift mobs. Tons of loot, tons of experience, tons of fun!

If only Trion back then realised what they had in their hands and took advantage of it. But that would have required someone else at the helm, not Harstman. Such big invasions could have spawned new friendly quest mobs and NPC sorties to reclaim the zone, new rift-specific quest givers could have replaced standard ones, etc. But no, Scott and his team had to water it all down to virtual insignificance, because your average JohnnyTheWoWPlayer could not turn in his 10 rat tails...

[Deleted User]

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Dattelis

Gamigo, please just sell the rights of Rift to someone that can actually DEVELOP....

Kirzan

This article doesn't exist if Cata wasn't mid.

Also, big grain of salt on "the game is running." Like, yeah, it's powered on, I guess.

Kyleran

Slapshot1188 said:

Kyleran said:

Interesting that MOP just ran an editorial on the stupidly of game devs trying to slag on their competitors and held up Rift's "not in Azeroth anymore" campaign as Exhibit A of how to do it all wrong.

Not sure how you can read MOPs Editorials anymore.  I can't get myself to even peek in there more than once every few weeks.  All I see and hear is screeching from the staff and the few posters that remain.

Don't you know the gankers were right, the tears are delicious....

Lobotomist

With all said and done. And I think its surely sentiment of few old timers here that clearly remember things like pre launch hype of Rift, and its first months.

Its amazing how at that times companies were able to churn pretty good MMOs. For example I am sure that if Rift was to come out today it would be near miracle thing.

Western MMO that does not look like boiled shit, and have engine that actually works and supports massive online play.

We can only dream of MMOs even half good than that today. Heck even if a kid in his basement makes "My first Unity project" MMO, people are all over it...

Scot

Not in my top all time MMOs but a good MMORPG none the less, we had a decent time in it for several months; it was a shame it went south.

waveslayer

played on day one and for about the next year, then off and on for a few more, liked it alot and if someone else would take it over, I would play today.

Coolit

It was an great game at launch, it had many of the features I’d always wanted in wow at the time and it had hands down the best open world experience of any mmo.

I have fond memories of participating in the first raid rift on our server and us having to have two raids, one to complete the rift and one to protect the main raid from PVP, it was so much fun!

Then f2p came, Trion got greedy, and the game changed forever sadly

I’d play again if there was ever a sub only version.

Darkhawke

I still play Rift in my rotation , fun game to visit .But we knew what Hartsman was and what was going to happen with Trion and Rift , some forget but it was Hartsman and his cronies that was heading up the P2W mechainics in EQ2 long ago , some of us spoke out strongly on this slippery slope and where it would lead .But many still wanted a server where the could buy every piece of gear with cash that Hartsman was putting out there. It was one if , if not the first mainstream game to go down that road ..

Soon after , Hartsman and his same cronies moved on to Trion games , Some of us knew then the fate of Rift and warned of what was coming ..

It did . And began the downfall of Rift and Trion games .Then Archeage and the full embrace of P2W broke them .

Dattelis

Let us never forget their $100 mount lootbox filled with recolors of existing mounts.

KroxMalon

Games are games sure, but some realism occasionally is cool. Seeing a character die from an invasion is what would have happened if they did not defend themselves or run a away. Rather than turn things off maybe set the npcs to defend when an invasion happens and "if they die, they die" Appeasing a winey community is the worst way forward because they normally make up a small % of player base.

Also, I can't imagine what the social teams have to deal with these days; considering some simple slander in social can ruin a game launch.

Angrakhan

I really enjoyed Rift when it first came out. I loved the open world Rift closing gameplay. That was so much fun for me. I also liked how classes worked with the mix and match souls system. Much more variety than your typical MMO. Then it seemed like they gave up on everything that made the game unique and stand out and instead started chasing WoW which made you wonder why you weren't just playing WoW which I think a lot of people did. So much potential unrealized. Sad.

Theocritus

Angrakhan said:

I really enjoyed Rift when it first came out. I loved the open world Rift closing gameplay. That was so much fun for me. I also liked how classes worked with the mix and match souls system. Much more variety than your typical MMO. Then it seemed like they gave up on everything that made the game unique and stand out and instead started chasing WoW which made you wonder why you weren't just playing WoW which I think a lot of people did. So much potential unrealized. Sad.

It felt like a WoW ripoff from day 1 to me....Add in some stolen ideas from Warhammer and poof you have a game!

Slapshot1188

RIFT Alpha was one of the best games I ever played.  I played it so much that I (and my group) got burned out before release.  When we went back after a little break... the game was almost unrecognizable.  Well, it LOOKED similar, but it played so very differently.  And not for the better

Wordsworth

Was Rift or AoC first? I remember these games being the beginning of the 3 million first week box sale and one hundred thousand subs by month three era in MMOs along with warhammet and swtor

McSleaz

Slapshot1188 said:

Kyleran said:

Interesting that MOP just ran an editorial on the stupidly of game devs trying to slag on their competitors and held up Rift's "not in Azeroth anymore" campaign as Exhibit A of how to do it all wrong.

Not sure how you can read MOPs Editorials anymore.  I can't get myself to even peek in there more than once every few weeks.  All I see and hear is screeching from the staff and the few posters that remain.

Bree turned it into her personal Echo Chamber.

OldKingLog

OG_Solareus

Reads like a resume for Riot Games.