Player Base steady?

SyrusSyi · May 2011

Anyone Think the player base is steady?

anthonyman6 · May 2011

In my eyes, yes.

Most playerebases see a rapid decline after the first month and it doesn't seem to be happening. General chat is filled with trial account deciding to buy. I must have seen someone say it 6-7 times yesterday.

SyrusSyi · May 2011

Agreed I have a level 33 mage and i recently got the money to start the game back i had to quit till i got the money back but now i have the money back to start and i am going to and everyone always said this game was going to fail and this games player base was going to decline after the first or even second month but it has yet to happen

whosaidwhat · May 2011

If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in. Even the welcome back weekends. How many games in the past that were doing very well did this, i dont recall any.

Sadly for Rift they had lots of players try out the game in the beginning which cuased them to invest alot into servers. But many droped off after first month and they are probably loosing a steady amount of players per month.

Rift will still have a sizeable fan base, but you should start to see server merges about 6 months after the release. Maybe a major content patch.

But Rift being so middle of the road game play wise and the lack of alternate leveling paths does keep players from resubbing after they hit max level. Then there is the gear grind which is becomeing just that, a grind. Even WoW is starting to feel the effects of players just being burnt out of gear grinding to only have to re gear grind every new raid dungeon that they bring out.

But still, Rift is a alternative to WoW or EQ2, so players who have accounts will prob play a month here or there just to cut the burn out of those games. Still wont help Rift on the long run.

Hellfyre420 · May 2011

Originally posted by whosaidwhat
If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in. Even the welcome back weekends. How many games in the past that were doing very well did this, i dont recall any.

Sadly for Rift they had lots of players try out the game in the beginning which cuased them to invest alot into servers. But many droped off after first month and they are probably loosing a steady amount of players per month.

Rift will still have a sizeable fan base, but you should start to see server merges about 6 months after the release. Maybe a major content patch.

But Rift being so middle of the road game play wise and the lack of alternate leveling paths does keep players from resubbing after they hit max level. Then there is the gear grind which is becomeing just that, a grind. Even WoW is starting to feel the effects of players just being burnt out of gear grinding to only have to re gear grind every new raid dungeon that they bring out.

But still, Rift is a alternative to WoW or EQ2, so players who have accounts will prob play a month here or there just to cut the burn out of those games. Still wont help Rift on the long run.

Basing a games failure on it's advertisements and stuff isn't logical, im sorry.. Games like WoW still advertise just as aggressivly or even more then Rift.. Advertisement cost money and Rift's is everywhere.. They wouldn't be spending that kind of cash it wasn't getting them subs back in return..

As for the trial and ascended program almost every MMO that launches has simular programs after launch.. AION, FE, AoC all had some kind of trial thing at launch, it's once again a easy way to get subs (like the OP said several people have been subbing after the trial.)

Now, with everything else you said i can't really argue with.. I agree servers will prolly need to be merged soon.. Playerbase will prolly stay at around its current ammount (which is a healthy ammount) and we'll prolly need a major content update 6months-1year from now to keep a lot of the playerbase going (especially with the "gear" grind that a lot of people complain about.) I myself don't mind Rifts end game as i never got into WoW and raiding and all this stuff seems new to me.

boojiboy · May 2011

Originally posted by syrusmag3
Anyone Think the player base is steady?

The player base has seen significant declines since launch. The new factor has worn off and a lot of player left, or play much less frequently. They will allow character transfers soon, which will allow players to move off dead servers which will help.

Server mergers are much needed as well.

There are a couple of popular servers that people are rerollling on so they can play with a high population. A good population is important so that invasions can be defeated. It's kind of depressing to have zone invasions and no one around to fight them.

Falcomith · May 2011

Player base was on a decline to where there was quite a few severs showing low. Now, with the free trial offer most servers are medium and about 4 are high and none at low. These are US servers and around peek hours (9est). With that said, it seems the free trial is the influx and it all depends on how many of those will stay. I'd say give it a month more and see where they are at.

Torgrim · May 2011

Originally posted by syrusmag3
Agreed I have a level 33 mage and i recently got the money to start the game back i had to quit till i got the money back but now i have the money back to start and i am going to and everyone always said this game was going to fail and this games player base was going to decline after the first or even second month but it has yet to happen

Please go on the main Rift boards and read in the server sub forums and get back to me.

UW1975 · May 2011

Originally posted by Falcomith
Player base was on a decline to where there was quite a few severs showing low. Now, with the free trial offer most servers are medium and about 4 are high and none at low. These are US servers and around peek hours (9est). With that said, it seems the free trial is the influx and it all depends on how many of those will stay. I'd say give it a month more and see where they are at.

It has been widely demonstrated though that the "Medium" is too generic to be of any value, as people have repeatedly complained that their "Medium server was empty while others say that their Medium was packed. It seems people at Trion have probably on purpose widen the parameters of the Medium category, as probably the Low tag was hurting the game.

In any case, riftstatus has become almost completely irrelevant. It is a fact though that Trion has created too many servers and they would have to merge some sooner than later.

watchawatcha · May 2011

Originally posted by whosaidwhat
If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in.

This is wrong. Marketing/Advertising is the first thing to go when your company is in trouble. Just google it and you'll see. TV Networks lose huge revenue off of advertisers when the economy is bad for this very reason.

darlok6666 · May 2011

The player base won't really be established till after SWTOR and GW2 releases and their newness fades. A sizeable portion are waiting for those titles and are "killing time" with Rift. I say right now there is nothing steady for Rift, too many issues or factors atm. The newness factor, boredom at lvl cap, sick of grind, dumbing down, PvP a joke...once the dust settles then the player base will finally settle down.

whosaidwhat · May 2011

Actually most of Rifts Advertising is internet based which is substancially cheaper then broadcast advertising. Also most companies have an advertising budget which is usually increased to get more cutomers. There are mathmatical equations that show by spending/advertising you will get x amount boost in sales.

Now since I am Familar with WoW, EQ2, Lotro and AoC the more popular titles at time of launch and many months after advertising was minimal. though I will say that there are alot more gaming sites now that allow increased advertising.

But even then, any substational advertising with these games came when the games were on a subscription decline, AoC being the exception.

Also none of these games, with the exception of lotro offered any free trial in the first year let alone within the first couple months. Lotro had a large drop off, as well as AoC, in the first few months. Though AoC added the trial much later.

Once more mmo's come out by the end of this year Rift will be hit hard. Unlike WoW, EQ2, and Lotro, Rift does not have the staying power. Gear grinding is now becoming a dirty word and creating an end game that is like that, which is similar to WoW, who is also suffering, is not going to keep the player base high.

The only redeeming quality of Rift is the events that they can add. But much more work needs to be done on this since the ones they have done were not well thought out. but other games are adding this, or will be adding this, and Knowing Blizzard they will rush something similar to this to recover the sub loss.

Valgar1 · May 2011

I have been playing since launch and at least on my server the communit has gone down. The good thing is now it has been steady so im assuming on other servers its also steady on the amount of people playing. Which is good if your looking to start.

Thing is now some servers (on mine agin) what other's have said about invasions is true, its not easy fr the people lvling up to be able to beat a zone invasion with the amount of people around. In the max lvl zones its fine. I think a server merge will be in need sooner rather then later if they want to keep all the trial people around. Otherwise somone new to the game will not get a good feel for it and be bored.

As of now i would add the people who are playing will continue to play until a new title rolls around. I myself won't go back to WoW because i would rather play rift until SWTOR and GW 2 comes around. So all that said.

Population most def went down, but good news is, its at a steady point right now so give the free trial a try and see how ya like it.

On a side note, the guy taking about the advertising and free trial stuff is not smart. Every game gives trials (even WoW) as well as advertising. This means nothing at all.

David99 · May 2011

Nope, population on my server is very low (even though it shows as medium). This low pop is in turn causing more players to leave as endgame consists of nothing more than trying to find a group.

They aren't doing themselves any favours by holding off on server merges or by trying to hide the failure of some/most servers by tagging them with 'medium'.

Soki123 · May 2011

Rift is doing very well. Could it use a few server merges, yes, but in general it s doing great on most servers.

jmhart · May 2011

It's pretty stable now, but having played since the start of Beta 1 I can assure you it lost a lot of players once their first 30 days was up. There simply isn't enough content, leveling is too fast, and endgame is terribly repetitive.

People who are judging the population by the indicators on the server select window don't realize those indicators have been tweaked to hide the player loss. A server can show medium population with only 300 players online, counting both factions. The game mechanics break down at such a low population, hence the invasions that can't be cleared or simply little to no rift/invasion activity to speak of. Most of the time it's okay if you want to solo quest, but if I wanted to do that there are much better single player games.

It's a grear game to play for a few months, but it doesn't have the staying power to stay this popular long term.

boojiboy · May 2011

I would also add that 'medium' doesn't necessarily mean a healthy population. I'm on a server that is 'perceived' as having a good popluation because it often shows at medium. But medium feels like low population when you venture around the world because invasions go un-checked (not enough people), LFG takes a long time, Warfronts can be up to an hour wait, etc.

So Medium could be just 100 players are so scattered throughout the world.

They definitely need to merge.

Hellfyre420 · May 2011

Do you guys even try to make groups when invasions come? Sometimes even on Braircliff (which has a HUGE population) invasions will go unchecked until someone starts asking for people in general/guild chat.. Just the other night an invasion cropped up and i was closing Rifts solo, until i asked in the drought lands chat and i got several people asking for invites.. Within 45mins our group of 15 had gotten to the collusus when we noticed a group of 20 or so defiants come running in our direction.. We managed to work together for the collosus kill but it was all out FFA pvp afterwords lol..

That was one of my funnest invasions cuz the invasion got us down to one wardstone and we only had to close 3 more Rifts.. So we had 3 groups of 5 spread out, one to camp the wardstone, the other to stop the incoming invaders, and the 3rd (one i was in) to close the last 3 rifts to get the collosus.. I got a few good sourcestones from drops too.. And i also got 40 dragon eggs for a nice 2plat/1plaque/1blue artifact..

But yeah, i can see how this game would lose a lot of its potential on a unhealthy populated server.. This game just SHINES so much brighter when theres people to take down invasions with and work together on things.. Thats why i truley do feel sorry for the low/med pop servers and i hope Trion merges em soon.. But remember, sometimes all it takes is to take some iniative and gather some people on you're servers together and fight the invaisons that way.. You don't need a full raid, even a group of 10-20 should survive the collosus.

Azrile · May 2011

Rift is doing great compared to recent MMO´s.. but it is very difficult to tell how it is doing overall because of all the free weekends and free passes stuff going on. Rift is really the first game that has been this aggressive, this early with regards to free trials. This is probably a great thing for the game overall, but makes it a little harder for people to judge server fullness or overall subscription numbers.

The two things that are going to hurt the game in the next few months are it´s singular leveling pathway and competition. WOW survived its early ´raid2play´days because there were 6 completely different pathways to level a character. Players who didn´t raid, didn´t quit because they rolled alts. Rift doesn´t really give that much replayability, and thos not into the endgame, will be bored when the competition comes.

But still, I hope Rift hovers at good numbers for awhile as it is teaching developers the importance of releasing a finished product. I am so tired of companies like Funcom that release garbage and then expect players to pay a subscription fee while they try to fix it.

darlok6666 · May 2011

Originally posted by Azrile
Rift is doing great compared to recent MMO´s.. but it is very difficult to tell how it is doing overall because of all the free weekends and free passes stuff going on. Rift is really the first game that has been this aggressive, this early with regards to free trials. This is probably a great thing for the game overall, but makes it a little harder for people to judge server fullness or overall subscription numbers.

The two things that are going to hurt the game in the next few months are it´s singular leveling pathway and competition. WOW survived its early ´raid2play´days because there were 6 completely different pathways to level a character. Players who didn´t raid, didn´t quit because they rolled alts. Rift doesn´t really give that much replayability, and thos not into the endgame, will be bored when the competition comes.

But still, I hope Rift hovers at good numbers for awhile as it is teaching developers the importance of releasing a finished product. I am so tired of companies like Funcom that release garbage and then expect players to pay a subscription fee while they try to fix it.

Well their free trials and free passes could be their way to help boost the pop issues that servers are experiencing.

I don't really see their player base steady till next year though, after SWTOR and GW2 releases to weed out those who are "killing time till X title releases."

KenFisher · May 2011

Originally posted by whosaidwhat
If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in. Even the welcome back weekends. How many games in the past that were doing very well did this, i dont recall any.

WoW advertised non-stop for years including major TV celebrity campaigns (William Shatner, Mister T, others?). I don't see that as an indication that they were slipping in players. They just wanted more as hitting critical mass (a playerbase so large that they aren't hurt by rivals) seems to have been a priority.

martaug · May 2011

Haha, they are still listing all of their na servers as medium at 2:30am on a sunday night but they have slipped to #12 on xfire from #5. It's funny, everyone on the rifts board was crowing how accurate xfire's numbers where when it was in fifth place but now they are saying just the opposite. saturdays shard status showed just 2 na realms as full, 3 high & the rest medium. Medium must mean more than 5 now .

Matt_UK · May 2011

I judge player numbers by the way world events are dealt with, if at all. I play on the Quarrystone server. There was a world event in Stonefield on Saturday and there were 20+ players involved. and despite losing the event I felt there were enough to deal with it. Yesterday however there was an event in Scarwood Reach and no one to take it on. Low numbers of players is fine for PVE games, as long as your guild mates are on, but when a game like Rift relies on open raid groups it can be impossible to play the best parts of the game, the world events. I'm hoping they will merge some servers and allow transfer of characters.

At the moment it's not too bad, but if population declines and world events become impossible to do then the game loses it's raison d'etre and server merges will be the only solution.

MMOtoGO · May 2011

Originally posted by whosaidwhat
If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in. Even the welcome back weekends. How many games in the past that were doing very well did this, i dont recall any.

With your logic nobody drinks Coca-Cola or Budweiser either since they advertise so much. The fact that they advertise (and have the revenue to do so) is a sign that the game is actually doing well.

Hellfyre420 · May 2011

Originally posted by martaug
Haha, they are still listing all of their na servers as medium at 2:30am on a sunday night but they have slipped to #12 on xfire from #5. It's funny, everyone on the rifts board was crowing how accurate xfire's numbers where when it was in fifth place but now they are saying just the opposite. saturdays shard status showed just 2 na realms as full, 3 high & the rest medium. Medium must mean more than 5 now .

Actually go check the past "xfire tells rift population" threads and you'll see people get flamed for regarding to xfire as "accurate", even Rift fanboys know that.. Xfire only works on a small % of players (i don't use it and i don't know many who do) so obviously it's not accurate.. Rift could be lower then #12 game when combined with all other people who don't use Xfire or it could be ranked higher.. Xfire just tells the rank among xfire users, that is all.

BarCrow · May 2011

Originally posted by whosaidwhat
If the player base was steady and Rift was doing well then they wouldnt need to advertise so much, they wouldnt need the trials or the buddy keys to bring players in. Even the welcome back weekends. How many games in the past that were doing very well did this, i dont recall any.

Sadly for Rift they had lots of players try out the game in the beginning which cuased them to invest alot into servers. But many droped off after first month and they are probably loosing a steady amount of players per month.

Rift will still have a sizeable fan base, but you should start to see server merges about 6 months after the release. Maybe a major content patch.

But Rift being so middle of the road game play wise and the lack of alternate leveling paths does keep players from resubbing after they hit max level. Then there is the gear grind which is becomeing just that, a grind. Even WoW is starting to feel the effects of players just being burnt out of gear grinding to only have to re gear grind every new raid dungeon that they bring out.

But still, Rift is a alternative to WoW or EQ2, so players who have accounts will prob play a month here or there just to cut the burn out of those games. Still wont help Rift on the long run.

I just see their strategy as a "try it you'll like it" instead of "buy it and hope you like it".....and since when is advertising a sign of failure. Hell..WOW is all over everything with its images and ads..are they going under too?. All successful businesses probably have at least 1 thing in common...they all advertise and continue to advertise. The free trials also help with some serious "word of mouth"...another form of advertising.

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