Just as the title says im stuck in between maybe this or swtor and dcuo, im just trying to get a pulse on how many people play the game anymore, and what the end game content is like? i really have no idea as ive not played it in quite some time, thanks
community is server dependant. there are 27 NA servers. 11 are 100% dead, another 5 or so are showing danger signs. Most of the rest are perfectly fine and will benefit from the other servers being dead (transfers) and Wolfsbane is thriving.
I left Rift last month, not only because I felt like I've accomlished pretty much everything I wanted to (reached T2 raiding with 4 classes), but because the community on my 2 (once high-medium pop) EU servers died. I know for a fact that SW:TOR had a major impact on this, but there was also a steady decline some time prior to this. There are definitely some active servers out there and some players will return in a month or 2, but it is nothing like it was when I first played the game in 1.2.
The endgame has been improving but it is still a game for the endgame raiders. I know this because I was one of them.
I left Rift last month, not only because I felt like I've accomlished pretty much everything I wanted to (reached T2 raiding with 4 classes), but because the community on my 2 (once high-medium pop) EU servers died. I know for a fact that SW:TOR had a major impact on this, but there was also a steady decline some time prior to this. There are definitely some active servers out there and some players will return in a month or 2, but it is nothing like it was when I first played the game in 1.2.
The endgame has been improving but it is still a game for the endgame raiders. I know this because I was one of them.
Left Rift 6 months ago. Quests were utterly boring. Reached level 30 or so.
The endgame has been improving but it is still a game for the endgame raiders. I know this because I was one of them.
I have a active TOR account at the moment so I can comment on this. Open the TOR map and tell me what you see. Is anything moving? Are there any messages saying there is something going on?
Now open a Ember Isle map and tell me what you see. The map almost looks like it is moving. There are invasions everywhere and messages telling you zones are being attacked.
I am unsure of why people have a hard time understanding what Rifts end game is. Take WoW's end game and tack on open world content with a alternative way to gain raid gear. Why the mmorpg community so non shalant about this dead world thing is beyond me?
I cna not disagree that the min/max perfect gear is from raiding like Hammerknell, but you can get entire raid sets from crafting or doing zone events. No other mmo out right now can say that except Aion where you get pvp sets from Dredgion and fort raids.
Anyone tellying that they know what the community size is like, is clueless.
I play on freeholme, some people proclaim it's dead, even though I never wait for a Q to do anything (and end up in dungeons and warfronts with mostly people from my server), and events are popping up on a regular basis. Coinsidentally the people that claim the server is dead, just so happen to have transfered to another server and claim that the server they're currently on has a better population.
We just had one of the larger defiant raiding guids transfer off of our server. They do this if they think they have a shot at a server first in a raid someplace else. At the same time I've done dugneons with people that told me they just transfere to my server.
In otherwords, it's rather hard to say how a server is, good or bad, because people are constantly transfering from one server to the next. I'm not a fan of the whole server transfer thing.
And the only people who think the game is all about raiding are people who think MMO endgame is all about raiding. This isn't WoW, if you want to progress after you hit 50, you NEVER have to do a raid. You can get the same raid gear, granted at a much, much slower rate, that raiders get. Minus relic items and such that only drop inside the raid. However the raid gear that a raider buys with the marks they earn while raiding can be bought without going into the raid by doing T2 random expert dungons and selecting the raid marks as your reward.
You can also do things in the open world that will reward you with sourcestones and planarite that will allow you to buy raid equivelant gear. Not to mention the crafted gear.
Endgame content in Rift is more small group content then raid content. There are A LOT of 5 man dungeons to do.
PS: Questing is no different in Rfit then it is any other nonsandbox MMO. And I play with some guys who mostly just farmed mobs and bought gear from doing events at their level or off the AH, or just had it crafted. You can actually earn as much, or more XP farming mobs, and don't actually have to do the quests. Otherwise it's just your standard go here and kill this, gather that, deliver these MMO questing. The quests will just help you to understand what's going on in the world if you take even just enough time to skim through the quest dialog, and some of it's actually pretty cool in my opinion. There's a lot happening in the world.
I have been playing SWTOR but just received emails on my 3 accounts that they're upping the security and giving 3 days free after I change my passcode. I did so then logged onto each account. All my characters were on Estrael . It used to be pretty packed before December. Did a /who command in Meridian and there were 3 people in city..coincidentally..it was this many each time for each account about 30 minutes apart. It faired a little better in starter area...about 6-10 people. I'm sure the new area and higher level areas may have been a bit more populated but it still seemed sad to me. I ended transferring all my toons to Faeblight because it was at medium pop..while Estrael was low pop. I may be playing Swtor but I do really like RIFT and hope it stays relatively populated and also doesn't go F2P unless absolutely necessary.. Is there a new main city in the ember isles area that is doing to Meridian what Shattrah (and later Dalaran) did for most of the main cities in WOW?
Is there a new main city in the ember isles area that is doing to Meridian what Shattrah (and later Dalaran) did for most of the main cities in WOW?
nah, no major city in EI where people just chill. ember isle is a trip. there are all the outposts and people just defend random ones doing the daily. sometimes people will just stick on a random outpost farming the waves gaining xp for the planar attunement xp. there are a crap ton of dailies in that area and people are just runnin around collecting mats and doing the dailies. i don't think i've done one of the same dailies out there minus the big one in the crater and the outpost onslaught. i'm not hardcore or anything as doing the standard daily quest crap just gets on my nerves, but i pick up every random quest i get in that zone as the rewards are beast.
i never know how many people are in the zone until i'm doing the last boss of an invasion. once the boss is live people just come out of the woodwork to get inscribes. it's still really impressive to see a couple hundred people going after the same target and all in the same area. if you try and do the zone event late at night it's not going to happen though. too few players online to fight the elites in ember isle. we can't defend and push at the same time. wtb more insomniacs.
The endgame has been improving but it is still a game for the endgame raiders. I know this because I was one of them.
I have a active TOR account at the moment so I can comment on this. Open the TOR map and tell me what you see. Is anything moving? Are there any messages saying there is something going on?
Now open a Ember Isle map and tell me what you see. The map almost looks like it is moving. There are invasions everywhere and messages telling you zones are being attacked.
I am unsure of why people have a hard time understanding what Rifts end game is. Take WoW's end game and tack on open world content with a alternative way to gain raid gear. Why the mmorpg community so non shalant about this dead world thing is beyond me?
I cna not disagree that the min/max perfect gear is from raiding like Hammerknell, but you can get entire raid sets from crafting or doing zone events. No other mmo out right now can say that except Aion where you get pvp sets from Dredgion and fort raids.
Well yeah, you do have a point there that the zone wide events in Rift are very important as a part of the endgame, but that is mainly because; you need do those events to get enough Inscribed, to upgrade your source engine with lessers, in order to Raid & PvP effectively. It still ends up being all about raiding, because would rather get gear from raids, than spend an eternity grinding zone wide events for lessers, greaters, medic, omen/quantum thingy and gear.
Turns out my old server Estrael was dying . Once I transferred all my characters to Faeblight I discovered Meridian was packed like I remember. Goofed around on Ember Isle for a bit. Pretty cool.
Seems very packed on my server, sometimes so busy there is lag and some problems. I highly recommend this game, just like Vanguard was better than WoW, this is even better again (although not as complex as Vanguard).
Heaps of people playing and adding content all the time. Highly recommended, I don't play anything else.
Don't take the advice of a fanboy of the game, they will never tell you the truth. Just go to their website and look at their server status, you will hardly ever see a server at high, and you'll be lucky to see more then 3 servers at medium throughout the day, most are always at low. If you want to know just look at their OWN server status throughout the day and you'll see for yourself. Right now as i post this there are 3 medium servers and the rest are low on the NA shards and before people start crying that this isn't primetime it is in Europe and they have only 5 medium and the rest low, not 1 high server population atm, just go to their boards, even moderators that play the game put medium shards at less then 1000 people online at the time.
Don't take the advice of a fanboy of the game, they will never tell you the truth. Just go to their website and look at their server status, you will hardly ever see a server at high, and you'll be lucky to see more then 3 servers at medium throughout the day, most are always at low. If you want to know just look at their OWN server status throughout the day and you'll see for yourself. Right now as i post this there are 3 medium servers and the rest are low on the NA shards and before people start crying that this isn't primetime it is in Europe and they have only 5 medium and the rest low, not 1 high server population atm, just go to their boards, even moderators that play the game put medium shards at less then 1000 people online at the time.
i play on a med/low pop server and there are always a crap ton of people around when i do invasions (people fill the screen). if there were only a couple hundred people online or whatever, then they all come out to the same spot when an EI invasion hits. so low/med/high, there's enough online where the community feels "sizable". 50 chat is always talkin about something as well.
also, how are you going to say here's NA, but it's primetime in EU !!! it was 9 am when you posted the NA progress. if you go to rift progress and look at population trends, you'll see an overall increase from last month in both NA and EU. if EU is low pop right now like it is in the NA right now, there are still more then enough players in game to handle the major invasions and do the T2 runs. what i'm sayin is the community size is more then fine. if you don't currently play, then don't speak on crap you don't know about. IF there were 100 people in game per server it's more then enough to handle the invasions on your server and deal with the queue for warfronts and T2s. i just checked and the EU has 10 med pop servers right now.
i enjoy rift a lot and feel it's the best game released, but if something better came along i'd be on it asap. i'm not naming my first child trion or anything, but trion does a great job and has amazing customer service. so far my money has been put to good use.
I have been playing SWTOR but just received emails on my 3 accounts that they're upping the security and giving 3 days free after I change my passcode. I did so then logged onto each account. All my characters were on Estrael . It used to be pretty packed before December. Did a /who command in Meridian and there were 3 people in city..coincidentally..it was this many each time for each account about 30 minutes apart. It faired a little better in starter area...about 6-10 people. I'm sure the new area and higher level areas may have been a bit more populated but it still seemed sad to me. I ended transferring all my toons to Faeblight because it was at medium pop..while Estrael was low pop. I may be playing Swtor but I do really like RIFT and hope it stays relatively populated and also doesn't go F2P unless absolutely necessary.. Is there a new main city in the ember isles area that is doing to Meridian what Shattrah (and later Dalaran) did for most of the main cities in WOW?
Hah cool. It looks like everyone that played before gets 3 free days if they want them.
I've been playing SWTOR but it's just so awful I can't even take it anymore, despite having time left on my free month. With the news that you'll be able to progress easier at endgame with the new patch, I'm definitely interested in returning. Thanks for posting this or else I wouldn't have known about the 3 free days to try it out again.
Blightweald a bit slow, but still get 200+ people killing most times on ember bosses (every hour or so) - with loads more people not getting there fast enough! And in most zones you wont go more than 30 seconds or so without seeing someone.
I will say that the last couple of days there has been quite an increase in players showing up again. 3 or 4 times as many at least.
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Anyone tellying that they know what the community size is like, is clueless.
I play on freeholme, some people proclaim it's dead
Actually no, people are not clueless.
The last time your server had more than 400 people online simultaneously was before christmas. Your server is certainly dead.
Dead? Wow! I had no idea. All the people standing around in meridian, the full raid groups taking on lvl 50 efents, doing WF and dungeons with people comprised of mostly my server; I had no idea.
I have an idea, post the source of your numbers.
BTW, dead implies no one else to play with, not some arbitrary number you decided upon to validate your statement. If I can experience all of the content the game has to offer on the server I play on, then somethings a little amiss. How exactly can it be "dead" if I'm logging in, and doing everything I want to do that requires a group, and without having to stand around waiting for even several minutes.
Even if the server does only have 400 concurrent players, wtf do I care? I've never done anything, in any mmo, that I required 399 other people to play with.
OMG! How will I ever find 4 to 19 other people to play with if there's only 400 on the server. OMG! What will I do without 10k other faceless individuals I'll never interact with.
this game its far from dead as people keep logging, and in some weeks they will realize KOTOr its full crap and return back to their mmo's games, RIFT its 1 or maybe the best mmrpg right now, polished and full of life in game not as KOTOr (its seems a 80's rpg solo game).
my pop size on my shard feels more then fine, but with that said..
so far i've found Alsbeth, Estrael, Atrophinius, Belmont, Galena all got a notice this morning of the server being converted to a trial server and my server (alsbeth) was recommended to go to shatterbone. the defiant guilds on my shard are all talking and tryin to figure out what server to move to as a whole. lookin at gnarlwood or greybriar.
my pop size on my shard feels more then fine, but with that said..
so far i've found Alsbeth, Estrael, Atrophinius, Belmont, Galena all got a notice this morning of the server being converted to a trial server and my server (alsbeth) was recommended to go to shatterbone. the defiant guilds on my shard are all talking and tryin to figure out what server to move to as a whole. lookin at gnarlwood or greybriar.
*Sniff* Sad. Estrael was such a great server as late as October of last year and still had many people in late November. I even subbed my main account a few days ago , despite playing SWTOR....because I hate such a good game going away or the risk of F2P. Long live RIFT . At least Faeblight seems busy still. I think all the great time consuming games and new MMOs coming out were too much for poor Rift not to lose people. It sucks because I've really only been unsubbed for less than a few months.
Comments
community is server dependant. there are 27 NA servers. 11 are 100% dead, another 5 or so are showing danger signs. Most of the rest are perfectly fine and will benefit from the other servers being dead (transfers) and Wolfsbane is thriving.
I left Rift last month, not only because I felt like I've accomlished pretty much everything I wanted to (reached T2 raiding with 4 classes), but because the community on my 2 (once high-medium pop) EU servers died. I know for a fact that SW:TOR had a major impact on this, but there was also a steady decline some time prior to this. There are definitely some active servers out there and some players will return in a month or 2, but it is nothing like it was when I first played the game in 1.2.
The endgame has been improving but it is still a game for the endgame raiders. I know this because I was one of them.
Left Rift 6 months ago. Quests were utterly boring. Reached level 30 or so.
I have a active TOR account at the moment so I can comment on this. Open the TOR map and tell me what you see. Is anything moving? Are there any messages saying there is something going on?
Now open a Ember Isle map and tell me what you see. The map almost looks like it is moving. There are invasions everywhere and messages telling you zones are being attacked.
I am unsure of why people have a hard time understanding what Rifts end game is. Take WoW's end game and tack on open world content with a alternative way to gain raid gear. Why the mmorpg community so non shalant about this dead world thing is beyond me?
I cna not disagree that the min/max perfect gear is from raiding like Hammerknell, but you can get entire raid sets from crafting or doing zone events. No other mmo out right now can say that except Aion where you get pvp sets from Dredgion and fort raids.
Anyone tellying that they know what the community size is like, is clueless.
I play on freeholme, some people proclaim it's dead, even though I never wait for a Q to do anything (and end up in dungeons and warfronts with mostly people from my server), and events are popping up on a regular basis. Coinsidentally the people that claim the server is dead, just so happen to have transfered to another server and claim that the server they're currently on has a better population.
We just had one of the larger defiant raiding guids transfer off of our server. They do this if they think they have a shot at a server first in a raid someplace else. At the same time I've done dugneons with people that told me they just transfere to my server.
In otherwords, it's rather hard to say how a server is, good or bad, because people are constantly transfering from one server to the next. I'm not a fan of the whole server transfer thing.
And the only people who think the game is all about raiding are people who think MMO endgame is all about raiding. This isn't WoW, if you want to progress after you hit 50, you NEVER have to do a raid. You can get the same raid gear, granted at a much, much slower rate, that raiders get. Minus relic items and such that only drop inside the raid. However the raid gear that a raider buys with the marks they earn while raiding can be bought without going into the raid by doing T2 random expert dungons and selecting the raid marks as your reward.
You can also do things in the open world that will reward you with sourcestones and planarite that will allow you to buy raid equivelant gear. Not to mention the crafted gear.
Endgame content in Rift is more small group content then raid content. There are A LOT of 5 man dungeons to do.
PS: Questing is no different in Rfit then it is any other nonsandbox MMO. And I play with some guys who mostly just farmed mobs and bought gear from doing events at their level or off the AH, or just had it crafted. You can actually earn as much, or more XP farming mobs, and don't actually have to do the quests. Otherwise it's just your standard go here and kill this, gather that, deliver these MMO questing. The quests will just help you to understand what's going on in the world if you take even just enough time to skim through the quest dialog, and some of it's actually pretty cool in my opinion. There's a lot happening in the world.
Actually no, people are not clueless.
The last time your server had more than 400 people online simultaneously was before christmas. Your server is certainly dead.
I have been playing SWTOR but just received emails on my 3 accounts that they're upping the security and giving 3 days free after I change my passcode. I did so then logged onto each account. All my characters were on Estrael . It used to be pretty packed before December. Did a /who command in Meridian and there were 3 people in city..coincidentally..it was this many each time for each account about 30 minutes apart. It faired a little better in starter area...about 6-10 people. I'm sure the new area and higher level areas may have been a bit more populated but it still seemed sad to me. I ended transferring all my toons to Faeblight because it was at medium pop..while Estrael was low pop. I may be playing Swtor but I do really like RIFT and hope it stays relatively populated and also doesn't go F2P unless absolutely necessary.. Is there a new main city in the ember isles area that is doing to Meridian what Shattrah (and later Dalaran) did for most of the main cities in WOW?
nah, no major city in EI where people just chill. ember isle is a trip. there are all the outposts and people just defend random ones doing the daily. sometimes people will just stick on a random outpost farming the waves gaining xp for the planar attunement xp. there are a crap ton of dailies in that area and people are just runnin around collecting mats and doing the dailies. i don't think i've done one of the same dailies out there minus the big one in the crater and the outpost onslaught. i'm not hardcore or anything as doing the standard daily quest crap just gets on my nerves, but i pick up every random quest i get in that zone as the rewards are beast.
i never know how many people are in the zone until i'm doing the last boss of an invasion. once the boss is live people just come out of the woodwork to get inscribes. it's still really impressive to see a couple hundred people going after the same target and all in the same area. if you try and do the zone event late at night it's not going to happen though. too few players online to fight the elites in ember isle. we can't defend and push at the same time. wtb more insomniacs.
Well yeah, you do have a point there that the zone wide events in Rift are very important as a part of the endgame, but that is mainly because; you need do those events to get enough Inscribed, to upgrade your source engine with lessers, in order to Raid & PvP effectively. It still ends up being all about raiding, because would rather get gear from raids, than spend an eternity grinding zone wide events for lessers, greaters, medic, omen/quantum thingy and gear.
Turns out my old server Estrael was dying . Once I transferred all my characters to Faeblight I discovered Meridian was packed like I remember. Goofed around on Ember Isle for a bit. Pretty cool.
Seems very packed on my server, sometimes so busy there is lag and some problems. I highly recommend this game, just like Vanguard was better than WoW, this is even better again (although not as complex as Vanguard).
Heaps of people playing and adding content all the time. Highly recommended, I don't play anything else.
Then again there is nothing else better.
Don't take the advice of a fanboy of the game, they will never tell you the truth. Just go to their website and look at their server status, you will hardly ever see a server at high, and you'll be lucky to see more then 3 servers at medium throughout the day, most are always at low. If you want to know just look at their OWN server status throughout the day and you'll see for yourself. Right now as i post this there are 3 medium servers and the rest are low on the NA shards and before people start crying that this isn't primetime it is in Europe and they have only 5 medium and the rest low, not 1 high server population atm, just go to their boards, even moderators that play the game put medium shards at less then 1000 people online at the time.
i play on a med/low pop server and there are always a crap ton of people around when i do invasions (people fill the screen). if there were only a couple hundred people online or whatever, then they all come out to the same spot when an EI invasion hits. so low/med/high, there's enough online where the community feels "sizable". 50 chat is always talkin about something as well.
also, how are you going to say here's NA, but it's primetime in EU !!! it was 9 am when you posted the NA progress. if you go to rift progress and look at population trends, you'll see an overall increase from last month in both NA and EU. if EU is low pop right now like it is in the NA right now, there are still more then enough players in game to handle the major invasions and do the T2 runs. what i'm sayin is the community size is more then fine. if you don't currently play, then don't speak on crap you don't know about. IF there were 100 people in game per server it's more then enough to handle the invasions on your server and deal with the queue for warfronts and T2s. i just checked and the EU has 10 med pop servers right now.
i enjoy rift a lot and feel it's the best game released, but if something better came along i'd be on it asap. i'm not naming my first child trion or anything, but trion does a great job and has amazing customer service. so far my money has been put to good use.
Hah cool. It looks like everyone that played before gets 3 free days if they want them.
I've been playing SWTOR but it's just so awful I can't even take it anymore, despite having time left on my free month. With the news that you'll be able to progress easier at endgame with the new patch, I'm definitely interested in returning. Thanks for posting this or else I wouldn't have known about the 3 free days to try it out again.
Blightweald a bit slow, but still get 200+ people killing most times on ember bosses (every hour or so) - with loads more people not getting there fast enough!
And in most zones you wont go more than 30 seconds or so without seeing someone.
I will say that the last couple of days there has been quite an increase in players showing up again. 3 or 4 times as many at least.
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
Dead? Wow! I had no idea. All the people standing around in meridian, the full raid groups taking on lvl 50 efents, doing WF and dungeons with people comprised of mostly my server; I had no idea.
I have an idea, post the source of your numbers.
BTW, dead implies no one else to play with, not some arbitrary number you decided upon to validate your statement. If I can experience all of the content the game has to offer on the server I play on, then somethings a little amiss. How exactly can it be "dead" if I'm logging in, and doing everything I want to do that requires a group, and without having to stand around waiting for even several minutes.
Even if the server does only have 400 concurrent players, wtf do I care? I've never done anything, in any mmo, that I required 399 other people to play with.
OMG! How will I ever find 4 to 19 other people to play with if there's only 400 on the server. OMG! What will I do without 10k other faceless individuals I'll never interact with.
this game its far from dead as people keep logging, and in some weeks they will realize KOTOr its full crap and return back to their mmo's games, RIFT its 1 or maybe the best mmrpg right now, polished and full of life in game not as KOTOr (its seems a 80's rpg solo game).
my pop size on my shard feels more then fine, but with that said..
so far i've found Alsbeth, Estrael, Atrophinius, Belmont, Galena all got a notice this morning of the server being converted to a trial server and my server (alsbeth) was recommended to go to shatterbone. the defiant guilds on my shard are all talking and tryin to figure out what server to move to as a whole. lookin at gnarlwood or greybriar.
*Sniff* Sad. Estrael was such a great server as late as October of last year and still had many people in late November. I even subbed my main account a few days ago , despite playing SWTOR....because I hate such a good game going away or the risk of F2P. Long live RIFT . At least Faeblight seems busy still. I think all the great time consuming games and new MMOs coming out were too much for poor Rift not to lose people. It sucks because I've really only been unsubbed for less than a few months.
It aint gong anywhere. The servers will probably need a few more merges after GW2 release but It will settle. Plenty of folks love the game.