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Rift: Counting on Success
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It has been nearly six months since the official launch of Trion's inaugural MMO, Rift. In the intervening months, people have been arguing about whether or not Rift is a success. In today's Riding the Rift column, MMORPG.com Associate Editor Suzie Ford takes a look at exactly that and offers a few thoughts about the issue. Check out Suzie's Tripping the Rift column and then add a few of your ideas in the comments below.
Other titles have come along in the first half of the year, some for only a bright and shining moment. Any more, MMOs enter into the game space in an increasingly crowded market. Gone are the days of wildly popular financial successes largely due to the limited number of games in the genre. In today’s market, there is fierce competition for players and their wallets. But what is it that constitutes success? Is it earning tens of millions per month for a short time before players begin moving on to the “next big thing”? Or is it a loyal fan base of lesser numbers that stick with subscribing to the game for a year or more? And what about free to play revenue models and the impact on those games still utilizing the subscription model the way Rift does?
Read more of Suzie Ford's Riding the Rift: Counting on Success.
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Comments
"Lacking hard numbers and actual revenue collection statistics, we can still measure, or at least opine about, Rift’s success. Let’s take a look."
"We don’t know all the facts and can only speculate as to Rift’s financial success."
IMHO, that's really the bottom line. I personally suspect that Trion is making Rift out to be more of a success than it is, spinning vague ambiguous numbers as best they can, because they know it helps advertising. Probably helps them secure funding for future pojects, too. Without hard numbers though, there just isn't much of anything to discuss.
We don’t know all the facts and can only speculate as to Rift’s financial success.Lacking hard numbers and actual revenue collection statistics, we can still measure, or at least opine about, Rift’s success. Let’s take a look.
We don’t know all the facts and can only speculate as to Rift’s financial success.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I guess when those words come from someone named Lasterba, we should just accept it, huh?
ME THINKS that when GW2 and SW:TOR has been released (succesfully), the hype from those games will fade away and everyone will face the fact that they aren't gamebreaking or wow-killing. They are just games, and eventually all the fuzz will fade away while they still remain solid with a healthy playerbase.
I remember how hyped everyone was about rift. These so called "rifts" or random events (which aren't THAT random tbh), was so innovative and groundbreaking within this genre. It's worked out great, and pvp rifts has been implemented recently (with a few bugs), but I know that Rift will be just as popular as GW2 or SW:TOR once those games are old news. Well, maybe not equally popular, but it will most definately not be forgotten
/end rant
I have no doubt come one year from now whatever game these people are playing they will be doing what DAoC players do now and what some people did when they went back to WoW.
It looked like this and it was roughly a 200 page thread on the Blizzard general forums....qq why can't we have ward drobe slots like Rift...Why can't our world be alive? Why can't you separate pve and pvp damage? Why do you charge us for transfers when Rift showed it could be done for free? What is up with this premium feature crap when Rift showed you could do it for free?
Mark my words if SWToR or GW2 the two biggies coming up will not have these complaints, ESPECIALLYYYYYY if EA decides to charge for server transfers.
I bring up the DAoC guys btw because no matter what game they are always crying for RvR like it used to be in their previous game.
No logical person could argue that Rift is doing well and will continue to do well. For years most new MMO's last a month or two and their populations hit rock bottom. Rift has been out for half a year not and has over 60 shards that are all well populated or packed full. I don't play Rift and personally don't like it because I tend to focus more on pvp driven games. I will honestly say howver that Trion has done well and their rate of releasing and updating their game will hopefully wake other developers up and keep them on their toes.
WoW, a game praised for it's content, will receive 3 major patches in the same time that Rift will release 5-6 major patches. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say Blizzard wins the resource pool so what is Trion doing right that blizzard is doing wrong?
I guess when these words come from someone named Shizaxxx, we should just accept it, huh?
The same basically goes for you my friend, just like Lasterba you just post a few statements without real facts to back it up with.
orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the game is not a huge grind ..but you know tomatoe tamatoe
Of course it still is a huge grind. Quest grinding to max, craft grinding to you can make something useful, rep grinding, valour grinding and gear grinding for endgame. Rift as one big grind but it's no way near as grindy as something like Lineage or Everquest. Which is why I was able to max out 3 chars and deck them out in T1 or T2 gear, in 2 months. ^_^
I am currently playing Rift and enjoying it. I've played MMO's since the days of Ultima Online, and I can safely say, I can not remember a single game that pushed out content of consistant quality as Trion.
Six months and there are, what, 3 raids available (Greenscale, River of Souls, Hammerknell? Not sure, I'm not even 50 yet) and a plethora of instances and expert instances? WoW did NOT push out content this fast, and to this day, still does not. I remember it was some time before Molten Core was available.
And I say consistant quality, and not perfect, because as always, there ARE bugs. But the turn around.. It's patches every other day it seems! Plus the Soul system (A balancing nightmare in and of itself), rifts, invasions, achievements, the crafting systems, wardrobes battlegrounds, free server transfers? That's a LOT to have within 6 months.
People say, "Well, it's just a WoW clone"... I love that argument because it illustrates how amazingly poor some people's memories are. When WoW launched it did EXACTLY what Rift did - It took the best elements from existing games, and put it into their own. You establish the basics, and THEN you innovate. What do the SWTOR fans think they're doing? Ooo.. Adding voice! INNOVATION! Other than that? WoW clone in the Star Wars universe. And really, that's FINE, nothing wrong with that, but don't put lipstick on a pig and call it a fox.
Give credit where it's due. Say what you will about the game if it's not to your taste, but as a developer, Trion ranks right up there with Blizzard in my book.. and in some ways is surpasing them.
"We don’t know all the facts and can only speculate as to Rift’s financial success."
uhm not to sound nasty but if you don't have the numbers what do you really have to write about???
Blizz lost almost 1 mil subs in a single month and they reported it why is Trion being close lipped on it's Q numbers?
oh and i forgot, lets face it , in this industry in this economic tumult we all know that the only sustainable long term game model is F2P Lotro style.
Blizzard has no choice because they chose to be baught out by a publically traded company. As far as I know Blizzard is the only company forced to do this. Sony is traded in Japan I believe and they do not have the same FCC guidelines as we do so they are not required to publish numbers to their shareholders.
NCSoft in Korea only ever puts out numbers when they are positive, but chooses not to talk when it those numbers go down lol...companies hate publishing bad news.
Actually, earlier in the article, I stated that we could "opine" about the financial success of Rift based on the things I discussed in the article.
As for Trion not revealing any numbers, unlike Blizzard, they are not a publicly owned company that issues stock to buyers. As a privately held corporation, they are under no onus to reveal any financial data.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Having played all of the big named games over the last 15 years I've been online gaming, I have to say that Rift has kept my attention longer than any of the others. The soul system is excellent and as for the game being a success. I neither care or am interested because I'm enjoying the game. By the time the game eventually folds I will have long since moved on to something else. So I say to those that haven't tried it, dont listen to the people who claim it's no good. Give it a try and see for yourself. Be daring, have your own opinion
There's no good reason for Trion to publish numbers. It doesn't matter what they publish, it will either be taken as a sign the game is doing well or doing poorly depending on the outlook of the person reading them. Those numbers aren't necessary for anyone playing the game. All the players need to know is if there will be enough people playing to do the content. The answer is, "Yes".
They aren't hiding the numbers from investors. If investors want to invest, and want to see the financials, they'll get to see them (with a non-disclosure agreement of course). This is why Blizzard announces their numbers. Their investors are stockholders, and not all of them come down to Blizzard's offices, so Blizzard has to publish the numbers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
One more thing I forgot... You mentioned no new zones?
Rift has 2 of them coming. They are not complete, but were temporarily accessible on the live servers (As an oversight, no doubt). Ember Isle was one, and I don't remember the name of the other.
So they are coming!
900K over 2 quarters =/= 1 million subs in a month
!
Yeah SB I posted a link to the Gamescon vid in the Rift subforums here.
Imagine if every dollar they recieve, they spend 30% or thirty cents to invest into a real world asset. Depending on what asset they invest into, rift can become self sufficient enough to pay its own server costs and operational fees without depending on subscriptions. If anyone is even one tenth of a business investor, then you will know what I'm talking about. Now I won't go as far and say Trion is actually doing this, but it would be safe to assume that if they had brains, they would be doing this. any company would, but most in this industry do not. Depending solely on the consumer for X years is lunacy. Instead, you must focus what you can into asset allocation to become better self sustainable. If you can, then your subs or box sales will be infinite returns. Not only would you not be dependant on the box sales or subscriptions, you would be able to use the money coming directly in from the game to make other games and aquire more assets. Though costs may seem high, you can reasonably invest time and very little money into a decent return. The asset will need monthly cash flow to pay for the costs, but it will also need to return the investment at (guesstimate) 20% return per year.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Noted! As said, delivering these (which I speculated needed to happen), only helps keep the community involved and active, both positives for Trion.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Success in MMO's is a relative thing-since NONE of us are privvy to the internal numbers of running Trion or any game company, what their ROI looks like, their burn rate/overhead. So we are left with really one way to measure success and that is to compare it to the other games in the genre.
To those that say Rift is a failure or not successful I guess Id have to ask-"by using your own measuring stick-what games on today's market ARE successful?". Or "what games are MORE successful than RIFT?". If you look at the games on this website there is no arguing that compared to whats listed here RIFT sold a good number of boxes, held on to a good number of subscriptions and currently maintains a healthy player base. Again-what games are doing better?
Id say WoW, EVE are certainly "more" successful. And id say DDO, LOTRO are experiencing comparable success in terms of boxes sold, subs maintained, servers active, and revenue. Followed perhaps by Aion? (lots of boxes sold, very few active servers but the servers that are active are busy) and maybe EQ2.
If Rift is a failure then by using the "compared to" model of measurement EVERY game on this website is a failure with the exception of EVE and WoW and maybe one or two others. Sure would be an odd thing for dozens of companies to run dozens of failed games but...
That said I agree-RIFT needs both an AA system and it desperately needs to open up some new zones-the world just feels VERY small. Instant portals to the same two or three zones to raid/rift/quest. I spend 95% of my time in sanctum/IPP/and stillmoor and the rest just insta porting thru the lobby/matchmaking system directly from Sanctum.
Trion is in a lose/lose situation if they release their numbers. All I can say is that nobody other than it's board of directors and financial backers can declare if it is a success. As for whether or not the game is a sucess? Servers are medium to full for about 15-18 hours a day with paying customers. Granted we don't know what metric they use to declare "full" but at most level ranges you are surrounded by other players. They seem to be doing well since they are hiring 50 plus people and have two new MMOs on the horizon. I suspect that private funding is not much of an issue for them.
It's ok to not like the game, it's another thing to bias your own ability to reason.
P.S. excellent editorial Ms. Ford.
I'm sorry, i forgot the link to their current hiring initiative.......http://www.trionworlds.com/en/careers/
Redpin, you raise valid business points if Trion is the parent company and soley owned. There are reasons why a subsidiary would be advised to avoid outside revenue streams.