Originally posted by Ender4 They are down to only 5 or 6 servers on high during prime time on week days, the population has dropped quite a lot even if people want to refuse to admit it.
Why do you care?
Because I find following the market on MMOs that I play interesting. Same reason I followed the path that WAR and AOC took. I was curious if making a stale product that is pretty bug free would work out better than creating better titles that were obviously incomplete. Looks like neither option is better than the other so far.
It is also always funny watching fanboys use the most absurd logic to try to beg and plead that an MMO isn't losing population. Same exact thing happened with WAR and AOC.
They are down to only 5 or 6 servers on high during prime time on week days, the population has dropped quite a lot even if people want to refuse to admit it.
Why do you care?
Because I find following the market on MMOs that I play interesting. Same reason I followed the path that WAR and AOC took. I was curious if making a stale product that is pretty bug free would work out better than creating better titles that were obviously incomplete. Looks like neither option is better than the other so far.
It is also always funny watching fanboys use the most absurd logic to try to beg and plead that an MMO isn't losing population. Same exact thing happened with WAR and AOC.
It's no different than the logic used on the side of the haters.
It's completely possible that less populated servers simply indicate that the same number of players are still there, only they are playing less hours, which will result in less populated servers at a given time.
Do I know this is the case? Of course not, only an idiot would make a claim like that. But I also wouldn't claim it as evidence that they are bleeding subs.
Personally, I'll wait for official numbers. Closest thing we have is a few comments to the press, including a great IGN article, stating that at some point after launch they had over 1,000,000 players, and that subs have increased since launch. I won't take that as fact, but IGN is a reputable source, and Trion has not yet been proved to be a bunch of liars, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
There as been alot of talk lately about RIFT population sever instabilites. Some server are said to be crowded - but now more and more posts are coming out that alot of servers are emptying really fast.
Trion has now found a reason to start closing topics that point out that some servers are totally empty- even during peak hours.
Its actually very easy to check how many ppl are online on each server when they become so totally empty. The /who is limited to 28 lines. Over the past 3-4 days.. my server has NEVER had 28 characters at lvl 50 for each class in game. I did a total headcount on the server last monday 19:30-20:00 (server time) on guardian site and we had 359 ppl online. Thats in TOTAL.
The solution that Trion is finding atm is to hide these facts. Close posts about it and try instead to show images with server full msg - that happened during an awfull World event - where the solution from TRION was to limit the number of players online to few hundreds to prevent server collapse.
Here is an example of a post that is on General chat that has been closed.
I'm pretty sure Trion have said that it's not possible to accurately measure the population of a server using /who, so your figures are meaningless.
Even so, I'm prepared to accept there may be some underpopulated servers now, as they were adding them by the dozen at launch time just to try and cope with the unexpected numbers of new players. There's bound to be some falling off of numbers after the first month in any new game but if the number of players on your server are bothering you, you have the option of re-rolling on another. There are plenty of people 24/7 playing on Blightweald for instance. I mainly play in the daytime and even at 8am the queue to get in a warfront will often be less than a minute. I can't go anywhere on the map, even the most obscure places, without passing other players.
They don't really release the numbers ever anymore, the best you get is vague marketing exaggerations. That isn't a rip on Trion, Funcom did the same thing as did Mythic.
I'm sure part of the drop is players just not playing as much, but when the drop is so excessive there is more to it than that. It also isn't anything to freak out over, it is pretty normal to see MMOs peak at release and lose 50% of their population in the first month or two. I was curious if releasing in a more stable state would make a difference but it doesn't appear it has.
They are down to only 5 or 6 servers on high during prime time on week days, the population has dropped quite a lot even if people want to refuse to admit it.
Why do you care?
Because I find following the market on MMOs that I play interesting. Same reason I followed the path that WAR and AOC took. I was curious if making a stale product that is pretty bug free would work out better than creating better titles that were obviously incomplete. Looks like neither option is better than the other so far.
It is also always funny watching fanboys use the most absurd logic to try to beg and plead that an MMO isn't losing population. Same exact thing happened with WAR and AOC.
It's no different than the logic used on the side of the haters.
It's completely possible that less populated servers simply indicate that the same number of players are still there, only they are playing less hours, which will result in less populated servers at a given time.
Do I know this is the case? Of course not, only an idiot would make a claim like that. But I also wouldn't claim it as evidence that they are bleeding subs.
Personally, I'll wait for official numbers. Closest thing we have is a few comments to the press, including a great IGN article, stating that at some point after launch they had over 1,000,000 players, and that subs have increased since launch. I won't take that as fact, but IGN is a reputable source, and Trion has not yet been proved to be a bunch of liars, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
I thought the 1 million was the number of accts. created on the website not necessarily subs. And the comment that it has gone up since launch was referring to those accts not subs. Let me know if I am misinformed, I would like those numbers to be true!
I am playing Rift and having lots of fun and will be for a long time. My main reason for sticking with Rift is the company and the company alone. Tell me when another MMO company has responded like they have to issues on the fly with little to no down time. We can go round and round about the quality of content but Trion Worlds IMO is the #1 company just for how they have handled their paying community.
There as been alot of talk lately about RIFT population sever instabilites. Some server are said to be crowded - but now more and more posts are coming out that alot of servers are emptying really fast.
Trion has now found a reason to start closing topics that point out that some servers are totally empty- even during peak hours.
Its actually very easy to check how many ppl are online on each server when they become so totally empty. The /who is limited to 28 lines. Over the past 3-4 days.. my server has NEVER had 28 characters at lvl 50 for each class in game. I did a total headcount on the server last monday 19:30-20:00 (server time) on guardian site and we had 359 ppl online. Thats in TOTAL.
The solution that Trion is finding atm is to hide these facts. Close posts about it and try instead to show images with server full msg - that happened during an awfull World event - where the solution from TRION was to limit the number of players online to few hundreds to prevent server collapse.
Here is an example of a post that is on General chat that has been closed.
I'm pretty sure Trion have said that it's not possible to accurately measure the population of a server using /who, so your figures are meaningless.
Even so, I'm prepared to accept there may be some underpopulated servers now, as they were adding them by the dozen at launch time just to try and cope with the unexpected numbers of new players. There's bound to be some falling off of numbers after the first month in any new game but if the number of players on your server are bothering you, you have the option of re-rolling on another. There are plenty of people 24/7 playing on Blightweald for instance. I mainly play in the daytime and even at 8am the queue to get in a warfront will often be less than a minute. I can't go anywhere on the map, even the most obscure places, without passing other players.
Can you find me the post where TRION said WHO can not be used to find out population numbers ?
As I said- Im pretty sure its not possible on a server that has healthy population. But we are talking a server that doesn't have that. And thats when you start looking. Im pretty sure TRION desided to allow 28 lines in their search results to prevent ppl to find out real population numbers.... Im just not sure they realised servers would go this low this fast. My bet is that their "solution" is to change it to 10 lines withing a week.
Trion servers carry around 5k people max per server. Servers can empty out quite quick with only that amount of people.
~besides everyone is just now figuring out that Trion can't code worth a dam~
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
It's no different than the logic used on the side of the haters.
It's completely possible that less populated servers simply indicate that the same number of players are still there, only they are playing less hours, which will result in less populated servers at a given time.
Do I know this is the case? Of course not, only an idiot would make a claim like that. But I also wouldn't claim it as evidence that they are bleeding subs.
Personally, I'll wait for official numbers. Closest thing we have is a few comments to the press, including a great IGN article, stating that at some point after launch they had over 1,000,000 players, and that subs have increased since launch. I won't take that as fact, but IGN is a reputable source, and Trion has not yet been proved to be a bunch of liars, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
It really doesn't matter if ppl are playing less or if they are not subbing when it comes to overall progression on the server.
The problem atm that is facing the low population servers is there IS not progress for endgame content. There are no raids - there are no raiding guilds cause ppl playing less means they are also not raiding. And there are not players that can fill those spots cause there are so few players online.
Lets compare one thing here. I played on a medium populated EU WOW server. My guild was ranked 40 something on the server in terms of raiding content and we have killed all Cata bosses on normal.
I play on a "medium" (acording to TRION) populated server and there are NO raiding guilds at all. Most tier 2 dungeon players have quit already form those GUilds that were gonna try raiding.
THis is the contrast we have to face. And no - Im not hardcore - I started playing RIFT about month ago. BUt I expect my character to be able to progress in a resonable way in a "1 million account" game. At least 40 guilds are doing it in a 12 million sub game. So lets compare the "sub" here shall we ?
I have not played Rift yet. Hearing of declining numbers already will probably keep me from trying it. I remember buying into the hype for Warhammer and spending nine months getting some chars up to 40 with decent renoun. By then there were hardly any city sieges or even the forts in the rv areas. So I came back to wow. Warhammer had lots of new ideas and quite a few zones. Their annimation was pretty crappy but the game could have be fun with enough people. However once the pop started declining and server merges started ... it seem to decline even faster. I really don't want to invest a lot of time in a new game just to have it die, I think I might do a free trial when that starts .... dunno.
I have not played Rift yet. Hearing of declining numbers already will probably keep me from trying it. I remember buying into the hype for Warhammer and spending nine months getting some chars up to 40 with decent renoun. By then there were hardly any city sieges or even the forts in the rv areas. So I came back to wow. Warhammer had lots of new ideas and quite a few zones. Their annimation was pretty crappy but the game could have be fun with enough people. However once the pop started declining and server merges started ... it seem to decline even faster. I really don't want to invest a lot of time in a new game just to have it die, I think I might do a free trial when that starts .... dunno.
Ya missed 2 free weekend trials.
The following statement is false The previous statement is true
I happen to play in one of the largest and most active guilds on my server, and of late I've found that level 50 players are playing less. However only 3 of the many, many level 50 players in our guild have actually left the game. The others log in at least once a day for a couple of hours. Furthermore that last 2 free weekends have led us to taking in many, many more players than we took in prior to that period... So from what we can tell (and from the fact that we went from a low pop to a sustained medium pop over those 2 weekends) Rift seems to be on the up, not the down.
The fact is that right now, the game has hit a stagnation point where the amount of players at max level on a lot of servers isn't enough to keep regular high end gameplay ticking over for a lot of players. So many are playing the waiting game. This clearly leads to a number of players sitting out whilst they wait for the end game numbers to pick up.
And let's be clear here: Warhammer Online had severe diminishment of players not after the first 2 months, but after the first 30 days of release. The active player base for WAR had dropped from the 700,000+ figure they were touting at month one to under 150,000 by month three. Are we likely to see that repeated with Rift? No, we're not. At least not from what I've seen.
There is a small group of people that are complaining about a lack of server population, and it is true that this is effecting some servers, but is it all of them? No. I think that Trion managed population control really badly, and that is why we're seeing the problems we're seeing now.
I started this game a week ago and I'm already level 25 (no powergaming or grinding, just by doing the quests and exploring stuff without haste).
In Sanctum I see many people at level 50 with top end gear. So when people are finished with everything in less than 2 months, it won't take long till they get bored and quit. MMOs became like fast food nowadays, everything is achieved fast and easily, there is no point in playing them for too long, so the death comes fast too and is inevitable - RIFT seems to be an extreme example for that.
Whereas other MMORPGs, that don't have level caps (like tibia) or offer almost unlimited possibilities to progress the avatar (like EVE) are constantly growing, there you log in and find people who play for over 5 years.
But it seems MMO publishers don't learn this simple lesson and let a 50 million dollar investment die after a rather short time when it could flourish for years with just little changes in the character progression system and longterm goals as motivations.
Trion made a mistake and added too many new servers for release after all queues on headstart. So I guess those servers might have population issues and merging those would be a good idea. Tho if I were Trion I'd wait with merges for TERA or some another hyped MMO open beta/launch goes live so haters will move and make "the sky is falling" threads there.
As for servers from headstart and Sparkwing which I play on - absolutely no issues. During event zerg of lvl 50 players cleared 4 Stillmoor(1 of 2 lvl 50 areas) bosses under 5 minutes. Whole event was like 30 minutes tops till phase 3. So definetely players are out there.
Then end game outside expert dungeons and raids is a bit lackluster for more casual players. Need more activities for that PuG style players which were catered thorough whole game via rifts and invasions. Have to wait and see what Trion does as so far it's really solid in terms of fast reacting on all major issues.
Last thing is WoW spoiled people expectations. Blizz really delivered and made new standard in MMO games. Thus I realy doubt You'll see MMO that will repeat that success in terms of population(12 millions active subs). Also there won't be shocking novelty or more content at start - be it Rift, Tera, SW:TOR or GW2. So either deal with fact that MMOs few months after launch will be worse than WoW in terms of population and content or go back to aged now Azeroth(not pointing this at sandbox lovers as neither WoW nor Rift are their piece of cake). I admit that this can be a poor choice but all I see now are people expecting impossible.
No smaller company on saturated already MMO market will deliver better than Blizz did, it's impossible
I disagree with the 'ghost town' statement. At peak hours on Argent, I am having little trouble finding guildies, PUGs, and random people to do group stuff with, from dungeons to rifts. I haven't tried PvP in this game yet, so battleground numbers don't interest me. But yeah, I'm finding plenty of people to roleplay with and quest with.
I don't much care for official numbers, so I won't be running any /who lists anytime soon. Game is flowing nicely for my required level of enjoyment.
server merges are bound to happen since Trion added A LOT of new servers at the beginning. They knew (we all knew in fact) that this would happen and there's no way to avoid it, unless rift magically attracts thousands of new players which i dont think is going to happen.. so Its the right thing to do and a good idea if you ask me. Nobody likes to wander around empty towns waiting 2 hours for a group. I dont get it why everyone thinks server merges are such a bad idea.
No. That is quite not what I experience. I play in the German PVE-RP server. Forgot the name, but it is full at prime time and even busy on other hours. So no, I entirely can't confirm that.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Also the WHO command doesn't show players who are in Warfronts or porting between zones.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
OmaliMMO Business CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 1,177
Originally posted by Shodanas
Originally posted by Apeg
Time for server merge I guess. Nothing special in the MMO genre.
This early? The game went live only 2 months ago.
It wouldn't be surprising. I mean, they did open 30 servers right after launch to accommodate the early buyers. If a standard game carries about a 60% retention rate on a good day, that means a lot of servers will become empty.
I find this to be a perfect example of ghostown server...oh wait... Screenie was taken during last weekend event. I wonder if I'll now see conspiracy theories about Trion making servers full while they weren't...
Originally posted by crazynanny I find this to be a perfect example of ghostown server...oh wait... Screenie was taken during last weekend event. I wonder if I'll now see conspiracy theories about Trion making servers full while they weren't...
You do realize just how silly this makes you look? You picked one server as an example of how servers aren't ghost towns when there still could be dozens that are. You also took a screenshot from the time when they were giving free trials to anyone who wanted one, of course there was a heavy population.
There are still 5 or 6 high pop servers at prime time and I'm sure there are at least 5 or 6 more that are high medium. That doesn't mean there aren't a dozen that are struggling with pop too.
I play on Argent. Argent has never had the status full, mostly medium, but it's nice and busy there. I can also always play WF's within 15 minutes. So you statement that RIFT EU servers are ghosttowns is not true. It might be true for some servers, but I don't feel the need to go check that out.
Trion made the correct decision by providing plenty of capacity at the begining, customers want to get in quickly and not queue so they clealry picked an option to suit their customer's needs rather than vice versa. it's not acceptable for them to leave a small populated server as is so they will need to merge otherwise they will simply lose the players permanantly on that server. Best option for those stuck on a low pop server is to join a big guild and keep an eye out for server transfers/merges.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
I find this to be a perfect example of ghostown server...oh wait...
Screenie was taken during last weekend event. I wonder if I'll now see conspiracy theories about Trion making servers full while they weren't...
Last weekend....that was during the free play event was it not ?
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Comments
Because I find following the market on MMOs that I play interesting. Same reason I followed the path that WAR and AOC took. I was curious if making a stale product that is pretty bug free would work out better than creating better titles that were obviously incomplete. Looks like neither option is better than the other so far.
It is also always funny watching fanboys use the most absurd logic to try to beg and plead that an MMO isn't losing population. Same exact thing happened with WAR and AOC.
It's no different than the logic used on the side of the haters.
It's completely possible that less populated servers simply indicate that the same number of players are still there, only they are playing less hours, which will result in less populated servers at a given time.
Do I know this is the case? Of course not, only an idiot would make a claim like that. But I also wouldn't claim it as evidence that they are bleeding subs.
Personally, I'll wait for official numbers. Closest thing we have is a few comments to the press, including a great IGN article, stating that at some point after launch they had over 1,000,000 players, and that subs have increased since launch. I won't take that as fact, but IGN is a reputable source, and Trion has not yet been proved to be a bunch of liars, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm pretty sure Trion have said that it's not possible to accurately measure the population of a server using /who, so your figures are meaningless.
Even so, I'm prepared to accept there may be some underpopulated servers now, as they were adding them by the dozen at launch time just to try and cope with the unexpected numbers of new players. There's bound to be some falling off of numbers after the first month in any new game but if the number of players on your server are bothering you, you have the option of re-rolling on another. There are plenty of people 24/7 playing on Blightweald for instance. I mainly play in the daytime and even at 8am the queue to get in a warfront will often be less than a minute. I can't go anywhere on the map, even the most obscure places, without passing other players.
They don't really release the numbers ever anymore, the best you get is vague marketing exaggerations. That isn't a rip on Trion, Funcom did the same thing as did Mythic.
I'm sure part of the drop is players just not playing as much, but when the drop is so excessive there is more to it than that. It also isn't anything to freak out over, it is pretty normal to see MMOs peak at release and lose 50% of their population in the first month or two. I was curious if releasing in a more stable state would make a difference but it doesn't appear it has.
I thought the 1 million was the number of accts. created on the website not necessarily subs. And the comment that it has gone up since launch was referring to those accts not subs. Let me know if I am misinformed, I would like those numbers to be true!
I am playing Rift and having lots of fun and will be for a long time. My main reason for sticking with Rift is the company and the company alone. Tell me when another MMO company has responded like they have to issues on the fly with little to no down time. We can go round and round about the quality of content but Trion Worlds IMO is the #1 company just for how they have handled their paying community.
Can you find me the post where TRION said WHO can not be used to find out population numbers ?
As I said- Im pretty sure its not possible on a server that has healthy population. But we are talking a server that doesn't have that. And thats when you start looking. Im pretty sure TRION desided to allow 28 lines in their search results to prevent ppl to find out real population numbers.... Im just not sure they realised servers would go this low this fast. My bet is that their "solution" is to change it to 10 lines withing a week.
Trion servers carry around 5k people max per server. Servers can empty out quite quick with only that amount of people.
~besides everyone is just now figuring out that Trion can't code worth a dam~
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
It really doesn't matter if ppl are playing less or if they are not subbing when it comes to overall progression on the server.
The problem atm that is facing the low population servers is there IS not progress for endgame content. There are no raids - there are no raiding guilds cause ppl playing less means they are also not raiding. And there are not players that can fill those spots cause there are so few players online.
Lets compare one thing here. I played on a medium populated EU WOW server. My guild was ranked 40 something on the server in terms of raiding content and we have killed all Cata bosses on normal.
I play on a "medium" (acording to TRION) populated server and there are NO raiding guilds at all. Most tier 2 dungeon players have quit already form those GUilds that were gonna try raiding.
THis is the contrast we have to face. And no - Im not hardcore - I started playing RIFT about month ago. BUt I expect my character to be able to progress in a resonable way in a "1 million account" game. At least 40 guilds are doing it in a 12 million sub game. So lets compare the "sub" here shall we ?
I have not played Rift yet. Hearing of declining numbers already will probably keep me from trying it. I remember buying into the hype for Warhammer and spending nine months getting some chars up to 40 with decent renoun. By then there were hardly any city sieges or even the forts in the rv areas. So I came back to wow. Warhammer had lots of new ideas and quite a few zones. Their annimation was pretty crappy but the game could have be fun with enough people. However once the pop started declining and server merges started ... it seem to decline even faster. I really don't want to invest a lot of time in a new game just to have it die, I think I might do a free trial when that starts .... dunno.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
Listen games always have more servers than they need in the begining to accomodate the tourist. Then they shrink down to their base players.
Ya missed 2 free weekend trials.
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true
Hmmm did not know ... guess i wasn't paying enough attention.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
I happen to play in one of the largest and most active guilds on my server, and of late I've found that level 50 players are playing less. However only 3 of the many, many level 50 players in our guild have actually left the game. The others log in at least once a day for a couple of hours. Furthermore that last 2 free weekends have led us to taking in many, many more players than we took in prior to that period... So from what we can tell (and from the fact that we went from a low pop to a sustained medium pop over those 2 weekends) Rift seems to be on the up, not the down.
The fact is that right now, the game has hit a stagnation point where the amount of players at max level on a lot of servers isn't enough to keep regular high end gameplay ticking over for a lot of players. So many are playing the waiting game. This clearly leads to a number of players sitting out whilst they wait for the end game numbers to pick up.
And let's be clear here: Warhammer Online had severe diminishment of players not after the first 2 months, but after the first 30 days of release. The active player base for WAR had dropped from the 700,000+ figure they were touting at month one to under 150,000 by month three. Are we likely to see that repeated with Rift? No, we're not. At least not from what I've seen.
There is a small group of people that are complaining about a lack of server population, and it is true that this is effecting some servers, but is it all of them? No. I think that Trion managed population control really badly, and that is why we're seeing the problems we're seeing now.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
I started this game a week ago and I'm already level 25 (no powergaming or grinding, just by doing the quests and exploring stuff without haste).
In Sanctum I see many people at level 50 with top end gear. So when people are finished with everything in less than 2 months, it won't take long till they get bored and quit. MMOs became like fast food nowadays, everything is achieved fast and easily, there is no point in playing them for too long, so the death comes fast too and is inevitable - RIFT seems to be an extreme example for that.
Whereas other MMORPGs, that don't have level caps (like tibia) or offer almost unlimited possibilities to progress the avatar (like EVE) are constantly growing, there you log in and find people who play for over 5 years.
But it seems MMO publishers don't learn this simple lesson and let a 50 million dollar investment die after a rather short time when it could flourish for years with just little changes in the character progression system and longterm goals as motivations.
Trion made a mistake and added too many new servers for release after all queues on headstart. So I guess those servers might have population issues and merging those would be a good idea. Tho if I were Trion I'd wait with merges for TERA or some another hyped MMO open beta/launch goes live so haters will move and make "the sky is falling" threads there.
As for servers from headstart and Sparkwing which I play on - absolutely no issues. During event zerg of lvl 50 players cleared 4 Stillmoor(1 of 2 lvl 50 areas) bosses under 5 minutes. Whole event was like 30 minutes tops till phase 3. So definetely players are out there.
Then end game outside expert dungeons and raids is a bit lackluster for more casual players. Need more activities for that PuG style players which were catered thorough whole game via rifts and invasions. Have to wait and see what Trion does as so far it's really solid in terms of fast reacting on all major issues.
Last thing is WoW spoiled people expectations. Blizz really delivered and made new standard in MMO games. Thus I realy doubt You'll see MMO that will repeat that success in terms of population(12 millions active subs). Also there won't be shocking novelty or more content at start - be it Rift, Tera, SW:TOR or GW2. So either deal with fact that MMOs few months after launch will be worse than WoW in terms of population and content or go back to aged now Azeroth(not pointing this at sandbox lovers as neither WoW nor Rift are their piece of cake). I admit that this can be a poor choice but all I see now are people expecting impossible.
No smaller company on saturated already MMO market will deliver better than Blizz did, it's impossible
I disagree with the 'ghost town' statement. At peak hours on Argent, I am having little trouble finding guildies, PUGs, and random people to do group stuff with, from dungeons to rifts. I haven't tried PvP in this game yet, so battleground numbers don't interest me. But yeah, I'm finding plenty of people to roleplay with and quest with.
I don't much care for official numbers, so I won't be running any /who lists anytime soon. Game is flowing nicely for my required level of enjoyment.
server merges are bound to happen since Trion added A LOT of new servers at the beginning. They knew (we all knew in fact) that this would happen and there's no way to avoid it, unless rift magically attracts thousands of new players which i dont think is going to happen.. so Its the right thing to do and a good idea if you ask me. Nobody likes to wander around empty towns waiting 2 hours for a group. I dont get it why everyone thinks server merges are such a bad idea.
No. That is quite not what I experience. I play in the German PVE-RP server. Forgot the name, but it is full at prime time and even busy on other hours. So no, I entirely can't confirm that.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Also the WHO command doesn't show players who are in Warfronts or porting between zones.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
It wouldn't be surprising. I mean, they did open 30 servers right after launch to accommodate the early buyers. If a standard game carries about a 60% retention rate on a good day, that means a lot of servers will become empty.
I find this to be a perfect example of ghostown server...oh wait...
Screenie was taken during last weekend event. I wonder if I'll now see conspiracy theories about Trion making servers full while they weren't...
You do realize just how silly this makes you look? You picked one server as an example of how servers aren't ghost towns when there still could be dozens that are. You also took a screenshot from the time when they were giving free trials to anyone who wanted one, of course there was a heavy population.
There are still 5 or 6 high pop servers at prime time and I'm sure there are at least 5 or 6 more that are high medium. That doesn't mean there aren't a dozen that are struggling with pop too.
I play on Argent. Argent has never had the status full, mostly medium, but it's nice and busy there. I can also always play WF's within 15 minutes. So you statement that RIFT EU servers are ghosttowns is not true. It might be true for some servers, but I don't feel the need to go check that out.
Trion made the correct decision by providing plenty of capacity at the begining, customers want to get in quickly and not queue so they clealry picked an option to suit their customer's needs rather than vice versa. it's not acceptable for them to leave a small populated server as is so they will need to merge otherwise they will simply lose the players permanantly on that server. Best option for those stuck on a low pop server is to join a big guild and keep an eye out for server transfers/merges.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Last weekend....that was during the free play event was it not ?
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...