small number of servers + official ftp started yesterday
It was low pop but with active servers until two weeks ago or so when they let in all the Rift owners. The servers they have arent enough to handle the initial f2p rush. Who knows what will happen when the smoke clears. Will people stay this time? That is the question no one knows the answer to. But expect lots of people with posts about how Rift is the greatest MMO ever and how we should all play it.
If their design had been more open world than "follow-the-quest-hub", I think they would have unseated WOW some time ago. For now, I predict they will do well with FTP until the AAA sandboxes come out.
Anyway, good to see games evolving and getting away from the WOW clone model.
no game is remotely close to unseating WoW. the only sandbox that has a chance to get within 20% of WoWs subs hasnt even been officially revealed. it must suck to be a wow basher because you are in for many long years of disappointment.
i hope some people who have not tried the game see how good it is.
to me its the best of the wow style themeparks. if you like steampunk play a defiant
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Originally posted by Wylf Every single shard has a queue of 450+ players waiting. This as of 10:39 p.m. Eastern Time (US)
to put a perspective on this, Rift servers are believed to hold 3k. 3k x 8 = 24000. Suppose average queue of 750. that extra 6k brings us up to 30k concurent. For sake of easy math well say that EU population is 2/3rds of NA, so total concurrent (if EU servers were up, they seem currently down) is 50k. Probably be an increase in people trying to play over the weekend so it might reach EvE type numbers this weekend.
Not only are the servers full, but I'm re-downloading and the patcher is getting hammered. It was just down, now it's back up running at like 72Kbps on my fiber connection.. I usually get 3MB/s from them. hahah.
Very cool to see them getting some well-deserved attention, IMO.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by Wylf Every single shard has a queue of 450+ players waiting. This as of 10:39 p.m. Eastern Time (US)
to put a perspective on this, Rift servers are believed to hold 3k. 3k x 8 = 24000. Suppose average queue of 750. that extra 6k brings us up to 30k concurent. For sake of easy math well say that EU population is 2/3rds of NA, so total concurrent (if EU servers were up, they seem currently down) is 50k. Probably be an increase in people trying to play over the weekend so it might reach EvE type numbers this weekend.
Not bad at all
YAY! Fantasy math!
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop. Subscription = Actual content updates!
It wasn't low population though It was healthy since storm legion, just not huge. I used the word huge because right now that is exactly what it is. The population is huge. It may not stay that way, but so far, people in chat basically praising the game and asking loads of new player questions. . . . . was responding to strangelo or something's comment
It wasn't low population though It was healthy since storm legion, just not huge. I used the word huge because right now that is exactly what it is. The population is huge. It may not stay that way, but so far, people in chat basically praising the game and asking loads of new player questions. . . . . was responding to strangelo or something's comment
Yeah this is true.. I re-joined the game a couple weeks ago before F2P and there were people in the lowbie areas all over the place. It certainly wasn't dead, but no where near as busy as now.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I'm going to attempt to get in this weekend myself. It wasn't a terrible game, it just had some balance issues I wasn't fond of. Plus, as I like to play melee dps, the raids themselves were almost punishing to those that had chosen to go melee, but not so much that you couldn't play melee, just that it was frowned upon. Kinda hoping that's changed a bit.
Not to surprising. I don't think anyone really doubted Rift was a good game and had great design behind it. Its biggest issue just was it (at the time) wasn't fully developed out and it is just the 'same old' even if its a very good type, just since F2P is pretty popular. It was I feel one of the strongest AAA games to come out in the last couple of years as far as MMos goes, even so bold as to claim the best game over-all in the last couple of years as far as MMos go. Of course partly an opinion, but when it comes to looking at its design and ignoring 'innovation' (which is good but as TSW and GW2 show with their combat, innovation doesn't always execute smoothly) it takes the cake and runs with it.
I'd say it should be pretty healthy F2P wise for some time.
If their design had been more open world than "follow-the-quest-hub", I think they would have unseated WOW some time ago. For now, I predict they will do well with FTP until the AAA sandboxes come out.
Anyway, good to see games evolving and getting away from the WOW clone model.
[mod edit] Rift follows the same formula that Warhammer online and WoW do. Most themeparks do.
Originally posted by tank017 What day did it go F2P?
Today I believe. I haven't tried logging in yet as I tried it a couple of weeks back and wasn't that impressed. But a lot of my friends are on so I might check it out.
It wasn't low population though It was healthy since storm legion, just not huge.
It was low pop. The servers were active because they wisely condensed them (and thats why the queues are so extreme, because they are starting with well populated servers instead of slow ones)
It certainly wasn't 'dead' like a vanguard or a pre f2p western Aion. Somewhere in between the population of EQ and LOTRO (of course LOTRO's pop was helped by f2p) with a relatively safe/stable population. A game can be healthy and still low pop, just look at EQ1. I guess you could technically call that medium pop and reserve low pop for the Istarias of the world.
Seems Trion are considering adding a new cluster server to add 2 shards (keyword : considering). That's according to the devs on the RIFT forum.
Update: Daglar wrote this on RIFT forum: I just got off the phone with our engineering director. The proposed plan that we are going to be reviewing and finalizing in the morning for North America is to split the existing shards into two clusters and add an additional shard to each of those clusters.To give you guys a little background, our current population limits are more related to the total number of users in a cluster as opposed to on an individual shard. By splitting it into two healthy clusters we may be able to greatly increase the number of users on a per shard basis.We will also be reviewing Europe and determining how to further address the issues there.~Daglar
small number of servers + official ftp started yesterday
It was low pop but with active servers until two weeks ago or so when they let in all the Rift owners. The servers they have arent enough to handle the initial f2p rush. Who knows what will happen when the smoke clears. Will people stay this time? That is the question no one knows the answer to. But expect lots of people with posts about how Rift is the greatest MMO ever and how we should all play it.
This is pretty true. Rift has always had a decent reputation but it still didn't hold the players. The game wasn't anywhere near dead before but you wouldn't say it was busy. Will people stay this time? Like you said, no one knows. I think they should stay this time though. I can't see better value in the MMO market right now. Cash shop arguments aside, If someone wants to play all of Rift completely for free.. they can do exactly that.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Pretty comfortable compared to TERA EU. There you had waiting queues of 8 hours or more, with 1000-5000 people being in front of you, haha - on several servers.
I'm enjoying Rift at the moment, great game and even better with a healthy population.
They have chosen a good time for going F2P. There is really no major MMO release in the near future. Many people are probably in a kind of MMO idle state. Question is, can they keep those new customers. At least some.
I played Rift awhile back, got to max level, did a few raids, etc. It was a quality game. But at the end of the day, my thought was, if I wanted to play a game just like WoW with a different skin, no real reason not to just play WoW instead.
At least now there is a difference, since WoW is p2p and Rift is f2p.
Comments
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
it didnt get huge.
small number of servers + official ftp started yesterday
It was low pop but with active servers until two weeks ago or so when they let in all the Rift owners. The servers they have arent enough to handle the initial f2p rush. Who knows what will happen when the smoke clears. Will people stay this time? That is the question no one knows the answer to. But expect lots of people with posts about how Rift is the greatest MMO ever and how we should all play it.
no game is remotely close to unseating WoW. the only sandbox that has a chance to get within 20% of WoWs subs hasnt even been officially revealed. it must suck to be a wow basher because you are in for many long years of disappointment.
i hope some people who have not tried the game see how good it is.
to me its the best of the wow style themeparks. if you like steampunk play a defiant
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
to put a perspective on this, Rift servers are believed to hold 3k. 3k x 8 = 24000. Suppose average queue of 750. that extra 6k brings us up to 30k concurent. For sake of easy math well say that EU population is 2/3rds of NA, so total concurrent (if EU servers were up, they seem currently down) is 50k. Probably be an increase in people trying to play over the weekend so it might reach EvE type numbers this weekend.
Not bad at all
Not only are the servers full, but I'm re-downloading and the patcher is getting hammered. It was just down, now it's back up running at like 72Kbps on my fiber connection.. I usually get 3MB/s from them. hahah.
Very cool to see them getting some well-deserved attention, IMO.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
YAY! Fantasy math!
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
It wasn't low population though
It was healthy since storm legion, just not huge. I used the word huge because right now that is exactly what it is. The population is huge. It may not stay that way, but so far, people in chat basically praising the game and asking loads of new player questions. . . . . was responding to strangelo or something's comment 
Yeah this is true.. I re-joined the game a couple weeks ago before F2P and there were people in the lowbie areas all over the place. It certainly wasn't dead, but no where near as busy as now.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Not to surprising. I don't think anyone really doubted Rift was a good game and had great design behind it. Its biggest issue just was it (at the time) wasn't fully developed out and it is just the 'same old' even if its a very good type, just since F2P is pretty popular. It was I feel one of the strongest AAA games to come out in the last couple of years as far as MMos goes, even so bold as to claim the best game over-all in the last couple of years as far as MMos go. Of course partly an opinion, but when it comes to looking at its design and ignoring 'innovation' (which is good but as TSW and GW2 show with their combat, innovation doesn't always execute smoothly) it takes the cake and runs with it.
I'd say it should be pretty healthy F2P wise for some time.
[mod edit] Rift follows the same formula that Warhammer online and WoW do. Most themeparks do.
Today I believe. I haven't tried logging in yet as I tried it a couple of weeks back and wasn't that impressed. But a lot of my friends are on so I might check it out.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Rift was never a bad game, I just couldn't run it properly on my old machine 2 years ago.
Going to give this game a shot again...
It was low pop. The servers were active because they wisely condensed them (and thats why the queues are so extreme, because they are starting with well populated servers instead of slow ones)
It certainly wasn't 'dead' like a vanguard or a pre f2p western Aion. Somewhere in between the population of EQ and LOTRO (of course LOTRO's pop was helped by f2p) with a relatively safe/stable population. A game can be healthy and still low pop, just look at EQ1. I guess you could technically call that medium pop and reserve low pop for the Istarias of the world.
Seems Trion are considering adding a new cluster server to add 2 shards (keyword : considering). That's according to the devs on the RIFT forum.
Update: Daglar wrote this on RIFT forum: I just got off the phone with our engineering director. The proposed plan that we are going to be reviewing and finalizing in the morning for North America is to split the existing shards into two clusters and add an additional shard to each of those clusters.To give you guys a little background, our current population limits are more related to the total number of users in a cluster as opposed to on an individual shard. By splitting it into two healthy clusters we may be able to greatly increase the number of users on a per shard basis.We will also be reviewing Europe and determining how to further address the issues there.~Daglar
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-discussions/dev-tracker/364427-daglar-good-chance-new-servers-tomorrow.html
This is pretty true. Rift has always had a decent reputation but it still didn't hold the players. The game wasn't anywhere near dead before but you wouldn't say it was busy. Will people stay this time? Like you said, no one knows. I think they should stay this time though. I can't see better value in the MMO market right now. Cash shop arguments aside, If someone wants to play all of Rift completely for free.. they can do exactly that.
Pretty comfortable compared to TERA EU. There you had waiting queues of 8 hours or more, with 1000-5000 people being in front of you, haha - on several servers.
I'm enjoying Rift at the moment, great game and even better with a healthy population.
@pre-pre poster
Rift wasn't well populated the last months, at least not on the european side of life - all areas were pretty empty.
They have chosen a good time for going F2P. There is really no major MMO release in the near future. Many people are probably in a kind of MMO idle state.
Question is, can they keep those new customers. At least some.
Just what the doctor ordered, I guess. Nothing like a good injection of players to get an MMO going.
I played Rift awhile back, got to max level, did a few raids, etc. It was a quality game. But at the end of the day, my thought was, if I wanted to play a game just like WoW with a different skin, no real reason not to just play WoW instead.
At least now there is a difference, since WoW is p2p and Rift is f2p.