Originally posted by Vantras

I dunno-my guild had just about everyone I regularly see still on.  Server was listed as "high", Sanctum was packed, expert dungeon runs were being formed, pvp instances were firing, AH was bustling.  I am sure there was some fall off-would be impossible for there not to be.  But all in all i think the first month crash has not happened.  Despite the obvious bunch of haters wishing/almost begging for it to happen.

 

Not sure why people cheer for games to fail.  I never really enjoyed WoW-thought it was a good game with an absolutely horrible community-that said-i never wished for it to fail.  Its success helped build the entire industry-made MMO's mainstream.  Games that I love today (Rift) are pulling heavily from a population of players that WoW brought to the genre-how this is a bad thing ill never know.

You can love Gladiator without HATING Braveheart-there is no mutual exclusivity to preference.  One games success does not mean that another MUST fail-its a big gaming world-success breeds success.  As a genre we'd all be better off if WoW perks along at 10 million plus AND Rift builds into the 2-3 million + category.  Nobody loses-the entire genre wins!

If Rift isnt your thing-so what-go back to whatever game is.  You had a million oppurtunities not to 'waste' money on it-if you chose to spend your money-you did so knowing what you were buying.  If it hasnt worked out-sorry-but move on.  Dont wish failure on it-who benefits from that?

I happen to think we are all worse off with failures such as Tabula Rasa, DCUO, AOC/WAR etc.  WoW isnt a better game because Tabula Rasa failed.  Take a deep breath-cheer for what you like-ignore what you do not!

 I'm torn because on one hand success breeds success, but on the other hand if the worn out design methods of World of Warcraft are applied to say Rift and it succeeds that further encourages more games to stay on the tried and true path as opposed to breaking new ground.  It makes investors push heavily toward games that follow the same model. Not everything WoW did was bad and not everything Rift did was poor either, but there needs to be a shake-up in the genre to avoid the stale feeling many of us veterans get when we log in these games that lack any depth, character options, solid interactive storylines, or solid PvP with a point beyond farming Honor/Favor in a meaningless battleground. There are other models that can and will succeed but it's going to take developers and investors with balls and a very clear vision of the changes that need to be made. 

In short yes in a way I root for copy cat non-innovative games to fail because no there is not an infinite player-base to draw from. Eventually you must draw from other games.

Skuldoon i agree that the "wow effect" has had a huge impact on the type of games that have followed.  But rather then cheering failure I cheer for the "indy" games to succede.  I am a huge fan of EVE, was a big booster for Perpeteeum when it first hit and always try to support games like Fallen Earth if they are at least half decent.

Id rather cheer a Fallen Earth then jeer a WoW.  But i hear you - some creativity would help.  I happen to think RIFT offers a fair bit of that.  Not a dramatic shift but w/ the soul system and rifts-i think theyve made a considerable contribution to innovation.  Quest-coaster, meaningless pvp, soul-less crafting-they still have a long way to go-but at least they did innovate and they did release clean.

Originally posted by Vantras

Skuldoon i agree that the "wow effect" has had a huge impact on the type of games that have followed.  But rather then cheering failure I cheer for the "indy" games to succede.  I am a huge fan of EVE, was a big booster for Perpeteeum when it first hit and always try to support games like Fallen Earth if they are at least half decent.

 

Id rather cheer a Fallen Earth then jeer a WoW.  But i hear you - some creativity would help.  I happen to think RIFT offers a fair bit of that.  Not a dramatic shift but w/ the soul system and rifts-i think theyve made a considerable contribution to innovation.  Quest-coaster, meaningless pvp, soul-less crafting-they still have a long way to go-but at least they did innovate and they did release clean.

Fallen Earth is pretty WoW-esque too.. I mean, A LOT less WoW-ish then Rift but it is a still a themepark that uses a lot of the same things WoW does.. Then again, we've all became so jaded with WoW it's easy call any themepark MMO WoW...

Rifts are nothing new, they are just PQs from warhammer, with a lot less variety. Oh they come in different pretty colors, but they are all exactly the same. Kill some mobs in a certain period of time to push it to higher stages, fun for about 10 levels, and then you realize its the exact same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and, well you get the idea.

At least warhammer the pqs didnt all feel exactly the same.

Originally posted by fiontar

Anyway, although I aknowledge my bad for the tangent touching upon why I left the game, the main point of the thread was population after the free month ended. The reported population values are inflated, which anyone can confirm by looking at server status during off, off peak hours. I also experienced far fewer people in game during my last three days in a noticeable "die off". Heck, the guild I was in only showed 6 of 80ish people had even signed in during the previous week.

Since you didn't bother countering observations on population decline, but rather thought it would be better to take a shot at the messanger, I have to assume you have noticed the same exact thing.

Out of curiosity I've been following extensively the Xfire, raptr and steam figures for the past couple of weeks up till yesterday, next to the server status, and in none of those I saw a dramatic decrease in numbers or activity that would support your claim.

Admittedly, the week and 2nd month is still young, but so far Rift seems to be doing ok.

Because we all know that it is all about ze numbers! Why do you guys care about whether X MMO has number 1, X MMO has number 2 etc. Especially when you are speculating :) I am pretty sure Trion will release numbers. As long as population is not a problem who cares :D

But yeah if you look at xfire it's doing fine. Of course, that is for Xfire users only of course :D I never used xfire and most of my friends don't use it, so we don't count it. Btw, why are people using Xfire? I find it useless and a waste of the ram and hd space it takes. 

I've no idea why people use Xfire, I wouldn't, but as a tool to notice trends it's been one of the most detailed I've encountered so far, and I include Raptr and Steam in that list.

Sure WoW has WoW census, but that's just one tool specifically for one MMO, and therefore can't be used for other MMO's to see what's going on in overall activity.

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

The majority of the servers being half empty doesn't indicate the game is "packed" imo, quite the opposite. 

The fact that Rift has lost a big chunk of it's players after the 1rst free month is undeniable. What's also undeniable is that the remaining subscribers are more than enough to keep the game going.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

Originally posted by Scambug

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

Uhm... what?

Originally posted by Scambug

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

The majority of the servers being half empty doesn't indicate the game is "packed" imo, quite the opposite. 

The fact that Rift has lost a big chunk of it's players after the 1rst free month is undeniable. What's also undeniable is that the remaining subscribers are more than enough to keep the game going.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

 If that were true then no game would ever get made

Greybriar still has a very good population almost around the clock.  I've really not noticed much of a change from headstart till now.

Originally posted by blueturtle13

Originally posted by Scambug

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

The majority of the servers being half empty doesn't indicate the game is "packed" imo, quite the opposite. 

The fact that Rift has lost a big chunk of it's players after the 1rst free month is undeniable. What's also undeniable is that the remaining subscribers are more than enough to keep the game going.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

 If that were true then no game would ever get made

I don't think taking general ideas is really plagiarising though. Isn't plagiarism copying the exact work of someone else and trying to pass it off as your own?

Originally posted by Scambug

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

So I guess you want WoW to stop as well then?? On topic - the server levels seem fine to me, and the population on my server seems good post free month deadline. There is always going to be some ppl leaving at that stage, for whatever reason. It seems the retention for Rift is pretty decent, and I'm pleased that it is.

Originally posted by Scambug

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

The majority of the servers being half empty doesn't indicate the game is "packed" imo, quite the opposite. 

The fact that Rift has lost a big chunk of it's players after the 1rst free month is undeniable. What's also undeniable is that the remaining subscribers are more than enough to keep the game going.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

Classic stuff. By this standard they should cancel WoW.  And I reckon Meridian and UO would be the only two MMO's permitted to survive-EQ1 perhaps since it went 3 dimensional.

If you had any sense of perspective you would realize just how much WoW copied eq1/uo and much virtually every game since has copied elements of the ones before it. 

If you had any understanding of business and society in general you would also understand that this is exactly how LIFE, BUSINESS and ACADEMIA work.  You take the best of what came before and improve, modify, innovate and update it.

Rift is undeniably one of the best titles to release in the last three+ years. It's not for everyone, its not groundbreaking.  but it runs smoothly, had an incredibly smooth release, is packed with content, has solid graphics, solidly improves public questing with its RIFT system, has a unique class system, and so far has pumped out content at a very solid rate.  RIFT is no failure and deserves the respect of the MMO community because in my opinion it respected us (unlike so many recent games) by releasing a polished and interesting gaming experience.

That said-it took a solid hit after the first month expired-after taking a bit more of a look around last night-the population was noticably and quite substaintially down.

Originally posted by fiontar

You do realize that xfire numbers have been debunked as providing any real value in these matters? Or that just bringing it up as a defense undermines your own point?

No they haven't. It's just some people like to claim so for some reason. I can't believe there are still people who have such a problem understanding that a program used by thousands of Rift players around the world can't show trends in the popularity of the game. Nobody is claiming it can show outright numbers but if a percentage of the X-fire players stop playing, or keep playing a particular game, it has to be a fairly accurate representation.

Opinion pollsters can fairly accurately forecast the results of political elections with a sample of a couple of thousand people. Rift provides a massively larger sample than that for a popular game such as Rift.

Most servers could be stuck mostly at Medium (which could mean anything to 10000 players to 5000 before it goes to Medium..I'll take the former). It sure isn't "increasing" I don't think. The game is just too unoriginal, and I never played WoW so in reality I should be loving it. It's no more popular than WAR/Aion when it first came out...

Originally posted by Zolgar

Originally posted by blueturtle13

Originally posted by Scambug

Originally posted by Furor

The servers are still packed as of peack time yesterday out of 99 servers 80% are medium, i have only seen 5 servers are  low, the rest of the remaingin servers are high.

eastern standard time for me even on peak time.

The majority of the servers being half empty doesn't indicate the game is "packed" imo, quite the opposite. 

The fact that Rift has lost a big chunk of it's players after the 1rst free month is undeniable. What's also undeniable is that the remaining subscribers are more than enough to keep the game going.

I personally don't think this game deserves to keep going. Plagiarism should never be rewarded.

 If that were true then no game would ever get made

I don't think taking general ideas is really plagiarising though. Isn't plagiarism copying the exact work of someone else and trying to pass it off as your own?

 Of course! but Rift borrows general ideas. It didnt recreate wow and call it Rift. 4story did that =p if plagerism didnt reward games like 4story and alganon would have never been made.