The Trion and Rift teams are ready to unleash a week's worth of celebratory excitement into Telara with the upcoming Half Birthday Celebration starting on August 25th. MMORPG.com's Suzie Ford sat in on a conference with Trion's Scott Hartsman to talk about the event. Check out what's in store for players as Trion gives back to its community.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been six months since the debut of Trion’s inaugural title, Rift. Not only did Rift start off with a bang, it continues to dazzle its fans with some of the most rewarding developer-community communication ever. Because of that and because it’s a game that the dev team actually plays and loves, Rift is still in its growing phase and doing quite well according to Scott Hartsman. With all that good news on the table, devs felt that they had to do something to celebrate Rift’s success and, boy, are they doing it in a grand way.

Read more of Suzie Ford's Rift: They Grow Up So Fast, Don't They?

This kind of makes me want to go back to rift for awhile to work on alts...

So many decisions in MMOs to make lately.  I've been wanting to return to Rift for a few months, and almost bought a 60-day gamecard, but then I found out about the free 45-days in EQII and Vanguard I have, and need to activate before the 31st, and then now this from Trion pulling me back into wanting to play Rift instead.

It does appear to say that previous accounts will get some free time for the 1/2 b-day event, so I may wait until then to see how much we get, prolly 7-days which will be fine, then maybe I'll sub after that...

Even though I'm currently really enjoying my time in LotR, I may have to sub for at least a month during this event and get the game for 1.99.  Sounds like a great deal to me.

 I did enjoy the game when I was in beta.  Just wish more effort would have been made on the PvP side of the equation since I wasn't overly impressed with the PvE portion.  Pretty good game though and they've done a great job with content updates and maintenance of the game itself from what I have seen.

Rift is an interesting phenomena. This website is an example of the somewhat endless and mindlessly positive spin articles that get put out on the web, yet after all of that the game remains niche at  only a few hundreds of thousands of subs, and its player base seems somewhat "well it was a nice filler between WoW and GW2/SW:TOR", but not enough to hold my sub long-term. Destined to be marked down as a WoW 1.5 clone, and not really a next gen mmo. I am also guessing that Trion are probably regretting the early free-to-play-trial and massive online advertising costs, since they haven't broken the million sub mark and long term look destined for the F-2-P market as a game to make profit.

One of the turn-offs of RIFTs is how easy the game is. Then they hand out epics and loot like Candy every other week.

Now this actually makes me not want to go back... They are just making the game easier and handing out more free stuff to try and get people to play..

If they want people to return, they should add a ton of content and make combat itself more interesting and challenging. They should fix PvP without breaking PVE further.

Free stuff isn't going to change the core game issues.

Originally posted by Illyssia

Rift is an interesting phenomena. This website is an example of the somewhat endless and mindlessly positive spin articles that get put out on the web, yet after all of that the game remains niche at  only a few hundreds of thousands of subs, and its player base seems somewhat "well it was a nice filler between WoW and GW2/SW:TOR", but not enough to hold my sub long-term. Destined to be marked down as a WoW 1.5 clone, and not really a next gen mmo. I am also guessing that Trion are probably regretting the early free-to-play-trial and massive online advertising costs, since they haven't broken the million sub mark and long term look destined for the F-2-P market as a game to make profit.

 

 Niche and few hundred of thousands of subs? You don't need a million to break a profit (unless you're EA)

You're making way too many assumptions based on what little of the vocal minority you've seen. Look in this thread. Three people have posititve feelings about the game whereas one has a negative feelings. Don't speak for the playerbase or your "expert" opinion. Go look at people's predictions of WoW on IGN for some good "expert" opinion laughs.

I'm not saying the game will be the giant behemoth WoW is, or even break a million, but they're the first game to actually launch smooth, release driving new content quickly, and have great dev-community feedback.

Originally posted by Frotus

One of the turn-offs of RIFTs is how easy the game is. Then they hand out epics and loot like Candy every other week.

Now this actually makes me not want to go back... They are just making the game easier and handing out more free stuff to try and get people to play..

If they want people to return, they should add a ton of content and make combat itself more interesting and challenging. They should fix PvP without breaking PVE further.

Free stuff isn't going to change the core game issues.

I hardly think Rift falls into the "not adding enough content" category.  Do they need to hold back content and lable it "adventure packs", "modules" or "expansions" and put a nice price tag on it before its respected as content to the MMO community?

No other mmo... NO other MMO has released as much content as Rift has in a 6 month period.  And  guess what?  They've done it all for free.

Originally posted by Frotus

One of the turn-offs of RIFTs is how easy the game is. Then they hand out epics and loot like Candy every other week.

Now this actually makes me not want to go back... They are just making the game easier and handing out more free stuff to try and get people to play..

If they want people to return, they should add a ton of content and make combat itself more interesting and challenging. They should fix PvP without breaking PVE further.

Free stuff isn't going to change the core game issues.

 Trion has added updates and content faster than any other mmo I've seen. I don't think that can be a complaint.

This is great news! My server is plenty busy, but I'm always glad to see Trion do all they can to bring in more folks. One thing is for certian...Trion isn't timid or shy ! Love it!

Playing Rift, having a blast, thinks most folks who don't like playing Rift are either burned out on MMO's period or simply have too high of an expectation.

Go Rift ! Keep it up ya'll !

It can be a complaint.

They didn't have much content to begin with, so they've had to add tons. They need to create a better experience for levels 1-49 or they won't get a high percentage of new players to even reach 50.

Most of the content they have added is for high level. The process of getting to max level is currently vary narrow, linear and boring.

Thanks

This is definitely the best MMO out today. The community is incredible and the dev team is the best in the industry hands down.  If you want to be a part of an awesome community and enjoy this game to it's fullest potential, come join us on Faeblight!

Originally posted by Frotus

It can be a complaint.

They didn't have much content to begin with, so they've had to add tons. They need to create a better experience for levels 1-49 or they won't get a high percentage of new players to even reach 50.

Most of the content they have added is for high level. The process of getting to max level is currently vary narrow, linear and boring.

Thanks

 Having a dungeon to do at every level past 15, WF's for XP, Zone rifts for XP, Questing for XP.

The process is somewhat boring regardless, but it still offers more to do to level up than most of the competition.

Agree, the competition is weak right now..

The fact is MMO's are judged too harshly. Hell games in general are judged too harshly. What Trion is doing is what they should be doing. Adding content addressing player concern.  

Originally posted by Benthon

 Niche and few hundred of thousands of subs? You don't need a million to break a profit (unless you're EA)

You're making way too many assumptions based on what little of the vocal minority you've seen. Look in this thread. Three people have posititve feelings about the game whereas one has a negative feelings. Don't speak for the playerbase or your "expert" opinion. Go look at people's predictions of WoW on IGN for some good "expert" opinion laughs.

I'm not saying the game will be the giant behemoth WoW is, or even break a million, but they're the first game to actually launch smooth, release driving new content quickly, and have great dev-community feedback.

Its hard to say how successful Rift has been.  I get the impression its a bit of a dead horse, and most people who didn't like it have moved on. I think if it were more popular, you'd actually see a lot more complaining about it.

I get the impression they'd be very lucky to be able to claim a few hundred thousand current subs.  And yet, Trion does seem to be a boundless spring of positive spin and advertising.  Maybe they're doing better than it seems, but I don't know.  To believe that, you'd kind of have to take them at their word, and ignore everything else.  Not saying its impossible, but let's just say that if I were an investor, I'd dig a little deeper before giving them anything.  

Originally posted by Vhaln

 Its hard to say how successful Rift has been.  I get the impression its a bit of a dead horse, and most people who didn't like it have moved on. I think if it were more popular, you'd actually see a lot more complaining about it.

 

I get the impression they'd be very lucky to be able to claim a few hundred thousand current subs.  And yet, Trion does seem to be a boundless spring of positive spin and advertising.  Maybe they're doing better than it seems, but I don't know.  To believe that, you'd kind of have to take them at their word, and ignore everything else.  Not saying its impossible, but let's just say that if I were an investor, I'd dig a little deeper before giving them anything.  

The senior vice president came out and said they have sold 1.5 million copies. They have 60 servers running high/medium pop 24 hours a day and this is a dead horse?

Hell they even have WoW copying them now on ward drobe gear.

Originally posted by Vhaln

Its hard to say how successful Rift has been.  I get the impression its a bit of a dead horse, and most people who didn't like it have moved on. I think if it were more popular, you'd actually see a lot more complaining about it.

You really just have to many consider how many games there are that the Gamer Hivemind has declared "dead" that are still running profitably.

It survived six months, and the devs have not failed to churn out new content.  Most games that passed both of those tests have gone on to long, long careers.

At some point you just have to stare at the people who prematurely declared a game's death and ask them where they got the cracked crystal ball.  Rift is still growing, and still getting new content.  The game may not be my personal cup of tea, but by any reasonable definition of "success", it's doing just fine.

Reading the list of perks makes it very tempting to log back in... until I remember that raiding is the only worthwhile PvE endgame, Trion does nothing to punish exploiters, leveling is so fast you hardly have time to enjoy it before it's over, and the leveling/questing is so mindnumbingly linear that after having leveled a toon on either faction the replay value nears zero.

Originally posted by Vhaln

 

 I think if it were more popular, you'd actually see a lot more complaining about it. 

Or, now don't hurt yourself thinking about this ~ its actually good and the multitude of people that continue to play it have little to complain about.  Not everying is bad and must be complained about continuously!