http://ascendedchronicle.blogspot.com/2013/02/is-rift-heading-for-bleak-future.html

Not my blog post, it belongs to Synovia, whose normal posts on the Rift forums can be classified as fanboi-ish.  Its a pretty unbiased look at what has been happening at Trion since Storm Legion release.

good and interesting read , thanks for posting this . I personally think this has been a long time coming myself. People just gotta face it rift is just a niche game and has never really took off . What it did about what warhammer online and age of conan did at release? then fell off pretty fast over the first year.  I know they have more players in general but I cannot imagine they have all that many playing rift still but the hardcore fans and trial accounts.

Personally I see Trion cutting down to a smaller team , releasing defiance and kinda just giving up on Rift myself in the long term. They have Archeage and Defiance , plus end of nations so I see them more or less doing the entire publisher thing with pushing some of their talent on defiance to see how that goes. Rift has kinda already done everything they can to bring in a mass influx of players and they dont seem to keep them when they come so i just do not see it being all that profitable to keep a big team on rift much longer.

Not bleaker then its past, unless they discontinue the service. Rift was a good first attempt at making an mmo. I am sure they learned alot from their mistakes, but they have never showed any attempt to repair their mistakes in Rift and just carried on with their vision. The failure of Rift is a result of lack of vision imo, and when Scott Hartman is a visionary his impact on the game must have been very minimal.

In other words the blogger is not just a Rift fanboy, but a Scott fanboy too.

Originally posted by Astraeis

Not bleaker then its past, unless they discontinue the service. Rift was a good first attempt at making an mmo. I am sure they learned alot from their mistakes, but they have never showed any attempt to repair their mistakes in Rift and just carried on with their vision. The failure of Rift is a result of lack of vision imo, and when Scott Hartman is a visionary his impact on the game must have been very minimal.

In other words the blogger is not just a Rift fanboy, but a Scott fanboy too.

Actually it's funny as initially (even after launch) it looked like they do have a vision of how Rift should be like however then it appeared like they suddenly lost it. Too many instanced stuff to do, artificial ow PvP (PvP quests), nerfed zone events. Also it's funny cos from what I remember this wasn't what players were asking for before launch

Originally posted by alterfenix

Originally posted by Astraeis

Not bleaker then its past, unless they discontinue the service. Rift was a good first attempt at making an mmo. I am sure they learned alot from their mistakes, but they have never showed any attempt to repair their mistakes in Rift and just carried on with their vision. The failure of Rift is a result of lack of vision imo, and when Scott Hartman is a visionary his impact on the game must have been very minimal.

In other words the blogger is not just a Rift fanboy, but a Scott fanboy too.

Actually it's funny as initially (even after launch) it looked like they do have a vision of how Rift should be like however then it appeared like they suddenly lost it. Too many instanced stuff to do, artificial ow PvP (PvP quests), nerfed zone events. Also it's funny cos from what I remember this wasn't what players were asking for before launch

I think Rift's vision was frequent patch updates, but I am not convinced they ever had a clear vision on what Rift should be at all.

When 3 months or so after launch it was clear that retention was an issue and people were leaving rift faster than they were coming in, Trion started throwing shit up against the wall to see what would stick.  Thats why you have so many poorly developed features in Rift.  Planar Attunement, Chronicles, Master Mode Dungeons, Conquest.  These are all things with pretty minimal implementation.  IA is the only thing they ran with, and when it launched it was small too, like they were dipping their toes in the water.

I don't know what's going on with Trion finances, but it seems that the blogger missed a major piece of information in his post.

Trion has recently partnered with XLgames to publish Archeage.

Archeage is a higly hyped MMO in the west, and I believe Trion will put all its resources behind this project.

Having said that, because Archeage is already fully developed and tested, Trion won't need a big  team to westernize and localize the game, hence the need to lay off all those employees.

With a casual MMO (Rift) and a Sandboxish game in the making (Archeage), Trion has the whole MMO market covered and it doesn't need to develope another one.

My 2 Cents.

I Played Rift for well over a year and in that time I felt that Trion wobbled in it's vision and what they stood for, based on patches for the game. Example, when they came out with the 3 faction PvP arena and added lore from that. It was disturbing because the original 2 factions, now could actually be playing together and support each other. It was one of many little things where the lore ball was dropped in place of expediancy to keep money coming in.

I also feel they now want to be a publisher only, as they are going to be the NA outlet for ArchAge (I am not sure if they are going be publisher any place else). This points to a shift in how the company works and the article the OP has listed, points to that as being done.

I liked Rift, but the inconsistancies in the lore, for the love of money, really did drive me out of the game.

Originally posted by itgrowls
Rift isn't the only one, any of the sub only model games are having a hard time keeping people and it's due to the market. American's just can't afford subs anymore we pay monthly for everything else as it is, power, water, cell phones, internet access (which is getting outrageous for the very very poor speeds we're getting in this country and the bandwidth charges don't get me started on that practice). Even WoW lost a ton of subs all at once.

Originally posted by ste2000

I don't know what's going on with Trion finances, but it seems that the blogger missed a major piece of information in his post.

Trion has recently partnered with XLgames to publish Archeage.

Archeage is a higly hyped MMO in the west, and I believe Trion will put all its resources behind this project.

Having said that, because Archeage is already fully developed and tested, Trion won't need a big  team to westernize and localize the game, hence the need to lay off all those employees.

With a casual MMO (Rift) and a Sandboxish game in the making (Archeage), Trion has the whole MMO market covered and it doesn't need to develope another one.

My 2 Cents.

The key word is "recently".  The article focuses on stuff before, and unrelated to, the Archeage deal.

And a company stretching itself too thin and then further extending its resources isn't going to help Rift at all.  "Putting all its resources" behind Archeage = death for Rift.  Rift can't afford to lose any more people than it already has. 

Not to mention any company putting all its resources behind a Korean game is just playing Russian Roulette with 5 bullets.  Korea has yet to produce even a moderate success in the west.  Archeage has a chance, but history isnt in it corner.

But given as its just a publishing deal, I doubt Trion is allocating too many resources to it.  They have Defiance is a more urgent need atm.  EoN should hae just been cancelled, like SoE did with The Agency.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by itgrowls
Rift isn't the only one, any of the sub only model games are having a hard time keeping people and it's due to the market. American's just can't afford subs anymore we pay monthly for everything else as it is, power, water, cell phones, internet access (which is getting outrageous for the very very poor speeds we're getting in this country and the bandwidth charges don't get me started on that practice). Even WoW lost a ton of subs all at once.

 

don't see the price really being a huge issue overall.. To me think its more and more games offering good content and no sub fee.. Makes it hard to justify paying $15 a month when I could play a game with equal or even greater content that charges no monthly fee..

The economy has nothing to do with it.  At all.  Cheap entertainment does well in down times, because there is always a need to be entertained.  And 15 bucks a month is absolutely cheap entertainment.  Movie theaters had their best year ever in 2012, and thats 15 bucks for 2 hours, not a month.

I dont even think B2P and F2P games have a huge effect.  I think its just that most P2P games are either old or mediocre.  itgrowls mentioned WoW, but when did WoW lose those subs?  After an awful expansion.  Mediocre content.  Cataclysm and age/burnout are the two factors in WoW's subscription drop over the past 2 years.  

It is in Trions best interest to make Rift F2P. There are far greater amounts of consumers out there now in the F2P market that can be turned into potential customers than they could EVER hope to get to buy a copy of their game now. Rift is well beyond the point of bringing in a decent amount of new players so there is zero business sense in keeping a subscription only model as it will do nothing but slowly bleed players away.

As is, players now have a large quantity of decent to A+ F2P games to choose from, Tera to SWTOR to LoRTo to EQ2...and even B2P games like GW2 and TSW...who would chose to jump into a game that has been out for a few years, to start so far behind as well as having to dump all that money on the game and expacs when they can choose from all those games? Few.

And that is why F2P is in their best interest, if they believe in their game, they would believe they would pick up enough of those people into an elite/sub status to boost their revenue.

Originally posted by Ryowulf
They can't be doing that bad, since they haven't gone ftp. 

neither has WAR

Originally posted by DMKano
With Hartsman gone, the game can only improve. He was keeping the game from going where its need to go - I see lots of positive changes coming to Rift in the future.

u can macro all those changes and smash the key to the fullest.... and thats why im not playing rift :s , the game is fun , the content is there, lots of souls ect , but what? , playing any soul is the same , smash 1-4 macros to victory... even as tank :(