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Originally posted by syntax42
In World of Warcraft, I felt like I was at a disadvantage because of my slow leveling speed when it first released.  By the time I hit the level cap, players had moved on past the first raid dungeon and were working on the next two.  I had a very difficult time finding groups to help me advance my character.

 

If I start playing Rift today, will it be the same?   Will I be standing in a capital city spamming "LFG" and never finding a group for the dungeon I need to do to advance?  Is the game already dead, population-wise? 

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You queue up in the Dungeon Finder and you wait. While leveling some level ranges are better than others. Even as a tank you will have lengthy waits sometimes.

At max level there are more than a few problems as well. Before you can do Expert dungeons(Heroics do use WoW terminology) you need a certain item level. To get to the required item level can take some time. For my most recent max level character in Rift it took a week from when I hit level 50 to when I could do Expert dungeons.

And then theres raids. Raid progression can be quite a grind.

Its not hard to see why other companies have easily overtaken NCSoft. Just look at the .pdf of their 2011 financial report and see for yourself.

NCSoft has had problems expanding their game catalog.

Aion is NCSoft's biggest game followed by Lineage 1 and Lineage 2, all other games equal to less than 10% of NCSoft's total sales.

Seriously, in 2011 Lineage 1 made more money than Lineage 2. Yeah, its cool that such an old game is still going strong but its also bad in that NCSoft has only put out 1 game in the past 14 years thats more popular.

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Originally posted by Sorrow
Could pull an enmasse where the developers themselves walk away with the code reform thier own label and push the project out like TERA did.

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How can people seriously post misinformation like this.

Also, yeah, steal from the state of Rhode Island so they can push out a WoW clone. Theres a brilliant idea.

Why?

So, it can be yet another under-developed, over-promised, unfinished, buggy pile like Darkfall, Mortal Online, or Xsyon?

Giving money to support an indie sandbox MMO in development is throwing your money away.

Should have just skipped KoA and Big Huge Games and put everything into Copernicus and 38 Studios.

KoA was such a disaster it not only killed an MMO but 2 development companies.

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Originally posted by Dromedarr
I'm asking. What's the problem? Introduce server transfers right from launch and let players to move freely from server to server and fluently cast out empty servers with no fuzz around. I mean, come on! Even successful MMOs have to merge/transfer players at some point so why don't anticipate it and prepare for it?

Make it once every 2 or 3 months for free and for $5 anytime and present it as core feature at launch and you're golden.

1) minimum complains about low population servers
2) no bad press about introducing transfers later in live service = dead game

What do you think?

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On launch day Tera allowed a free server transfer once a day to help alleviate server congestion.

Actually, Tera still has free server transfers.

The "strategy" of opening a bunch of new servers to alleviate server congestion at launch DOES NOT WORK.

After the rush dies down and the game settles in you are left with a couple high population servers and a bunch of low population servers.

Every MMO that has done that has ended up having to close many more servers than they opened.

More bad news.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/73961/report-average-old-republic-server-has-less-than-350-players

BioWare's rookie attempt at a MMO has definitely gone bad, what will EA do?

A serious management shake-up is going to be needed and EA seems very apathetic towards the whole project.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that either BioWare or EA will do whats necessary to turn TOR around before its too late.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/73961/report-average-old-republic-server-has-less-than-350-players

...and its not good.

Less than 350 active people on a server is horrible.

Looks like server transfers in 1.3 won't be enough. Some serious server down sizing is going to be needed.

3 updates in and they are STILL focusing on features and content that should have been in the game at launch.

The "and Beyond" does not look promising.

A hastily thrown together rip off(a rip off of a rip off even, nothing can go wrong there) in a desperate attempt to stop current bleeding subs and to prevent future more large scale bleeding subs.

Meanwhile, other features like Rifts(in general), Warfronts, Instant Adventures, Chronicles and Master mode dungeons are forgotten.

Kinda makes you wonder what new feature Trion will introduce later that they completely abandon Conquest for.

Destiny = Bungie

Titan = Blizzard

Destiny will be a series of MMOFPS that have timed exclusivity for the Xbox made by Bungie for Activision.

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with Blizzard.

Diablo 3 becomes the fastest selling PC game selling 3.5 million in the first day and 6.3 million in the first week.

This does not include the 1.2 million that got D3 through WoWs Annual Pass program nor does it include Korean sales.

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=676112

A controller is just fine for PvP if you're a melee DPS.

Casters? Not so much.

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Originally posted by just1opinion

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Originally posted by cesmode8

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Originally posted by JudgeUK

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Originally posted by Mizzoufan

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Originally posted by butter1011 Stop doing things that you don't want to do.

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lol.

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Wise words - advice already taken with sub cancellation - roll on GW2 or Secret World ? 

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 My warrior hit 45 last night(got from 44 to 45 in one day, maybe about 2-2.5 hours of play time).  The game is not grindy for me as I mix in bams, questing, and dungeons.  As for the cut and paste models, I've seen it, I'll agree. But currently in westonia, these are new mobs.  As for the same rotation, sure.  But...that...is in..every other mmo?  wut?  It hardly changes in other MMOs once you get your core abilities.  At least in this game you arent tab targeting.  As for cancelling your sub and heading to GW2 or TSW.  #1, I hear TSW is trash and a slow paced game.  #2, GW2 questing is better for the most part, at least at first.  If you dont level quick enough, you'll end up doing the SAME EXACT dynamic events, over and over instead of doing a quest once.  If you do a DE once in GW2, log off, come back later, chances are you'll be doing that SAME EXACT event again.  Im not bashing GW2, but I dont think its as dynamic as people think it is.  Maybe I am playing the game wrong, which Ive never played an MMO or a game wrong, I thought there was no correctway.  But I keep doing the same dynamic events, twice or even three times before I can move into a higher lvl area.  

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Are you exploring and finding all the other things besides DEs that there are to do out there?  I only repeateded one DE between level 1 and 12 and it was because I enjoyed it.  I waited around and did it TWICE more and had a ball all 3 times.  I know I'm not very high level yet, but that's because I've found so many other things to do, like even crafting and EXPLORING.  Exploring leads into all kinds of "quests," so to speak.  You don't have to just keep repeating DEs, you just have to play the game like it's an exploration instead of the same ol' BS we've been playing for years in other games.

 

OP, I'm sorry to hear TERA isn't working out for you.  I hate grinding too.  If I'm going to have to grind, it had better be WELL disguised as FUN....so much so that I can't tell it's a grind at all.  I played WoW for too long to not hate grinding. I just can't do it.  I don't WANT to do the same instance 50 times or have to kill 200 raptors to get 10 raptor hearts.  No thank you.

 

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Originally posted by Z3R01

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Originally posted by Astraeis

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Originally posted by GeezerGamer I think Trion is really trying to understand it's players and deliver what they want.

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In that case I wonder why they do not succeed in understanding the player base they continue to loose.

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Trions done nothing to lose players. in this day and age people dont stick with subscription games long.

Even WoW is losing subs at a crazy rate.

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WoW lost 15% of its peak subscriber base over the course of a year. Not what I would call a "crazy rate".

Also, WoW can afford to lose subscribers at a "crazy rate" and barely notice it. Rift, on the other hand, does not have that luxury.

These big updates cost a lot of money so how long can Trion continue without seeing returns in subscriptions?

Theres already a topic about Tera being on sale at Amazon.

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Originally posted by paroxysm
I also agree with your first statement.  "They do it because they can get away with it basically."  But why do we let them get away with it?  At what point was it just deemed par for the course?

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Uh ...since the first MMO launched.

Meridian, UO, EQ, all of them had bad launches.

The only thing that has changed is that we now complain about it.

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Originally posted by Vhaln

I'm not talking about how good loot looks, but how much it varies.  The thing about the cash shop skins is they add variation - what's gimmicky about a zerker wielding a 2H hammer, or a lancer with a sword?  Why should each class be stylistically limitted to such very specific weapons?

 

Not that I'd pay for it - that defeats the whole point of loot, IMHO.  What's the fun of it, if you don't look forward to drops, and just buy it?  Still though, hoping it shows the devs have some ideas of what sort of stuff to add, and that it might make it into the regular game eventually, not just the cash shop.

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The lack of variation in armor is probably because it looks so good. The armor is extremely detailed and that level of detail takes a bit more time and effort from the developers to texture and model than in other MMOs like WoW.

Also, since each armor set is different for each race and gender the developers have to do 33 armor sets for each tier. Not an easy undertaking.

The lack of variation in the weapon models is because of how Tera was designed initially. When Tera first launched in Korea the hit boxes for players and their attacks were very much exact to the in-game models. So, if your sword was 2 inches shorter than some other sword because of design then that meant 2 inches less reach.

People complained so they relaxed on the hit boxes. In the 2 updates past the initial game the designs for weapons has gotten a bit more varied.

Reakktor Media, developer of Black Prophecy, was unable to pay their debts.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-02-29-last-gasp-for-black-prophecy-developer-reakktor

This and the other features being previewed really do stink of "dart boarding".

Basically Trion is throwing whatever they can at Rift and seeing what sticks. From copying ideas from other MMOs to applying their own bad ideas.

This has the unfortunate side effect of none of the features feel truly implemented/fleshed out/polished.

As someone else mentioned they create Instant Adventures and then subsequently abandon it because Trion became fixated on something else.

Yeah, its great that Trion is working hard on new content but they also need to focus on the content and features they already have.

Rift has always felt like a quality half done MMO and that doesnt seem to be changing anytime soon.