I think this needed to happen some of the low population servers must have been very low . Luckily theres plenty of medium still .

I'm sure someone with say this is a fail of epic proportions but the games still very busy and theres plenty of people playing it .

What in the days before WoW would have been considered a successful mmo .

It'd possibly help of they merged the EU servers into US ones ASAP rather than letting the EU die out slowly as many MMOs have done in the past, then merge the bedraggled survivors into US servers at the last minute.

population is BOOMING I see

Server mergers less than a year after launch is never a good thing.  I'm not a fan of Rift, but have no desire to see it fail.  Good luck to Trion.

Anti-rifters: "OMG it's a sign that RIFT is failing a horrible flamming death of epic proportions."

Pro-rifters: "I still see a ton of people while I'm running around. Obviously it's just a wise decision to bring more players together from the almighty Trion"

Can we just be real? The subscriptions have dropped so they have to bring servers together instead of spending money to keep extra machinery running for servers that were designed to hold many more players. The game is not going to shut down anytime soon, but it is a sign of it's popularity declining.

Nothing wrong with merging servers, it's natural.  The initial rush of players has dwindled and as such servers are quieter than usual.

WoW distorted a lot of things about the industry.  They had to keep adding more and more servers as the game grew older (though there hasn't been new ones in quite a while).  Launch enough servers to keep the population healthy and queues low, but after the initial 30 days and over a year watch the populations and merge accordingly.  I wouldn' be surprised if WoW merges some of the low population and faction inbalanced servers in the next year to improve the game experience.

I think they did make a mistake when they gave in on the launch queues of upto 5000 on each server! PLayers would have persisted and thy wouldnt need to be removing the extra ones they added to relieve launch pressure :(

Originally posted by onehunerdper

Anti-rifters: "OMG it's a sign that RIFT is failing a horrible flamming death of epic proportions."

Pro-rifters: "I still see a ton of people while I'm running around. Obviously it's just a wise decision to bring more players together from the almighty Trion"

 

Can we just be real? The subscriptions have dropped so they have to bring servers together instead of spending money to keep extra machinery running for servers that were designed to hold many more players. The game is not going to shut down anytime soon, but it is a sign of it's popularity declining.

Or a SWTOR just came out and Rift took a big hit (for a while). The server I play on is still very populated. I think this is a great thing, if riftjunkies.com is correct on the number of servers closing, that is not very many for how many they have up.

They have free server transfers anyway so people are hopping all over the place anyway so pop. change weekly.

Originally posted by Cassey

WoW distorted a lot of things about the industry.  They had to keep adding more and more servers as the game grew older (though there hasn't been new ones in quite a while).  Launch enough servers to keep the population healthy and queues low, but after the initial 30 days and over a year watch the populations and merge accordingly.  I wouldn' be surprised if WoW merges some of the low population and faction inbalanced servers in the next year to improve the game experience.

Yeah WOW was success has alot to do with the launch timing too, broaband became more widely accessible at decent speeds around 2003/2004 i believe, and as WOW was the new kid on the block at the time, and the only one who advertised its a no brainer.

It happens to every game, eventually.  Even the mighty WoW will be seeing it within the next couple years, I'd bet.

Rift is a big "meh", for me.  But it's polished and they've done everything right post launch; strong updates, aggressive "Cost of Entry" sales...

It's a tough market, right now.

Originally posted by Teala

Wait...what?   I was under the impression when this game released last March that it would have a minimum of 3 million people playing it within a year.    That is what the rabid fans of this game spouted continuely here on these forums.   What happened?

I have a bookmark at home of one guy reminding everyone to get their names in ASAP cuz there were gonna be millions of players... :P

...another said 6 million... and don't forget all the "WoW fanbois are scared (*&^less!" threads...

I still think the game is doing well enough; I certainly wouldn't call it a failure... but I do hope alot of those folks who used to argue that "dynamic " content and events would put other MMO's OoB have sobered up a bit.  Like anything else, some people will like it, some people won't.  and still others really don't give a crap whether it's dynamic or static, so long as they have fun playing.

They really did mess up putting up all those servers during launch. Of course some people aren't gonna want to stick around, so once those people left servers became more empty. Now if they would have launched with less servers, I think they would have kept a bigger player base since the servers would look fuller. I know this is why I left, the server I was on became empty after 2-3 months. I know I could have transfered but I didn't feel like it, however I am looking to start playing again. Easily the most solid MMO in years.

Eh not to suprising. An issue with free character transfers is it tends to polarize people to one server and then leaving other servers rather empty. I just hope things done get way to cluttered. 

Oh and in terms of what rob said, its actually happened, several times already in the past. :)

This is a good thing even though it might be spelling some signs of trouble in Trion's yard.  Hope not, I'm really impressed with them as a company and hope to see End of Nations and Defiance soon.

Probably better this way. There's nothing less interesting than hanging out on an empty server. They are a waste of space and should ofc be merged with other servers. I don't see the big deal about this

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Teala

Wait...what?   I was under the impression when this game released last March that it would have a minimum of 3 million people playing it within a year.    That is what the rabid fans of this game spouted continuely here on these forums.   What happened?

I have a bookmark at home of one guy reminding everyone to get their names in ASAP cuz there were gonna be millions of players... :P

...another said 6 million... and don't forget all the "WoW fanbois are scared (*&^less!" threads...

I still think the game is doing well enough; I certainly wouldn't call it a failure... but I do hope alot of those folks who used to argue that "dynamic " content and events would put other MMO's OoB have sobered up a bit.  Like anything else, some people will like it, some people won't.  and still others really don't give a crap whether it's dynamic or static, so long as they have fun playing.

 

Every single MMO after the pop culture boom of WoW has had this type of hype (As well as hate)..

It's expected... But I personally don't need to be re-assured that millions of other people fill hundreds of servers to enjoy the game..

How can you please a fanbase full of lemmings?

Originally posted by Cassey

Nothing wrong with merging servers, it's natural.  The initial rush of players has dwindled and as such servers are quieter than usual.

 

WoW distorted a lot of things about the industry.  They had to keep adding more and more servers as the game grew older (though there hasn't been new ones in quite a while).  Launch enough servers to keep the population healthy and queues low, but after the initial 30 days and over a year watch the populations and merge accordingly.  I wouldn' be surprised if WoW merges some of the low population and faction inbalanced servers in the next year to improve the game experience.

 Because Blizzard can afford to keep all the servers running, eventho over two third of the servers are low pop!

Seriously, lets be honest here. Have you taken a good look at the whole WoW server list during primetime? A jitload of servers are low populated!

Blizzard can easily merge over half of the current servers! But they refuse to do it, because they want to keep up the appearance!

2 years ago I used one of those free come back offers and checked out my old server, that use to be heavy populated. It was completely dead! All zones were void of players. Just some high levels hanging around in Stormwind and Ogrimmar.

Up to this day that same server is still running on low population and nothing is being done about it, just like tons of other low population servers.

Players are basically just forced to pay for character migration to migrate their characters to another higher populated server! Simply because Blizzard does NOT want to hear anything about server migration! They plain refuse it!

ALL MMORPG's have declining populations at the moment. Simply, because the market has become oversaturated!

SW:TOR won't be any different. You can already see, before the month is even up, that server populations are already lowering. Will be more after next week, when the first month is running out.

Just like the famous quote of Agent Smith: " It's inevitable!"

It just seems that Trion just can't catch a break lately.  With the whole hacking fiasco and now with the server mergers, the only press I'm seeing is negative.

Originally posted by junzo316

It just seems that Trion just can't catch a break lately.  With the whole hacking fiasco and now with the server mergers, the only press I'm seeing is negative.

One strange thing that is confusing the hell out of me right now. They did a extended EU maintenance last night and now when you look at the EU status almost every single server is at medium and a few are high.

This time yesterday it was not a pretty picture. This makes me wonder if that thing that is reporting server statuses is completely broken.

I tried Rift and bought it when I was cheap, but... there is simply no choice where to level. It's always the same path. It gets boring so quickly. Then then human starting zone was to 50% forest, the next zone was to 90% forest, the zone after that was 90% a slightly darker forest... Then I had more than half of max level and seen nothing but forest. That gets insanely boring too. And then add the lack of communication in the game. On the server I was, nearly noone ever said anything. 

It sure had some good ideas and graphics were not bad either, but... it was getting boring so quickly. So it's no wonder that the people are leaving.

Originally posted by maji

I tried Rift and bought it when I was cheap, but... there is simply no choice where to level. It's always the same path. It gets boring so quickly. Then then human starting zone was to 50% forest, the next zone was to 90% forest, the zone after that was 90% a slightly darker forest... Then I had more than half of max level and seen nothing but forest. That gets insanely boring too. And then add the lack of communication in the game. On the server I was, nearly noone ever said anything. 

It sure had some good ideas and graphics were not bad either, but... it was getting boring so quickly. So it's no wonder that the people are leaving.

Why do you say this when most of us are/have played the game? The amount of made up stuff in this post alone is shocking.

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by junzo316

It just seems that Trion just can't catch a break lately.  With the whole hacking fiasco and now with the server mergers, the only press I'm seeing is negative.

One strange thing that is confusing the hell out of me right now. They did a extended EU maintenance last night and now when you look at the EU status almost every single server is at medium and a few are high.

 

This time yesterday it was not a pretty picture. This makes me wonder if that thing that is reporting server statuses is completely broken.

That is fairly odd and something that should be looked into further.  The new promotion may have brought in a few more players, but  would it change it that drastically....hmmm.

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by maji

I tried Rift and bought it when I was cheap, but... there is simply no choice where to level. It's always the same path. It gets boring so quickly. Then then human starting zone was to 50% forest, the next zone was to 90% forest, the zone after that was 90% a slightly darker forest... Then I had more than half of max level and seen nothing but forest. That gets insanely boring too. And then add the lack of communication in the game. On the server I was, nearly noone ever said anything. 

It sure had some good ideas and graphics were not bad either, but... it was getting boring so quickly. So it's no wonder that the people are leaving.

Why do you say this when most of us are/have played the game? The amount of made up stuff in this post alone is shocking.

Yeah maybe you have wrong game maji, as doesnt sound like anything I play!

Originally posted by junzo316

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by junzo316

It just seems that Trion just can't catch a break lately.  With the whole hacking fiasco and now with the server mergers, the only press I'm seeing is negative.

One strange thing that is confusing the hell out of me right now. They did a extended EU maintenance last night and now when you look at the EU status almost every single server is at medium and a few are high.

 

This time yesterday it was not a pretty picture. This makes me wonder if that thing that is reporting server statuses is completely broken.

That is fairly odd and something that should be looked into further.  The new promotion may have brought in a few more players, but  would it change it that drastically....hmmm.

 

It is because of SWTOR on both counts the recent population drop and then you will see a steady increase (not saying it will be alot) starting about now.

The 'free' month is over and just like with every other mmo launch post WoW a number of players will not sub past the free month and go back to what they were playing beforre.

Originally posted by junzo316

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by junzo316

It just seems that Trion just can't catch a break lately.  With the whole hacking fiasco and now with the server mergers, the only press I'm seeing is negative.

One strange thing that is confusing the hell out of me right now. They did a extended EU maintenance last night and now when you look at the EU status almost every single server is at medium and a few are high.

 

This time yesterday it was not a pretty picture. This makes me wonder if that thing that is reporting server statuses is completely broken.

That is fairly odd and something that should be looked into further.  The new promotion may have brought in a few more players, but  would it change it that drastically....hmmm.

 

Iv been monitoring it that same time every day for the last couple of weeks as was considering guild transfer. And to me there is not that much difference, apart from 2 high server on the time i check, first time I have seen high for a while. The last week has seen the low turning to medium more often. And from my  friends/guild players logging on has at least doubled. But it is currently the highest its been for the nearly 3 weeks I have checked. Maybe some "tweaking" went in lol

i actually feel bad for game companies (they might be the only large companies i feel bad for).

when they launch and there are Queues, people say "OMG there are Queues what a fail launch"

when they address this by making more servers but then the launch rush dies off and there are too many servers the people go "OMG they're closing servers it's so fail"

I bet they could go back to exactly the number of servers they had at early launch and it'd be just right.

the only real complaint i have with trion and the servers at launch was the fact that they added more shards, and THEN increased the size each could hold. if they would have just increased the server limits then we wouldn't have seen these server merges right now. i may be confused, but i think this was close to the number of servers there were at launch?

someone also made a comment about WoW not shutting servers down to keep up the image. i agree 100%. played WoW for a while and always saw a large amount of low pop servers even on prime time after a reset or weekends. 25 man raiding guilds are hurting right now and a lot are down to 1 or 2 10 man groups. people didn't want to pay for a transfer just to have to pay to transfer again in a couple months.. they already bought the game..

Is crafting developed to the level that would attract people who love to craft...NO. Have they implemented world class 24/7 world class faction vs faction conflict...NO. Does the game look and feel like many other games you've played ....YES. And you wonder why the're reducing servers and not adding them ?

It's too bad, Rift was really well done in some ways.  Just fatally flawed in others, especially in regards to longevity.  I had fun with it, but knew it wouldn't do well in the long run.

Originally posted by Vhaln

It's too bad, Rift was really well done in some ways.  Just fatally flawed in others, especially in regards to longevity.  I had fun with it, but knew it wouldn't do well in the long run.

 

Rifts mistake was launching before TOR and GW2. They should have held off because the best justification I have seen for quiting Rift besides alts is "Tor will be better" or "GW2 will be better".

The game is not setting records for populations, but they sure as hell are still making Bioware and Blizzard look terrible.

Originally posted by Shadanwolf

Is crafting developed to the level that would attract people who love to craft...NO. Have they implemented world class 24/7 world class faction vs faction conflict...NO. Does the game look and feel like many other games you've played ....YES. And you wonder why the're reducing servers and not adding them ?

Please do share what game has developed crafting to the level that would attract those who love to craft and has implemented world  24/7 faction vs faction conflict.  The game also needs to have a development pace and release schedule, provide free account services, and large content updates that are included in the stubscription cost like Trion does?

Crafting isn't very deep in RIFT, but it is useful at end game.  PvP is also seeing improvements to make pvp gear progression smoother.  This is the difference with Trion compared to most any other established developer:  they are improving their game at a fast pace and adding content like no one else.

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by maji

I tried Rift and bought it when I was cheap, but... there is simply no choice where to level. It's always the same path. It gets boring so quickly. Then then human starting zone was to 50% forest, the next zone was to 90% forest, the zone after that was 90% a slightly darker forest... Then I had more than half of max level and seen nothing but forest. That gets insanely boring too. And then add the lack of communication in the game. On the server I was, nearly noone ever said anything. 

It sure had some good ideas and graphics were not bad either, but... it was getting boring so quickly. So it's no wonder that the people are leaving.

Why do you say this when most of us are/have played the game? The amount of made up stuff in this post alone is shocking.

 

i dont see what is made up in that post.. I got bored of Rift pretty quick for some of the same reasons... every character/race walks the same path while leveling (tahts boring after the first toon).. most of the world involves forests, dark forests, dusty fields (boring after a couple of run through)...

Also one of my biggest dissapointments with Rift are sanctum and meridian, not even cities... more like fantasy business buildings and no real cities in the game, just a bunch of tents and small quest hubs everywhere... thats uninspiring and gets boring fast too. If the dragons are going to destroy the world, create a world worth destroying.... IF they already destroyed, then create a devastated world, cities in ruins, etc...

I dont see that the game is failing at all.

There were shitloads of RIFT servers when it was first released and all were medium to very high population for months.

Now it's been a year and people have moved on to other games etc.

With SWTOR it's the same. I play SWTOR and all european servers first month were medium to full. most of them were heavy and very heavy, while a few are standart.

I picked a server with low-medium population(recommended), and now I see that after a month the server is just dying. I would already merge a few servers. It's never good to be alone in a MMORPG game.

The same is I think with RIFT.

just logged on rift today and no such message appearing, i've never seen said message eaither, i have a feeling this maybe a troll feeding false info mmorpg

thankgod SageSpire isn't effected