Friday, March 4, 2011

Spectator Sports: The "Rift" dent

Well, Friday arrives...my health improves, and with that, some fun little commentary on how Rift is progressing.

Yea, yea...we can read it on the blogs, in the forums, or playing the game. Success you say? Sure, people can state it as such. But, what we need are some measuring tools. Not only is talk been above the norm for Rift, with the smattering or "Queue QQ" and "WoW Wannabe" blather, but overall the sense of happiness is more alive within the blogosphere and forums, than most previous launches from the last several years.

"It’s bringing to my mind the age old question of “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” Well, to be honest, I know if I’d hated Rift, felt no connection to the game at all and didn’t feel it was worth money, I probably would have uninstalled after beta testing and never looked back. Time and money are too important to waste on something you don’t like.
But as I recall, I did like Rift,"
MMOGamerchick

"I’m trying not to go on and on about Rift; in fact I have decided to hardly mention it at all. It’s one thing if it’s a game few people play, but that’s not Rift’s problem.
Just wanted to share this screenshot of my Bard/Ranger/Assassin taking down the boss of an earth rift in the Stonefields. Yummy."
WestKarana

This is pretty typical across the board, with the usual suspects calling fail (Keen and Graev). But, looking to Twitter, the Forums and across the blogosphere, the consensus is more of a "like" for Rift than some of our previous launches like Age of Conan, Aion or Warhammer Online (with that final one having a massive battle over love versus hate....with hate finally winning).

Talk is of people who see what Trion did. Making a stable polished game that people can play if they are bored with their other title or need new environs. For myself, I had been on break from the standard DIKU MMO and coming fresh to Rift feels fresh for me. I have fallen into my patterns, and I am enjoying myself very much.

But, lets talk REAL visual success. Lets take a gander at what a GOOD game launch can do.

First off, Raptr numbers have been pretty impressive. I hope to see next weeks X-Fire game in full swing. Until then lets see how Rift sits as of today...
3149 players were playing Rift...ON A THURSDAY! Just to give a comparison, our normal #1 game for Raptr, EvE Online on a Sunday rakes in about 1200+ players. So, over double that. Todays numbers for EvE? 1035 players.

How about also looking at Raptrs REVIEW page for Rift. You can see a fair consensus there of people who are for the most part happy or accepting of Rift's sameness.

For X-Fire, an issue (as always seems to be the case, due to support being pretty bad for X-Fire right now), is preventing the game from being recognized. A patch has gone out though, and my hopes are that by Sunday, all clients should be recognized and we can do the game come Monday.

But, lets look at what I call the "Dent".


Please take a close look at the drop near the end of that chart. Can you guess what game this is?

That is World of Warcraft.

Now, note, you can see another "dip" in that chart, from earlier last month when a patch was applied and they had some major downtime. But, for the most part it would climb back up almost immediately. This time the "dent" stuck. What day is that huge dip? March 1st - Rift Launch Day.
I will watch this chart again on Monday and see if this is just an anomaly or if we have a REAL WoW denter in Rift.

Who else felt the heat?
LOTRO
Again, the same thing. A noted outage from last month struck LOTRO over the weekend (and also for Rift betas)...But, the huge dent near the end, thanks to Rift launch.

EvE Online
This one I did NOT expect. Eve took a dive also. I expect it will go back up....but, the pain was felt even in Space!

AION
This includes the marker showing the day of the drop. March 1st took a chunk from Aion as well.

Now, of course time will tell how well Rift has done say in 3 - 6 months. Progress on stability, fixes and thinking of new content needs to be paramount to Rift's success.

I personally feel Rift COULD be the first million subber game, if they keep their cool, work on the games strong points and hold on tight to their player base they have created. I know I am a 6 monther subber (and I rarely do that for MMO's). So, the formula is there...lets see what you got Trion. And Good job!

Cheers



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was a bit disappointed to see that there's still no real data for Rift at XFire. I am curious how many people (or in XFire's case, how many hours, rather) are playing Rift and how many Rift-tourists we have that are gone now that the headstart is over and of course, how many will stay after the initial 30 days. :) But until then, I hope that the issue is fixed! ^^

Even with the issue, Rift was no. 45 on all games played. Impressive! ^^

Ardwulf said...

I think Rift has a shot at a million as well. What I think it'll take, though, is an initial (say after 30 days) dip below that and a subsequent strong effort by Trion to keep new people flowing in. It's possible, and even though I've elected to skip it for now, it's an exciting prospect.

Anonymous said...

Rift will see its mass exodus once the majority get to 50 and are not happy with Rift raids and the pvpers will leave due to pvp imbalance in the end game.

Please chart the 1 month from now dip in Rift.

Elementalistly said...

@Dink
I see. Do you have a review blog post up yet for End game? I would like to read your analysis.

Thanks

Scarybooster said...

I don't think the PvP is unbalanced. How can you cry unbalanced PvP when the Soul system is so diverse it will take months just to learn what combo is overpowered. There is no way new level 50's in 1 month can calculate effectively a balanced experience. Those people that do, save your breath and leave.

Anonymous said...

PvP imbalance may be there, in the familiar form of one faction dominating the other.