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No expansion til 2013
With the information being purposely leaked by Trion this week, we know there will be 4 patches in 2012, and alongside those patches Trion has listed "XP Milestones", which most believe relate to internal goals for the expansion pack. With the last patch of the year in mid november (with an XP milestone) its safe to assume we wont see the expansion until at least early 2013.
I know many of the Rift fanbois like Puremallace will say 'we dont need expansions, Trion is amazing with content already'. And while they may be perfectly happy with small updates every 2-3 months (which is now Trion's published schedule) most people will get tired by 2013 of running the same dungeons and hanging out in the same zones. Rft launched as the smallest AAA MMORPG, and since has added one (admittedly impressive) zone. Just one. Possibly another is on the way (Planetouched Wilds). We will see. And dungeons? Just two of those have been added.
While they are doing LOTS of positive things (secondary tradeskills being added next patch!) they keep cramming ev erything into the same little shoebox.
Ive always said Rift needs a slam dunk expansion to achieve any signficant growth. But by waiting til 2013 I think Rift is doomed to fall under 200k subs by years end and never recover (not saying it will die or go f2p, games can live with 100-200k subs quite easily). Disagree with me all you want, but mark this post and revisit it in december.
Comments
You seriously are missing the point of this game. Sit there and tell me about all the zones WoW has and the sheer size of it and how much is not used for anything?
Trion has a problem. The world map size right now works. It is easy for me to get to any zone that has a zone event going on and participate. The assumption is after Maelforge and Laethsys we get Crucia, then maybe Regulos? After that the next logical step is basically Rift: Burning Crusade
You know walk through the portal and goto the fire plane or life plane to actually destroy the real versions of the dragons. So the idea goes if I am in the Plane of Fire and a zone event happens in Shimmersand why would I care? It is not like I got Warcraft series to go off here like you did in WoW to basically tell you where the storyline was going.
My best theory is GW2 will release and people will just utterly dominate the events and get to end game and see WvWvW and some 5 mans. People for some reason are getting GW2 confused with some mmorpg version of Skyrim where you create your own end game. They got pvp on lockdown (I think), but I do not see how at end game that mmorpg competes honestly.
I love that Puremallace was the first to respond to the OP after he was called out by the OP:)
"You are all going to poop yourselves." BillMurphy
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
And his post makes absolutely no sense.
Why is he bringing up WoW and GW2? Why compare with a game that is known for being very slow with content releases and then speculate on a game that isnt out yet?
The world size works because he can get to any zone easily? Its called a porticulum. Even if it was 1,000,000 zones you would still take a porticulum to get there in 5 seconds.
Why would you care if you are in Plane of Fire and there is an event in Shimmersand? Same as now, you would only care if it drops a relevant currency.
I ment no disrespect.. I was just thinking Pure must be the number one fan if he was the first to respond to a post that you mentioned him in.. And yes I agree with you
"You are all going to poop yourselves." BillMurphy
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
I remember some time back in 2011 that Trion wanted to do an xpac after 1.8 in mid to late 2012. Now i cant remember where I read it, Ill try to find it tho.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
There is a recent dev video where they showed the timeline on a board, it said 1.11 was mid november as well as 'XP Milestone 7'. We know no expansion is currently planned before then (or else it would be 2.0, 2.1 etc) and we dont even know if expansion will follow 1.11.
Here is what he is referring too. No clue wtf MS is referring too.
AHh ok guess plans changed then.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
Rift released early 2011 so releasing the xpansion 2013 makes sense.
Wow makes an expansion every 2 years and Rift is kinda Wow clone. why would it be different with this?
Besides, Rift have made pretty lot of money the last year, i wouldn't worry. it is better to release a large expansion 2013 than a half @ssed one now anyways.
That's not true really. Remember when rift was released they had to push content patches fast and this made them have to keep the dev team huge and that cost money. I would be very suprised if they made a profit in 2011.
I think it is already under 200k. They need to do something massive with the dynamic events, or PvP, for this game to not drop under 100k when TERA, TSW and GW 2 are released.
My gaming blog
and when the next big thing is released we will be saying the same thing about gw2, tera, tsw.
People think swtor will be f2p but ill bet Rift does it first.
Except that there might not be many players left by 2013, and Rift's window of oppurtunity will have passed. If another game or another game's expansion launches in, say, June someone is far more likely to jump ship if there is no Rift expansion in the near future as opposed to if Rift were releasing an expansion in July or August they might just stck around in Rift.
They were estimated at 250k at their lowpoint, I would imagine Rift is somewhere around 300k. They had a month and a half of some growth but its trending down again (during a major event and a free for anyone week)
Be suprised. http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/19/rift-revenues-reached-100-million-in-2011-trion-secures-new-fu/
They made 100 million, thats pretty significant. The game has been the best success story since WoW came out .(we will see with SWTOR for now..) Also not sure where people are pulling these sub numbers from, but Trion has never released any sub numbers. They do not have to since they are not owned by a publisher like EA or Activisiion.
AoC made close to 100 million its first year for what its worth (which isnt much).
Revenue and profit are 2 very different categorys.
They made 100 mil in 2011, but didnt rift cost 80 + to develop ? Add in dev salary for 2011 and you really think the game made a profit after all expenses ?
Also being owned by a publisher isnt why they dont release financial information. Trion is not a publicly traded company though they have stated a desire to eventually be one in the future and when that happens they will be required by law to release public finanical information.
Source?
50mil to develope. 100mil was borrowed for 3 projects and 50 mil went towards Rift, so that is 50mil in profit. They also got another 85mil investment and the first thing they do is sign the biggest deal with a mmo company in China in history and then target the Korean market also.
The game is extremely proffitable to say the least . What should be getting asked is how does a company pull in maybe 10mil a month if that roll out content faster then the one make 100mil a month? Noone dares to ask that question and WoW fans cry quality over content and I have yet to see the "quality" in Cataclysm. Ghostcrawler had the balls to say "we are aiming for faster content in Mist", but didn't he say the same thing after Rift launched and started the 2011 nose dive in subs.
I am happy where the game is. There are more then a few servers running at high pop and as more people join every server is now normally running at medium. 1.8 will simply add to this because right now there is zero competition still and TOR while out there is being forced to play catch up.
No thats 50 mil in revenue after paying back the development cost. How much do they spend every year on the dev team, marketing, publishing ?
Like I said how much did rift cost to maintain the first 6 months ? That dev team was huge and releasing content that fast cost money a lot of it.
I don;t have the first clue. Even if they had 20mil left over that is still a crap ton of profit. They are dropping content on average ever 43 days and as a gamer that is all I give a damn about. If I was looking to invest in there potential IPO then I would ask these other questions.
My theory is without a doubt companies like NCSoft and EA have approached Trion about buying their studio. This is stuff we do not hear about, but I guarantee it has happened. It would beyond piss me off if Trion sold out like Blizzard or Bioware did.
I like trion and i hope the game does well, but the reality is that they need the next expansion sooner than later.
OK, but was this really necessary?
I still play Rift. Not nearly as much as I used to, but I still have an active account. It' s a good game. Nothing earth shattering but it's not going anywhere. So if you don't play it, why should you care?
And why is it that whenever a new game comes on the horizon, we have to sift through these doom and gloom threads?
It's a given that people are playing "other" games while waiting for GW2....even me. But it's not news. Has any successful MMO ever been shut down as a result of the release of another?
I am waiting for GW2. So are a lot of people. Hell, it's one of the main topics in Rift's general chat. But there is one thing I am fairly certain of.
GW2 is ony one or 2 steps forward from where other games are. Rift is pretty aggressive in it's own right. GW2 is not a revolution in MMOs. Just from the simple fact that there are limitations within the currentl level of technology and AI programming. GW2 can't be light years ahead of everyone else.
If you beta tested GW2 and had your doors blown in but something new and original, I can say, I had the same experience in Rift the 1st time I got unexpectedly caught up in a zone invasion. I thought that was awesome and the future of MMOs.
Only it didn't take long for the limits of what can be done to show up, Meaning, it got old. It will be the same in GW2. DEs will become less and less dynamic and GW2 will start to lose some of it's shinniness. Not to say it won't continue to be fun. Not to say that it won't become the best MMO on the market and stay that way. I believe it will, I am just saying that gamers themselves are different now. Games get old much quicker now then they did 5-10 years ago.
This is my view. Come 1 month after launch people will begin to start asking for features that literally make no sense to current Guild Wars players and ArenaNET staff.
People will ask for a x-server LFG tool and what devs and GW players need to understand. The mmorpg playerbase is far more anti social then they used to be. Somehow and someway the invading crowd of GW2 bandwagon fans will come up with a way to label you a "perfect support" or "perfect dps". They will not say "LFM Ascalon Tombs"..they will say "LFM experienced support or experience DPS" . You will get told we want you only AoE healing and not doing anything else.
ArenaNET will struggle to stop this behaviour and then come to the realization that you can not change a mmorpg playerbase brainwashed by 7 years of WoW. You cannot tell someone who has been dps'n in mmorpg's since MUD's that they are now required to throw out heals. The concept simply will not work for most people.
Somehow people are trying to turn GW2 into a mmorpg version of Skyrim. It can not be said enough that this is IMPOSSIBLE unless the game is based on artificial intelligence and the game creates a different scenario for every single one of the 1million+ people who will be playing.
We also have to accept the fact that you can not put 1,000+ people in the same zone and not expect massive lag. This will become the biggest reality check that ArenaNET is not some god mode dev and this will bring GW2 fans down to earth and see reality. It's pure insanity to believe anything ArenaNET says for skills/healing will work on a massive scale.
I hope GW2 is awesome, but if it fails im gonna smile because fanboys already say its the best MMORPG ever and its barely in beta.