RIFT in China: 'Biggest game deal ever' for a Western MMO

Wow, CEO of Trion and the voice of Yogi Bear. What a career.

Okay now this is significant...if RIFT can catch fire in China They could compete with WoW. Blizzard is surrounded by very Hungry wolves, TRION Bioware, Arenanet. I don't see a happy future for them unless they return to what made them great in the first place (Here's a hint it isn't making your MMO all about Pop Culture references /eyeroll )

@(Unverified) I question your IQ.

Rift is awesome.

@(Unverified) As far as MMO's go they're still easily one of the most successful. Until these last few years, 500k subs was considered extremely successful.

What I want to know is, what innovation is Buttler talking about? He says they innovate in so many ways... I'd like them to name one. I just spent quite a while googleing Shanda and I don't see anything that makes me think they have ever done anything innovative. I could be wrong of course, but if I am I'd like some examples.

@(Unverified) Since when does being successful mean you have be over 1 million subs?

It doesn't.

I will say 1 thing about Rift at least it had a nice solid "finished" feel to it at launch which is alot more then can be said about the vast majority of "products" that come out of this "genre".

Well, Rift is clearly doing well, regardless of all the naysayers, "Blah blah doesn't have 5 million subs so it's failing blah blah", and if they can get a grip in China that's a TON of potential subscribers right there.

Good on them, they released a solid game and deserve the success.

@(Unverified)
Yeah, the numbers, the numbers are that Trion has made over 100million in the last 10 months from Rift.

Most of us can only hope to start a company that sucks that hard.

@(Unverified) what numbers?

You have the same problem as other people trying to show that the pop is dropping, your only measurement is an arbitrary goalpost of "low" "med" and "high". You have NO numbers to speak of... just a moving yardstick.

Tell me.... if Trion moved the pop a server changed to "high" to be 1/2 what is is now, and EVERY server was "high" all the time, would that mean their population skyrocketed? Of course not... same way that if they improved hardware and it takes twice as many to make a server "high" doesn't mean their pop is dropping.

It's like trying to measure a race when someone can change the length of your meter stick whenever they choose between races.... there is no way to know if your 400m races was the same as someone else's 400m race.

On the other hand.... $100,000,000 profit is a damn high number regardless of what colour the servers are.

@Grumms Success is also determined by income and profit. A game can have 10,000,000 players and still make less profit than a game with 500,000 if it's not managed properly.

At the end of the day, Trion seems to be managing this well. Numbers don't just stand on their own.

@(Unverified)

Trololol.

Hartsman already said that there are -absolutely- no plans to go F2P.

RIFT has also been very successful as evidenced by the reports coming out over the past few months.

So... troll more, please. Because it's kind of funny.

I like that Rift is already looking to the future...they clearly intend to be around for the long haul. In my opinion, Rift is the game with the most polish, the most in-game content to do both solo and with groups, the largest flexibility with character appearances, the fastest content additions, and the highest level of listening to their customer base. That's why I keep subbing.

Those who are claiming an arbitrary success milestone of "1 million players = success" need to leave their parser-driven obsession in-game...the same concept doesn't work with real life business models. It really doesn't matter how many subscribers Rift has...if they are generating more money than they are spending, they have a successful product. When they launched, nobody thought that this little-known company could ever complete in the MMO industry. But they are still going strong at the 1-year mark, and looking to expand their business to new markets. I'd call that a success.