Rift Population/Playerbase

[Tokowei]

I recently bought a year of awesome Riftness when I was strolling through some Rift videos on youtube when a stunning string of comments dawned on me. And when I say string of comments, it was like a group of players from WoW or something came and just started curbstomping Rift videos just because.

Of course they said all you usual stuff: It's a clone, it's boring, it's a clone, PvP is garbage, its a clone and it's laggy, and it's a clone. (WoW users will never put that to rest). And all of those comments went over my head because they all were wrong, and WoW is just mad because most MMO critics put Rift over WoW. But it was that one comment. This one, overhanded, below the belt comment that struck me right in the soul.

"...[Rift] is just going to inflate over the hype and crash and burn...just like Aion..."

Like I said, I ordered a year of gameplay literally moments before I read the comment, which is most likely just some troll trolling himself to sleep, but then I thought, why is Trion so quiet about this. Usually MMO publishers are screaming their population at the public.

"10 Million Subscribers! Join Now!" "Over 30 Million Account Created! Play For Free Today!" "Most Popular MMO In Asia! Download Here!"

Meanwhile Rift just advertises it's amazing reviews (which are in fact amazing), but the population is just sort of hushed away.

If a Trion Employee or somebody can come and tell us what the number is ( a guild mate of mine guesstimated 500k- 1M subscribers). Thanks in advance

[Credo]

The louder they are the faker they are.

[Chaosoul]

I recently bought a year of awesome Riftness when I was strolling through some Rift videos on youtube when a stunning string of comments dawned on me. And when I say string of comments, it was like a group of players from WoW or something came and just started curbstomping Rift videos just because.

Of course they said all you usual stuff: It's a clone, it's boring, it's a clone, PvP is garbage, its a clone and it's laggy, and it's a clone. (WoW users will never put that to rest). And all of those comments went over my head because they all were wrong, and WoW is just mad because most MMO critics put Rift over WoW. But it was that one comment. This one, overhanded, below the belt comment that struck me right in the soul.

"...[Rift] is just going to inflate over the hype and crash and burn...just like Aion..."

Like I said, I ordered a year of gameplay literally moments before I read the comment, which is most likely just some troll trolling himself to sleep, but then I thought, why is Trion so quiet about this. Usually MMO publishers are screaming their population at the public.

"10 Million Subscribers! Join Now!" "Over 30 Million Account Created! Play For Free Today!" "Most Popular MMO In Asia! Download Here!"

Meanwhile Rift just advertises it's amazing reviews (which are in fact amazing), but the population is just sort of hushed away.

If a Trion Employee or somebody can come and tell us what the number is ( a guild mate of mine guesstimated 500k- 1M subscribers). Thanks in advance

Well, this is my take on it.

As long as the game is not in any danger of 'burning', what does it matter?

To me, it doesn't matter. We have plenty of servers, NA/EU/RU, and more coming for other areas of the world. We have a healthy population on servers (though some are 'too full' and others need that overflow, imo), we still have our great, quick updates.. I don't see an issue.

Don't let comments like that bother you. There is nothing about Rift that would indicate that it is going to go like Aion did - they are completely different games.

Rift, and its' creators, are amazing. They are different than any other on the market now and prior. We have a very bright future ahead. Don't sweat little things like that. Let the haters hate. Just enjoy yourself. There's more than enough fun to go around.

[the_real_seebs]

They're not gonna say, and the people who do say are often using... interesting... accounting. (For instance, I'm told that in pay-by-the-hour markets, WoW counts each character as a subscription).

My estimate is 350-450k right now. I estimated 450-500k active subs last summer, I think it's gone down a bit. I would guess peak would be 500-600k simultaneous active subs. Right now, though, I think population is increasing -- I think it's higher now than it was in January, for instance.

We don't have really solid information. We know they sold 1M total copies of the game sometime last summer, but obviously a lot of people have stopped playing (and maybe cancelled). On the other hand, we see a lot of people coming back.

Trion's estimate of initial demand was 17 servers with a (simultaneously logged-in) population cap of about 1800 each in NA, they actually got up to... I think 58? Since then the pop cap has increased (I believe to about 2,000) and the number of servers has decreased to about 16. So if everything were full we'd have 32,000 simultaneous players in NA, which would probably mean a population of 320,000-640,000 players. (Peak times are usually 5-10% of player base, I believe.) There's also EU servers. There are players in Russia, but Trion doesn't run those servers; they just collect money from the company running that.

If we call Trion's initial population estimate N, they were probably expecting a curve from N to something like N/2 as the initial population dropped off, and instead they got 5N to N or so. So we're way above estimates; if you look, for instance, you'll note that the developers we see posting have obvious high morale, and the office Rift is developed in had 28 job openings last I checked. Lots of job openings either means really low morale (and high churn) or that they have plenty of money.

[Synovia]

I recently bought a year of awesome Riftness when I was strolling through some Rift videos on youtube when a stunning string of comments dawned on me. And when I say string of comments, it was like a group of players from WoW or something came and just started curbstomping Rift videos just because.

Of course they said all you usual stuff: It's a clone, it's boring, it's a clone, PvP is garbage, its a clone and it's laggy, and it's a clone. (WoW users will never put that to rest). And all of those comments went over my head because they all were wrong, and WoW is just mad because most MMO critics put Rift over WoW. But it was that one comment. This one, overhanded, below the belt comment that struck me right in the soul.

"...[Rift] is just going to inflate over the hype and crash and burn...just like Aion..."

Like I said, I ordered a year of gameplay literally moments before I read the comment, which is most likely just some troll trolling himself to sleep, but then I thought, why is Trion so quiet about this. Usually MMO publishers are screaming their population at the public.

"10 Million Subscribers! Join Now!" "Over 30 Million Account Created! Play For Free Today!" "Most Popular MMO In Asia! Download Here!"

Meanwhile Rift just advertises it's amazing reviews (which are in fact amazing), but the population is just sort of hushed away.

If a Trion Employee or somebody can come and tell us what the number is ( a guild mate of mine guesstimated 500k- 1M subscribers). Thanks in advance

I do not work for Trion but I can offer you some facts with respect to the game and its current state.

1) Trion has gone on record saying that they don't need "12 million subscribers" to be hugely successful"

2) Trion has already confirmed in the past that they had a steady 1M+ active subscribers

3) Several of the shards right now are full and/or queued. I am on Faeblight and every night during primetime there is a queue ranging from 20 minutes to 2 hours.

4) Trion has already confirmed 100M+ in revenue and has said the game has "exceeded expectations" and has already been successful.

5) Since launch, Trion has maintained a rigorous major patch schedule that has a major patch come out anywhere from 45-90 days after the previous one. In the history of MMOs, there are not many (if any) that can claim a similar speed at delivering quality content - not even WoW.



Rift is doing quite well at the moment.

EDIT: Although my assessment above has some merit, I think seebs offers a better look at the current state of the game. In short, most all signs point to a game that is doing quite well.

[Credo]

Really all you need to see is:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/rift-re...n-2011-6348954
and
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/4...ia_release.php

[Tokowei]

alright yeah guys, thanks for the reassuring.

[Terram]

Well, the best number we have is the amount of marriages in the last event.

Multiply that by 2, and realize that a small part of the playerbase participated in the event, and think about it.

[Traciatim]

Well, the best number we have is the amount of marriages in the last event.

Multiply that by 2, and realize that a small part of the playerbase participated in the event, and think about it.

[Edit]. Like I said over there, that's over 40k married and in my guild about 20% are married which would put the total population in the 200k range. That's not counting people who married prior to the event or just didn't participate.

To get 40000+ people to participate in a 1 day event that really has no in game functionality other than fluff... that's pretty darn good if you ask me.

[the_real_seebs]

Well, the best number we have is the amount of marriages in the last event.

Multiply that by 2, and realize that a small part of the playerbase participated in the event, and think about it.

That's probably a meaningless number; my spouse and I did three marriages, and I know people who did 6+. We also have no way of knowing whether "small part" is 10% or .01%.

So let's just say... obviously no one who participated did less than one marriage. Not many people did more than ten. Let's take the geometric mean, call it 3ish marriages per person. So 21k * 2 / 3 => 14k people who participated. It was a weekday, so it wasn't peak activity level, obviously not everyone even knew about it, but if you did log in there was a ton of talk about it. So let's say at least 1% of players participated, but not more than 10%. Geometric mean again; about 3%. Okay, so 14k / .03 = 466k or so.

I'd buy that.

But it's full of wild guesses, so it's basically within +/- an order of magnitude. I feel comfortable stating that Rift has between 46k and 4.6M players in NA+EU combined.

[Terram]

Obvious troll is obvious. Like I said over there, that's over 40k married and in my guild about 20% are married which would put the total population in the 200k range. That's not counting people who married prior to the event or just didn't participate.

To get 40000+ people to participate in a 1 day event that really has no in game functionality other than fluff... that's pretty darn good if you ask me.

That's EXACTLY what I just said.

[Edit]

[Ashina]

I recently bought a year of awesome Riftness when I was strolling through some Rift videos on youtube when a stunning string of comments dawned on me. And when I say string of comments, it was like a group of players from WoW or something came and just started curbstomping Rift videos just because.

Of course they said all you usual stuff: It's a clone, it's boring, it's a clone, PvP is garbage, its a clone and it's laggy, and it's a clone. (WoW users will never put that to rest). And all of those comments went over my head because they all were wrong, and WoW is just mad because most MMO critics put Rift over WoW. But it was that one comment. This one, overhanded, below the belt comment that struck me right in the soul.

"...[Rift] is just going to inflate over the hype and crash and burn...just like Aion..."

Like I said, I ordered a year of gameplay literally moments before I read the comment, which is most likely just some troll trolling himself to sleep, but then I thought, why is Trion so quiet about this. Usually MMO publishers are screaming their population at the public.

"10 Million Subscribers! Join Now!" "Over 30 Million Account Created! Play For Free Today!" "Most Popular MMO In Asia! Download Here!"

Meanwhile Rift just advertises it's amazing reviews (which are in fact amazing), but the population is just sort of hushed away.

If a Trion Employee or somebody can come and tell us what the number is ( a guild mate of mine guesstimated 500k- 1M subscribers). Thanks in advance

You have to take everything with a grain of salt, both good and bad.

And understand that just because you disagree with an opinion, doesn't mean its wrong. To some people Rift IS a boring WoW clone. It all depends on how you look at the game and what you personally are trying to get out of the game. I think you are very wrong thinking those comments are from WoW players. They are mostly from people that dislike WoW and see many of the reasons they dislike WoW in Rift. They are anti-themepark people.

I would say the population is between 300-400k. It declined over the course of 2011, but its gone up in 2012. It survived one of the 800 lb gorillas unscathed, just one more left to go. And whatever damage the other Gorilla may or may not do will be undone when Rift releases an expac.

The important thing to note about Rift's population: Its doing fine.

[Ashina]

Well, the best number we have is the amount of marriages in the last event.

Multiply that by 2, and realize that a small part of the playerbase participated in the event, and think about it.

I know people that married 4 alts though, those numbers are fairly useless without knowing the number of accounts and the percentage of people that participated.

[Traciatim]

That's EXACTLY what I just said.

Do... do you know how to read?

Yeah, completely misread it and thought it was like the guy on the announcement of the weddings that was complaining that less than 50k people play rift because that's how many weddings * 2.

[Shajin]

I think the thing that will keep Rift strong for a long time is Trion's attention to quality.

There are tons of games with lots of subscribers at launch but that quickly fizzle out. As was mentioned before launch for Rift had what seemed like 10x the numbers they expected, and while some left, a lot are coming back. I have played several other MMOs and I have seriously zero desire to ever play them again. I took a break from Rift for 9 months, came back, and it's truely amazing and so much better than before.

I do appreciate the work of a smaller team working hard on a refined quality playing experience rather than games just focusing on getting the max number of subs, or most cash shop revenue. That devotion to quality is what keeps people around, or gets them coming back if they take a break.