As discussed earlier, there's a big difference between announced "Subscribers" and real players.

But what a lot of people want to know is how many real players are there playing RIFT right now?

According to Trion (Source) they had a grand total of 58 North American and 41 European servers prepared for launch.

Trion also pleasantly provides Shard Status information. It's very limited (just like Blizzard's - you don't want to reveal too much information), but it does let you know how many people are waiting in queue.

Right now, the Dayblind shard is FULL with 112 people waiting.

I counted the total number of players on Dayblind (very tedious and time consuming by the way), and it came out to around 1900 players (Defiant and Guardian combined). Let's say for argument's sake that their servers are maxed at 2,000 total players (a very reasonable estimate).

Since there are 99 total servers, that means that they can support AT MOST 198,000 real players.

Keep in mind that these are peak concurrent logins and it was the busiest period (9PM-11PM showed about the same numbers, then tapered off) for NA. Many servers are still showing Low and Medium (probably 1200-1500) populations too.

(Note: If you play RIFT, pull some numbers from other servers during peak hours and leave a comment here - e.g. total players on both sides. I suspect all of the servers have the same max. number though. Remember that these are peak concurrent logins at a certain time of day. Other players login during different schedules.)

There are also other factors at play, some players haven't started playing yet, and they might increase the player capacity on each shard at a later date.

Take this information for what you will, but I wouldn't be surprised if real players were somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 total right now (based on average player activity cycle and that over 50% of the shards were at half capacity.) If there were "1 million subscriptions" as promoted by gaming news sites, there should have been at least 600,000 simultaneous users logged in during peak hours.

Even if all of the shards were completely full, that would probably amount to 250,000 to 275,000 total players max during peak hours. That would mean less than 425,000 total players who would be logging in throughout the entire day. A far cry from the "1 million subscriptions" that gaming news sites are mistakenly reporting anyways. =]

Dramatic title used to get your attention.

I thought some of you might find this a little interesting. It's really no big deal, but it's just one of those funny things that people always _suspect_ but can never prove it to be true. =]

I saw a lot of visitor hits coming from the RIFT Forums and Blizzard, so I figured I would check it out.
So yeah, they're watching the RIFT Forums from their company network on company time. I'm sure Trion is seeing a ton of hits from Blizzard's Irvine office (and their other remote offices), but it's not like they would ever share that information publicly.

Considering that most of their GMs and Customer Support staff are outsourced overseas, and based on the system specs of this one example - he appears to work in the graphics/cinematics department.

I mean, you all know this happens.. businesses watching other businesses. But, some people like to see the evidence for themselves. Hopefully people won't use this information and blow it out of proportion though (e.g. "Blizzard is running scared!"). I'm pretty confident they're not worried at all. =]

Various gaming news sites have already started stating that RIFT has hit 1 million subscribers. I'm sure you'll see more news articles about this over the next few days too.

But just like Blizzard, the truth is in the details. =]

Here is Trion's official announcement:

RIFT™ HEAD START KICKS-OFF TODAY AS TRION ECLIPSES
ONE MILLION REGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Names of Rift public servers revealed on the game’s official forums

Trion Worlds announced today that more than one million accounts have been created to date, signaling a high level of interest for the company’s first massively multiplayer online game, Rift™, which is scheduled to launch March 1st in North America, March 3rd in pan-European countries, and March 4th in the UK. The news hits just as the game’s Head Start period begins, giving pre-order customers advance playtime before servers officially open on launch day.

Launching with 33 Head Start servers, Rift will feature dedicated realms for PvP, PvE, and role-playing players. Servers are live today, coinciding with the game’s Head Start period, which lasts until the game launches next week. Find the official server list on Rift’s official forums at: http://forums.riftgame.com/showthrea...48#post1198848

One million accounts have been created to date. That includes the hundreds of thousands of open/closed beta testers over the past several months. It might even include players who created new accounts on their forums, as anyone is able to create a new account to post on their forums even if they can't play the game (for now anyways.) Here are the beta key numbers that I am aware of: MMORPG.COM passed out 175,000 beta keys (7000 VIPs), WarCry gave out 2,000 keys, MMOHUT gave out 5,000 keys, GameZone.com gave out 25,000 (1000 VIPs), Gamestar.de gave out 125,000 (5000 VIPs), and ZAM "burned through" 125,000 beta keys (5000 VIPs).

You know.. it's funny because I'm saying "it's just like what Blizzard does" but as a negative connotation. Usually that doesn't happen.. users often claim that games will copy good ideas from Blizzard ("oh, just another WoW clone", "same spell name"), but when have you ever heard someone claim that they copied something _bad_ from Blizzard? (e.g. "I can't believe they're doing the same thing as Blizzard, it's going to be a mess.. an even bigger screw up.") I don't think it happens very often.

Apparently, Blizzard has been deleting threads and banning players from WoW Forums when the subject of RIFT (in a positive light) comes up.

So whatever you do, even if it's related to WoW in some way, don't talk about RIFT! They'll ban you for that too.

This shouldn't come as a big surprise though, they did the same thing when AION first came out.

Proper Guide to Blizzard Forum Discussion:

- Even though you pay $15 per month for the privilege of posting in their forums, you may only talk about subjects that they tell you to talk about.
- Such topics and general discussions may only be about how amazing and glorious Blizzard is.
- In Off-Topic Forums, you may only post about Blizzard games and Blizzard topics.
- Free.. speech? What's that? This is BLIZZARD'S forum, they can limit and censor you as much as please. And yes, it is indeed pleasurable.

Champion's Online has finally announced their F2P launch date, which is the near the end of this month (January 25, 2011).

I think it's really cool that they're going "F2P" and I hope that more games do the same.. but I wish that game developers would take a different approach to their revenue generating methodologies (and change their definition of "Free-to-Play").

Say, for example, you download a new stand-alone game. You can play it for the first few levels, but the rest of the content (or should I say the majority of the content) is locked down for paying customers only. Paid customers also have access to more features, can unlock extra account slots (or alternatively, they have the "Save" feature enabled), can unlock new character classes, have access to larger inventory bags, better gear, and better character stats. Non-paying customers may also frequently get bombarded with "Buy Now!" or "Upgrade Now!" ads. That's called a limited demo.. just like the old DOS shareware days.

Most F2P MMO's follow the same pattern: sell big features and game altering items online. The more money a player spends - the more powerful they are over other players. We humans just want to be better than everyone else.

There must be a way for a F2P game to really be Free-to-Play where nothing is locked down, non-paying customers have full access to the entire game, and yet the business still earns a substantial recurring profit. (Even though Guild Wars has already demonstrated that you can make quite a bit of revenue by just selling Expansion Packs.)

Examples that generate revenue and yet also allow full content might include:

- Ad-targeting (which is always an option) if you can get the right relationships with other companies. Advertising also depends on the type of game (consider a virtual world where you can purchase real-world products.)
- Vanity pets, items, or character abilities (eg, dances) work well as demonstrated by Blizzard. Especially if some of the proceeds are donated to charity.
- Special (non-game breaking) features like physical appearance changes (very cool effects like bright glowing eyes or character voices) and paid services such as character renaming, pet renaming, customized spell effects, class/race/build changes, server transfers, etc.
- Selling real estate for real world currency (prime examples include Second Life and Entropia).
- Merchandising (if game lore can build up a strong following) or novels/fiction (publishing deals for fan fiction).
- Donations (risky)
- A guild system where guilds are initially limited but they can be unlocked (inexpensive monthly fee - say $3.99) to access additional services and special Guild Perks. What's nice about this model is that all members of the guild can donate pennies each to maintain the guild.
- Collecting demographic information, selling useful survey and polling data for marketing purposes or scientific research. If you have a constant supply of over 1 million people from around the world, you can collect quite a bit of useful (non-personal) information from them.
- Turn in-game minigames into a crowd sourcing application similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk. There's a lot of unexplored potential here.

Or how about this: instead of targeting our need to be better than everyone else (we all want to be God after all), how about targeting human laziness instead?

- Leave the game fully open (no locked down content), but meet the Free vs Paid customers somewhere in the middle.
- Everything is available to all players, however make it easier for paid customers to level or receive special drops.
- Paid customers can purchase a special "lucky buff" that increases the chances of extremely rare items dropping for example. Free players can still obtain the same item, however it takes longer and is much more difficult.
- Paid customers can purchase an "experience buff" to level faster. (Technically, Blizzard already did this.) =]
- It's "fair" in that the same content and items are available to everyone, but lazy players can purchase services to reach goals faster whereas free-players need to work harder to receive the same rewards.
- Other options include Auctions, Player Trades/Selling, and Gold/Item Trading/Selling
- "Make Your Own Spells" paid service where players can create "new" spells combining existing spell mechanics and old/new spell visual effects.

Those are just some of the ideas off the top of my head. If I think of anything else, I'll update the post.

In other news, RIFT will be coming out soon too. I never really followed the game too much until just recently (a friend is in the beta, and I checked it out). Initially, I had assumed that it was going to be F2P or at least really inexpensive considering the competition - but apparently it isn't. They're following the "standard monthly fee" of $14.99. Ugh. That might have worked for WoW since they launched before the recession after all, but that $14.99 price tag looks more-and-more expensive every day. =]

I think it would be neat for a MMORPG publisher to do a little experimentation in this field. Make a great game, plan for a game to be F2P, but release the game with a $4.99 per month subscription fee instead and just see what happens. If things don't work out, simply switch back to Plan A. It will give them some great insight into customer mentality, and they can use that data for determining the cost of their next big game (that might have been planned all along). There's some data that you just can't get reliably from random focus groups, surveys and polls.

Anyways.. back to RIFT. After playing the game, I'm getting a really bad feeling from it. It's the same vibe I got from Darkspore.. you know that feeling where there's a lot of hype about something, you watch/play it, you're left disappointed, and you just know it's just not going to do well? It's the same feeling I got from watching THE CAPE yesterday too. (Even though I could already tell by the title that it was going to bomb, the first episode confirmed that it's going to flop badly.) Unless there are some significant changes made, you know it's going to fail. So, with that in mind, I really hope that Trion Worlds listens to their customers and implements recommended changes.. it can still be saved. If things don't go well, they may just reduce the monthly fee or change it to the standard F2P model.

Whenever any game moves from standard payment models to F2P - even partial F2P like the first 10-40 levels are "free to play", it's typically a very bad sign.. a death knell if you will. =] I'm positive that World of Warcraft will one day change to this model (e.g. a partial F2P) and then start reducing it's monthly fees a year or two after that.

(Note: RIFT reminded me a lot of Allods Online actually, except that Allods is already a F2P game. It's a standard clone, but you might want to give it a shot if you're bored.)

Other than that, I haven't had a chance to play DC Universe Online yet, but based on the gameplay I've seen, I'm getting the same bad feeling that they'll be merging servers sometime soon (the "death cry" of massive subscriber losses), lowering prices, and that it might need to become another F2P candidate. =]