MMO Roundup: RIFT in China, SWTOR hip hop, and more
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 15th 2012 at 7:00PM
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RIFT in China: "Biggest game deal ever" for a Western MMO How big is RIFT? Big enough to attract one of China's heavyweight MMO houses, apparently. Trion has announced a partnership with publishing giant Shanda that will bring RIFT to the Chinese gaming market. Trion is flexing its muscles -- and broadening its horizons -- on the strength of a banner year that included a hefty influx of investment capital as well as RIFT's $100 million revenue windfall. |
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Full SWTOR-themed hip hop album released If the one thing missing from your life has been music to show the world how much you love Star Wars: The Old Republic, rejoice! Your wait has come to an end. Richie Branson, who put out his first SWTOR-themed song late last year, has released Cold Republic Episode I: The Empire Likes Rap, which has the peculiar honor of being the world's first SWTOR mix tape. |
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League of Legends reveals Nautilus, its newest champion Riot Games adds a new champion to League of Legends' growing roster every few weeks to keep the game fresh, and this week Riot revealed the game's next champion, Nautilus, the Titan of the Depths. Nautilus is a tank with a unique initiation ability: He throws his massive anchor toward a target, and then drags himself toward the anchor. |
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Watch The Old Republic's Guild Summit from home Maybe you want to head down to the first guild summit for Star Wars: The Old Republic but just can't quite fit a trip to Austin into your budget at the moment. Good news: Portions of the event will be available via livestream for those who can't attend in person. |
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Massively's week in review Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wonk Feb 15th 2012 8:01PM
Reading the Rift comments following the news story was like reading them 8 months ago, same people arguing over numbers and if Trion is successful or not, it's really pathetic.
You'd think they would have moved on to SWOR MMO blogs/forums to attack the players and the game there... but it seems some missed the memo to move on.
jfofla Feb 15th 2012 8:16PM
Hate does not have a half life,
lazymangaka Feb 15th 2012 8:45PM
I would play Rift if it was fully F2P. I can't justify a subscription, but I would adore it as a WoW supplement.
Brasson Feb 16th 2012 1:40AM
...Mr. Bubbles?
Bossy Feb 16th 2012 4:01AM
Trion is NOT a publicly traded company. They can say whatever they want without making any number public.
But all their fantatic followers want to talk BS when numbers are concerned, because no one can controls these figures. So they can say whatever they want.
... BUT when you CAN control server numbers, they have an explanation of being "test" servers. Laughs ...
Rift now has LESS than 1/3 of its servers as on launch and 1/2 of those remaining servers never get out of low pop status (>300 people).
So their population must have dwindled to around 1/6 of the original pops when the game was launched and all those 99 servers were capped and showed full status.
-- As a European I shrudder though as I read some more private investors put money into this thing, like a US pension fund...
Oh boy, If I knew my pension fund would be investing in an mmorpg with a paid sub that lost 85% of its players in the first year, I would ask my money back the day after.
But as I said: they are not publicly traded so they can declare whatever they want without public control. That goes for those 100 million dollars too btw, as it covered ALL activities of the group and not only Rift publishment.
Well, they have a really good PR department, but that didn't prevent them from dropping the game to place 40 on Xfire (with less than 10% of its launching figures) And for those not believing Xfire: server numbers just confirms it: This game in NO way has more than 100K subs by now.
The ever shrinking server numbers prove it. Odd that the fans didn't use the BS of "but they upped the server caps !!!". ... which is ALWAYS the same argument when you see all those servers drop activity.
:)) Greetings from reality checks.