Death of a Game: Rift

[@TheDrizzle404]

I was part of Rift in the beta and an active member of the forum community. There were quite a few of us "regulars" that would often chat with each other and other players. I'm not sure exactly where it was on the timeline after launch, but at some point they hired new mods for the forums and we noticed a ban wave. People that had been talking to each other for over a year daily suddenly found themselves banned for very mild reasons. Complaining about a ban was also conveniently a bannable offense, so people who tried to chat with each other about the event were effectively silenced. A lot of them simply stopped showing up at all. Being the blunt and controversial type, I made a very lengthy and scathing post calling out the lead forum mod, a mod that had been around and active in the community along us regulars since beta. I went through my ban history and why each of them were bullshit. He replied after many people posted their similar concerns and began voicing their own unfair bans. He claimed he would go through my list and see what he could make of it. After a while he replied that he had removed most of them, but left others. Among the ones he left were bans for complaining about the bans he himself claimed weren't justified. I asked him what they're going to do about their new ban-happy mods and they said they'd look into it. Bans calmed down for about 2 weeks before it went right back to full speed. At this point I made a post letting them know I would be cancelling my sub (I paid 1 year in advance) if this shit kept up. Of course it did, and I left. That's a long and boring way of supporting your theory that they cared more about their image than their community. It happened far earlier than you might have thought as this all took place before it went free to play.

[@Kakerate2]

Did they ever do anything interesting with the Dynamic Event? It's a neat idea, more of a gimmick really, but still. It seems the focus of that kind of design would be constant content, instead of releasing it in "expansions". Just my 2c though, maybe it's a pointless distinction.

[@ardisst]

I loved Rift! I did the Alpha and Beta and immediately quit my other games to play. I loved my Rogue/Tank-like class (can't remember the combo). The dungeons were great and I loved the Rift content, always looking for more challenging ones. The Master dungeons were awesome, which I noticed WoW quickly copied. The classes were so much fun to make, test, and put to use. I still have nostalgia about it, but I quit a 1-2 years from the start as my friends stopped playing. I came back during Free-to-play and it just wasn't the same.

[@Goremize]

Forever gonna miss the days of Elrar. He was so great... when they fired him, man, the game felt hollow, and as you said, mods started banning people.

[@samomico9536]

Sounds like someone on the inside was trying to kill the game.

[@Sorenthaz]

Yeah it's really a damn shame how badly RIFT fell apart. The early days with Elrar and them all was great. I'd always tune in on Twitch to watch the weekly Friday livestreams and was a forum regular as well. Such a great community and the CM team was great up until Dahanese steadily took over and things shifted to F2P.

[@bweatyfingy6503]

When Rift went F2P, they deleted all my char's with over 100 plat on them, & my guild/guild bank. Then abused me thru support. Then perma-banned me for showing what they said. F Trion!

[@Winterfal11]

They deleted a max level char I had with high tier pvp gear and I never went back.

[@thunberbolttwo3953]

Trion tried to auto renew my 1 year rift subscription.That woul;d have cost me at least $150.It didn't work because my debit card was replaced.So the information they had was out of date.Lol.So I agree frak trion.

[@txdmsk]

@@Winterfal11 Why did they delete your characters?

[@iamplaceholder]

lol really? its been a long time since i played but i had 3000+ plat on my main char when they went F2P and experienced zero issues. Weird man.

[@areyousrs4812]

@@thunberbolttwo3953 zzzzzz

[@Mogsey1972]

Rift was a great game at launch, but had a strange feel to it. Can't put a finger on exactly what, but it all felt a bit plastic.

[@naejimba]

A concept called "game feel" or "juice." It could be anything from messing with the physics of jumping or acceleration and deceleration of running in a Mario game, animations and spell effects, the sounds, screen shakes or flashes of light, slowing things down for a fraction of a second when you make impact with an enemy, etc. All of this combined gives feedback and weight to actions, making it fun to play on a visceral level. It is an elusive concept that takes time most don't want to spend... but it is the secret to Blizzard's polish or the quality of a Nintendo game.

[@dovahkiin5902]

It was similar to wow in so many ways. It really reminded me of classic wow honestly. But there was a few jarring differences, like the pet system wasn't the same and it made playing a necromancer less enjoyable than playing a warlock or hunter in wow.

[@Mogsey1972]

@@naejimba Nice and Intelligent reply.

[@ppsarrakis]

@@naejimba exactly,i didnt appreciate character animation smoothness when i moved from ESO to WOW and from PUBG to BFV... not to mention RIFT was sooo punishing on the FPS... pvp on that large warfront fuck directx 9!!!!

[@VegetoStevieD]

Character animations in Rift were stiff, and for some reason, it never looked like they belonged in the world, like their feet just didn't make contact with the ground.

[@Ragefatha]

Such a shame...Rift had a LOT of great content speaking from my experience from the vanilla days. The PVE side of the game was best in its class, even surpassing WOW at the time in my opinion. RIP old friend 😢

[@LikaLaruku]

Just read yesterday that Gamigo was shutting down RIFT Prime. That sure didn't last long.

[@Xenospire]

I fully agree, from launch to the end of SL, RIFT was an AMAZING game. I will miss the game deeply.

[@planescaped]

MMO's with great potential killing themselves through horrible mismanagement is a startlingly regular occurrence in the genre...

[@Calla47]

I agree was by far the greatest experience I had in any mmo, me being there from beginning to end. RIP Rift we will miss you.

[@alpinoterran]

rifts pve has nothing on tbc, wotlk and mop raiding

[@peterbeck88]

"The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan" Why does this not surprise me? For those who don't know, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan is an investment organization associated with the teachers union of Ontario, and they have their fingers in so many businesses. I think they own around half the shopping malls in Ontario.

[@Xathian]

They're quite famous for their abnormally forward thinking investment system. Investing to raise capital is nothing new for pension organizations, but they tend to be very conservative in their approach. Low risk, low value industry standard stuff. The OTPP however invests all over the place, into start ups, video games companies, movies, etc. It's a rarity for a pension fund and it's worked quite well for them so far.

[@Gewyne]

They own my local airport ( 8 million + passengers a year) www.bristolairport.co.uk/about-us/who-we-are/bristol-airport-ownership

[@CDAW_45]

Ey you had my old profile picture nice man

[@brandon_leeroy135]

Gordon 323,000 teachers in Ontario? Jeez, my city has 75,000, according to Google, and I thought that was a lot.

[@bophadesknutz7798]

@@brandon_leeroy135 Being a teacher is over saturated. It's hard to be a teacher nowadays because there are so many

[@v-7815]

"You're not in Azeroth anymore". Rift's worst mistake was trying to be a WoW killer. That's how you instantly kill your game.

[@omnifarius6325]

Games start o lose their own identity when they care more about outdoing WoW or comparing themselves to WoW. It's never been a fair comparison because WoW simply took elements of other games and made them fit together at it's prime. So being as a WoW clone might sound great from a technical aspect, but it has a bad reputation among players who wont look past similar fantasy aesthetics to see a product for what it is once it's compared to WoW. WoW had a lot of lore an a foundation to build an entire world on, and there will likely never be another mmo with as much to start with as it's had. But it reinvents itself over the years, chipping away at what initially made it as successful as it was. So other game devs need to stop trying to create the great WoW killer, it's just not going to happen. WoW is steadily digging it's own grave and players are tired of piss poor knock offs. If there is another great game to rise up, it'll be by some fledgling company that cares about it's community and less about corporate overlords. A company that'll be smart about spreading itself too thin, and even consider player input of the direction it grows in. What we need is a great author or artist that isn't concerned with money, to lead this company with their driving goal to tell a story. The rest will fall into place. At least imo.

[@kevinoconnor5134]

You don't mention someone elses game. You're just giving them free advertising. Big Time Mistake.

[@internaut4257]

only thing that can kill WoW is WoW

[@battle-brotherthiel1563]

joseph ezu and it’s doing it pretty good

[@LikaLaruku]

I remember when every RPG that came out was trying to be a "Diablo Killer."

[@OriaXu]

Very nice video, I was surprised when people told me I had to watch this video because I was in it :) Unlike most other people that did a "death of a game" genre video on Rift, you actually researched quite a bit! I can only repeat myself once again: Rift was imo, the best MMO out there and the most fun i ever had! Trion... well they worked hard to kill their game and company, so congrats to them!

[@Estirvana]

I really miss the dynamic rifts opening up and the really customizable class system. I moved onto playing BnS a long time ago(love the responsive combat system) although I've given up on this one too as it's not worth playing anymore. Back to my fallback comfort game League of Legends until another MMO comes along with the rinse and repeat cycle :c

[@kriskleinsteuber9261]

They truly did the worst. It was pretty bad in NMT when they stripped you guys of some firsts because of "exploits," but then let Raptor's guild get the world first on Crucia when they used an exploit in the code to get past a whole phase of the fight. That was truly the downhill point of the game for the competitive raiding scene.

[@DuLlas2002]

All hail the fall of Nazi walrus

[@thevlaka]

invasions, rifts and (some) raids were the shit back when Rift had a sub

[@OriaXu]

@@kriskleinsteuber9261 "If it looks like an exploit, it's fine because you have a Dev in your raid!" :D

[@Zephyrbal]

RIFT was the only modern MMO that ever successfully codified the support role in a group, and it is the feature from that game I most hope someone more competent will steal.

[@Valkod23]

I'd say City of Heroes did it better with Defenders and Controllers.

[@brothertim1322]

I agree with you. One of the main reasons why I continued to play Rift was the support roles. The bard was so much fun for me to play. It was very different from anything available in WoW, even still today.

[@salvatoregreco2380]

The Lord of the Rings Online also had really good working support roles

[@htennek1]

Having support be a dedicated role is superfluous. You can add in the same abilities that support have as passive's on other role's spells, attacks, or abilities. Which is what just about every other MMORPG does, It just makes things simpler. Why make a class that gives everybody a 5% chance to critically strike, when you can just put that on a passive on a cyromage's ice shatter? In the end all that RIFT support is 'not really good damage, but not realy good healing either, but gives some half assed buffs' I do like RIFT though, my 2nd fave MMORPG in existance. Just I felt they made support, not as an actualy role but more as a 'look we did it different, lol no tank dmg, dmg, dmg heals, for a group. I think going with a 6 player group instead of 5 would have been better.

[@kriskleinsteuber9261]

I played Archon in the guild Trinity, and I will say that a dedicated support player was one of the most looked down upon roles, yet such a vital necessity. Losing a dedicated player that also enjoyed a role left a hole to be filled in any raid group. Knowing the layering of some buffs and the overlay of others took skill and timing. Also tailoring your build to maximize dps while still providing these important buffs was a unique skill in of itself. Yeah, people love to see those with the top dps numbers, but those numbers wouldn't have occurred without proper timing of buffs. The loss of dps in the one person made up for the overall dps increase in the group or raid.

[@Corrupted]

Much love for producing content like this! New era of quality essays on youtube

[@henrikw377]

The class/soul system is hands down the best system I have ever seen in a game. I so hope to see it in a new MMO.

[@michaelpapageorgious5053]

I agree. If I was to ever make my own MMORPG i'd love to experiment with the idea of mixing classes

[@dylankelly8049]

take a look at the game in development, Chronicles of Elyria

[@ArdaIskender]

for sure!

[@gnawershreth]

It was part of what ultimately broke the game though. Go play any big MMOs and most people love to mess around on alts to try other classes, other quest/story lines, to try a different class role (ie. a DPS player making a healer alt or whatever). You may not like making alts (How would I know?) but it's what keeps the lower levels active for any new player potentially joining the game later on, keeping the population up. If you've ever joined a MMO a year after launch or whatever, you've grouped with a lot of people who were on their alts. Otherwise your experience as a new player would have been drastically different. The world would likely have felt dead since most older MMOs don't tend to suddenly get a big wave of new players all at once. One of your tanks just being able to swap to to main healer, DPS mage or whatever was also just silly and downright immersion breaking.. I was actually a fan of the system at first, I was in the beta, got the 4 day head start and everything, but during the first months (or whatever it was) it became clear that it just didn't work well for the overall health of the game world. You also saw it clearly later on when no one was at the lower level areas and rifts just "took over" completely, a game that's supposed to "feel alive" needs people to make alts, to be in the newbie areas etc. or it'll feel anything *but* alive. The mixing and matching part of the class system was pretty cool though. Sort of making your own class was quite fun, you just shouldn't be able to switch between them. The only problem with people making their own classes is obviously going to be balancing them all. Even MMOs with just 12 (or whatever) pre-made classes are clearly hard to balance, Rift made that even harder. It was fun to make a "class" of your own though but some were quite clearly just way better than others because the system was impossible to balance.

[@Felsmukk]

@def cultist holy shit dude that wall of text crit me for 8d8 damage.

[@justfitz08]

This series is so good. I'm glad someone on yt understands what kind of content people desire.

[@Corrupted]

Watch joseph anderson, tehsnakerer, GVMERS, summoning salt and many other similiar channels! Theres a lot of stuff like this out there

[@KantiDono]

Here's my RIFT story. I really liked RIFT, I thought the class system was better than anything WoW ever had, and the titular rifts didn't hurt either. I have some great memories from playing in Vanilla, and raiding in Storm Legion. Then I ended up quitting a little while after it went free to play, for personal reasons. I thought the game was fine at the time, I just wasn't playing MMOs. Sometime later, I heard about the release of a new expansion: Nightmare Tide. Hey, the game's still F2P, right? Why not give it another try? All my other characters were still there, and even with old gear I leveled up to the new cap with no trouble. But then, I ran into a wall: Earrings. You see, if you preordered Nightmare Tide with real money, you got two new equipment slots: Earrings. These weren't just cosmetic or something, they had stats on them. If you didn't have earring slots, you were just 10% less powerful than a character that could equip earrings. So forget getting invited to any raids, you couldn't even get into a world rift group. Why would anyone want to take a character that was just strictly worse? Oh, but don't worry, you can unlock the earring slots in only in-game currency, just like they promised. All you had to do was do *every* *possible* *daily* *quest* that gave you the right currency *every* *day* for *two months* to be able to buy it. Oh well, at least after those first two months, you'd have your earrings and be on par with the pay-ers, right? Guess again! That currency could also be spent on gear upgrades! So when you finally bought your earrings, you'd *still* be 10% behind all the other characters who were earning that same currency and getting better gear with it since they didn't have to save up for earrings. That's when RIFT died for me. Sure, technically, they weren't lying- every bit of power that was for sale with real money could _also_ be earned in-game. But you would never catch up. Ever.

[@mikey-nm3od]

yea i always loved Rift, always had to push myself away though because it became nothing more than a money grab after it went f2p

[@ladybucket9798]

yeah thats what pretty much ruined rift for me. you got slapped left and right with restrictions whereever you went and kind of felt forced to buy stuff for real money. it really made me feel uncomfortable because i had the feeling that if i dont spend money im not welcome, so i left for good.

[@Rev_Boneman]

Imagine having to work for two months straight just to get your damn ears pierced smh

[@andysummnons4893]

I remember earrings... I spent 2 years without and got into most raids and parties... I really didnt care for them eventually a friend got em for me

[@anneaunyme]

I perfectly agree with you: this earring thing was way too expensive to buy with in-game earnable currency. At the beginning I naively thought I would just have to farm a bit, but it quickly became obvious I would never get to the end of it. At this point I finished solo quests and puzzles and left for good. I had great times with it, but things change.

[@Mike55690]

I've been looking forward to this ever since you did Aion ! Like i said before this series is a breath of fresh air, it's so well done, the scripting, the research, it all culminates to a very enjoyable video, keep up the great work nerdSlayer ! This series definitely is a breath of fresh air !

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I am still working on it, but I appreciate the kind words nonetheless! I have to keep striving for more :)

[@katkall2]

@MISFIT Can you do Death of a Game, Anthem?

[@hermeticascetic]

I loved my bard in rift. It was so much fun at the start. Decent support, high burst damage capability, high survivability, great mobility. So much fun in PvP. Then I left for a couple months and they completely screwed the class. And after how much time and energy I sunk into it, it put a bad taste in my mouth and I stopped playing altogether.

[@alexh4449]

Oh yes, Defiance. Played it for 3 days and never touched it again.

[@mikoto7693]

Likewise. I enjoyed most of the TV show of Defiance and I had MMO experience thanks to FF11, ESO, FO76 and STO. But I couldn't get into the Defiance game. Amongst other things the enemy respawns was far too fast and there weren't any villages or town to be safe in or protect or use as a hub.

[@Arc115YT]

I admit, I played Defiance on PS3 and thoroughly enjoyed it haha. I just liked how intense it was and how good the gunplay felt.

[@thatdudeoverthere5459]

I was hyped for it, never heard or seen anything after the launch. Downloaded it when it went F2P, then never played it.

[@mileswhite3706]

Oh noes! Not Rift. I loved playing this game on release. Lots of great memories. But I'm not surprised. I think I only played it for a few months and quit at level 40. But the first time I saw a Rift Invasion. Certainly one of my top 10 memorable gaming moments in my life. Time to watch!

[@mileswhite3706]

One of my pet peeves for Rift, which I have no idea if will be mentioned in the video. Is that I absolutely hated how the NPCS had different models than the players. It was just such a weird disconnect for me.

[@mileswhite3706]

Another thing that I think Rift pioneered was having non-combat pets follow you through zoning. I remember Rift doing that first, and then literally within a month or two--WoW added that feature. Those sneaky bastards!

[@dahymster5666]

How does one love a game and play only for a few months. Your love is rather fleeting, I hope your girlfriend isnt reading this

[@mileswhite3706]

I'm sure my lady would get a chuckle if she saw the amount of text I spewed into the KZbin's comment section, lol. An interesting reply, you had me re-reading my statement to see if I worded it stupidliy or something. But I did say "I loved" playing the game at release. Loved being a past-tense word. It would be like saying "I loved that pizza I ate." Past-tense, because you don't love it forever. Where as, if I was talking about my wife. I would say "I love my wife." Present tense. ------------ Though you could argue that love might be too strong of a term to use when talking to a video game--maybe! But that kind of hyperbole is pretty common when talking about hobbies. If I love a game or hate a game--it's not as intense as those words should indicate. But It's also convenient that Nerdslayer went on a little tangent about how the context of words like 'dead' are just as important as their literal use.

[@dahymster5666]

@@mileswhite3706 The pizza analogy doesnt work. Pizzas are consumed so the object of your affection no longer exists. In the context of a game, you fell out of love, or maybe more appropriately, you enjoyed your honeymoon period. But when reality set in you saw the flaws and realized it wasnt true love at all..... Just a temporary infatuation...... Which could be some sort of analogy for the game. People really enjoyed the potential of what this game could have been, alot were very excited, but Trion just kept letting ppl down. Anyway, the discussion is one around semantics, Im glad you didnt get your heart broken by this game :)

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

My long awaited Death of a Game episode on Trion Worlds' Rift/Rift Planes of Telara/Heroes of Telara. The game is currently only focusing on QoL changes (maintenance mode) per the Dev team (massivelyop.com/2018/11/08/gamigo-considers-quality-of-life-improvements-for-rift-post-trion-but-theres-little-else-shared/). Also sorry for implying callings can switch, you are locked to a calling and can only switch amongst the sub classes within. Sources are in the description as per usual (I am making a habit to not be lazy and put them in there). I appreciate the support everyone, and please stay tuned for a channel announcement video that should be coming out before the year ends. Thanks.

[@johnblount1347]

Glad you are giving a look at this game. Had such a great time on here and it had true potential.

[@xplicitmike]

Nice! Thank you, I love your series and I've been waiting for this installment!

[@jinzok]

for the next Dead of a game episode can you do Tera Online, now the game has a max of 1k players on weekends and -500 during weekdays. game died because of massive p2w tactics and massive grind.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Yes a horrible habit of being a speak with my body person ROFL

[@SchmuckBoi]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss should deal with that with a counterhabit- make a habit for when you notice as a sign to stop, like snapping fingers twice or something

[@bunnarchist8965]

This might be the one video of yours where I actually played the game in question Rift was such a wonderful MMORPG, and I honestly thought the world and everything about it was unique, so it's honestly heartbreaking to know it's ending with how many hours I spent in its world

[@redavni1]

This game was so good at launch, and pretty much every patch nerfed the games difficulty until nobody cared.

[@dosbilliam]

I agree with that in the area of those Elite areas being removed...you know, the ones where taking on more than a single enemy solo would spell death.That being said, considering how boring Nightmare Tide was, it's not a surprise.

[@simon6435]

@@redavni1 Looking back it's easy to see that they were clearly lacking in the balancing area when it comes to difficulty of PvE Content, they fucking jacknifed the difficulty curves all over the shop. T1/2 Expert Dungeon were a challenge (a fun one too) and then suddenly a fucking walk in the park. T1 raids were really well balanced but somehow they released fucking Hammerknell which pretty much required peak performance for a number of guilds. Game died then and there with my Guild imo. Stopped being fun when we started losing people who couldn't cope with a raid schedule and the difficulty (don't blame them at all though), and started having to run tier 1 raids only because we needed to get new people and gear them. It only went downhill after Hammerknell was so inconsistent in difficulty on release.

[@criticalmass3993]

I played if for a while when it became f2p and i really liked the soul/talent system no matter if it was broken or not, melee/ranger hybrid i made was simply so much fun to play as it was mostly troll spec rather than pure burst spec. Oh and that dimension housing is still probably best housing i have seen in MMO's, never seen a housing system so flexible where you could almost do anything that comes to mind. I suck at building nor that i am personally super interested in housing content but i can appreciate well made feature when i see one.

[@simon6435]

Rift had so much fun built into its classes, every class had a pet archetype of their own. Warlock/Chloromancer Mage could do some legitimately insane healing (before they nerfed it into the ground), pretty much everything the Rogue had was superfun to play from have 0 aggro bomb applications to being able to actually effectively tank in dungeons and raids. Really wish it didn't take the cataclysmic nosedive it did.

[@tamjames1496]

This was the best mmo I ever played. Played everyday for 7 years and loved every minute of it. Miss this game terribly.. I hate Trion for killing this game ☹️

[@kirapyromantic4431]

Me too. Literally heart broken. Have tried a few games since but none stuck.

[@samomico9536]

Same here. It was the BEST MMORPG I ever played. When I first started it was beautiful, I was instantly thrown into world events with parties of up to 30 people with awesome challenges and rewards. The pve was so good, everything about rift was perfect I’m seriously baffled as to wth happened...

[@thehumanmachine6121]

what makes it worse is that im pretty sure trion sold rift and a few other of their IPs to gamigo.

[@Arc115YT]

I jumped ship for Final Fantasy XIV when I noticed the trouble starting. I hate that i was right about where Rift was heading. I'm having a great time in FFXIV though. I always pimp the free trial to those looking for a new MMO. Hundreds of hours of content for free. Play the complete game up to level 60 with no restrictions on time. It's worth a shot at least.

[@troodon1096]

"Any gear sold in the store can also be earned through play." I don't think when they said that, they realized... or maybe they just hope players wouldn't realize... the converse of that statement is: "Any gear earned through play can also be bought in the store." That makes denying the game is "pay to win" a bit more difficult. Sure, you don't have to buy that gear that gives you a stat advantage... but the fact remains that you CAN. Meaning yes, you can buy power, you can buy an advantage... which is pretty much the definition of "pay to win."

[@archardor3392]

No. Any gear that can be bought in the store can be earned in the game. If the amount of sellable gears are 2, for example, then you can buy 2 in the store and earn them as well while playing. That does not mean that the rest of 100 pieces of gear that can be earned while playing can be bought in the store. A square has 4 angles. That does not mean the every figure that has 4 angles is a square. P.S. No idea about Rift, but his statement is generally wrong.

[@zytha2890]

that... doesn't make it pay to win lol just means pay to progress faster

[@huyvuminh1048]

I love those gacha gambling system, push the boundary so hard goons these day forgot what pay to win is

[@cgirl111]

The sold the last raid gear in the store when a new progression raid dropped. If I remember right you couldn't buy current raid equivalent gear in the store.

[@maevixie7041]

Pay to win would mean you can't get gear anywhere else outside of buying it.

[@alexandertrilliam]

God I fucking love how far you’ve come, I’ve been watching since the Star Wars Galaxies episode and it’s amazing how much better quality everything about these videos has become. You’ve indirectly gotten me interested in whole genres of videos I never thought I’d care about, thank you brodie and keep it up

[@skizzitt8422]

Yussss. Rift is one of two games to ever break my heart. Warhammer Online was the other. Oh what a time 2008-12 was.

[@Saa_la]

YES, I'm looking forward the new MMO era which should begin in 2020

[@brothertim1322]

Unfortunately, Warhammer SHOULD have been amazing but, in my opinion, EA forced them to rush and overhyped it. Ultimately the game fell on it's face due to being undercooked. I wanted it to live up to the hype, which I guess is usually impossible for any game.

[@txdmsk]

@@brothertim1322 It was definitely rushed. Too bad.

[@omnifarius6325]

I'll miss both Warhammer and Rift. They were fun even with their apparent flaws. Archeage had a ton of promise as well, but it was a cesspool of toxicity both from the playerbase and publisher that I'll not miss it as much lol.

[@Slayer-cd8gc]

Warhammer was fun at launch. Just the idea of public quests and it had a good way to put pve and pvp togeather. So i felt like I was advancing in the main quest while also fighting other people, but most of my family and friends quit playing. So I slowly got bored also.

[@Cinematron861]

I love your series man, always interested in watching another entry.

[@AryehAmitz]

Rift was so fun when it first came out. I think it was probably one of the highlights of my MMO experiences.

[@samomico9536]

Rift was the Absolute MOST fun I’ve ever had in any MMORPG...EVER. I don’t know what happened. I remember the pve was soooo fun because it made you band together with upwards of 30 people and fight monsters that posed a threat and threw you in a new mission every time you beat one and the rewards got better and better each one you beat. The PvP was amazing and well balanced. It had so many players. What the hell happened?????? Last time I went back in it was dead

[@Spootnik]

Rift was me and my WoW friends most fun we've had in a game in general, but it only lasted about half a year until it all just sort of fell apart. We still remember it fondly though and reminisce from time to time about the weird but viable builds we found. FF14 has sort of scratched that itch but not quite in the same way.

[@NiraSader]

“You can buy stat granting gear in the irl currency shop” “Gear must be earned” Pride and accomplishment lmao

[@andrewholloway7202]

I see you everywhere

[@Saieras]

Gear must be earned. By working irl.

[@irishbattletoster9265]

@@Saieras this is what they would say 100%

[@teninoru]

It's sad because Rift was the first MMO I truly -truly- got into. Dungeons, raiding, all of that stuff. WoW, for some reason, never appealed to me, and then when this came round, at the time, it was beautiful, and I knew I could get into it and stay with the curve, since I began playing in beta. But the expansions... the expansions I remember, kind of sucked, and the game began to drop off for me. I'll always remember the first year or so fondly though, had tonnes of fun and sunk tonnes of hours into this game. RIP Rift

[@txdmsk]

Water expansion was great, I think.

[@andrewpaul1644]

The story of both sides coming from time to heal the future and the enemy raising the wardens was just too good. I stopped playing when I reached max lvl and realized people could just buy the best gear and rule over PvP

[@LikaLaruku]

I've tried over 60 MMORPGs & Rift is one of the only two I've played for more than 1 month & still go back to for at least a week every year since it went free. I was a broke-ass college student & couldn't afford Wow, so a classmate told me "RIFT is WoW without the supremely fugly art style or the fees" & "the cash shop is nothing but costumes, dyes, & mount skins, & it's not all rentals like Maplestory."

[@Senth99]

I remembered the potential this game had, especially with the way the first expansion went. Then nightmare tides happened and the developers got greedy, to the point where gear grind was at an all time high unless you dished out cash. It sucks, mostly because of the fun times I had with group events.

[@GVMERS]

1:59 We see what you did there, NerdSlayer. ;) Fantastic video as always!

[@Jinny-Wa]

Haha yeah it reminded me of you guys

[@pudgeypigeon]

Tbh I miss the endless doses of hype that was that period of time. Rift was great and capitalized on the disappointment of wows cataclysm. I wish MMOs were as relevant today as they were in the 2007-2012 period.

[@PhyreI3ird]

I actually never got to play wow during cataclysm. What went wrong with it?

[@ayligerwolf]

@@PhyreI3ird I played during Cata. The main issue with Cata was the lack of end game content. Blizz spend so much time in revamping the old "vanilla" zones, ( lvl 1-60) that it felt like they forgot to add content for max level players, which after the final raid, left the game with like 14 months without any new updates. Cancelled raid and features. The last raid, Dragon Soul, is considered amongst the worst raid designs ever, as well as being very short, having only 8 bosses. Considered one of the 2 worst WoW expansions, along with WoD. Though, I think that is being a bit too harsh for Cata. Final raid did suck balls, but overall it was an alright, but hugely lacking in max level content..

[@TheAyanamiRei]

Well Warframe still has a large and healthy community. Fortunately, their success is due to really listening to their players, as well as having MUCH more fair monetization. Plus the focus on PvE.

[@nogravitas7585]

@@TheAyanamiRei Warframe is the only MMO I know of you can truly finish, all you need to do is create a successful enough clan that your recruitment process gets you banned until 2035.

[@lestat305]

All you need is eso

[@williammercurio4188]

I really wish Rift Prime had been a true CLASSIC experience and not just a cash grab.

[@kirarayen]

who of the old players want to loose all of their hours and hours of content and start a new game in Rift Prime, that they may started several times again with other chars on old shards - BUT you could transfer items between all the old ones, so the time (items, artefacts,,...) on old servers not wasted, when you try something different. Last i played, i waited very VERY long to get into old dungeons.

[@LikaLaruku]

You have to admit that they were quick to get rid of that $100 loot box & never tried to reinstate it. Most other MMOs would have just left it on the market & released another a month latter.

[@LikaLaruku]

It was a short lived experience, because Gamigo shut it down.

[@andysummnons4893]

Like wtf classic experience the game is fairly new compared to real classics like ragnarok etc... And the classic experience in this game was basically just fighting rifts questing. Really....?

[@anneaunyme]

@@LikaLaruku They had cheaper (but still expensive) lootboxes that stayed for way longer.

[@wowmartiean]

I loved Rift. It was the only MMO to make me unsub from WoW, partly due to it was during Cata, and the only other MMO I hit level cap in. I will always have a soft spot for Telara.

[@twiggimmapiggus6695]

Rift was so beautiful. It was enjoyable simply running around on my turtle and taking screenshots all day.

[@Qualls_MD]

sounds like blizzard's current direction

[@Ramsesamonra]

*oh boy, this is exactly what will happen.................BLIZZARD WILL FALL...........you'll see*

[@JengiX]

WoW isn't F2P yet. Yet.

[@Ramsesamonra]

*lol indeed*

[@GoldInk-ds5up]

With their decision to ruin Soldier 76 making him gay with the purpose that everyone forget their multiple flaws with Diablo Immortal and other stuff.

[@Ramsesamonra]

*BLIZZARD WILL FALL, wait and see*

[@biffman6]

I did not know a founder of Trion is former EA. That explains a whole lot.

[@Matteo_11]

I played Rift at release and I liked alot of what was going on here, especially what the idea of Rifts added to gameplay. One thing that turned me off early was how the further I got into the levelling process, the more the zones all looked the same to me and had little to stand out. Games like WoW etc have a lot of unique characteristics even on their 'desert and rock' levels.

[@LikaLaruku]

The only bad things I will say about RIFT is that when I actually bought something in the cash shop, my money didn't go very far at all. It must have cost me $30-$50 to unlock a hairstyle & hair dye set. Nothing in a cash shop should cost more than 25 cents. & the continents of Dusken & Brevane felt unfinished in some areas. When I returned to the game to play them, I rarely encountered anyone in the areas. It was like the apocalypse had hit & I was the last woman on earth. I loved the spookiness of it, & yet it felt like there weren't nearly enough quests, NPCs or mobs to fill up the land. I always felt they should go back to these areas & triple the amount of content there.

[@bengorraou2602]

after watching almost all your DOAG videos, i think its safe to say most games die from one thing in common, greed

[@SimonNZ6969]

I swear what are these companies thinking? WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO MAKE 3 GAMES AT THE SAME TIME AND TWO OF THEM ARE THE SAME TYPE OF GAME! THAT IS JUST DUMB

[@kevinoconnor5134]

By making 3 games at the same time they were splitting the audience for all three games, increasing the odds of all three failing. Stick to one game and do it right. (race of the players vs new content..gotta keep up)

[@eewweeppkk]

@@kevinoconnor5134 That's not really how it works. You aren't splitting the audience at all if they are different genres, or even the same genre but different enough from each other to have their own niches. And there's no need to "stick to one game and do it right" because, you know, they have more than one dude making games. One company doesn't have to focus on one game at all times. They have multiple teams on multiple projects.

[@robertrijkers4923]

i loved the character customization...having a second tab with gear to be shown on your person apart from your stat gear and having items have a primary and secondary colour scheme that can both be dyed however you want.

[@Dacapo88]

First of all, thanks for this "Death of a Game" -serie, really well put together! I played Rift when it came out, I think I played it for 3 months and thought it was really good. But as it happens, I had been playing WoW since Vanilla beta and soon had to make decision which game to devote my time into. It was always WoW that won, because all of the friends I had made over the years were ultimately there. We tested out new MMOs together as they came out (AION, Warhammer, GuildWars 1&2, Wildstar, Rift, you name it) but we always returned back to WoW. What I still remember from Rift was that the dynamic PVE content was super fun, the class system was a theorycrafter's like myself wet dream and.. The Community Managers were really friendly and fast to respond/act. Still to this day, I remember thinking "If Trion releases another game, I'm sure to check it out because of the Studio itself". Funny how that had degraded over the years.

[@TheKingOfN0thing]

Henri Leppänen that’s exactly what happened with me. LOVED rift. But...WoW always drew my friends and I back.

[@ZergrushEddie]

A “Death of a Game” on CCP Games is called for. EVERY game not called EVE has fallen apart under their watch. Their rush to be innovative hasn’t helped keep their games alive. DUST 514 was the first console-PC connected game, dead. Valkyrie was one of the first games for VR, studio dead. A toxic working environment (allegedly) killed their WOD game. Now Project Nova is delayed. Every person who went to EVE Vegas was supposed to get beta access a month later, not anymore as the game has been shuttered “for the time being.” Here’s the takeaway: “CCP is not dead and probably not dying. EVE is popular and the sandbox world of New Eden makes it into Forbes whenever there is a 1,000 ship battle. But for a company called CCP Game*S* they have more corpses than lives.”

[@Dark__Thoughts]

I think we're not quite there yet, but CCP Games is certainly dying and in a terrible spot right now. Another company in a similar state would be Arena Net, they also just have one product that's also fairly old by now and was not quite the success story either with some pretty bad news recently and both companies don't seem to have anything in the making that could save them. They're both good examples that you can't rely on a single product forever, and we could throw in some other examples of companies who did die because of this too. Being more or less exclusively present on the MMO market is also an issue, because that's still pretty much a dead market right now, with some zombies walking around who are slowly falling apart.

[@CHURCHISAWESUM]

I will be very sad when EVE finally hits this list. But I just can't play it anymore, the devs and players killed the game with coalitions. I moved on to Albion which seems to be starting to make the same damn mistakes..

[@Maniac742]

Sand box MMOs all have the same problem. You rely solely on players to make content, players will make content for themselves at the expense of other players. Or they won't make content at all. Sand box MMOs always end up with large guilds or alliances gatewaying content from solo or small gang players. That's true in all sand boxes bar none. EVE is just sand box on steroids. It IS possible to please both sand box and theme park players, but you have to be willing to separate them. Most game developers aren't. They'd rather please the sand box crowd, but since the sand box crowd takes great pleasure in tormenting the theme park crowd until they leave the game, the spiral of death quickly circles the drain. If you don't separate these two crowds you'll end up with neither.

[@Sorain1]

@@Maniac742 Hot damn that's the insight I've been missing on the issues with EVE's design model. Thank you kind anon!

[@ohayuhanna]

I played RIFT for around 900 hours when I was 12. I quit playing at the end of 2011, before Storm Legion came out. I'm glad I wasn't around when it was falling apart. Yet, i spent so much time in RIFT's world, that I always think about it. You could solo queue for dungeons through the dungeon finder. I did a lot of dungeons while levelling. And sometimes I would stay in the instance after the dungeon was completed and all the other players had left. I would just walk around and look at stuff. I would hide all the UI and take screenshots of the map. I would walk from the start to the end, and find all kinds of interesting details everywhere. Like a small table with cups on it next to a tree. I wonder who sat there? The satyrs and the fairies that were the enemies in the dungeon? What about this one river that ran through the instance. Where did it start? What was the story of this plane? RIFT imo had some great level design and atmosphere, especially in its vanilla version. I spent a lot of time in Stonefield, for example, the 20-27 levelling zone for the Defiants faction. I kept revisiting this zone because I was almost done on all the achievements in the zone. If you completed all of them, it would grant you with a rare companion (small non-combat creatures that would go around with you) and a title. Stonefield was a zone full of tribalistic Ogres. The ground was dark and black. Green here and there, but not foresty. The region was mountainous overall. The sky was almost always dark and cloudy. There were giant bones and skulls all over, half buried in the ground. The ogres made their homes close to some of them. The bones were said to belong to some ancient beings. I doubt that this was followed through in any other storyline after this region ended. It was like all the regions were self contained, story-wise too. Nothing followed them up, but they were great fun. Especially while levelling. Imagine my surprise when I finished stonefield and moved on through the path at the end of the zone, to reach Scarlet Gorge. I still remember the pathway that led from Stonefield to Scarlet Gorge. You had to complete some quests from the quest givers that stood in front of a small building next to a trail. There was some sort of machinery next to them, if i remember correctly. Like a watermill. Once you were done with those, the quests led you to the next zone, Scarlet Gorge. You went through a kind of natural wall, and if i remember correctly, took an elevator that looked like the kind of thing they'd use in a quarry. Then you were in a valley of stone. Everything was yellow. Everything you saw around you was rock. The whole zone was a mix of red and sand looking stone. The enemies reflected that. The quests was exciting. It was such an experience to explore. All the other zones reflected that. I remember the 'Arctic zone' in the higher levels, and how it was connected to the next higher level zone with a similar pathway. Everything changed, and it was a completely new region to explore, leaving behind really good memories and genuine experiences with quests, NPCs, and a world you really cared about. As a 10-something year old, spending that much time being fascinated with all this world building, I was sad for many years about this RIFT"s decline. How could such amazing worldbuilding (in my eyes) go to waste? Those amazing crafted atmospheres and fictions are still out there, it's a shame no one gets to see them because of bad company decisions. Watching your videos makes me realize, what I have been so painfully missing all these years was the worldbuilding, the design, the lore, the practice of creating a fictional world. Yet, now I clearly see that it was by design that an MMO should have those elements to be successful. Worldbuilding, zones, experiences, memorable encounters is the trademark of the MMO genre. After seeing this video, I am no more so sad about all these experiences not getting the recognition they deserve. Instead, I just acknowledge the great work from lore writers, zone and instance designers, and digital artists that went into it. Work like theirs make many MMO great experiences to remember for a lifetime. They did a job well done in RIFT, and I am thankful to them for giving me an incredible world to experience in my earlier years.

[@HenrikGJ]

I still love the idea of Rift, the character system is the best in any MMO in my opinion. It is a shame that so many great MMO ideas have failed, and we are left with the super generic WoW.

[@HenrikGJ]

@@madzi9574 True, WoW is extremely solid and does the core MMO experience really well. My comment was not meant to put down WoW, but merely to express that I think it is a shame that all these interesting MMO mechanics are forgotten because their games failed.

[@skunkpiss]

​@@HenrikGJ "WoW does the core MMO experience really well". There's no doubt in my mind that you're trolling. WoW isn't an MMO anymore. It hasn't been for several years. The only reason why that game is still up and running is because its core audience has played for so many fucking years, they literally refuse to quit as they have spent the majority of their lives playing it. The top-raiders only play in order to maintain or become World First. Its top PVP-ers play the game because there's no other "MMO" on the market that has similar combat. A lot of them even say they hate the game in its current state, which it has been for two expansions, and have zero fun while playing it. WoW still does certain things well. Combat, movement, PVE content, zone design and graphics. That's literally it. If a team just literally copied the movement, combat and art-style of WoW and didn't have a p2w in-game shop then it would hands down be fairly successful.

[@TheNewBerser]

Heroes of the Storm next?

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

They are moving the game to "long-term sustainability" = maintenance mode.

[@BoomBoom54543]

The clue points to Hots but it's too early to call it dead. It Still has large player base, devs are going to continue support and release new heros, and new tourney scene is already popping up

[@MashupsByMandy]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss game could stay afloat with private championships easily, people need to stop being lazy by expecting developers to hold their own championships. Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, the original DOTA and Counter Strike had tournaments going on up to 6 years ago, the community keeps itself alive. If Heroes of the Storm is really their last passion project, the best thing Heroes devs could do to save it is to make dedicated servers available with a server browser system or something similar showing active players online and overall stats to help boost confidence.

[@trajan4824]

It's definitely hots

[@MashupsByMandy]

@I Showed him my dick and called him a fag Devs can release patches\mods under nicknames so that they don't get sued or anything.

[@mrutherford1994]

I know a lot of effort goes into these. Appreciate all your hard work.

[@Ahov]

At Rift's peak it was the greatest MMORPG I've ever played. It had a good amount of raid content that was actually more difficult than mythic World of Warcraft. I know this because I raided WoW myself for a few years after quitting Rift. The combat system was extremely fun especially as a healer! It's such a tragedy that it was so poorly mismanaged. It had a perfect wardrobe system as well, where any item obtained is automatically saved forever as a cosmetic option. Brilliant!

[@KindaSemiCompetent]

I enjoyed healing healing in Rift way more than WoW.

[@toffeelatte6042]

@@KindaSemiCompetent Better class design for healers probably had a lot to do with it.

[@Digibullet32]

yes when they released that feature it was so satisfying to go redo some of the older dungeons that were nbow obsolete to get the cosmetic appearance... collecting those was like collecting artifacts... great game played for long time from launch until a few months after gamigo bought them out... great game many memories... bad balancing

[@ShinChuck]

Great video, and it confirms a lot of my suspicions. I started a little after launch during a free weekend (after dismissing it as another WoW clone) and ended up utterly adoring it. For my own story... it was the lead up to Storm Legion that started to worry me. Conquest was a rare gameplay misstep, and removing the faction divide was an interesting choice but half-baked in execution. I could deal with that, though: it was Storm Legion launching with *five different retailer specific* pre-order bonuses that first gave me pause, followed by the rather bush-league midday launch. My initially concerns were mostly gameplay-related, to be fair: Storm Legion just felt slow and grindy. Even though Rift's quests were never anything amazing, Storm Legion stripped them down further by replacing them with contextless "Carnages" found in the wild, and these required double the kills of the average quest and lacked any of the benefits of even a basic framework (story, guidance). It was a beautiful-looking expansion, though, with excellent housing and some great new features, but then... Six months of questionable decisions led in to some layoffs and Hartsman leaving, saying, "The good news is that if you enjoy what's been going on in RIFT lately" the folks who made these recent decisions are sticking around, and that struck me as ominous. Things were relatively quiet for a few months... and then the F2P announcement dropped. Suddenly, the new creative director was sparring with longterm fans on Rift's official forums, coming to a head when he called respected member who had contributed a lot to the community through walkthroughs, class guides, and so forth (not me, I can't claim I was a particular asset to the community!) a liar for calling him out on something. Said poster responded with a direct quote of his confirming the accusation, which he then ignored. Elsewhere, Trion was touting they didn't "piss off [their] players" in the transition to F2P, even though they were dashing about putting out several fires at the time of the interviews (one at the now-defunct Gamerzines.com sticks out: web.archive.org/web/20131103063748/www.gamerzines.com/mmo/exceeded-expectations.html). They had sworn F2P wasn't even being considered within a few months of the announcement, yet here we were. Smaller issues included long-promised things like weapon-wardrobes, additional profession and character slots being delivered behind paywalls, but the biggest (and shadiest) were the year-long subscription packages they pushed in the months leading up to going F2P (after significant rage within the community and initially refusing any apologies or consolations, they eventually offered those who purchased the massive subscriptions free mounts). All of this fed into Patron/subscriber benefits that were, at least initially, found lacking. The creative director announced that things like stipends or account-based purchases were "off the table", and it took weeks of fighting simply to get Trion to consent to giving subscribers discounts for cash-shop purchases--a fairly standard practice in F2P games that offer subscription models. Of course, in hindsight, these are all minor details in the eight-plus year lifespan of Rift. My gameplay concerns were relatively minor to the sudden focus on finances the game was suddenly taking on in the lead up to Storm Legion. A cash-grab for subs before announcing the F2P transition, long-promised features being immediately put behind paywalls, heavy reliance on preorder bonuses... it was the start of that slippery slope you covered in the video. I know a business has to make money, but the way they went about it sealed, I think, their own fate. Thanks for all the effort you put into the video, and thanks for letting me commiserate!

[@KurtisShane]

Just got chipotle, open my beer, see this was just uploaded. So well timed.

[@circleofsorrow4583]

Do you have Chipoltaway?

[@Malouco]

Fatty....

[@Mcdude02]

One of the few games in this series I care about or have played.

[@MrSillMann]

The monster designs are pretty badass though

[@wynngwynn]

that Volan world event was amazing hah.

[@ImNotSoLegit]

Dude, I remember right after launch I was headed back to town to turn in quests and THE WHOLE TOWN was taken over by hostile NPC's because an invasion had gone unanswered and a small army of players had to fight and regain control of the town. Never experienced anything like it in a game since. Only other MMO that structured itself to encourage player interaction was Warhammer Online, sacking a castle with an army of players was crazy.

[@rhast57]

God I loved this game. It was amazing at launch. Content was hard and rewarding. The story was decent. I still to this day, miss this game. It just tank so so quickly after going free to play.

[@samomico9536]

I could cry. I had so much fun when I first started playing and I’m low level questing when rifts opened up and out of no where you were grouped with like 25 people fighting the monsters and getting awesome loot. It used to be so populated where you could just click a button and you were in one of the many game modes where you played with a bunch of people. I miss rift. Last time I got on 6 months ago it was so dead, no one was playing... But I guess Trion got their karma for archeage being nothing but a big cash grab. I was tricked into spending a shit load of money in archeage because I couldn’t progress without it. Once I figured out what they were doing with archeage I quit playing.

[@gluesniffer2]

I feel if Rift had not launched during the height of WoW's popularity it might have stood a better chance. It also fell into the same microtransaction bullshit that's killing a lot of good games today. I love the rifts and always felt like there was something to do outside the normal questing, I LOVE the skill tree it truly felt like my character was unique and different from everyone else unlike the cookie cutter builds in WoW. Hope someone from Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard are watching because this is their future if they keep doing what their doing.

[@LikaLaruku]

Their cash shop is primarily cosmetic skins & they do not sell stat-boosting gear or speed-boosting mounts, but their prices are absolutely abysmal. For the price of a single player game, you can get 2 tiny bundles that add a small handful of hair styles & colors to the avatar.

[@terlayne1]

Dont forget the greaf factor

[@NiricDigital]

Rift lost me when they butchered the Void Knight class early on. It was so brilliant and refreshing to have a hybrid melee class dedicated to counter harassing and shutting down block headed full mage nukers in PVP. I’m sure too many of them cried about the class even there was so few of us playing Void Knight. Eventually they turned it into something different entirely and mages were again allowed to just spam and worry about typical counter bow/stealth classes. I have a curse with things like this happening to me with new MMOs I picked up. Now I’ve stopped playing MMOs all together. Great video - it was fun to see what became of the game. -Niric

[@shinon748]

Reading that makes that soul sound a lot like how the Mesmer class from Guild Wars 1 played. Lots of debuffs that punished the target if they did certain actions, increase cast time, interrupts, and resource draining skills. All meant to shut down and lock down a target to relegate them to only auto attacks.

[@demonstone677]

New to your channel but these Death of a game stuff is really interesting. I like how you lay it all out and explain how it affected the games player base and overall successes

[@unconsidered1]

I know ya talked alot about the death of a game, but what about a birth? Can you make a video on how to make a successful MMO? What players would like, what players expect after end-game content, and how to make money that doesn't piss people off?

[@LikaLaruku]

How about Stillborn MMOs? The ones that go through development hell & shut down before they even leave Beta?

[@professorutonium5095]

It's simple, you build a hard as nails game, with slow progression but great rewards and story then nerf it all later for casual players and completely screw over the dedicated.

[@luketfer]

I encountered what I would call a Stillborn MMO. Eclipse War Online. The website for it can't be accessed via google search and instead has to be accessed via a link from another website and it still has the message "Phase one Beta has ended, thanks for your support, leave us feedback"...that was the one and only beta phase they ever did and this was something like 6 or 7 years ago.

[@inplane9970]

@@LikaLaruku Not an MMO, but was a weird sci-fi FPS called Repulse that was pretty fun. It died during beta testing.

[@Sorain1]

I think a better term would be 'Conception of a Game' because it's really about design decisions made early on.

[@curiositykilledthecat5118]

really enjoyed rift's pvp at launch as I tend to hate most mmo pvp. The gimmick the game was centered around became way too repetitive and unrewarding though

[@Muridin360]

I wish you talked about game play and patches more like you used to. I dont know if its the fact the games youve been doing recently have died just because of the publishers/devs. I always thought of this series as a review of old MMO's. Dont get me wrong, still a crackin' series. Also still waiting for Asheron's call though

[@Heretus]

19:08 Actually up to Storm legion and some months into it Rift was awesome people were constantly coming in, the "go ranged or do not go at all" approach in dungeons and raids brutally killed the game (all the mechanins forced everyone to go ranged, even warriors with their pathetic laughable ranged spec that even looked goofy) , then it was the "copy wow balance" , tanks no longer could have 70% block no matter if they had the best gear in game like in Rift classic, nop block was capped at 30% cause... well WoW did it... , then it was the fact that you could no longer mess with souls , you HAD for the most part invest heavily into 1 tree... cause.... WoW did it... Forgetting that literally millions left WoW for Rift, when Rift wanted to be the exact copy ow WoW and not a very WoW like game, it failed HARD, I remember everyone and their mother leaving in Storm legion. I will not even bother with the absolute mess in PvP storm legion brought, it was Ok on vanilla (after some balances) but Storm legion PvP balance was Warhammer levels of wrong

[@mainmanmagellan3803]

yeah rift and world of tanks were my mmo's. both are almost dead now. 20k players active on tanks but idk how long that'll last. Storm Legion was my fave time in an mmo. I picked up Rift Prime but it was just not the same feeling. And warlock class sucked, and that's what i played in original. They had 2 new souls per class. And if u didn't play them. u would get kicked outa raids, and etc.

[@mainmanmagellan3803]

and before that i played an MMO called Fiesta Online. Another game that sold out to Gamigo. Lots of dead mmo's lol.

[@larriyrnir5756]

rip reaver

[@Rags]

That final WoW quote has certainly not aged well at all.

[@ara_ara-]

Hey Rag's!

[@KevinM491]

hi rags

[@Freestyle80]

because you one of the salty geniuses who think wow is now 'dead'? rofl

[@OreMiner64]

@@Freestyle80 He is obviously referring to the fact that WoW Classic had a fantastic launch and managed to keep a quite big, dedicated and hard-core audience

[@wrigglenight93]

@@Freestyle80 I wouldn't exactly say it's up and livin' life to the fullest

[@neurotransit]

This is the only game I was entirely enamored with. After the first expansion, it slowly became more P2W and drew a lot of trolls. I will always miss the healing dynamics of this game though. As an MMO junkie, no other game quite has the same 'healer' feel.

[@alistairmcelwee7467]

As usual, great analysis. TYVM. I just loved Rift. Played it from first month after release onwards - until Rift deleted my account in the great Defiance expansion purge. They put some new programming in that would delete your account if you had significantly more assets than you should have had for your level. I certainly did as a top level friend quit the game & gifted me all his gold. I got caught up on the net Rift suddenly put in place an account deletion program when they felt too many people were buying gold from one of those gold/leveling game services was offering. Actually, utterly agree that such services and micro transactions totally distort game play. Apparently thousands of accounts got deleted. Hmmm. No other solution could be found other than getting rid of your paying customers without letting us have an opportunity to challenge this? Apparently they deemed us cheats, although I was not a cheat nor a recipient of some gold selling company, but a year later they made cheating the game (ie. micro transactions) their business model. Such a pity coz it was a wonderful game.

[@Maximilian_Romus]

The soul-system was great. Waant to build a leather-wearing tanking bard? Sure, go for it. It was fun af.

[@krinniv7898]

Ah such a great release and fun skill tree system with great world pvp. Was fun while it lasted.

[@rachaelshockey7586]

Late on this video - but my thoughts. What I loved about Rift was the actual rifts and world events. Seeing hundreds (and later dozens, and later a few) people rallying to an event was a blast. You didnt have to queue and wait - everyone just came. And you got loot. And it was fun! I really miss that kind of thing in an MMO. Guild Wars had sort of similar things but not in the same way.

[@hplexicon]

Being a rogue dodgetank was some of the most fun I've had in mmos, even though I only played for what feels like 5 minutes. I'm genuinely sad that such a fantastic system was squandered.

[@MrWardonis]

my problem with rift was always the lackluster combat animations and sounds. casting a lighting bolt felt like shocking someone with static electricity not blasting them with an impactful effect.

[@TheAfrobob]

I love these. Never stop, please!

[@tnndll4294]

Only a handful of companies like Blizzard seem to understand the MMO business.

[@FlowerSong606]

If the mmo industry completely dies hell have a handful of games before runs out of content xD

[@rasmusdegn9690]

Death of a Game: Hello Kitty Online when?

[@roweenalangin9421]

Is it actually dead?

[@chk1230]

death of a game: neopets when?

[@LuvTonique]

9:00 "You could mix a soul from a mage with a soul from a cleric and a soul from a warrior" No you couldn't. Mage had 8 unique souls, Cleric had 8 unique souls, Warrior had 8 unique souls. You could mix and match between their 8 souls, not across classes. Mage could not use Warrior, Cleric or Rogue souls. 2 years late on this but thought I'd point that out.

[@wolvojay85]

As someone who played from Beta through to about 6 months into F2P, in my opinion what ruined this game was a combination of greed and focusing more on Archeage. It was my first MMO and I will always have fond memories of the 2 years or so, I even (against my better judgment) jumped into Rift Prime for a couple of months, even though it was a pretty obvious last ditch cash grab I thought what the hell. It's clear their team is no longer anywhere near big enough to manage the game properly and resolve issues in a timely manner anymore. Just a matter of time until the death bell tolls, RIP Rift I hardly knew ye. The soundtrack to this video brought back many memories!

[@insanelol]

Man all this made me wanna do is just DL rift again lol

[@selfactualizer2099]

Loved the intro so much i subscribed lol Edit: "how do we counter other mmos coming out and taking our players?" "I got it we will make more mmos before they do !" Genius

[@Baleur]

Rift's pve was amazing bar none even to this day.

[@DRC92]

This was my first mmo, I put about 8-10k hours into this game, quit just before it hit free to play. I had an incredible time and still have friends to this day from it. I am happy to keep it as a fond memory. Got a few world firsts in the raids!

[@tid418]

It was a fantastic game at its best. It was "the WoW killer" when I joined. Nearly everyone I met was like me, a refugee from WoW Cataclysm. Its WoW influence was obvious, but unlike Blizzard of that era, they really listened. I had some criticisms that I made in the forum that shortly thereafter ended up in the actual game... while I was not sure if it was my specific words that made the difference, I imagine that I was not the only person saying the things. I was mainly a PvP player, and I had a lot of fun in the warfronts (their version of WoW battlegrounds). I played on the side of the Defiants, the side that usually had longer to wait in the queue. It was not objectionable, though; I waited far longer in WoW for a BG queue. Then one day we got the "mercenary" system. If there were not enough players from one of the factions, they would randomly choose some people from the other side and put them on the enemy side, whether they liked it or not. Many of us took umbrage to that. We played the faction we had chosen because that was the one we wanted to fight for. Rift's factions had a better backstory as to why they would fight one another while the big baddie (the dragon aspect of death, or something) than WoW's... each side had (within the lore) reason to believe that the other side's actions to fight the big baddie were putting the entire world at risk. The Guardians believed their gods would only step in to help if the Defiants were forced to be, uh, not so defiant, while the Defiants were directly being attacked by the guardians, which would hamper their ability to use the forbidden (by the gods the Defiants defied) magitech, without which they were certain the world would be doomed. As such, there is no plausible explanation how an "ascended" of either side (who canonically believed that defeating the other faction meant survival in the face of the big baddie) would be a mercenary, forgetting this whole "fight to survive" in favor of a few coins-- and worse, there were never any coins! When we complained, we were told that PVPers don't care about lore or factions, and that they just want action. That was certainly news to those of us who cared about the lore and PvPed. We argued on the forums about it, providing suggestions about how it could be made palatable (volunteer only, turning the player into a race from the other faction visually, that kind of thing), but we were told that this was final, so shut the something up. So I did, and once again was pulled back to WoW by its sheer gravity. It is said no one leaves WoW for another MMO and stays gone. Shortly after that, Rift went as far as having cross-faction dungeons and raids, and finally cross-faction guilds. Lore wise, that may have worked in WoW, where the main reason the factions hate each other is because they always have, but in Rift, making friends with the guys helping the big baddie to destroy the world (as they saw it) just made no sense. They made a two faction system, gave each faction a real reason to want to defeat the other one, and then tried to blend it all into one faction. I never went back. After it became free to play, that was the death knell. The game I knew was gone.

[@razvanpopa7294]

Found this quite late and while thinking to try it out again, after playing since the launch and a bit after they went F2P. While most of the things in the video don't bother me and would have given the game a fair chance again, that bit where they banned people for summarizing game experience and asking questions about the changes did it for me. There is a definite, hard-proven cancer in silencing people that proof or no proof, will make folks like me stay away. 1 year late but still, great video!

[@realbento]

Pro Tip: Stop sayng when a companie straight up LIE to its consumers its "PR".. call it how it is. LIES.

[@chriswhinery925]

I loved this game when it came out. I played during the betas and right after release and I loved it's world. The class system was amazing.

[@terlayne1]

The greaf was toxic... People was ovef rude and lots of people left

[@Arc115YT]

I played Rift on and off since it came out until 2014. Paid the sub for a full year. I loved the game so much. It was the first MMO I felt at home in, and unlike now, there was little to no monetization besides your sub. To this day, I love certain aspects of Rift, despite the fact that it was bought by Gamigo and is now aggressively monetized. I wish the game could be sold to someone who cares so they could pull a "A Realm Reborn" move and update the game and fundamentally change the way it works. Never gonna happen though. Unfortunate. RIP Rift. Gone, but not forgotten.

[@Daruffy]

Just wanted to compliment you on the whole death of a game series, this video was my introduction and i kinda binged a bunch since. Your video on Darkfall really struck a cord for me seeing as i played it so hardcore in Black Shields and later Sun. The analysis was spot on and i agree with the time line although i quit just before Unholy Wars.

[@TrillCozby]

This was the first MMO other than WoW that I was able to hit max level in, after trying many others to break away from WoW. I had an awesome time with the game while I was playing it, but for me the really really bad optimization was a massive turn off, combined with the pretty shitty cash shop and dying player base. Such a shame, it really didn't do anything AMAZING, I just thought it did what it was trying to do pretty well, and was something different coming from WoW, but Trion seems to destroy everything kind of like EA, or Hi-Rez .

[@jodyd3762]

THE NEXT WOW KILLER! lmao i remember the hype

[@hrep14]

The only MMO game company that can be a "WOW killer" is Activision Blizzard themselves, if they follow the same path as these companies, putting profit before maintaining the quality of the game product. If you don't meet consumer/player expectations, it doesn't really matter who the competition is.

[@shinon748]

@Chris Anderson WoW is still popular as a game no doubt. But...its developers atm is doing some unpopular decisions that arent helping it

[@gorg9928]

@@shinon748 I hope the staff thinks better about their decisions to improve the game and make the experience more enjoyable

[@saranghae1saranghae]

"Where not in Azeroth anymore." Is anyone? LOL! Also, awesome video. Thumbs up.

[@Plainbear]

WoW is still number one MMO wise.

[@Selelmo]

R.I.P this game, i had so much in it and played for a number of years. All ways enjoying the content and having so much fun with friends that i will never forget.

[@rayrayz4667]

I was there near the beginning and I did love all the potential of the planes.I saw some parallels with Guild Wars which was interesting. Like you say they could have done more innovation with the planes and I thought it could have been a neat idea to be "corrupted" by one of the planes as a form or progression and even have housing in one. Traveling to them would be great in contrast to the regular world. The dungeons were interesting but the manner in which you got into raids was beyond confusing and I don't think explained anywhere. That was the beginning of the end for me. Doing all the dungeons yet being unable to do raids because eventually everyone abandoned them and moved on so essentially you couldn't ever experience the beginning. Maybe in that newer server it was different but I'm from those earlier years where we all started to leave and I think for shits and giggles I came back maybe 2016 and it was very similar so I just left again. I hope those interesting ideas they had will be used by other games. I played with my good friend's boyfriend who later passed away so I at least have those great memories to take with me.

[@JDoeX]

I started RIFT during closed beta. I was playing with a hardcore guild since launch, attempting all the world firsts at dungeons etc. Shit was seriously hardcore, final bosses at dungeons took hours and hours and there was nothing to hold your hands while clearing your way to there as well (no markers on ground etc). But that changed in few months, people (read: filthy casuals) complained about stuff being too hardcore and Trino just nerfed everything by 50% literally. Everything became snoozefest, most of all I knew just quit the game and I went off to PvP. Played it couple of more years and then it finally went full retard by going full P2W. Then I also left. Still missing the game, as it was awesome at the beginning.

[@ValensBellator]

It’s why WoW has multiple difficulties now. They did the same thing to raids. Hell, I think people would riot if they released a dungeon today that was as time-consuming and difficult as dungeons like scholo or brd/ubrs were in early vanilla; there were zero assurances that you’d actually finish.

[@biikuajet]

@@ValensBellator and yet wow classic is Still going strong.

[@mutombomania]

Hey Mr. Detective! Mind doing something on Gamebyro perhaps? I've seen that name pop up here and there, even in the latest fallout disaster. not sure whats up with that engine, heard some different views about it.

[@DaFieFie]

Gamebryo is a good engine... if you use it for what it is designed for. It's for smaller projects like Catherine, not large open world games like Fallout.

[@mefikFS]

The trick with Fallout is that its not fully Gamebyro fault Fallout failed. It was more of an Bethesta inability to use it.

[@cattrucker8257]

@@mefikFS In other words, it's the workman's failure to use the tools for their purpose and metaphorically trying to use a hammer for microelectronics.

[@naejimba]

This is a good idea for a video... the different engines and their pros and cons is not often discussed. Especially because of the unique requirements of MMORPGs, this is an important topic.

[@TheAyanamiRei]

It's not just the fault of the engine, but also the fault of the coding. From what I've been told, they stole OUTDATED code from their Fallout & Skyrim. Often times making little to no changes, and in many cases using code WITHOUT any of the patches for it. Which meant years old bugs were in the game.

[@quickfinish1]

Wild guess here but by the sound at the end I am guessing the next death of game will be Marvel Heroes. And as someone who actually put thousands of hours into the game I can't wait to see that.

[@ClockworkBard]

If not next, then eventually. With its poor launch, inspirational rebound, controversial revamp, short-lived console port and explosive death, it's a story that begs to be told. But the wound is still tender and I'm not sure I'm ready to relive it.

[@justacat472]

Wow soon too its walking closer to its grave.

[@allanribeiro8054]

I put over 2k hours in that game. It's one hell of a tale, and i can't wait to see it when he does it.

[@Rhaz_]

I miss MH. Played since launch and always looked forward to new hero releases. I lost interest around the time of the last big update before it was shut down, but never thought it was on deaths door. It was a sad day to hear I wouldnt ever be able to log on anymore.

[@quickfinish1]

@@allanribeiro8054 Yeah I have 3000 Hours on steam and thats not counting Beta time and playtime before the game went on steam. So its probably more than 4000+

[@jonchambers8864]

I tried Rift after watching this... for me it lasted about 30 min. On the other hand this video was really interesting and well put together, thank you.

[@thecriptkeeper]

For me and my friends (all of us wow players), when we tried rift we were like: oh cool! it's like WoW! Then 2 weeks later our mood changed to: oh, it's like WoW... And we never came back to Telara, we went straight to Azeroth again lol

[@ForTheOmnissiah]

With mmo's, you seriously don't want to try and copy WoW. WoW is as WoW as you can get, and it has blizzard's MASSIVE budget, years and years of experience developing it, massive playerbase, and Blizzard polish all in one package. You can't out-do the original at it's own game. If someone is interested in a game with mechanics and gameplay like WoW, they'll just play WoW and not your mimic version of it.

[@zenith2876]

Trion who keeps wanting money from its player base and made Trove so grindy i still at level 20 out of 30 a month later killing Castle after dungion after tower run.

[@bookcadenb4584]

Played Rift from Beta and bought the "Collectors Edition" to start 4 days early. I really loved the Game, in spite of the serious performance issues. There were only 2 problems I had then ended my Rift days. The first was something of no fault of Trion and that was the toxic Raid & PvP Community that follows pretty much every MMO. The 2nd, and the literally death nail for me, was the Loot Boxes. The Mech mount (can't remember it's name) that when it came out was the coolest thing since sliced bread, was available by a stupid low drop chance from ONE Boss in ONE Dungeon -OR- by spending real money to play the lottery. Oh yeah, and it had a horribly low drop rate in that Loot Box.

[@Wyzai]

The answer why Rift didn't maintain its early level of success is simple: It was a WoW clone and basically marketed as such as far as I know. WoW players switched games for a while, then went back to WoW. This much should've been an obvious outcome.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I like Rift more than WoW though

[@wrthgdrver710]

A new nakeyjakey vid AND death of a game? Today is a good day

[@TheGodEmperorOfMankind_]

Are we all the same person?

[@DorzakZitro]

Idk how ad placement works, but they’re happening mid-word and mid-sentence and it bugs me like a record skipping. Great vid though! As is always the case.

[@isair81]

"You're competing against 15 years of development..." Then goes on to release Classic Wow.. which made players come back in droves, to the surprise of nobody but Blizzard themselves.

[@MRTOMBO]

Rift was a great game in so many respects. One of the things my brother and I saw immediately however was the pandering to a mechanical leveling-for-power-and-stuff dyanmic. It instantly transformed an "immersive world" into an Indy-500 race track where zones and such were nothing more than 1/4 mile dashes for players to blast through just as fast as they could in the sprint past the next zone, then the next one after that, etc. What you ended up with was a FAST moving bubble of players rocketing forward through zones trying to get to "the real game at end game" (whatever that means), leaving a ginormous vacuum in the game world behind them. I remember this clearly when subbing shortly after launch, and the very first dungeon available to you as a lowbie, sort of an analog to Deadmines in WoW for Alliance, was damn empty. It took me like two days to finally find a group for that, and my brother had the same experience. I had some fun in Rift. The game had some really good concepts, and I like much of the character and class system. But it ended up eventually being an obvious skin over a theme-parked, mechanical, gerbil wheel for making numbers and chasing carrot sticks, with shallow human/community attention.

[@alexanderrahl7034]

WoW isn't gonna die. Ive finally swallowed that pill. Their massive early success has proved to be a massive jump start for their entire company. WoW can continue because of that boost and everything they got from it. Its been around longer, made more money, have all the experience, and can take hits. WoW isnt gonna die. And trying to be a WoW killer is a fools errand.

[@simonn5651]

the big thing is this... no matter what any other game brings to the table , new innovative systems , raids or whatever ....it doesn't matter because wow has the money, manpower and knowledge of how to do it properly and effectively ....they have very well built systems with many redundancies and capital to fall back on ...this is the problem for smaller games and companies they try and go all out from the start yet have no back up plan.......they throw it all on the table from the start so when launch comes they have nothing left to build on.

[@svmei]

I played every single other MMORPG out there, even ones that were only available in Asia, I gotta say Rift was always one of the best MMORPGs for me, if it was a bit more polished and had it's own original graphics and looks it would've honestly been better than WoW for me. There was just something so enjoyable about Rift, the content you had to play through was so much fun and their open world activities was before WoW's world quests, so you might say Rift inspired WoW in some aspects.