Rift
Setting: Fantasy | Developer: Trion Games | Release Date: March 1, 2011 | Shut Down: Still running, but without major updates in recent years | Payment Model: Pay2Play, Free2Play since 2013
What is this MMORPG like? Rift is an MMORPG that closely resembles the fundamental principles of World of Warcraft. There are 2 factions with various races and classes.
The focus is on PvE, which offers dungeons and raids, as well as the titular rifts, events that appear in the world and in which anyone can participate. There are also PvP servers where players can fight in the open world.
Why was it considered a WoW-killer? Rift was very similar to the successful game WoW, and this was intentional. In an interview, David Reid, the then head of marketing at Trion Worlds, stated that Age of Conan and Warhammer Online were good games but could not defeat WoW because they strayed too far from it and could not retain players.
Rift was not officially meant to be a WoW-killer, but rather an evolution of the game, combined with world events and several other new aspects.
What “killed” the MMORPG? Rift struggled to establish itself in the market. Some even speculate that the game was too similar to WoW, in some aspects even worse than the genre leader. Therefore, it gained little attention overall. Even the Rifts, the game’s main selling point, were not varied enough for many players.
Nonetheless, the MMORPG managed to retain a decent number of players for a long time, especially after the switch to Free2Play in 2013.
Since Gamigo’s acquisition of Trion Worlds, however, there have been few new updates, and little hope remains for the game’s long-term future. At Gamigo itself, the MMORPG plays a minor role, as the revenues indicate.
