Rift Servers – Over Capacity

I was happy with playing Rift last night. I got my first free starter “dimension” (housing). Tonight the servers are full. The queue is over ten hours. I usually wait a week or two at least after launches, so I don’t think I’ve ever had an entire evening of gaming shut down by a queue.

I have mixed feelings about Rift F2P so far. I’m not ready to form a definite opinion. It seems very generous, and I hope players appreciate that. The store is non-intrusive, which is a relief. My first impression is that Trion is really trying to do F2P differently. The question is how well it will work for them.

The generosity shows long-term goals and commitments from Trion. Instead of trying to grab as much money as they can from everyone right from the log-in, they are trying to buy fans. They are counting on purchases not only of content now, but content down the road. They have confidence in their product.

Also unlike the strategy of other MMOs, Trion apparently boiled the Storm Legion expansion down to an unlock pack for your souls, running more or less what the expansion costs now at retailers ($20) depending on the currency package you buy. Of course, you can still get the box instead for the unlock as long as retailer supplies last.

I was happy to see some loyalty rewards when I logged in last night as well as a good hunk of earned currency right away to use. I don’t know why I got that, but Trion loves to shower their players with presents, so I won’t complain.

Per a dev post by Elrar, Trion is currently considering a new NA server configuration, but he seems to be saying they would then have to commit to an entire new “cluster”, as far as how they’ve got the whole game set up.

Hopefully things will be straightened out this weekend. If it’s still bad, I may be willing to re-subscribe.