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Enter at Your Own Rift: Is the subscription justified?
I wonder whether the folks at Trion Worlds feel as if they're on an ever-shrinking island, holding fast to the subscription-only model while the world erodes into the sea of free-to-play. It's got to be an unsettling feeling, particularly as the competition continues to press in from all sides. Is clinging to RIFT's subscription worth it? When even Star Wars: The Old Republic flinched and buckled to F2P, what chance does RIFT have to stay its course? Is Trion hurting or helping this game by holding fast to the business model? It's a tricky question that's made trickier by the scarcity of facts. Trion's expressed strong confidence in the way it's steered RIFT so far, and I wonder whether that's a genuine confidence based on numbers that I don't see or a brave front for a duck that's paddling furiously under the calm pond surface. So is RIFT really so good that it justifies a monthly subscription, and if so, what makes it OK to stay above the F2P waters on that tiny island?
The Daily Grind: What will be the last sub game standing?
Take a look around the traditional subscription MMO market. Notice anything unusual? That's right -- there aren't many games left that can really call themselves traditional sub games, and there are fewer still on the horizon. So many MMOs are going or have gone free-to-play or freemium in one form or another that traditionalists are left without many MMO safe havens -- and even most of those have given in to double-dipping microtransaction shops. That makes us wonder which game will be the last to convert fully to the modern Western-style F2P. Will Blizzard be the lone holdout, refusing to turn the aging World of Warcraft into a free-to-play MMO? Will it be a sandbox like Ultima Online or EVE Online, whose design mechanics discourage easy account creation? Or will a newer game like RIFT or the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic have more staying power? Which game will stay subscription-only until the bitter end? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
