So, on a lark driven mostly by nostalgia, I just looked up one of my favorite old MMORPGs, being “Rift“. I played that game from closed beta until well after Trion Games sold it off to Gamigo several years ago, and really enjoyed it. Maybe it wasn’t the “WoW Killer” that a lot of people – myself included – thought it could be back in the early 2010’s, but it was still a great game.
Anyway, I was certain that I would find the game languishing and barely holding onto life. I thought it was clearly going to find either the game no longer running, or barely running on some publisher (Gamigo) where they are barely holding on.
Apparently, I was wrong. Sort of, anyway?
Yes, the game is still published through Gamigo Group, but under the Trion banner, which is… a novel approach, I suppose. But there are still activities going on, the game is receiving maintenance updates here or there (nothing since last June, but still… better than some games), and people are actually playing. That’s the most important thing, really.
In short, the game isn’t dead. Not completely, anyway.
I expected “Rift” to be just left running as a means for Gamigo to extract money from what few players they can scrape up, and yes, I suppose that is true to some degree. But that said, they have an official Discord server (the link on the Trion Worlds website has an out-of-date link… Do a search on Discord and you’ll find it), and it is still active. The company is still communicating with the players, anyway (server updates, at the very least), so there’s that.
In short, I really think I need to break out my login information, and see if my account is still going to work. I’m not sure I would return to play “Rift” as much as my wife and I did from 2011-2020, but I can see myself playing it for a while at least.
