4.0 is coming..

I've seen a few threads with people posting things like "there is no guarantee 4.0 is coming. Trion is a sinking ship, they'll probably just let it ride" These people make me scratch my head, because they obviously have no experience in information technology let alone game development. Let me present some ideas.

1.) Trion Worlds released news of 3.0 or Nightmare Tide very early last year. I believe it was around June of 2014 with a release of October 2014. You might say "Well, thats only 4 months, thats not a huge amount of time?". You're correct, it isn't but when you figure that 4 months encompassed 2 major patches 2.7 and 2.8 before 3.0 rolled out, it makes a lot of that content moot. Why? Who wants to continue progressing on bosses and gearing their characters when it will ALL be replaced with the new expansion roll out? Especially if a hard month or even day was released to the public. I know I didn't want to continue. This created a mass exodus of players touting the "I'll be back for the new expansion, I see no point in playing now" mantra.

2.) Even Everquest, probably the longest running (or one of the longest) MMO's that shaped the future for many others, still releases expansions. They are currently on the 22nd expansion releasing 1 new one every year, due for another this fall around the November timeframe. This game had 400,000 subscribers at its very peak back in the day, or so it was reported, and likely has a much, much, much smaller populace of hardcore fans left that keep this game kicking. Long story short? Rift will likely come out with new content for a long time. This game is pretty far from a collapse, in my opinion. I would wager a large bet that 4.0 is already pretty far into development, much further than many of you may think.

3.) There are MANY MMO's out there now, and thats partially the reason its a rough industry, there is always someone doing it better. Rift has systems that in my opinion they do the best. They also have systems I think they probably do the worst or close to it. If you don't enjoy Rift, try some other games and compare them. You may find a new home, or you may discover that Rift offers more of what you want and return. Once upon a time, your options were Ultima Online and Everquest along with various MUDs and some other one offs. I'm sure it would take a lot to decommission Trion Worlds, whom became a 100 million dollar company in the first 9 months after their flagship game Rift launched. I wouldn't worry too much about it's development.

So how do we fix this mentality? How can we keep players interested in the game up until expansion premier? Why should we continue to grind marks and gear our characters? Well, there isn't really a reason when an expansion has been launched, unless you are trying to get pre-launch chieves for bragging rights.

***PROPOSAL***

I think there are a few things Trion could do to smooth over the expansion, and bolster player retention.

-->Gearing/Marks conversions. When XXXX expansion launches, allow a conversion rate of your old gear to the new marks system, even if this is expert dungeon marks to accelerate gearing. Say for every 10 T3 marks you have, it rewards 1 Expert Dungeon mark in 4.0. Then you could do a set value of marks for each piece of gear based on the slot that you could sell when you replaced it for extra marks. This bridges the gap, and places value on still trying for T3 gear. You could also give lesser values like 20:1 and 30:1 for T2 and T1 respectively as well.

-->Reduce cost to gear alts. Ok. This one's touchy, because once upon a time playing alts was relatively easy and fun. Storm Legion to Nightmare Tide wasn't as bad as Nightmare Tide to XXX is going to be because in Storm Legion, you could play alts cheaply. Now, it costs a LOT of money/marks to upgrade gearing, so as soon as word gets out about 4.0, those people are going to catapult into rage quit status. No one wants to spend all that time on marks/plat farming to gear a character that is going to be reset shortly. It takes too much time, they probably wouldn't even have him geared by expansion launch (which is incredibly stupid right now. Seriously, if I could pick one thing Trion Worlds messed up. This is it. BAD. Like... REALLLLLY BAD. It can't be expressed enough. You seriously messed up not making alts accessible to people who don't have multiple hours each day to dedicate to your game. CoA easy mode is helping, but as a guy who gears/plays 5 characters in an attempt to do guides for the community, you messed up.

-->Blend the transition further. Stop resetting everyone to zero with a new expansion. This is where you can break new ground, and pioneer a new MMO vision. Almost EVERY MMO out there comes out with a new expansion and then resets everyone to the same playing field, disregarding all past achievements and gearing. We're all used to it, so it's not a big deal. Find a way to stop this. Reward people for clearing prior tier content and give them something that sets them apart from the pack. Increase or get rid of mark limits, create a longer timeline, and give those people who have max geared characters and spent lots of time in your game a small headstart (and I don't mean being able to use your T3 SL gear up to level 63-64. Looking at you Nightmare Tide). This in my opinion is Trion World's opportunity to discover something new and really change the way game development lifecycle management rotations work. If you can figure this out, I think you'll stop the mass exodus of players during new expansion launch.

I've been lurking around for a while checking out opinions people have and these are thoughts I had on my mind. I think a lot of the innovation in MMO's is gone, with mostly everything possible being flushed out, but I believe there is still more room for Trion to change the way we play, without devaluing our time and energy.

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4.0 is coming..