Thursday, April 21, 2011

Rift Weekend Event: one man's pooch screwing can be another man's awesome free stuff

Earlier this week the blogosphere was alight with displeasure at how badly Trion managed phase 3 of their world event over the weekend. Even generally upbeat bloggers like Blue Kae and MMOGamerchick expressed disappointment. I was on during the weekend, but didn't bother trying to log during the event itself due to pretty horrific que times. When I saw I had an hour long wait to log on, I fired up LoTRO instead.

Even if I had been able to get on, I doubt I would have been able to participate in the finale because my highest level character was only level 18 or so at the time. So the whole fiasco didn't really affect me at all. However, as an apology Trion handed out free stuff to everyone with an active subscription. Given my penchant for alts, this actually had a big effect on me since each of my toons got a random free item.

Most of my characters got 20 slot bags. That's a pretty ginormous bag to a low level character. My main is a tailor making bags out of cloth higher level than I'm getting from drops, and she can only make ten slot bags so far. However, the best was in store for said main: she got a 90% runspeed horse when she opened her gift box. Normally you have to get to level 40 to be able to ride such a fast mount, and they cost something like 35 platinum (my character currently has exactly 3 platinum to her name). As a bonus, it looks way cooler than the turtle I've been using:

Even on my mediocre PC, Rift is a very pretty game.

Trion may have ticked off the bulk of their player base over the weekend, starting a wildfire of negativity that burned across the web, but they sure threw me one hell of a bone. All because I "missed" an event I had no intention of participating in. Doesn't seem quite fair, but I'll certainly take it :-)

7 comments:

  1. Good for you! This is the one time that not having a bunch of alts bit me on the backside. Oh well.

    The event was okay, just ill conceived. I actually enjoyed the part I got to see.

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  2. The reaction disappointed me and I don't really think it's the considered response of the majority.

    Imagine if someone forgot Christmas and whined that it was unfair it happens at a specific time that might not be convenient. And so they cancelled Christmas.

    I'm a bit concerned that as a result of some people missing this event (I missed it because I fell asleep which I do not consider to be Trion's fault), that we won't be getting any future events.

    In case someone misses them.

    I do have some sympathy for people who tried to log on in plenty of time but hit a queue lasting hours.

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  3. Congrats! As soon as I saw the title of your post in my reader, I suspected..."hmm, did Yeebo snag himself a ghost horsie? Lucky bastard!" Heh heh, j/k, good on you! :D

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  4. Nice one!

    It certainly is useful also to get around a bit faster ;)

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  5. @Anjin: Well, I'm sure Trion has learned from the experience. Maybe next time they will have waves of bosses once an hour for a few hours or something. I'm glad you got me going on Rift in any case, it's a blast.

    @Stabs: I think having phase three start and end withing 20-30 mins on most servers is a legitimate concern. Particularly with loot being tied to getting through it. That said, you're likely correct that the reaction of our neck of the blogosphere probably doesn't remotely resemble that of Joe Average Rift player :-)

    @mmogamerchick: thanks! I really wasn't expecting anything but bags. The great thing is that the character that got it was the one I would have chosen it for if I could.

    @Sente: yeah, it's a huge help. Particulary when working quest hubs out in the middle of nowhere. So far the game has not been very generous with swift travel (teleportation) bind points.

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  6. Best title ever for a post. :D

    @Stabs, based on Scott's follow up and Trion's track record so far I really doubt that they're going to stop doing events. After all, that's their differentiating feature from most other MMOs.

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