March 1 marked the official North America launch date for Trion Worlds' Rift. Did they take this opportunity to show the world how a real MMO launch is done?

Yesterday marked the official North American launch date of Trion Worlds' highly anticipated MMORPG, Rift, and I'll admit that I was waiting for those server opening times with a bit of trepidation. You see,  these days it seems that most MMO development teams deem launch day to be all about ironing out the kinks in your system, and many players have come to accept the plethora of technical problems that inevitably come with being a pioneer in their fantastical new game. Unfortunately, with so many highly polished MMOs already running the market, launching a wonky product can simply make players pine for the stability of their older staples. There have been a number of MMOs out there that have run into some really rough times, simply because they launched when they weren't ready. Thus, when I sat there waiting for my clock to roll over to 1 PM EST (server opening times), my fingers were crossed that Rift would set the new standard for an MMORPG launch.

In reality, Rift launched a week ago with the beginning of their 'head start' event, where players who preordered the game could get into it a week earlier. I ended up being busy on the first day of the head start event, but on the second day, when I was ready to go, almost all of the servers were full up, with queues that were predicted to last for up to six hours!  Of course, trust Trion Worlds to stay on top of their game and, in an impressive move of forward thinking, they quickly introduced a number of new servers in order to alleviate the overwhelming head start traffic. Amazingly, Trion has gone on to add another 31 servers for their opening day launch and, while I hope that this doesn't stretch Rift's population out too thin, if the head start numbers are an indication of the kind of popularity this game will build, my worries might very well be misplaced. Either way, I obviously went to a server with a more forgiving queue (Emberlord, PvP), and I was on my way, playing as a Defiant Saboteur. 

With regard to specific server stability within Rift, it seemed that most of the launch day servers were equally stable, although Trion Worlds did end up requiring a few thirty minute intervals of server downtime, to upgrade the stability of the game. It also seems that the team is really dedicated to polishing Rift as much as possible, as when they manage to slip in a small server downtime, I have often returned to my game to discover that Trion has made some small changes in addition to their server upgrades. I recall grumbling about one early quest being a little too specific to accomplish, and by the time the next server downtime rolled around (of which there were only a few), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Trion Worlds had redefined the parameters of that quest to be much easier.

Of course, much of Rift's incredible launch day stability can also be attributed to the extensive closed and open beta tests that Trion Worlds ran in the months leading to their official launch, and these tests were probably instrumental in allowing Trion to prepare for what was to come. It's rather sad, however, when you consider that many other MMOs have run extensive closed and open beta testing periods, often these very same MMOs would be the ones having server stability issues and overcrowding problems.

At the end of it all, however, Rift's ultra-smooth opening day launch really just represents Trion Worlds' dedication to creating one of the best MMORPGs on the market. When you set yourself up to compete directly with World of Warcraft, it's obvious that there will be a lot of comparisons made and, if Trion can follow up on the strength of their launch day support, we might just have the next big thing on our hands. Either way, tune in next week to get some of our early game play impressions for Rift!