Trion Do Development the Right Way

 

I was listening to the latest Massive Failure podcast produced by Joesph of the MMO Troll and Roleplay Domain, in which he mentioned that Trion have dropped a new PvP battleground into the game as part of a hotfix patch, right before they planned to add another free content update. One thing that’s always struck me about Trion, at least with regards to Rift (I’ve never really played anything else by them so couldn’t comment), is that they are enormously generous with their content updates.

This is not a new phenomenon, they’ve been doing this ever since launch, with no real interruption in the pace of updates. They recently just released version 2.8 of the game, which saw them add a whole new slew of systems and content. This generosity is also on display with their free to play model, which is the fairest I’ve ever seen. Literally all of the game is available for free. Every battleground, dungeon, raid, zone and system is there for all players to enjoy, not just those who fork out the cash for them.

This has to make you wonder why other developers are so much slower with their update schedule. Companies like Blizzard ought to hang their head in shame when it comes to the pace of content additions next to almost any other MMO developer, and most others are not managing much better then quarterly updates. I know Trion have spoken in the past about having multiple development teams working on updates separately to create a staggered approach to additions to the game, but surely this isn’t the only secret or more developers would imitate this process.

It is this sort of development that really makes me want to support companies like Trion financially. Unfortunately, while I like Rift well enough, I just don’t have it in me to play another game of that ilk, simply because I feel I have already done so many times at this point. But still, hats off to Trion, you put many other developers to shame, and it sure creates a great image for your company.