Post-Launch Rift Q&A with Producer Adam Gershowitz
This article originally appeared on ZAM on March 8, 2011.
Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff took a break from the Game Developers Conference to head to Trion Worlds' studio and talk with the producer about Rift's launch and beyond.
During our time at the Game Developers Conference, we had the opportunity to swing by the Trion Worlds studio in Redwood City, CA and speak with Producer Adam Gershowitz and Senior Community Manager Cindy "Abigale" Bowens about the recent launch of Rift.
To kick things off, Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff talked with Gershowitz about Rift's smooth launch, the process of adding new servers, team members playing the game during work (hey, wouldn't you?), and the fact that experience from rifts is getting a boost. He also hinted that players can expect to see all sorts of new content added in the first couple months of updates.
Keep reading below for the full interview with Adam Gershowitz, and check back with ZAM tomorrow for our interview with Cindy Bowens!
ZAM: What was the Rift launch like from your perspective?
Adam Gershowitz: It's weird. People kept saying, “launch is coming up, you must be overwhelmed!” The answer is it was a little bit anticlimactic. To be honest, we launched the game like eight times before we actually launched it. All things considered, launch day went really smoothly. We were really excited. We were more interested in beating the queue than anyone else. Yes, developers have to wait in queue. Launch day for us was a lot of just playing with the players. Admittedly, we did have hiccups here and there, but it went really smoothly.
The past couple weeks have been very exciting for us, but we've been able to move on as well as start looking at what we're doing post-launch. With MMOs, launch is only the beginning. Launch was a lot of fun. We've all been cramming to get to 50 just like everybody else. We're now looking forward to next month, and the month after, and the month after, and six months from then, and all that other fun stuff.
ZAM: So you work on Rift all day, and then you play Rift during your free time as well?
Gershowitz: We definitely have problems with people playing at work from time to time (laughs). We try not to frown upon those things. All of Thursday and Friday, for example, my entire group and most of the design group... actually, I think the entire studio was playing. A lot of people play during their launch or for an hour or two before or after, and generally everyone keeps a reasonably high amount of play. It's kind of tough when you're working nominally eight, realistically 10 to 12 hours a day on a project, and then you've got family and other things to juggle along with the game. Myself in particular, I'm not going to be the first person to level 50, even though a gave a good try the first weekend. I try to put in a couple hours a day.
ZAM: So what calling do you play?
Gershowitz: A bunch of different stuff. Being one of the guys involved with the game systems, I tend to mix and match everywhere. The current character that I'm playing, the first character I'm leveling up, is a cleric. Everybody loves a healer and I know that if I'm lagging just a little bit behind everybody else, that's the one nice class healer-wise that I can go ahead and join in a dungeon if I'm not quite the right level. That's my first character through the game. My second I plan on running with a rogue, and my third will be a warrior or mage. Hopefully before six months I'll have all four to 50.
ZAM: So getting back to queues, a lot of servers were added during head start and launch. What goes into choosing to open a server? It's obviously a big commitment, since you may have to deal with merges at some point if too many are added at once.
Gershowitz: Yeah, it's one of those things that is super tough. Scott and Victoria, two of the big brains of the operation in terms of running the live service, poured over the numbers. You wouldn't believe how many numbers and metrics we use to determine how many servers we need to open. We carefully watch and monitor the queues and the populations, but it's a tricky situation. On your launch week, you'll have 75% of your players who actually bought the game wanting to get in. Whereas realistically, when the servers settle down a little bit, the number is lower than that. It's one of those things that if you want to make sure after your launch you have a very healthy population on a server, queues are kind of a necessary evil. But at the same time, we want to make sure that everyone can get in and play the game. It's kind of a juggling act.
I think we've done a pretty good job at this point of opening new servers, especially now that we've settled down a little bit after the frenzy. There are very few servers with queues, and none that have extraordinarily long queues, although they do happen from time to time. And then we have more than enough servers where there is no queue at all. Of course, down the line we are looking at things like character transfers and everything else. That's really important to us, but at the same time we want to make sure that the live service settles down before we start flinging characters all over the place.
ZAM: Compared to other MMOs, Rift had a fairly smooth launch. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Gershowitz: Oh, there are always things you want to do differently. I think in terms of stability and service and the quality of the game, I don't think we could have done anything differently. Obviously we'd have changed the way we approached things, but we did a pretty good job, in my opinion, of having one of the most successful MMO launches, at least that I've worked on. Servers are up and stable and the game is fun. The game can handle a thousand people in Freemarch, for example. I kid you not, there was well over 1,000 people in one zone with no problems. Things were going on and people were having fun and the server wasn't coming to its knees, which is kind of a huge accomplishment on our end. I think we made a lot of the right choices. I think the things that we want to do differently are the things we're doing now the make the game better, and they're more smaller things to add in versus the key important things of having a fun game, a stable game, and a service that is up and constantly improving itself from day one, which was probably the most important thing for us.
ZAM: From your perspective, how many players would you say have already hit the level cap? Is it what you expected?
Gershowitz: A small percentage of our total player base has hit 50 at this point and it's what we expected. The players that hit max level did so within the times we kind of expected. A lot of people say, “hey, Rift is a short game.” The answer is Rift's a short game if you want to power through it. But for players who are just playing it, there are tons of things to do, and they spend a heck of a lot more time just adventuring around in the world than sitting in the same dungeon instance and grinding the same mobs over and over again without sleeping for three days. We have a high-level population. People are in our expert dungeons right now.
Overall, I don't think people are exceeding our expectations. They will always exceed what you expect them to do, but I don't think they're exceeding our worst-case scenarios. It's not like everybody in the game is at 50. Actually, a lot of people are pretty low or middle range, which is right where we'd expect them right now.
ZAM: As you said, the launch of an MMO is just the beginning. What are you working on for future content?
Gershowitz: Most of us are stuck in the frenzy of Update 1, which is coming down the line. We have some pretty decent-sized things planned for the first couple months of updates. New content for players to play through, new things for them to experience and further expanding the world. We're really serious about expanding the game after launch. We want to do a lot of things in a lot of places. We have that list of things we didn't get to do, and we're drawn to that list. We're also learning from our initial players the kinds of things they like, and we're changing our plans accordingly.
ZAM: Sounds like players have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. Let's switch to the topic of dynamic content. Did anything happen in-game during launch that you didn't expect?
Gershowitz: Oh, there were lots of things that happened with the dynamic content that we didn't expect. It's dynamic, right? It worked well in ways that we didn't expect it to work well and worked poorly in ways we didn't expect it to work poorly. When you put that type of dynamic system in with the randomness of players, it changes.
A really good example of it is a lot of people in our forums were complaining that the exp out of rifts and rift events was a little low at launch. It was because we found an exploit. We didn't really expect a thousand people to be sitting there killing hundreds of invasions at a time. Because we didn't think it was going to be that successful, people were leveling really fast as a result. It was tuned for a large group, but not nearly as large as that group. We tuned it down for a little bit and spent a week or so getting things in place, and will be putting it back up again with our next patch. We've put the things in place to make sure that the higher populations don't necessarily exploit the generosity that we want to give players who come across a rift and venture in with a smaller group of friends.
ZAM: So exp from rifts will be going back up?
Gershowitz: Oh yeah! There was an expectation in beta and alpha that rifts gave out really good experience, which they did. The big difference is that even in our later beta phases, people had spread out a little bit more. We didn't necessarily take into account the super large mass of players moving through the rifts. Unfortunately, we had to do an emergency deal with that and lower the exp, but it was one of our highest priorities to get that back up. In the next patch, especially smaller groups and raids, will see a dramatic increase in experience.
And then there are the obvious things from there. We're constantly making new dynamic events, tweaking the ones we have, playing around with the spawn rates and everything else to make sure that people aren't necessarily flooded by dynamic events all the time or can't find one anywhere in the world. It's all a very delicate kind of dance between too little and too much. It's something we're really serious about and it's something we watch every day.
ZAM: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Gershowitz: The community has been fantastic for this game. I don't think I've worked on a game before that has had a community that has been behind us this much as developers, and it really energizes us in wanting to make the game better and make changes, so I think it's a really positive feedback cycle right now. It really excited me if we can keep that going in the next couple months, because it means we're going to be able to do some really fun things and I think the community's really going to like it.
Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff took a break from the Game Developers Conference to head to Trion Worlds' studio and talk with the producer about Rift's launch and beyond.
During our time at the Game Developers Conference, we had the opportunity to swing by the Trion Worlds studio in Redwood City, CA and speak with Producer Adam Gershowitz and Senior Community Manager Cindy "Abigale" Bowens about the recent launch of Rift.
To kick things off, Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff talked with Gershowitz about Rift's smooth launch, the process of adding new servers, team members playing the game during work (hey, wouldn't you?), and the fact that experience from rifts is getting a boost. He also hinted that players can expect to see all sorts of new content added in the first couple months of updates.
Keep reading below for the full interview with Adam Gershowitz, and check back with ZAM tomorrow for our interview with Cindy Bowens!
ZAM: What was the Rift launch like from your perspective?
Adam Gershowitz: It's weird. People kept saying, “launch is coming up, you must be overwhelmed!” The answer is it was a little bit anticlimactic. To be honest, we launched the game like eight times before we actually launched it. All things considered, launch day went really smoothly. We were really excited. We were more interested in beating the queue than anyone else. Yes, developers have to wait in queue. Launch day for us was a lot of just playing with the players. Admittedly, we did have hiccups here and there, but it went really smoothly.
The past couple weeks have been very exciting for us, but we've been able to move on as well as start looking at what we're doing post-launch. With MMOs, launch is only the beginning. Launch was a lot of fun. We've all been cramming to get to 50 just like everybody else. We're now looking forward to next month, and the month after, and the month after, and six months from then, and all that other fun stuff.
ZAM: So you work on Rift all day, and then you play Rift during your free time as well?
Gershowitz: We definitely have problems with people playing at work from time to time (laughs). We try not to frown upon those things. All of Thursday and Friday, for example, my entire group and most of the design group... actually, I think the entire studio was playing. A lot of people play during their launch or for an hour or two before or after, and generally everyone keeps a reasonably high amount of play. It's kind of tough when you're working nominally eight, realistically 10 to 12 hours a day on a project, and then you've got family and other things to juggle along with the game. Myself in particular, I'm not going to be the first person to level 50, even though a gave a good try the first weekend. I try to put in a couple hours a day.
ZAM: So what calling do you play?
Gershowitz: A bunch of different stuff. Being one of the guys involved with the game systems, I tend to mix and match everywhere. The current character that I'm playing, the first character I'm leveling up, is a cleric. Everybody loves a healer and I know that if I'm lagging just a little bit behind everybody else, that's the one nice class healer-wise that I can go ahead and join in a dungeon if I'm not quite the right level. That's my first character through the game. My second I plan on running with a rogue, and my third will be a warrior or mage. Hopefully before six months I'll have all four to 50.
ZAM: So getting back to queues, a lot of servers were added during head start and launch. What goes into choosing to open a server? It's obviously a big commitment, since you may have to deal with merges at some point if too many are added at once.
Gershowitz: Yeah, it's one of those things that is super tough. Scott and Victoria, two of the big brains of the operation in terms of running the live service, poured over the numbers. You wouldn't believe how many numbers and metrics we use to determine how many servers we need to open. We carefully watch and monitor the queues and the populations, but it's a tricky situation. On your launch week, you'll have 75% of your players who actually bought the game wanting to get in. Whereas realistically, when the servers settle down a little bit, the number is lower than that. It's one of those things that if you want to make sure after your launch you have a very healthy population on a server, queues are kind of a necessary evil. But at the same time, we want to make sure that everyone can get in and play the game. It's kind of a juggling act.
I think we've done a pretty good job at this point of opening new servers, especially now that we've settled down a little bit after the frenzy. There are very few servers with queues, and none that have extraordinarily long queues, although they do happen from time to time. And then we have more than enough servers where there is no queue at all. Of course, down the line we are looking at things like character transfers and everything else. That's really important to us, but at the same time we want to make sure that the live service settles down before we start flinging characters all over the place.
ZAM: Compared to other MMOs, Rift had a fairly smooth launch. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Gershowitz: Oh, there are always things you want to do differently. I think in terms of stability and service and the quality of the game, I don't think we could have done anything differently. Obviously we'd have changed the way we approached things, but we did a pretty good job, in my opinion, of having one of the most successful MMO launches, at least that I've worked on. Servers are up and stable and the game is fun. The game can handle a thousand people in Freemarch, for example. I kid you not, there was well over 1,000 people in one zone with no problems. Things were going on and people were having fun and the server wasn't coming to its knees, which is kind of a huge accomplishment on our end. I think we made a lot of the right choices. I think the things that we want to do differently are the things we're doing now the make the game better, and they're more smaller things to add in versus the key important things of having a fun game, a stable game, and a service that is up and constantly improving itself from day one, which was probably the most important thing for us.
ZAM: From your perspective, how many players would you say have already hit the level cap? Is it what you expected?
Gershowitz: A small percentage of our total player base has hit 50 at this point and it's what we expected. The players that hit max level did so within the times we kind of expected. A lot of people say, “hey, Rift is a short game.” The answer is Rift's a short game if you want to power through it. But for players who are just playing it, there are tons of things to do, and they spend a heck of a lot more time just adventuring around in the world than sitting in the same dungeon instance and grinding the same mobs over and over again without sleeping for three days. We have a high-level population. People are in our expert dungeons right now.
Overall, I don't think people are exceeding our expectations. They will always exceed what you expect them to do, but I don't think they're exceeding our worst-case scenarios. It's not like everybody in the game is at 50. Actually, a lot of people are pretty low or middle range, which is right where we'd expect them right now.
ZAM: As you said, the launch of an MMO is just the beginning. What are you working on for future content?
Gershowitz: Most of us are stuck in the frenzy of Update 1, which is coming down the line. We have some pretty decent-sized things planned for the first couple months of updates. New content for players to play through, new things for them to experience and further expanding the world. We're really serious about expanding the game after launch. We want to do a lot of things in a lot of places. We have that list of things we didn't get to do, and we're drawn to that list. We're also learning from our initial players the kinds of things they like, and we're changing our plans accordingly.
ZAM: Sounds like players have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. Let's switch to the topic of dynamic content. Did anything happen in-game during launch that you didn't expect?
Gershowitz: Oh, there were lots of things that happened with the dynamic content that we didn't expect. It's dynamic, right? It worked well in ways that we didn't expect it to work well and worked poorly in ways we didn't expect it to work poorly. When you put that type of dynamic system in with the randomness of players, it changes.
A really good example of it is a lot of people in our forums were complaining that the exp out of rifts and rift events was a little low at launch. It was because we found an exploit. We didn't really expect a thousand people to be sitting there killing hundreds of invasions at a time. Because we didn't think it was going to be that successful, people were leveling really fast as a result. It was tuned for a large group, but not nearly as large as that group. We tuned it down for a little bit and spent a week or so getting things in place, and will be putting it back up again with our next patch. We've put the things in place to make sure that the higher populations don't necessarily exploit the generosity that we want to give players who come across a rift and venture in with a smaller group of friends.
ZAM: So exp from rifts will be going back up?
Gershowitz: Oh yeah! There was an expectation in beta and alpha that rifts gave out really good experience, which they did. The big difference is that even in our later beta phases, people had spread out a little bit more. We didn't necessarily take into account the super large mass of players moving through the rifts. Unfortunately, we had to do an emergency deal with that and lower the exp, but it was one of our highest priorities to get that back up. In the next patch, especially smaller groups and raids, will see a dramatic increase in experience.
And then there are the obvious things from there. We're constantly making new dynamic events, tweaking the ones we have, playing around with the spawn rates and everything else to make sure that people aren't necessarily flooded by dynamic events all the time or can't find one anywhere in the world. It's all a very delicate kind of dance between too little and too much. It's something we're really serious about and it's something we watch every day.
ZAM: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Gershowitz: The community has been fantastic for this game. I don't think I've worked on a game before that has had a community that has been behind us this much as developers, and it really energizes us in wanting to make the game better and make changes, so I think it's a really positive feedback cycle right now. It really excited me if we can keep that going in the next couple months, because it means we're going to be able to do some really fun things and I think the community's really going to like it.