Rift released and immediately became hugely popular, even though, during this era, people kind of groaned at everyone releasing copy/pastes of the behemoth already mentioned, World of Warcraft. But ... that popularity didn't last too long. From Trion reallocating developers to other projects, to plans for massive amounts of MTX, in a time when microtransactions were far less accepted by the masses, to Gamigo buying Trion Worlds in 2018, the game fell flat, and has been in maintenance mode for what seems like, forever.
Some people might say that Rift's gameplay loop of grinding literal rifts was just not enough to excite players and keep them engaged, but they'd only be half correct. Had Trion not removed developers from the game to work on a Syfy sponsored project, Rift may have seen more than four expansions. It also didn't help that, in 2012, when they decided to introduce a free to play option, that this was also something that most people saw as a sign of failure.
Fast forward to 2025, nobody cares about MTX, and most people are looking for free to play games.
It seems Rift should have just waited ten years to release, huh?
But is the game still active? Yes? No?
I logged on after a pretty quick installation, and found that my character from 2011 is still sitting there, ready to be leveled up past 40.
Although, I opted to try out a Doomcaller, instead (never been a fan of rogues, they're all too squishy in like, every game).
And, in the couple of hours that I was able to play before maintenance hit, I did run into other players, including someone else who had returned to check things out. So, that was pretty neat.
The problem is ... no matter which version of Proton (including GE) I tried, the game runs fine, but it locks up and crashes after anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes of play. And, because this is Linux we're talking about, and a fairly old game, there is no way to reliably troubleshoot this issue.
Never-the-less, it still feels good to play. It's virtually untouched, outside of all the microtransactions, ... and the transactions wherein you can buy armor with actual stats. A big no-no, even today.
It feels like ... if World of Warcraft stopped at Wrath of the Lich King, and changed nothing else (aside from adding in blatant pay-to-win mechanics)
You would think that this would bring in tons of players eventually, but ...
They don't do any advertising.
In fact, I'm finding it hard to discover what exactly Gamigo is doing with Rift. I see little events listed on its Steam community page, but virtually nothing else, at all. No content updates, no expansions, no real official communications, and, as mentioned, zero public presence that I can find online.
It's as if Gamigo purchased Rift and simply expected to collect money from its players, for nothing. And that's what they've been doing this whole time. It's depressing.
Because I feel like Rift could easily be revitalized, and could see a mass return of old players.
If only Gamigo gave a shit.
Regardless, you should go on Steam and load up Rift, see how you feel about it. And, also, if you're on Linux, and can figure out why the game won't stop freezing/locking up, please, please reply to this post via ActivityPub, or on my forum. Thanks!
Source: https://mkultra.monster/gaming/2025/07/14/rift-mmo/
