Rift Dev Knows Why Star Wars MMO Failed

You may think that Star Wars: The Old Republic is a great and successful MMO. You may think it failed because it wasn't compelling as it stood. Well, you would be wrong according to Rift dev Trion's Lars Buttler.

Buttler, who has both Rift and the freemium MMORTS End of Nations has come to the conclusion that the success or failure of an online multi-player game is down to the frequncy of updates.

Speaking at E3 he says, "In the case of Star Wars (the Old Republic) , I don't think the business model was necessarily the issue, but I think it was content updates, and what to do in the game, and how you can play it without it becoming repetitive.

Trion's Rift has lots of "frequent significant content updates, whereas The Old Republic's consumers are left wanting", he tells Gamasutra.

"You have to be able to keep people interested. The key about an online game is that it's a live service. If you make it more like a packaged goods game, people will stay about as long as they stay with a packaged goods game," that is Buttler's advice.