Scott Hartsman, one time head-man of RIFT, the man with apparently the best dressed photo of all devs on the planet, sat down to have a discussion with Forbes.com. Since RIFT’s launch, RIFT has gone from a full subscription game with no trial to having a Rift-Lite version where you can play the first 20 levels for free. Now that Scott has left Trion and rumors swirl around the internet that Rift is heading towards a full F2P model, we get a glimpse of the future og gaming subscriptions according to Mr. Hartsman.

Continue reading to see what he had to say about the subject.

The subscription model was a great way to keep everything paid when MMOs were a lifestyle choice, a hobby. MMORPGS had more in common then with a game like golf. Now players simply aren’t willing to commit to the subscription model as large audiences. Subscription models aren’t going away, but the fact is we’ve hit the cap on players looking to embrace the subscription model and free-to-play models have really opened up doors to a new audience. Users don’t stay as long as they used to.

With the first-generation MMORPGs players used these games to make friends. Now players are bringing all of their friends from game to game, and they all have different amounts that they’re willing to pay. So players that have all the hours but don’t want to spend money they’ve got a spot, and the players that don’t play as much and just want to pay for perks, they have a spot too. It’s all about finding business models that serve larger numbers in a fair way.

So what is in store for the future for Scott Hartsman? We don’t know, but we are eagerly awaiting what project he will work on next. Hartsman has never been the head of any game development from inception. If you recall, he came on board RIFT when it was still called “Heroes of Telara” with a very different design in mind.

Scott does bring up one interesting point, he doesn’t believe the sub model is dead. If you were to ask John Smedley, he’d disagree. These two people have their roots in online gaming development in Everquest, and it will be very interesting to see how the genre advances. Smedley has an upcoming project in Everquest Next, and if it’s anything like Planetside 2, it’ll be completely free to play with a cash shop attached to it.

Will Scott Hartsman’s next project, if he chooses to dive back into the gaming market, be free to play or subscription based? We can’t wait to find out.

Read the full Forbes article here.

Colin took to the forums today to respond to a few questions. Here’s one:

I’m kinda diggin’ the announcement that achievements will have value, even if it ultimately ends up being nothing but cosmetic stuff. However, I’m a bit concerned that my 4200+ points will go -poof-.

So, do we get tokens for our existing points? Is the exchange going to be 1 to 1?

Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)

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The initial version will only be for daily/monthly achievements (this will not be retroactively rewarded.) Later you’ll see a system in place that rewards more expanded achievements points which will retroactively reward all achievements already earned, yes.

However, there are some achievements which are infinitely repeatable currently. It is highly likely so this new system isn’t broken we’ll need to cap those and people who have made insane progress down one of those lines will lose some of their progress to get back to the cap. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go bonkers trying to progress an infinitely repeatable achievement category in anticipation of the release of this system, as you will likely lose some points/progress if you take it to an extreme number.

We’re still working out the details on the system, so that’s about as far into detail as I can go currently.

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Re Examples of rewards

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In going back to that whole “let people play the way they want to play” concept:

We’re going to hold off on adding most of the daily achievements that send you to specific parts of the game until we’ve added the ability to select from a list (like 4/6.) The initial version you’ll see with rotating daily achievements won’t feature too many new achievement options, since we don’t want to do more specific type achievements without giving you the choice to pick from a list of stuff you’re more excited about.

Originally posted by Mike Ferguson (Source)

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Hey everyone, sorry to not post about this sooner, the last few days have been a little hectic and I wanted to verify a couple things first about the issues we’ve been seeing with the queues before posting anything.

As many of you know, it is possible for someone to queue up for a map after you and get in first. We’re trying to get that fixed as soon as possible but unfortunately we still need a bit more time to solve the problem. We will definitely keep you updated when there is any news on our progress.

I have been checking the queue sizes and wait times for each matchup, and there are a couple interesting things I’ve observed so far that may help reduce queue times for some of you.

Worlds at the top of the rankings can have queues that reach multiple hours (particularly for the Eternal Battlegrounds map), but most of the worlds in the bottom half of the ranking quite frequently have open spots in at least a few maps, and the lower ranked the server is, the more likely it is that there are spots available. I’ll be posting the up to date world rankings shortly.

When there are queues for every map, the wait time for borderland maps tends to be shorter. Enemy team borderlands tend to have the smallest queues for just about every team so you may want to try entering those maps first before attempting to queue for the Eternal Battlegrounds. If you are just entering the queue for the battlegrounds and not checking the borderlands maps first to see if they have space open, you could be missing out on playing in the Borderlands while you wait for a spot to open up for you in the Battlegrounds.

Make sure to continue reading.

That being said, while we still have worlds that consistently have open spots for more players, it would be fantastic if some players out there could help us spread the WvW population out a bit so we don’t have a few heavily stacked populations facing large queues on some worlds while many other worlds still have room to support people.

While I know this isn’t what most of you wanted to hear, I also want all of you to know that we are still investigating numerous other options we can take to help resolve some of these ongoing queue issues and we’ve been discussing them internally every day to see what would provide everyone with the best long term solution, but we wont have anything ready on that front for quite a while.

Ideally, we would see some people move from worlds with extreme queue times to worlds that need additional people and start building up active wvw communities there as well. Having more worlds with heavily active populations in WvW will be a very good thing for the long term health of the game, and spreading out the population will help reduce the queue times on the worlds with the longest queues.

While queues do indeed suck, the fact that they are this bad is because so many of you are trying to play and that is actually one of the best possible problems we can have at this point. It may sound silly, but it means that there are quite a few of you out there are enjoying the game and we’re thrilled that so many of you are out there trying to fight for your world. We will do our best to make sure you can.

Finally, I would like to ask everyone to post any additional queue comments to this thread only from now on and refrain from creating additional threads about it.

Thank you all for your understanding and patience.

BRIGHTON, UK – SEPTEMBER 13, 2012: NCsoft®, the world’s premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and ArenaNet, developer of the renowned Guild Wars franchise, has announced that the chart-topping MMO Guild Wars 2 has sold more than two million units. Despite temporarily halting first-party sales and replenishing retail stores to maintain an optimal player experience, Guild Wars 2 surpassed the two million sales milestone shortly after turning sales back on.

Guild Wars 2, which launched just over two weeks ago, has captured the imagination of the gaming community around the world. With peak concurrency regularly exceeding 400,000 players and first week sales that placed it at the top of the All Formats charts across ten European territories, it’s clear that demand for the game hasn’t slowed.

“Reactions from around the world justified the time and care we put into developing Guild Wars 2 and making it into the game it is today”, said Mike O’Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet. “And this is only the beginning. We’re continually fine-tuning the game to deliver the polished experience that our players expect, and we’re already working on new adventures and experiences to introduce into this truly dynamic online world.”

Congratulations to Arenanet!

Tales of Tyria is out with episode 41 as they discuss how much fun they had during BWE3.

Episode 41:

• 03:25 – Feedback: Whistleblowing
• 6:05 – News: The 48 Hour Marathon, Names Reserved for 24 hrs After Character Deletion
• 10:30 – Beta Weekend #3
• 10:30 – UI/Economy/Other: Vistas, Gem Store, Hunger Royale, Keg Brawl
• 54:50 – World vs. World: WvW Pop Cap Issues, Sentries, Commander Book
• 1:45:13 – PvE: Asura, Sylvari
• 2:11:04 – Structured PvP: Legacy of the FoeFire

Keep reading to watch the episode after the break.

Today we get a new Dev Blog by the Guild Wars Team telling us when and how we’ll be able to reserve our names for the upcoming launch.

Today no one actually has the name Wizardex, because all character names from the original Guild Wars were two words or more. All one-word names will be up for grabs at the start of the Guild Wars 2 Headstart Access period. But there are currently 20 million two-word names in use by existing Guild Wars players. We need a policy that allows dedicated players to hold on to their established names, while freeing up the bulk of names for the rush of Guild Wars 2 players who will come into the game at launch.

Thus our policy will simply be as follows: to preserve your character name from Guild Wars into Guild Wars 2, you must be an active Guild Wars player (more on that below), and you must create a Guild Wars 2 character with the same name as your Guild Wars character during the Headstart Access period or on launch day.

Get full instructions read the blog post. However, if you want to reserve your name today, go make a Guild Wars 1 character now!

Source: Reserving Your Character Name for Guild Wars 2

Some time today the first public yet still closed beta test begins. Many people will get their first hands on the game for the first time. Keep in mind that this is still a closed beta test and a very important and possibly heavily enforced rule is that this is still under NDA.

Earlier this month ArenaNet hosted another event for select media sites. Lucky for us many high quality videos were released showing nearly every aspect. Following this event we featured class spotlights with some select videos giving as much detail about the class as possible. In case you missed them or perhaps you were not selected for this beta event and you still need a Guild Wars 2 fix, check them out.

• Necromancer
• Ranger
• Engineer
• Mesmer
• Thief
• Warrior
• Elementalist
• Guardian

Elementalist with water is one of the few classes that offers healing to their allies. Even though the holy trinity has been done away with in Guild Wars 2, healing roles may still be needed it seems. Other than the little healing water to offer, elementalist appears to be mostly focused on damage. Not much in the way of control or buffs can be found for most of the weapons.

With the help of Guild Wars 2 Guru’s community memeber carralpha, we now have a sliced up map of Guild Wars 2′s world map and where you should expect to go for each level range.

1-15: Zones adjacent to all major cities (there are 4 since Rata Sum and the Grove seem to share a zone for this)
15-25: Kessex Hills, west of Kessex Hills, west of Wayfarer Foothills and north of Plains of Ashford
25-35: Gendarran Fields
30-40: South of Blazeridge Steppes (this doesn’t seem right position-wise but that’s what I seem to see), Timberline Falls
35-45: Valley Headland
40-50: East of Timberline Falls, Blazeridge Steppes
50-60: NW of Blazeridge Steppes, south of Timberline Falls
55-65: Sparkfly Fen
60: Island SW of Lion’s Arch
60-70: The zone with the volcano SW of Ancient Dwarflands, Regrown Flame
70-75: NE Orr
70-80?: Northernmost Shiverpeaks zone (with the big lake)
75-80: NW Orr
80: W Orr

One observation that you can take from this new information, is that there appears to be only three max-level areas and only one of those three seem to be 80 only. What kind of activities do you think we’ll find in these areas and will there be enough things to do to keep the PVE players happy? Or are there some areas missing from this account? This size of the world map points to a lot of room for expansion.