Rift: We’re WoW’s ‘most significant’ rival

Rift is the most significant competitor World of Warcraft has had, according to its developer Trion Worlds.

In an interview with IndustryGamers, Trion Worlds head Lars Buttler explained that prior to Rift, World of Warcraft had no legitimate competition from other MMOs in the genre.

“I think nobody can ever predict that there’s another WoW because WoW basically had, for seven years, no competition.

“There was nobody launching that created an experience that was even remotely comparable – never as deep, never as polished. Now that has changed, obviously. Rift is out there as the most serious competitor they ever had, and now with Rift updating and evolving in the most dramatic way, that is changing everyday. But our goal is not necessarily to create one giant product that everybody has to play, but to give people choice.”

Trion Worlds has previously taken responsibility for World of Warcraft’s drop in subscribers. Blizzard’s famed MMO has gone from 12 million subscribers down to under 11.4 million in the last year.

Trion Worlds’ David Reid commented that these subscribers all moved to Rift when the game was first launched.

“It was a pleasure to see that in the latest Activision Blizzard earnings call, they inquired about Rift when Blizzard announced that their subscriber numbers went from 12 million to 11.4 million. You can do some math… we know very well where those 600,000 people are.”

Cocky or not, it will be interesting to see how World of Warcraft’s subscriber-base fares once it has both Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 to combat against, let alone little old Rift.