Hello dear MMORPG community. Today, I wish to ask you a question about the game, RIFT.

I've played RIFT very little, so I wouldn't call my experince with it broad at all, since it was back in March, which is quite some time ago, and from what I can tell, things have changed a bit.

I'm pondering on re-subbing, and have read various reviews around the web, to try and get a good feel on how the state of the game is at the moment. The amount of people playing, the content, etcetera. Hence, this is why I've now come to you, asking for a fair review or say on the game. Is it good, is it bad? I don't know, but I'd like the opinion that you folks have on the game, playing the game, or former players alike.

I'm also particulairy interested in the PvP aspect, and I'm wondering how it holds up to other MMOrpg's around.

Anyone care to shed some light on this game? Is it truly worth re-subbing?

Thanks in advance!

- Barukha

If your main focus is pvp, then I would avoid it. They have not put in goal based pvp like forts, arenas. There are things called pvp rifts that are basically last man standing type open world battlegrounds that I see used ALOT.

The pvp gear stat called Valor which is like resilience in WoW has been standardized, so you are not cannon fodder for higher ranked players. It is getting better, but you have to decide.

Rift is a pretty decent game.  If WoW wasn't out, Rift would be top spot and killin the subscription numbers.

As for the state of the game.

Servers:

The playerbase is shrinking in size and some servers are turning into suedo-wastelands as people move to more populated realms and battlegroups.

PvP:

While I find the leveling-through-PvP experience quite fun, you hit 50 and it's another brick wall.  Yes, the Valor stat (reduces incomming player damage) has been normalized through the sets, it's still a grind to get them in not only Favor (PvP currence) but Prestige (basically your Rank).  I think that's a huge step in the right direction but you're talking to someone who thinks that if you are going to have INSTANCED PvP arenas the gear should mostly be the same because it's PvP, not PvGear - which unfortunately alot of MMO's have gone to.  I like this type of PvP experience to be won by tactics, organization, skill and teamwork, NOT who spent more hours grinding currency and rank to get the best items.

PvE:

I don't have an issue with the PvE, it's solid with a few bugs here and there but what game do you know that doesn't have bugs?

Decent game, had a good launch...if you like wow, but just want something different...then you'll like rift.  Basically a remake of wow with a few extras.  Not enough open world pvp, you could basically illude open world pvp all the way through the game.

My guess is if they ever shift focus to pvp it is going to be pretty damn insane. I just got off the pts after some testing of the new stuff in 1.5 and it is just flat out shocking what they are added into one patch.

Rift population does not appear to shrinking atleast to me. I think as long as Trion keeps up that reputation of delivering content, then the game is going to grow. I know this is the only p2p mmo where I feel like my money is being invested into the game.

There is just so much that separates this game from WoW that I get confused why it is called a clone. Some stuff is similar, but since launch it has gone in a different direction. Almost everything Trion has done is stuff Blizzard said was not possible.

I think that is why WoW has seen its hey-day. American devs are finally stepping up with quality products that just makes WoW looks so out dated. It started with Rift, then ToR, then GW2. More and more devs are popping up that just challenge all the crap Blizzard said was not possible.

Thanks for the replies so far. =)

It's nice to get a mixed bag of reactions from you all, instead of pure "Oh my god its perfect" and "It's so incredibly awful", it helps a lot with forming an idea about how RIFT is doing at the moment.

I did see the trailer for the patch mentioned, and I must admit, I liked what I see.

Thanks for the advice and feedback so far.

Cheers

new to rift(lvl32 atm) but i can tell you my thoughts up till now...

RIFT is a lot like WoW so if you really searching for something enterily new,,,then its not for you.

Now if you dont care about  the themepark aspect then i can say,that the game is a good one as a person said above me

you really see that your sub money go somewhere!

the best thing i can say to you about RIFT is this

the game is out for 6 months and it can compete with wow in every level expect world size and lack of arenas....besides that RIFT will give you everything WoW will give you in a better package and a few more things that WoW cant give you.IF and this is a big IF,TRION keep up their infow of things then in a year or something this game will be something that can compete with pretty much any MMO out there...remember we are talking about games that had years of development and rift put things in 6 months that other games took years to implement.

My advice? try it,it is a good and solid game,,,even if you get bored hell the game is cheap and you only pay for the sub more or less(the game cost 6$)

I put some stuff about the next content update here

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/327069/New-stuff-on-pts-Chronicle-Planar-Vet-rewards.html

They are pushing some stuff out in the next patch that is just pretty crazy.

RIFT is pretty much a World of Warcraft clone right now, down to the cross-server instancing, "Warfronts" which are somewhat similar to Battlegrounds, and even PvP gear with PvP-only stats. 

TRION has been putting in events lately that give a little bit of cosmetic flare to the game, and some semi-useful items from the events for all that choose to participate.  There's been vendors in each major city that offer rewards such as: mounts (newest one is a Mossy tartagan, a kind of dark green turtle mount) and some weapons for various levels.

Overall, the impetus of TRION's new content has been a lot of "daily grind" similar to WoW.  Build rep, hunt for event tokens, buy cosmetic stuff from event vendor.  Rinse.  Repeat.  However, on a PLUS note, they've also added some new raid content, for both 10-man and 20-man groups, but I'm a little baffled at the crappy reward system for tackling the content, since it takes literally HUNDREDS of Greater Marks of Ascension (an in-game currency earned for killing a raid boss in Hammerknell, the new 20-man raid instance) to buy a piece of the new raid gear, and you only get about 4 from downing one Raid Boss.

If you want that Old Time Progression tension and stress from massively wiping on raid content while you attempt to kill the new bosses to gear up your raid members (just like WoW), then RIFT might be for you.

There are major flaws in RIFT's make-up though.  Much like in WoW, abilities are affected by a Global Cooldown, but unlike WoW, where you had stats to shift this to make some skills and builds more viable, RIFT is lacking this.  The only exception being the dependence of an Archon Mage to give a raid-wide buff to speed up attack and casting times, but this does not shift the overall Global Cooldown, which is very sluggish.  For raid boss fights that are heavily dependent on high DPS, and strong healing to survive the massive damage they pump out, this can make or break a lot of raid groups.  I feel for anyone with poor latency.

If you're checking to see if RIFT has improved any since you left, well... perhaps in Patch 1.5 it could be something incredibly more diverse, but for right now, it still feels like a WoW clone with a prettier face.

I've only played rift a small bit and it wasn't really my cup of tea. However i do like its soul system and its crafting is a step above WoW.

It really felt like playing wow overall, looks amazing but still the same ol 123 123.

It's staying point right now is its dev and pr team, they are workin this horse hard and plan to keep it going for quite awhile it seems. So really it is hard to gauge rift, it is changing alot and from what it seems for the better.

Most MMO's have the 1 step forward 2 steps back updates.. rift seems to be doing better than that :p

according to a rl friend who moved his guild from wow to rift recently, there were too many servers at launch but the game still has a lot of heavy pop servers.  I played for 2 months at launch and liked it, but left because i wanted to have 2 eve accounts for a while instead of one rift and one eve (i've since gone back to one eve account)

Originally posted by hercules
For me rift has good pve with frequent update but terrible pvp

This really. And in my case problem with PvP wasn't ever really in valor (remind how it worked just after launch) or clerics - despite I was playing warrior. Problem was rather with brining every build on every class to dust once it appeared to need minor nerfs. Eventually lead to situation where pretty much every class while having 8 souls has only 1-2 builds that work in PvP. And if you like mechanics of this build then it's ok but if you don't... Well forcing dps to be tank never really works.

Rift is a pretty solid game.

My only problem with it is that the gameplay is too similar to WoW's for my taste, so unfortunately I lost interest after a couple months due to being burnt out on WoW after several years.

A staggering amount of content, and more added today. Always something to do.

Didn't care for the PVP....kinda bland.

PVE is a blast though. The zone invasions and Rifts get pretty crazy.

All in all a great game....I was very surprised by it.

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

A staggering amount of content, and more added today. Always something to do.

Didn't care for the PVP....kinda bland.

PVE is a blast though. The zone invasions and Rifts get pretty crazy.

All in all a great game....I was very surprised by it.

Pretty much this. PvE in Rift is pretty good. I enjoy hunting rifts. Pvp, I get my fix in AoC atm not Rift. Rift pvp needs some work. 

RIFT is a great game. It's polished really well and TRION pushes out content almost bi-weekly. The game is great, I enjoy the PVP. I haven't really noticed any terrible balancing issues, since every MMO has them. 

Give it a shot; you might like it!

Originally posted by Ceridith

Rift is a pretty solid game.

My only problem with it is that the gameplay is too similar to WoW's for my taste, so unfortunately I lost interest after a couple months due to being burnt out on WoW after several years.

I started the trial today and see what you mean. It feels a lot like Warhammer to me. Not just the rifts / PQ's but the way the game is layed out reminds me of War as well.  Its linear and not much exploring to do but its not a bad game.

Decent game thats polished well. Rifts and invasions get too repetitive too fast. Nothing really to get excited about here.