I'm trying it again (played 30 days at release, but never passed lvl 30... i was not enjoying it that time.), but still dont know if its worth the sub though... with so many F2P MMOs  and  being a lifetimer in LOTRO i'm not sure if Rift is interesting enough to have my 15 USD/month.

What about Rift pvp ?  i enjoy pvping, i really like it. (thats why i'm not playing LOTRO atm.)

I don't.... However; I do remember it being a pretty good game. felt like a good mesh of a lot of games that came before. I do recall loving the amount of options and customization availible. I may give it another go.

here is my opinion of Rift.

When they put it on the drawing board, they went with a WoW clone. But I truly believe that Trion sees the mistake they made.

Yes, getting to 50 will not feel much different from the usual. Rifts biggest drawback is that much of what you will do in Rift, even it's the 1st time you are doing it, will not really feel that new. But there are options. You can seek out minor rifts to break the monotony of questing, but that only goes so far. Zone events are a real fun diversion during leveling. I always enjoyed those. You can do PVP levleing in War Fronts. Again, nothing really new, but it breaks it up.

Once you get to 45, you can start to do instant adventures Which is a lot of fun. They will eventually repeat but that takes a while, I leveld from 45-50 on one character like this. Basically it's a sort of dynamic event where the quest objectives automatically get added to your log and they scale to your group. It can go up to raid group in size. And you run through a chain of events. There is nothing like it in WoW.

I can really see a strong effort to break away from WoW in each update now. Especially in Ember Isle. It's not as easy as the rest of Rift. In spite of what another soon-to-be released game's fan base will tell you, it's fairly dynamic, there is always something going on beyond the usual zone content. Zone invasions, World raid bosses, dynamically spawned events. If you want to do everything there is to do while it's happening around you there is enough content to last a long time.

There are options in end game. You have a personal story called Chonicles that you can run through. There is a new mechanic called Planar Attunement that allows you to continue to gain XP after cap. You apply XP to abilities tied into the elemental planes.

And ofcourse, the usual (good or bad, I'll leave to you to decide) There is crafting, PVP, Dungeons and Expert Dungeons, Full on raids. Plenty of what you are used to.

I will also state the other side of the coin. Rift's biggest negative is that there really is tremendous amount of "WoW" still in this game. In terms of game mechanics and game play. Minus the cartoony backdrop. But as I said, Trion is making every effort to break from WoW and it really does show at lvl 50.

Originally posted by airhead

(note: i cap instead of quote, sorry. traditionally cap=scream... i'm not screaming, just finding capping easier)

1. Content that takes a long time to figure out. Rift has HK, there are a handful of guilds per server that have done it after months of work, but there are also 80% of the population that has not cleared it all. It's there, there is something to figure out; but you are most likely not going to do it alone or regularly by PUGing, need a guild/group and figure it out. I think I said a group-figuring-something-out is why I'm still playing. But eventually (soon) we are going to figure it out, and Trion is NOT going to be able to keep up. Content is coming out at a slower-pace already imo.

Granted, maybe not ALL games fail in the production-to-content race, it all depends on how fast your gruop is. But your statement that MOST mmos win in that race is an overstatement as well. And of course the meaning of ALL is limited to my mmo experience: ac2,eq,sb,eq2,wow,lotro,ryzom,war,aoc,rift.

2. Different endgame models.

Shadowbane-type area control = just a big UT onslaught map. Is it really that exciting and different? You get together, take over an area, build, etc. Once you are good at it, you win. Maybe you get lucky and another competitive group comes on and you have some challenge (keep sub another month or two). More than likely, if you get really good, you own, then you get bored and quit. If combat is determined by hours-played, you grind to empower. this is not content-driven imo... and I can get the same adrenaline rush playing a shooter on day-one.

Different end-game model: dynamic world pve. Rift did pretty good at this: rifts, zone events. Other games will copy a little. But after you've experienced it X+ times, you know all the fights, all the mechanics, and you do it mindlessly... i.e. boring.

And as you mentioned, very few MMOs even have this much dynamic end-game... essentially just hard dungeons. And if you require 20man instead of 10man, then you throw in another difficulty, how to get 20-people to commit regularly to a set time and get geared and figure it out... all just little "obstacles" to make it take longer, i.e. to keep the subscription longer. I suppose if you view that as end-game 'content', then sure, there are some MMOs that have done that.

But all of these features or lack thereof pale in importance to real human-connections, friends, chatting, working-together, competing with others, razzing, jesting, taunting, joking, blah blah. If 'content' = puzzles, pretty-pixels, immersion, then MMOs mostly fail imo... just play single-player games like skyrim or some competitive shooter.

I suppose all I was really trying to say was this: beyond eating the original content of an MMO, the ONLY reason to keep playing an MMO is guild, friends, group-tasks, etc. The 'dream' that a dev company is going to keep spitting out "game content" at a faster pace than players can consume is just that... a 'dream'... as yet unrealized, and it's an overused sales pitch. Here i'm defining content as equivalent to 'mechanics'... something you or your group have to 'figure out' or 'overcome'.

Of course this is just my opinion, and it's limited to my experience, (see list above), and it's probably tainted because I'm old and pessimistic and have no faith... lol

POINT 1:

Hammerknell has *one* boss that is noteworthy.  Akylios's difficulty was about on par with Heroic Ragnaros, but nowhere near as difficult as some past WoW bosses (not even gonna compare eq or eq2, which have harder content than both games but the gameplay is different, WoW and Rift play almost identically).  yes, a greater percentage of guilds cleared H ragnaros pre nerfs, but it wasnt significantly more (many servers never cleared him) and its due to the fact the many WoW guilds have raided together for 6+ years.

All other raid instances in Rift are easy.  the second half of HK is a good difficulty, on par with a standard WoW heroic mode.  but its not this amazingly hard dungeon by a longshot.  the reason 80% of people havent seen it is because 80% of people dont do 20 man raiding on anything more than a strictly casual level.

POINT 2

Rift's endgame model is a near mirror image of WoW.  ALmost EXACTLY identical.  its gear crrency grind wth heavy emphasis on daily quests.  Yes, there are a few more options.  but the absolute focus in Rift is gear and currency/reputation for gear.  And espeically focused on repitiion of dungeons ad infintum.  

Originally posted by teakbois

POINT 2

 

Rift's endgame model is a near mirror image of WoW.  ALmost EXACTLY identical.  its gear crrency grind wth heavy emphasis on daily quests.  Yes, there are a few more options.  but the absolute focus in Rift is gear and currency/reputation for gear.  And espeically focused on repitiion of dungeons ad infintum.  

Entirely your opinion, 90% of my time is not spent grinding for gear, I prefer doing other things. And having racked up over 2000hrs it just shows there are other things to do... I could not do this in all the other games I have played.

In fact I'm not particulary interested in raiding, which is all you could do in most other games at endgame.

It shows you have very limited view on what RIFT has to offer, or are "trying to play it like exactly like WOW" as thats all you are used too. Dig deeper, you will find more.

There are two primary reasons I play aside from friends and guild.

1. There is always something to do that will advance my characters.

I have two level 50 chars both highest PVP Rank, both raiding in HK. Gearing up for ID, neither character is really "there" yet. I PVP with friends and have a blast, espescially when I get merc'd and play against them. Dungeons, expert or master modes, 10\20 man content like RoTP or GSB\ROS\HK. I have a tough time getting a chance to work on events or IA's because I keep busy in the other aspects. I've yet to complete (not even close) artifact collection or Rare Boss kills on either character.

2. The soul system. Between my mage and my cleric there is ALWAYS something to work with or change up to get different results. Cabicar PA grinding...wheeeee! Inquisicar PVP. Full dungeon healing as Inquisicar. Squirrel...Fireball..Fireball..Fireball. POOF Yer a Squirrel...Fireball...Fireball..Fireball. Heh, that particular never gets old. Lightning raining down from the sky, hellish firestorms bursting from the ground! Alright, I admit I have lots of fun with my characters.

@lighting issues, I had similiar problems initially but an update to NVidia drivers and game handling resolved it. Fixed both at Nvidia and at Trion. Something that helped prior to those fixes was turning off AA in graphics settings. Everything is crisp and clean and no lighting issues except deep in an event when the sky turns dark or in Realm of the Fey during the snow blind.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

here is my opinion of Rift.

When they put it on the drawing board, they went with a WoW clone. But I truly believe that Trion sees the mistake they made.

Yes, getting to 50 will not feel much different from the usual. Rifts biggest drawback is that much of what you will do in Rift, even it's the 1st time you are doing it, will not really feel that new. But there are options. You can seek out minor rifts to break the monotony of questing, but that only goes so far. Zone events are a real fun diversion during leveling. I always enjoyed those. You can do PVP levleing in War Fronts. Again, nothing really new, but it breaks it up.

Once you get to 45, you can start to do instant adventures Which is a lot of fun. They will eventually repeat but that takes a while, I leveld from 45-50 on one character like this. Basically it's a sort of dynamic event where the quest objectives automatically get added to your log and they scale to your group. It can go up to raid group in size. And you run through a chain of events. There is nothing like it in WoW.

I can really see a strong effort to break away from WoW in each update now. Especially in Ember Isle. It's not as easy as the rest of Rift. In spite of what another soon-to-be released game's fan base will tell you, it's fairly dynamic, there is always something going on beyond the usual zone content. Zone invasions, World raid bosses, dynamically spawned events. If you want to do everything there is to do while it's happening around you there is enough content to last a long time.

There are options in end game. You have a personal story called Chonicles that you can run through. There is a new mechanic called Planar Attunement that allows you to continue to gain XP after cap. You apply XP to abilities tied into the elemental planes.

And ofcourse, the usual (good or bad, I'll leave to you to decide) There is crafting, PVP, Dungeons and Expert Dungeons, Full on raids. Plenty of what you are used to.

 

I will also state the other side of the coin. Rift's biggest negative is that there really is tremendous amount of "WoW" still in this game. In terms of game mechanics and game play. Minus the cartoony backdrop. But as I said, Trion is making every effort to break from WoW and it really does show at lvl 50.

I'm having the same revelation about RIFT, Geezer.

I recently returned to RIFT because a core group of my guild friends kept asking me to come back.  I am really glad I did. 

I'm getting the same impression that folks at Trion realized their mistakes in following the "WoW" model too closely, and I feel that RIFT is starting to create its own identity.  I'm looking forward to patch 1.8, and I'll be curious to see how the game continues to shape up in future content updates.

Definitely having a good time with the game again.  It could be partially because of the community (my guildies in particular) which always helps, but I think Trion is evolving as a company, lessons learned.

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by teakbois

POINT 2

 

Rift's endgame model is a near mirror image of WoW.  ALmost EXACTLY identical.  its gear crrency grind wth heavy emphasis on daily quests.  Yes, there are a few more options.  but the absolute focus in Rift is gear and currency/reputation for gear.  And espeically focused on repitiion of dungeons ad infintum.  

Entirely your opinion, 90% of my time is not spent grinding for gear, I prefer doing other things. And having racked up over 2000hrs it just shows there are other things to do... I could not do this in all the other games I have played.

In fact I'm not particulary interested in raiding, which is all you could do in most other games at endgame.

It shows you have very limited view on what RIFT has to offer, or are "trying to play it like exactly like WOW" as thats all you are used too. Dig deeper, you will find more.

Just because you like the endless repitition of things like IAs, invasions, world events and chronicles does not mean the endgame is indeed modeled after WoWs.  You cant deny the focus is on the reputation and currency grinds.  Sure, you may play it differently, but you can play any MMO's endgame differently, even WoWs.

The fact you have played 2000 hours in Rift says absolutely nothing about Rift itself, just that you love Rift.  I would bit every penny I own there are more people that have spent 2000 hours in WoW since Mar 1, 2011 than in Rift.

Rift is in my rotation.  I play Rift a month, then WoW, then Aion, then repeat (with some Star Trek thrown in every now and then).

It is a very good-looking game. Character movement/fighting is good for me. It's pretty solid.

Originally posted by teakbois

The fact you have played 2000 hours in Rift says absolutely nothing about Rift itself, just that you love Rift.  I would bit every penny I own there are more people that have spent 2000 hours in WoW since Mar 1, 2011 than in Rift.

DIfference between 2,000 hours in Rift and that much in WoW is I bet most of his was spent running around doing something. For some reason people consider AFK'n in a major city and trolling trade chat "community".

MY FAVORITE qq about Rift when it first launched was "zomg this does not have a community like WoW". You know that community that trolls the simplest question to death out of pure boredom as they get feed content once every 6 months.

I'll take content updates every 43 daysishhhhhh over any current mmo or mmo coming out.

Beacause no other mmorpg has a company as good as trion behind it, constant content updates every 1-2 months.constantly keeping the community updated,swift with patch fixes.It's just a good solid product nothing majorly new or innovative, its just a well put together game.

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by teakbois

The fact you have played 2000 hours in Rift says absolutely nothing about Rift itself, just that you love Rift.  I would bit every penny I own there are more people that have spent 2000 hours in WoW since Mar 1, 2011 than in Rift.

DIfference between 2,000 hours in Rift and that much in WoW is I bet most of his was spent running around doing something. For some reason people consider AFK'n in a major city and trolling trade chat "community".

 

MY FAVORITE qq about Rift when it first launched was "zomg this does not have a community like WoW". You know that community that trolls the simplest question to death out of pure boredom as they get feed content once every 6 months.

 

I'll take content updates every 43 daysishhhhhh over any current mmo or mmo coming out.

You do realize that the way to defend your game correctly is not by saying omg WoW sux?  You seem so threatened by every other game.  Maybe if you didnt post your hate threads on the WoW and SWTOR forums (and who knows other forums, Im betting gw2 and TERA as well) less people would come here and post negative thoughts about Rift?

Acting like your game is somehow superior and *insert game here* sucks is only going to make people want to point out where you are wrong.

For something to do. 

Originally posted by teakbois

You do realize that the way to defend your game correctly is not by saying omg WoW sux?  You seem so threatened by every other game.  Maybe if you didnt post your hate threads on the WoW and SWTOR forums (and who knows other forums, Im betting gw2 and TERA as well) less people would come here and post negative thoughts about Rift?

Acting like your game is somehow superior and *insert game here* sucks is only going to make people want to point out where you are wrong.

It is not some WoW is suxors statement. My point is I like Trions approach to MMO's. Some people like Biowares story emphasis or Blizzard casual style. Some like ArenaNET's pvp focus and sub model.

I like the concept that if I give Trion $15 I get content. It is what they do. The stuff they do surprises me because stuff like leader boards I never expected or looking for guild. I like the graphics choice. TOR/GW2/WoW all look cartoony to me and not realistic enough.

I log in to talk to people over vent and jump around in circles in Meridian.

I love leveling up in this game. I just wish the end game was as entertaining. Nothing else to play, but my sub does expire next month. I doubt I continue after that.

The community is 100 times better than WoW, and I'm probably not being generous enough. I've never been bitched at for not having 3k dps. Not once, yet this was a daily occurence in WoW. People in Rift just seem to play to have fun, and understand life isn't defined by how much raid gear one has. 

Its a good game, I just wish PuGers could get into raids. If they could I doubt I'd ever leave.

It's the most polished mmo out today.    The bugs are fixed quick, the content can be pushed out faster than anybody can push out content right now.  The rifts are exciting, especially when the rift events happen and the whole zone takes part in attempting to fend off the evil.  

The complaints about rift have nothing to do with rift but the general generation of game that it came out in.  After we sawthrough the storylines of SWTOR, we realized that Rift just had a better play experience.  

Originally posted by Golelorn

I love leveling up in this game. I just wish the end game was as entertaining. Nothing else to play, but my sub does expire next month. I doubt I continue after that.

The community is 100 times better than WoW, and I'm probably not being generous enough. I've never been bitched at for not having 3k dps. Not once, yet this was a daily occurence in WoW. People in Rift just seem to play to have fun, and understand life isn't defined by how much raid gear one has. 

Its a good game, I just wish PuGers could get into raids. If they could I doubt I'd ever leave.

Oddly, I had the opposite experience, Leveling was a chore, but endgame was the best part of Rift.

You can't approach Rift's endgame like current WoW. It's progression model appears to be more based on how WoW was in TBC. meaning there is more "progression" in your progression. Once WoW's LK hit, it felt like Raiding was little more than a 10 man heroic and everyone could do it' Rift is a bit different. You should spend some time running Experts before raiding. 

during LK, WoW's progression painted itself into a corner. By the end of the expansion, you had 5 man heroics dropping better gear than some 25man heroic raids. That's bad. When LK hit, my hunter was still doing 2nd place in DPS still sporting Santo's rifle and Legacy.

Anyway, Rift's endgame progressions has a bit less of the short cuts later expansions in WoW provide. If you meet the focus/hit and DPS requirements, you will raid. I hit those requirements within a couple days after hitting 50. No, I wasn't a DPS monster, but I was able to raid. And Rift raids are a lot of fun. I just ran Experts like no one's business.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by teakbois

POINT 2

 

Rift's endgame model is a near mirror image of WoW.  ALmost EXACTLY identical.  its gear crrency grind wth heavy emphasis on daily quests.  Yes, there are a few more options.  but the absolute focus in Rift is gear and currency/reputation for gear.  And espeically focused on repitiion of dungeons ad infintum.  

Entirely your opinion, 90% of my time is not spent grinding for gear, I prefer doing other things. And having racked up over 2000hrs it just shows there are other things to do... I could not do this in all the other games I have played.

In fact I'm not particulary interested in raiding, which is all you could do in most other games at endgame.

It shows you have very limited view on what RIFT has to offer, or are "trying to play it like exactly like WOW" as thats all you are used too. Dig deeper, you will find more.

Just because you like the endless repitition of things like IAs, invasions, world events and chronicles does not mean the endgame is indeed modeled after WoWs.  You cant deny the focus is on the reputation and currency grinds.  Sure, you may play it differently, but you can play any MMO's endgame differently, even WoWs.

 

The fact you have played 2000 hours in Rift says absolutely nothing about Rift itself, just that you love Rift.  I would bit every penny I own there are more people that have spent 2000 hours in WoW since Mar 1, 2011 than in Rift.

Originally posted by Golelorn

I love leveling up in this game. I just wish the end game was as entertaining. Nothing else to play, but my sub does expire next month. I doubt I continue after that.

The community is 100 times better than WoW, and I'm probably not being generous enough. I've never been bitched at for not having 3k dps. Not once, yet this was a daily occurence in WoW. People in Rift just seem to play to have fun, and understand life isn't defined by how much raid gear one has. 

Its a good game, I just wish PuGers could get into raids. If they could I doubt I'd ever leave.

Byriel, Defiant side, we've been pugging RoS\GSB for months and have started pugging HK in the last couple. Pug run in HK usually makes 4-5 bosses in a night. GSB\ROS are usually cleared in 1 night by pug. I've heard of other groups on other servers that will pug an instance and everyone bids for items, then the winner pays money to the raid and everyone splits it. Ours has always been Need if Need and don't be a douche. So...yeah, pug raiding does exist!